AI visibility platforms compared on engine coverage and refresh rate
Engine coverage and refresh rate are sold as one product and priced as two. Coverage decides which answer engines a plan watches, and nearly every vendor gates it by tier rather than by product. Refresh decides how often each prompt runs, and daily is the common default. A platform can be strong on one axis and thin on the other, so the pair has to be read together before a price means anything.
We publish this page and sell one of the ten platforms on it. GetXEO covers four engines here, which is fewer than three of the platforms above it. Every figure was read on the vendor pages on 29 August 2026.
In short
The questions this page answers, and the short answers.
- Which AI visibility platforms watch the most answer engines?
- AthenaHQ includes five models on every plan and ten on either paid tier, which no other vendor here matches on an included plan. Ahrefs Brand Radar indexes six AI surfaces and adds Claude through custom prompts. Most others start with ChatGPT alone and open the list further up the price card.
- How often does an AI visibility platform refresh its data?
- Daily is the common setting. Profound runs at daily frequency on every tier, Peec AI checks each prompt once every twenty four hours on every selected model, and Ahrefs runs custom prompts daily on each platform chosen. GetXEO publishes a weekly rhythm with scans available on demand, and Conductor describes continuous monitoring.
- Does adding a country cost more on an AI visibility platform?
- On several, yes. Ahrefs counts one prompt on one platform in one location as a single check, so a second country doubles the meter rather than adding to it. Peec AI caps countries at one to three below its enterprise tier. Semrush prices many locations into the toolkit itself.
- Is a faster AI visibility refresh rate worth paying for?
- It depends on what the number has to defend. The same prompt can return different answers on different runs, so frequency is what turns a reading into a trend. A weekly figure is enough to steer a content plan and thin for a team that has to explain a two point move to somebody who did not choose the tool.
Coverage and refresh are two different purchases
Two axes that are priced and gated separately.
Every vendor in this category sells one dashboard, and the dashboard hides two decisions that were made separately.
Coverage is which answer engines a plan watches. It is almost never a product level answer. The engine list is a plan row, so the number on the marketing page and the number a buyer gets are frequently different, and the gap is widest at the entry tier.
Refresh is how often each prompt is run against those engines. It matters for a reason that has nothing to do with software. The same prompt can return different answers on different runs, so a single check is a sample rather than a measurement, and frequency is what turns a scatter of samples into a line somebody can read.
The two axes fail differently. Thin coverage produces a number that is confidently wrong about the market, because it describes one engine and gets read as describing all of them. Slow refresh produces a number that is right and late. Neither problem is visible in a screenshot of a dashboard, which is why both belong on a shortlist before a demo is booked.
Every platform, its engines and its refresh
The whole field on both axes at once.
Read on the vendor pages on 29 August 2026, at the tier each vendor publishes.
| Platform | Engines on the plan | Refresh | What gates the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| AthenaHQ | Five models on every plan, ten on either paid tier | One to seven days a week | Credits, not the engine list |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Six AI surfaces indexed, with Claude through custom prompts | Daily | Tracked prompt quota per tier |
| Peec AI | Three models included, more billed separately | Every 24 hours | Models and countries per plan |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | Several assistants, across many locations | Daily | Absent from the cheapest plan |
| Profound | ChatGPT alone at entry, more further up | Daily | Plan tier |
| Writesonic | ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews until enterprise | Daily | Plan tier |
| GetXEO | Four answer engines | Weekly, plus on demand | Not gated by tier |
| Conductor | Not published as a list | Continuous | Not published |
| Scrunch AI | Not published as a list | Not published | Not published |
| AirOps | Not published as a list | Not published | Not published |
The column counts answer engines, so a platform that also watches classic search results is credited here only for the assistants it polls. Three rows say not published: Conductor publishes no engine list, Scrunch AI publishes none and AirOps publishes none. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling in from a roundup. Two of those vendors sell to enterprise buyers who get the answer in a call, which is normal and still lengthens an evaluation.
Where the engine list is gated by plan
Coverage is a plan row more than a product one.
The pattern across this field is that a product covers many engines and a plan covers few.
- Profound starts narrowest. The entry plan watches ChatGPT alone, and the main paid plan carries a hundred prompts and about nine thousand responses a month at daily frequency, so depth arrives before breadth does
- AthenaHQ starts widest. Five models are included on every plan and ten on either paid tier, which is the widest included list on this page, and scan frequency is set per workspace from one to seven days a week, so the constraint moves to the meter instead
- Ahrefs splits index from prompts. The index covers AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT and Copilot, while custom prompts add Claude and run daily on every platform selected, from five tracked prompts at the entry tier
- Semrush gates the whole toolkit. The cheapest plan carries no AI visibility at all, and the toolkit is also sold on its own at ninety nine dollars a month with twenty five tracked prompts
- Writesonic opens the list last. ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews are watched until the enterprise tier, with fifty, three hundred and six hundred answers tracked daily across the three brand plans
GetXEO is the odd row here, and not always flatteringly. Four answer engines are covered, on a weekly rhythm with scans available on demand, and the list does not change by tier. That is simpler to reason about than a gated list, and four is fewer engines than three of the platforms above reach.
What a daily refresh actually buys
Frequency matters because model answers move between runs.
