Top 5 free tools that check whether ChatGPT mentions you in 2026
Five free tools report whether ChatGPT mentions a brand: the Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, the Semrush AI Visibility Checker, the Otterly AI Authority Checker, AthenaHQ free tier and the Conductor AI Visibility Report. Three of the five need no account at all. This page stops at five because five is the number that qualifies, and a Top 10 on this subject would have to count crawl checkers and prompt generators as mention checkers.
We publish this ranking and sell an answer engine optimization platform that qualifies for none of it, because GetXEO offers no free tier, no free trial and no free tool. The count is five rather than ten because five tools passed the test, and padding the list would have made the title false. Every offering was read on 4 September 2026.
In short
The questions this page answers, and the short answers.
- What are the top 5 free tools that check ChatGPT mentions?
- The Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker, the Semrush AI Visibility Checker, the Otterly AI Authority Checker, AthenaHQ free tier and the Conductor AI Visibility Report. The first three run with no account, the fourth needs a signup and gives three hundred credits, and the fifth arrives behind an email address.
- Why do only five free tools qualify as ChatGPT mention checkers?
- Because five is the number that reports whether ChatGPT named a brand, without payment. The obvious candidates for places six to ten check whether ChatGPT can read a site, or generate prompts, or produce a file. Those are useful and they answer a different question, so counting them would make the title false.
- Which free ChatGPT checker returns the most detail?
- The Ahrefs tool, on what it publishes. It returns total mentions, a breakdown by platform, top topics, and the domains and pages being cited, with no signup and no stated limit on how many brands can be checked. The Semrush tool adds a competitor comparison and caps free runs at three a day.
- Is a free ChatGPT mention check reliable?
- It is a sample rather than a rate. Answers vary between runs, so one free reading tells a team whether it appears at all rather than how often. Two of the five publish their own limits, which makes them more trustworthy rather than less, and the ones publishing no limits are simply quieter.
Why the count is five
Four candidates that each answer a different question.
A Top 10 was the obvious shape for this subject and the field does not supply ten, so the number moved rather than the standard.
The test applied was narrow: does the tool report whether ChatGPT named the brand, without payment. Five pass. The strongest candidates for the remaining places all fail it for the same reason, which is that they answer whether ChatGPT can reach the site rather than what it said.
- A crawl checker reports robots rules for named AI bots. Essential, and it is a permission check rather than a mention check
- An llms file generator produces a file. Useful after a problem is found, and it finds nothing itself
- A prompt generator suggests questions worth monitoring. That is what to ask, not what the answer was
- A free suite account carries tools that mostly predate this subject. One excludes the AI visibility product outright, and one repeats a reading its own checker already gives
Counting those four produces the list of ten on the companion page, where every entry after the fifth is doing something other than what this title promises. The test also counts one entry per vendor, which is why a free plan returning the same reading as a checker from the same vendor does not appear twice.
The five, and what each returns
Every tool with its gate and its published output.
Each row records what the vendor page said on 4 September 2026.
| Rank | Tool | Gate | Published output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | None | The fullest free output, and it names who gets quoted |
| 2 | Semrush AI Visibility Checker | Three runs a day | The only free output carrying a competitor comparison |
| 3 | Otterly AI Authority Checker | None | A zero to a hundred score, drawn from training data |
| 4 | AthenaHQ free tier | Signup | A working account, capped at three hundred credits |
| 5 | Conductor AI Visibility Report | Email address | A mailed report covering prompts, sources and sentiment |
The gate column is worth reading before the output column. A tool needing nothing can be run against a competitor as easily as against your own brand, and the comparison is what makes a single reading mean anything.
The three that need nothing at all
No signup, no card, and a reading in minutes.
1. Ahrefs. No signup and no credit card. It covers five named AI surfaces and returns total mentions, a platform breakdown, top topics, and the domains and pages being cited. There is no cap on how many brands you can check. The cited domains list is the best part of it. It names who gets quoted in your place.
2. Semrush. Three runs a day, no registration, covering four named AI surfaces. The output carries a score, mentions, citations, reach, top cited pages and a competitor comparison. A rival comparison in a free tool is rare, so spend the three daily runs with care.
