A customer asks ChatGPT for the best accountant in their city, or the best CRM for a ten-person sales team. It answers with three names. Is yours one of them?
Most small businesses have no idea, because Google Search Console cannot tell them. That is what a GEO audit is for. GEO stands for generative engine optimization, and an audit checks how AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews describe your business, whether they mention you at all, and what is stopping them.
Until recently the tools for this were priced for large companies. That has changed. Several now cost under $50 a month, and a few are free. Here are ten that suit a small or mid-sized business, with what each one audits and what it costs.
Prices are taken from published comparisons and vendor listings checked in October 2026. This is a young market and prices change often, sometimes differing by region and billing period, so confirm before you buy.
- What a GEO Audit Checks
- The 10 Tools at a Glance
- 1. HubSpot AEO Grader
- 2. Otterly.AI
- 3. Rankscale
- 4. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
- 5. Geoptie
- 6. Peec AI
- 7. SE Ranking
- 8. Writesonic GEO
- 9. Ahrefs Brand Radar
- 10. Hall
- Which Tools to Use at Each Budget
- How to Run Your First GEO Audit in an Hour
- What to Fix First
- A Few Cautions Before You Buy
- FAQs
What a GEO Audit Checks
The phrase gets used loosely. A proper audit looks at five things, and few tools cover all of them.
| Area | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Visibility | When people ask about your product or service, does the AI mention you? |
| Accuracy and tone | Is what it says about you correct and positive? |
| Sources | Which websites is the AI quoting? Are any of them yours? |
| Competitors | Who gets recommended in your place, and how often? |
| Technical and page readiness | Can AI crawlers reach your pages, and is the content written so it can be quoted? |
If the idea is new to you, our primer on generative engine optimization basics explains how it differs from ordinary SEO.
The 10 Tools at a Glance
| Tool | Starts from | Free option | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AEO Grader | Free | Yes | A first brand score |
| Otterly.AI | $29/month | 14-day trial | Tracking plus on-page audit |
| Rankscale | $20/month | Trial | Lowest price, page readiness score |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/month | Free checker | SEO and GEO in one, crawler checks |
| Geoptie | About $41 to $49/month | Free tools | Beginners |
| Peec AI | $95/month | 7-day trial | Sources, sentiment, multi-country |
| SE Ranking | About $65/month plus AI add-on | Trial | Budget SEO suite with AI tracking |
| Writesonic GEO | $79/month | No | Fixing what the audit finds |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | About $129/month | No | Competitor and market research |
| Hall | Free | Yes | Free tracking, AI crawler activity |
1. HubSpot AEO Grader
Start here, because it costs nothing and takes five minutes. Type in your brand name and the grader asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini about you, then scores the answers out of 100. No account is needed.
The score is built from five things: how positively the engines talk about you, how much detail they give, whether they recognise the brand at all, your share of voice against competitors, and how they position you in your market. Each comes with a short written explanation, which is more useful than the number.
It is a one-time snapshot based on what the models already know, so it will not tell you how you appear for a specific customer question. For that, HubSpot sells a separate tracking product.
- Website: hubspot.com/aeo-grader
- Price: the grader is free. HubSpot AEO, the ongoing tracker, is about $50 a month for 25 prompts and does not need a HubSpot subscription.
- Best for: a first benchmark before you spend anything.
- Limits: no page-level or technical checks, and no history unless you pay for tracking.
2. Otterly.AI
Otterly is the paid tool most small teams try first. You enter the questions your customers ask, and it checks daily whether your brand is mentioned and which websites the AI cited in its answer.
What earns it a place on a list of audit tools is its GEO Audit feature. Point it at a page and it reviews more than 25 on-page factors, then gives you a checklist of what to fix. Most trackers at this price only tell you the score. This one tells you why.
- Website: otterly.ai
- Price: Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts. Standard is $189 and Premium is $489. There is a 14-day trial.
- Best for: a small business that wants tracking and page audits in one low-cost tool.
- Limits: 15 prompts go quickly, and coverage of Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude is sold as an add-on.
3. Rankscale
Rankscale has the lowest published entry price in the category. It tracks your visibility across a long list of AI engines and includes an AI Readiness Score, which audits individual pages for how easily an AI system can read and quote them.
It runs on credits. The entry plan includes a set number of AI responses and page audits each month, so it rewards being selective about what you track.