Daily has become the default setting in this field, and it is worth being precise about what it delivers. Conductor describes continuous monitoring instead, which is the one row here that is not a cadence at all.
A daily check does not make an answer engine stable. It makes the instability visible. A brand that appears on four days out of seven has a real position, and a single weekly check will report that position as present or absent depending on which day it landed. Frequency is how a team stops arguing about which of those two readings was true.
What daily does not buy is depth on any one day. Running once a day against one engine is one sample a day, and a vendor that runs the same prompt many times inside a day is doing something different with the same word. Profound is the clearest case, because it publishes both halves and the arithmetic works out at roughly ninety checks per prompt in a month.
Two practical readings follow. A team tracking a handful of high value prompts should want depth, because each figure will be quoted on its own. A team watching a broad prompt set for movement can accept less depth per prompt, because the pattern across many prompts carries the signal instead.
Locations and models multiply both the coverage and the bill
A third axis hiding inside the first two.
Coverage is usually read as an engine list, and on several platforms it is really a list multiplied twice.
- Ahrefs multiplies by location. One prompt on one platform in one location counts as a single check, so watching two countries on three platforms turns twenty prompts into a hundred and twenty checks
- Peec AI caps countries. Three models are included per plan and countries are capped at one to three below the enterprise tier, so a multi market brand meets the ceiling on coverage rather than on volume
- Semrush prices locations in. Visibility and sentiment are reported across many locations alongside prompt research and an AI ready site audit, which suits a team already reporting rankings by market
- AthenaHQ multiplies by model weight. One credit is one AI response, heavier models cost five, and switching on fan out multiplies every prompt by four, so the widest included engine list is also the fastest meter to spend
The consequence for a shortlist is that two quotes are rarely comparable as written. A plan that looks cheap for twenty prompts can cost more than one that looks expensive, once the second country and the second model are counted the way the vendor counts them.
Which axis to buy first
Coverage or frequency, decided by what the number defends.
Both axes cost money, and most teams cannot max both at the entry price. The question that settles it is what the number is for.
Buy coverage first when the brand competes across several assistants and nobody yet knows where it is weak. A wide, shallow read finds the engine that is quietly ignoring the brand, and that finding is worth more than a precise figure for the one engine somebody happened to pick.
Buy frequency first when the engine is already known and the number will be challenged. A figure quoted in a board pack needs enough runs behind it that a two point move is a change rather than noise, and that is a depth purchase.
What neither axis buys is a reason. Research on AI search citation factors points at what earns a citation, and a tracking figure records the outcome rather than the cause. Coverage and refresh tell a team where and when it lost. What to publish next is a separate question, and no amount of either axis answers it.
Frequently asked questions
Longer tail questions that did not need a section of their own.
What counts as one check on Ahrefs Brand Radar?
One prompt, on one platform, in one location. That definition matters more than the quota beside it, because the multiplication happens in configuration rather than in output. Twenty prompts watched on three platforms in two countries consume a hundred and twenty checks, and nothing was published to cause it.
Can an AI visibility platform track Claude?
Some can. Ahrefs adds Claude through its custom prompts feature rather than through the index itself, and AthenaHQ includes ten models on either paid tier. Several platforms here publish an engine list that starts with ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and open it further up the price card.
Why do two AI visibility quotes rarely compare directly?
Because the field meters five different things: prompts, responses, checks, credits and answers a day. A price per prompt and a price per answer are different units, and a plan gated by location or model weight can cost twice its headline figure once a second market is switched on.
What does an AI visibility tracking platform not tell you?
Why the answer looked the way it did. Presence, position and sources are records of an outcome. The decision that follows, which is what to publish and how to structure it so an engine can lift it, sits outside every dashboard in this category.
Sources
The 18 records behind every external claim on this page.
All were published or last updated within the past twelve months. A competitor page appears only as a record of that vendor’s own published terms.
- Gond and others at Microsoft Research, enabling determinism in LLM inference, January 2026
- Machine Relations, AI search citation factors research
- Profound, the published pricing page and plan comparison, read 29 August 2026
- Peec AI, the published pricing page and plan comparison, read in a browser 29 August 2026
- Ahrefs, the published Brand Radar page, read 29 August 2026
- Ahrefs, the published Custom Prompts page and plan quotas, read 29 August 2026
- Semrush, the published AI visibility feature list, read 29 August 2026
- Semrush, the published AI Visibility Toolkit knowledge base entry, read 29 August 2026
- Semrush, the published pricing page and plan comparison, read 29 August 2026
- AthenaHQ, the published home page and FAQ, read 29 August 2026
- AthenaHQ, the published plans and pricing comparison, read 29 August 2026
- AthenaHQ, the published credit calculator, read 29 August 2026
- Writesonic, the published pricing page and plan comparison, read 29 August 2026
- GetXEO, the published dashboard feature page, read 29 August 2026
- Conductor, the published AI Search Performance page and FAQ, read 29 August 2026
- Conductor, the published pricing and plan comparison, read 29 August 2026
- Scrunch AI, the published pricing page, read in a browser 29 August 2026
- AirOps, the published pricing page and plan comparison, read 29 August 2026
Read next
The rest of this cluster, in the order it makes sense to read.