3. Otterly AI. Free with no signup needed. It queries three named sources for a score from zero to a hundred, and states that results reflect training data rather than the live web. That admission is why it ranks third. It is also why it belongs on the list.
The two that ask for something first
A signup and an email, for a fuller reading.
4. AthenaHQ free tier. Three hundred credits at no cost, covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot, with prompt and response analysis, source and competitor insights and content recommendations. This is a working product rather than a single check, which makes it the most generous entry and the hardest to budget. One credit is one AI response, heavier models cost five, and fan out multiplies every prompt by four, so three hundred credits disappears quickly with fan out enabled.
5. Conductor AI Visibility Report. Share of AI visibility by brand mentions and citations across top AI engines including ChatGPT, with top prompts, most cited sources and sentiment. A domain and an email start it. That is quicker than creating an account and it is not anonymous, so it belongs last of the five.
Both give more than the instant three. The sensible order is to run the free three first, and only trade an email or a signup once a reading has shown there is something to look into.
Reading a free result without over reading it
One run is a sample, and two runs are better.
The main risk with a free check is not that it is wrong. It is that a single number gets carried into a meeting as though it were a rate.
Model outputs vary between runs, so one reading is a draw from a distribution. A brand named in one check and missing from the next has not changed, and neither has the engine.
Two habits fix most of it. Run two different tools rather than one, because agreement between two samples is worth far more than confidence in one. And run the same check against two competitors, because a zero means something entirely different when every rival returns a zero as well.
What none of the five can do is show a trend, explain why a competitor is preferred, or tell a used source apart from a cited one. Those need a subscription, and the free reading exists to decide whether that subscription is worth buying.
What to do with a zero
Two causes, and one of them resolves in a day.
A brand missing from all five checks has one of two problems, and they are cheap to tell apart.
The crawler is blocked. OpenAI publishes that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that the setting is independent of the GPTBot training rule. A robots file written to keep content out of model training may have removed the brand from answers as a side effect. A free crawl checker tests robots rules against about sixteen named AI bots and settles it in seconds.
The pages are not preferred. Crawlers allowed, brand still absent, which means competitors are being chosen. The next move is to read the answers rather than run more checks: which brands appear, which publishers are quoted, and what the engine takes the question to mean.
The first resolves fast. A robots.txt change reaches OpenAI search systems in about twenty four hours. The second resolves over quarters, which is why establishing which one you have is the highest value hour in this whole subject.
How the five compare on one brand
Four differences that decide which one to run first.
Run all five against the same brand and the readings differ in four predictable ways.
- Recency. Four query live or recent answers. One scores from training data and says so, which makes it a lagging reading rather than a wrong one
- Breadth. Every one covers more than ChatGPT, so a brand strong in one assistant and absent from another will see that split immediately
- Who else appears. Two return the domains and pages being cited, which is the single most actionable field any free tool gives
- Repeatability. Two impose no cap, one allows three runs a day, and two are one off readings gated by a signup or an email
The fourth difference decides the order of use. Start with something uncapped, because the first reading is rarely the useful one and a capped tool is better spent on a competitor than on a second look at yourself.
Who should use which of the five first
Five situations, each pointing at one starting tool.
The five are close enough that the order of use matters more than the choice between them.
| Your situation | Start with | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A first look, right now | Ahrefs | No account and no cap on brands |
| You need a rival comparison | Semrush | A competitor view inside a free run |
| Checking a brand nobody knows | Otterly AI | A score built from training data |
| You want to feel the product | AthenaHQ | A real account rather than a snapshot |
| A report to forward upward | Conductor | A written report rather than a screen |
The last row is worth a caveat. A report that arrives by email is easier to circulate and it also puts a sales team in contact, so send it upward on its findings rather than as a recommendation of the vendor that produced it.
Two rows deserve to be run together rather than chosen between. The first and second cost nothing, take minutes each, and disagree often enough that the disagreement is informative. A brand that appears in one and not the other has learned something real about how thin a single free sample is, and that lesson is worth more than either reading on its own.
