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GEO: what generative engine optimization is and what the tools cost

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is the work of getting a brand named and cited inside AI answers rather than ranked in a list of links.

We follow 10 tools that measure it. Their cheapest paid plans run from €20/mo to $295/mo, with a median of $88.76/mo, read from the vendors’ own pricing pages on September 8, 2026.

Tools measured

10

Cheapest entry

€20/mo

Rankscale

Median entry

$88.76/mo

normalised to USD

Engines on the entry plan

1 to 11

Amounts stay in the currency the vendor bills in. Only the median and the ordering are normalised to USD, with the ECB rate of 2026-09-01.

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What GEO is, and where it parts from SEO

A results page hands you ten links and lets you choose. An AI assistant hands you one composed answer with a handful of sources under it. The unit that matters moves from a position in a list to a mention inside a paragraph.

That changes what there is to measure. There is no rank seven in a ChatGPT answer. What exists is whether the engine named you, whether it linked to you as a source, and how often it did either across the questions your buyers actually ask.

The work itself overlaps heavily with plain good SEO, which is why this page stops at the measuring. The longer definition sits in what generative engine optimization means, and the five levers that get a page quoted are set out in how to get cited by ChatGPT and AI Overviews.

What these tools actually measure

Every tracker in this set does the same basic job. It stores a list of prompts, runs them against a set of engines on a schedule, and reports what came back. The differences that decide the price sit in four numbers.

  • Prompts. Eight of the ten entry plans publish how many prompts they cover, from 15 (Otterly.ai) to 500 (LLMrefs). The other two (Rankscale and AthenaHQ) sell an allowance instead and publish no prompt count.
  • Engines. An entry plan covers 1 to 11 of them. Profound tracks 1 engine on the cheapest plan and LLMrefs lists 11. The only engine every entry plan in the set has in common is ChatGPT.
  • Mentioned versus cited. Being named in an answer and being linked as its source are two different results. A tool that reports only the first one answers half the question, because a mention without a link sends nobody your way.
  • Share of the answers. One hit in twenty runs is noise. The number worth watching is the share of your prompt list that produces a mention, followed over weeks rather than read once.

That engine count comes with a warning. Six of the ten vendors keep at least one engine behind a paid add-on or a higher tier, so what the cheapest plan lists is not what you end up paying for.

Which tool fits you

Three routes, split on the measured price and not on a preference of ours. The median of $88.76/mo is the dividing line, so a tool moves route on its own when its price does.

One site, and you want the cheapest way in

Four standalone trackers sit below the median. The cheapest of them is also the cheapest of all ten. The widest coverage sits with LLMrefs, which lists 11 engines and 500 prompts.

Read the prompt count before you read the price. Between the smallest and the largest published allowance sits a factor of 33 in how many questions get followed for you.

You already pay for a big suite

AI tracking is now a module inside the suites. Look at the subscription you already have before you buy a second tool, because what that module covers differs a lot per suite. We review each of them in full.

When a standalone tracker still wins. The suite module is the cheaper move only if you need the rest of the suite anyway. Semrush AI Toolkit (Semrush One) covers 4 engines on the tier we measured, against 11 for LLMrefs.

An agency, or a brand in several markets

Four standalone trackers sit at or above the median. This is where several markets, more workspaces and longer prompt lists live, and where the published price stops being the whole price.

All ten publish an entry price, so “price on request” here means the tier above the entry plan. Profound and Scrunch AI quote everything above that tier on request. Scrunch AI publishes no monthly rate and bills the entry plan annually.

What we cannot tell you yet

None of the ten has been through a trial of our own. We compare this category on the published price and on what the vendor states about the entry plan. Both are read from the vendor’s own page, with the date attached.

The vendors do not all measure the same thing. One counts prompts, the next sells an allowance, and an engine included on one plan is a paid add-on on another. A price per prompt across this set is an estimate rather than a comparison.

Every amount here carries the day it was read, September 8, 2026. Anything older than 45 days is flagged during the build and in the feed, so a stale figure gets caught rather than quietly aging on the page.

Prices last checked on

Where to go from here

The full price table

Every amount, the billing term, the engines and the prompt limit, plus the JSON feed.

AI visibility tools price index

The category

The AI visibility tools we review individually, ranked as we rank every other category.

AI visibility tools

The how

Five levers that decide whether an engine quotes your page or somebody else’s.

Getting cited by ChatGPT

The pages these prices come from

Each amount on this page was read from the vendor’s own pricing page on the date behind the host name, with a copy of that page kept as evidence. A vendor can change a price the day after we look, so their page always beats ours.

GEO questions

What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?

GEO is the work of getting a brand named and cited inside the answers that AI assistants compose, instead of ranked in a list of blue links. An assistant returns one written answer with a few sources under it, so there is no position to hold.

What can be measured is whether an engine mentions you, whether it cites you as a source, and how large your share of the answers is. The ten tools in this guide do that by running a fixed prompt list against the engines on a schedule.

What do GEO tools cost?

The cheapest paid plan runs from €20/mo for Rankscale to $295/mo for AthenaHQ, with a median of $88.76/mo across the ten tools we measure.

Those amounts buy very different things. An entry plan covers 1 to 11 engines, and six of the ten vendors keep at least one engine behind a paid add-on or a higher tier. Every amount was read from the vendor's own pricing page in September 2026.

Do I need GEO on top of SEO?

The work overlaps almost entirely, so this is a measurement question rather than a second discipline. Pages that get cited in AI answers are overwhelmingly the ones that already answer the question clearly, carry dates and sources, and are crawlable.

What a tracker adds is proof. Without one you cannot see whether an engine names you or names a competitor. If AI search sends nothing worth the money in your category, keep doing the SEO and come back to the tracker later, because $88.76/mo is real money for one site.