- Website: rankscale.ai
- Price: Essential is $20 a month, reported to include 120 credits, 480 AI responses and 10 page audits. Pro is $99.
- Best for: solo marketers and freelancers who want the cheapest way to track and audit.
- Limits: credits run out fast if you check many prompts across many engines.
4. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
If you already pay for Semrush, this is the simplest option, because your keyword, backlink and AI data sit in one place. The toolkit tracks prompts, compares you with competitors and shows which sources the AI engines cite.
The audit side is strong. Semrush’s Site Audit now includes AI-readiness checks, such as whether your robots.txt file is blocking AI crawlers and whether technical problems stop your pages from being read. Semrush also offers a free AI search visibility checker for a quick look.
- Website: semrush.com
- Price: the AI Visibility Toolkit is listed at $99 a month per domain. Semrush One, which bundles it with the SEO suite, starts at $199.
- Best for: businesses that want SEO and GEO audits from one subscription.
- Limits: expensive if AI visibility is the only thing you need.
5. Geoptie
Geoptie is built for beginners. It offers a set of free tools you can run without a credit card, then a paid plan that adds tracking and content recommendations aimed at getting pages cited.
The interface explains what each finding means and what to do about it, which matters when nobody on the team has done this before.
- Website: geoptie.com
- Price: paid plans are reported from about $41 to $49 a month. Free tools are available before you subscribe.
- Best for: owners and marketers new to GEO who want guidance, not a dashboard of numbers.
- Limits: a newer product with less history behind it than the SEO suites.
6. Peec AI
Peec AI is the tool to pick when the question is “what exactly are the AI engines saying, and where are they getting it from?” It reports mentions, position in the answer, sentiment and the sources behind each response, in a clean layout that is easy to share with a client or a boss.
It handles multiple languages and countries well, and plans come with unlimited seats, so a whole team can log in.
- Website: peec.ai
- Price: $95, $245 and $495 a month, with a 7-day trial.
- Best for: small agencies and businesses selling in more than one country.
- Limits: it tracks and diagnoses but does not audit your pages or write fixes.
7. SE Ranking
SE Ranking has long been the budget-friendly SEO suite for small businesses, and it now has AI visibility tracking alongside its rank tracker and website audit. It also offers a separate product, SE Visible, for teams that only want the AI side.
A useful detail: it shows which of your URLs are being cited in AI answers and which competitor pages are winning the mentions you are not.
- Website: seranking.com
- Price: SE Ranking plans start at about $65 a month, with AI tracking as a paid add-on. Total cost is commonly reported at around $129 a month. A free trial is available.
- Best for: SMBs that need a full SEO toolkit and AI tracking for less than Semrush.
- Limits: the advertised entry price does not include AI visibility, so read the plan details.
8. Writesonic GEO
Most tools in this list stop at telling you what is wrong. Writesonic goes on to help fix it. It tracks your AI visibility, points out the gaps, then uses its writing tools to draft or rewrite the content, and can publish to WordPress.
For a business with no content team, combining the audit and the fix in one place saves a lot of time.
- Website: writesonic.com
- Price: $79, $199 and $399 a month.
- Best for: small teams that want recommendations they can act on the same day.
- Limits: AI-drafted content still needs a human edit and your own facts before it goes live.
9. Ahrefs Brand Radar
Brand Radar works differently from the trackers above. Ahrefs maintains a very large database of AI prompts and answers, so you can look up how often your brand and your competitors appear without setting up prompts first. It is good for research and for measuring share of voice across a whole market.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which is free for verified site owners, is also worth setting up for the standard technical audit.
- Website: ahrefs.com/brand-radar
- Price: Ahrefs plans start at about $129 a month. Sources disagree on whether Brand Radar is included or charged as an add-on, so check the current plan page.
- Best for: businesses already using Ahrefs, and competitor research.
- Limits: monitoring only. It does not give recommendations.
10. Hall
Hall offers one of the more generous free plans: one project and 25 tracked questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.
It also covers something most tools skip. Hall shows which AI crawlers, such as GPTBot, are visiting your site and which pages they read. If the bots never reach your best pages, no amount of rewriting will help, so this is a useful audit in its own right.
- Website: usehall.com
- Price: free plan available. Paid plans are reported from around $239 a month.
- Best for: startups and solo marketers who want ongoing tracking without paying.