What free stops being enough
Three moments that turn a reading into a purchase.
Free readings are a diagnostic. Three situations turn them into a subscription, and none of the three is about wanting more detail.
Somebody starts asking for a trend. The moment a figure appears in a monthly report, it needs the same measurement repeated the same way, and a snapshot cannot supply that.
The number gets challenged. A free reading has a thin sample behind it and no published run count, so the first question about how many times the prompt was asked ends the conversation.
A page needs to be aimed. Knowing a rival is preferred is not the same as knowing which of your pages an engine leaned on. That field is paid everywhere it exists, and it is the point at which measurement starts changing what gets written.
None of the three is a reason to buy the most expensive option available. The reading that prompted the purchase usually points at one specific gap, and buying against that gap beats buying against a feature list. A brand blocked at the crawler needs an access product, not the deepest reporting in the field.
What the five have in common
Three shared limits worth knowing before running any.
The differences matter less than the ceiling all five share.
Nothing here follows a brand over time. Every entry is a snapshot or a small allowance, and a quarterly movement needs a paid account behind it. Comparing two snapshots taken weeks apart looks like a trend line and is not one, which is the mistake this subject invites most often.
None of them explains a result. A checker reports that a rival is named more often and not why. That answer sits in the text of the answers themselves, and reading twenty of them by hand explains more than a second free run ever will.
Nothing here tells a quiet source from a credited one. An engine can lean on a page heavily and never name it, which is the gap between supplying an answer and getting recognized for it. Reporting those apart is a paid feature, and one GetXEO also lacks.
Where GetXEO sits on this page
Absent, and the reason belongs in the ranking.
We publish this ranking and appear nowhere in it.
GetXEO offers no free tier, no free trial and no free tool. On the subject of this page there is nothing to enter, and quietly omitting ourselves while ranking five rivals would be the wrong kind of tidy.
For a reader who came here specifically because there is no budget yet, that is disqualifying rather than a footnote. The three instant checkers cost nothing and take minutes, and any of them is a better first step than a conversation with us.
There is a version of this page that would have included GetXEO anyway, on the strength of a demo or a conversation, and called that a free way in. It is not one. A demo is a sales meeting with a product in it, and a reader looking for a reading tonight is owed the distinction rather than the generosity.
Frequently asked questions
Longer tail questions that did not need a section of their own.
Should a free AI visibility check be run more than once?
Yes, twice at minimum and with two different tools. Answers vary between runs, so agreement between two samples is worth much more than confidence in one. Running the same pair against a competitor on the same day adds the only context that makes a single reading interpretable.
Does a free AI visibility tool cover engines other than ChatGPT?
Every one of the five does. Ahrefs names Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Overviews alongside ChatGPT. Semrush covers ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews. AthenaHQ includes five models on its free tier, and the Conductor report names ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
How many free AI visibility checks does a brand need before paying?
Two tools and two competitors, run on the same day, which is four readings and about an hour. That is enough to know whether the brand appears, whether rivals do, and whether the gap is worth money. Beyond that, free readings repeat rather than accumulate.
What does an email gated AI visibility report actually cost?
A place on a vendor sales list, which is a real price rather than a hidden one. The Conductor report asks for a domain and an email before it runs. That is a smaller gate than a signup and it is worth paying only after the anonymous checks have shown something worth following up.
Sources
The 9 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.
- OpenAI, the crawler and user agent documentation, read 4 September 2026
- Gond and others at Microsoft Research, enabling determinism in LLM inference, January 2026
- Ahrefs, the published free AI Visibility Checker, read 4 September 2026
- Semrush, the published free AI search visibility checker and its FAQ, read 4 September 2026
- Otterly AI, the published free AI Authority Checker, read 4 September 2026
- AthenaHQ, the published plans and pricing comparison, read 29 August 2026
- AthenaHQ, the published credit calculator, read 29 August 2026
- Conductor, the published free AI visibility report, read 4 September 2026
- Writesonic, the published AI crawl checker tool, read 29 August 2026
Read next
The rest of this cluster, in the order it makes sense to read.