- Limits: a big jump in price from the free plan to the first paid one.
Which Tools to Use at Each Budget
| Monthly budget | What to use | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| $0 | HubSpot AEO Grader and Hall’s free plan | A brand score, 25 tracked questions and a view of AI crawler visits |
| Under $50 | Otterly Lite or Rankscale Essential | Daily tracking for a handful of prompts and audits of your key pages |
| $100 to $150 | Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, SE Ranking with the AI add-on, or Peec AI | Wider tracking, competitor comparison and technical checks |
| $150 and up | Any of the above with Writesonic GEO | Tracking plus help producing the content that closes the gaps |
Most small businesses do not need more than the second row for the first three months. Upgrade when you have run out of prompts, not before.
How to Run Your First GEO Audit in an Hour
- Write down ten questions a customer would ask. Not keywords. Full questions, such as “who is the best wedding photographer in Leeds for small ceremonies?” Include a few that name your competitors.
- Run the free grader to get a baseline score and see how the engines describe you.
- Ask the questions yourself in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Note who is recommended and which websites are cited. This is your manual audit, and it costs nothing.
- Check the facts. Wrong opening hours, an old address or a discontinued product in an AI answer usually trace back to an outdated listing somewhere. Find it and fix it.
- Look at the cited sources. If the AI keeps quoting a directory, a review site or a “best of” article, getting listed there is your quickest win. We compare the value of brand mentions and backlinks in a separate guide.
- Check crawler access. Open your robots.txt file and make sure you are not blocking AI crawlers by accident. Some security plugins and hosts do this by default.
- Audit your three most important pages with a page-level tool. Fix what it flags.
- Put the ten questions into a tracker and look again in a month.
What to Fix First
Audits produce long lists. For a small business, these four fixes tend to matter most.
- Make it obvious who you are. A clear About page, consistent business details everywhere and basic schema markup help AI systems recognise your business as a distinct thing.
- Answer questions directly. Put the question in a heading and the answer in the first sentence underneath. AI engines quote short, plain statements.
- Get mentioned where the AI is already looking. Review sites, local directories, industry round-ups and forums carry more weight in AI answers than most owners expect.
- Clear the technical blocks. If crawlers cannot reach a page, nothing else counts. The checks in our technical SEO guide apply here too.
For a fuller method, see our guide to LLM SEO. And if you are short on backlinks, depth on your own subject still counts. Here is how to build topical authority without backlinks.
A Few Cautions Before You Buy
- AI answers vary. Ask the same question twice and you may get two different lists. Good tools run each prompt many times and report an average. Treat a single result as a hint, not a ranking.
- Check which engines are included. The cheapest plan often covers only some of them, with the rest sold as add-ons.
- Count the prompts. Fifteen prompts sounds like plenty until you add locations and product lines.
- A score is not a sale. Use these tools to find and fix problems. Judge success by enquiries and revenue.
FAQs
What Is a GEO Audit?
It is a review of how generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity present your business: whether they mention you, what they say, which sources they rely on, and what on your website or elsewhere is holding you back.
Is There a Free GEO Audit Tool?
Yes. HubSpot’s AEO Grader gives a free one-time brand score without an account, and Hall has a free plan with ongoing tracking. Semrush and Geoptie also offer free checkers.
How Much Should a Small Business Spend on GEO Tools?
Between nothing and $50 a month is enough to start. Paid plans begin at about $20 to $29. Move up to a $100 tool only when you need more prompts, more engines or competitor tracking.
What Is the Difference Between GEO and AEO?
In practice, very little. GEO means generative engine optimization and AEO means answer engine optimization. Vendors use both for the same job: getting your business mentioned and cited in AI-generated answers.
Do I Still Need SEO if I Am Doing GEO?
Yes. AI engines draw heavily on pages that already rank well and on sites they can crawl easily. Good SEO is the base that GEO builds on.
How Often Should I Run a GEO Audit?
Do a full audit every three months, and track your key questions weekly or daily with a tool in between. Run an extra check after a rebrand, a site redesign or a change of address.
Can I Do a GEO Audit Without Any Tool?
You can do a basic one. Ask your customer questions in each AI assistant, record who is mentioned and which sources are cited, and check your robots.txt file. Tools save time and add history, but the manual version will show you the biggest gaps.
Find more tools:
