AI visibility companies in 2026 fall into six types: enterprise platforms like Profound, mid-market trackers like Peec AI and Scrunch, entry tools like Otterly.ai, specialist AEO agencies, full service firms that pair AEO with PR, and in-house builds, with real costs running from $29 per month for a tracking tool to five figures per month for enterprise programs. Most buyers need exactly one of these types, and the most common mistake is paying agency prices for what a $95 tool measures, or buying a tracking dashboard when the actual problem is that nothing on the web says anything citable about your brand.
The distinction that sorts the whole market: tools measure AI visibility, services change it. Every vendor below does one or the other, and a few do both.
What are the 6 types of AI visibility companies?
The market splits by what you get and what you pay. Type 1 is enterprise platforms: Profound raised a $96 million Series C at a reported $1 billion valuation in February 2026, serves 700+ enterprise customers, and while its entry plan starts at $99 per month for a single engine and seat, real enterprise deployments with 10 engine coverage, SOC 2, and SSO run into five figures annually. Type 2 is mid-market trackers: Peec AI runs $95 to $495 per month with 50 prompts and multiple models at entry, and Scrunch, acquired by Sitecore in June 2026, starts around $250 per month. Type 3 is entry tools: Otterly.ai starts at $29 per month for 15 prompts across 4 engines, and Peekaboo targets agencies from about $50.
Type 4 is specialist AEO and GEO agencies, which typically charge $2,000 to $10,000 per month to do the work the dashboards only measure: schema, content restructuring, entity cleanup, citation building. Type 5 is full service firms pairing AEO with digital PR and earned media, usually $3,000 to $15,000 per month, built on the evidence that most AI citations trace to earned media rather than owned content. Type 6 is in-house: a capable marketer with a $95 to $250 tracking tool and 10 to 20 hours per month, the cheapest option in cash and the most expensive in attention.
Before comparing vendors, it helps to know what you are actually invisible for. Run a free AI visibility audit and see which buyer queries ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews answer without ever mentioning you.
Which type fits which buyer?
Match the type to your gap, not your budget. If you already produce strong content and press but cannot see where you stand, buy a tracker: Otterly.ai at $29 or Peec AI at $95 answers the measurement question for less than one agency hour. If your brand barely appears in AI answers because the underlying web says little about you, no dashboard fixes that; you need a service that creates citable material, which means type 4 or type 5.
Company size sets the ceiling. Enterprises with multiple brands and compliance requirements land on Profound or Scrunch inside Sitecore because they need SSO, API access, and agent analytics, and they staff teams to act on the data. A 10 person law firm or a single location clinic gets no value from enterprise tooling; its entire prompt universe is 30 queries, trackable for under $100 per month, and its real constraint is that nobody has published the comparison pages, review profiles, and press mentions that AI engines cite. Service businesses in high trust categories, law, medical, financial, aesthetic, consistently get more from citation building than from measurement, because their buyers ask AI “who should I hire” and the engines answer from third party sources the business does not control.
What do AI visibility companies actually charge in 2026?
Five price bands cover the market. Band 1, $29 to $100 per month: entry tracking (Otterly.ai Lite, Peekaboo, Profound’s single engine starter). You get scheduled prompt runs, share of voice, and citation source lists. Band 2, $100 to $500 per month: serious tracking (Peec AI tiers, Scrunch entry) with more prompts, more engines, competitor benchmarking, and API or export access. Band 3, $2,000 to $6,000 per month: specialist AEO agency retainers covering technical implementation, content, and monthly reporting. Band 4, $3,000 to $15,000 per month: integrated AEO plus PR retainers where earned media placement is the core deliverable. Band 5: enterprise platform contracts, custom priced, commonly five figures per year before services.
Two pricing traps recur. First, tool reselling: some agencies charge $1,500+ per month for reports generated by a $95 tracker, so always ask which platform produces the numbers and what work happens on top of measurement. Second, prompt inflation: platforms price by prompt count, and sales teams size packages at hundreds of prompts when a focused brand needs 25 to 50 well chosen buyer queries. A bigger prompt set produces a bigger invoice and a noisier report, not better decisions. Detailed cost breakdowns by business type are in how much an AI visibility company costs.
What should you check before signing with any of them?
Check five things regardless of type. One: engine coverage that matches your buyers, at minimum ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini, with Copilot mattering for B2B. Two: whether they track buyer intent prompts (“best mass tort firm for AFFF claims”) or vanity prompts (“what is AEO”), because only the first kind precedes revenue. Three: who owns the data and content when you leave; exported prompt history and published assets should be yours. Four: reference results, meaning citation gains on commercial queries, not traffic screenshots. Five: contract terms, where month to month or quarterly beats annual lock in for a market this young; the clauses worth refusing are covered in AEO agency red flags.
For services specifically, add a sixth check: ask what percentage of the retainer produces third party visibility (press mentions, review platform presence, directory and data source cleanup) versus on-site edits. Research across millions of citations shows AI engines cite earned and third party sources far more often than brand owned pages for “who should I hire” queries, so a proposal that is 100% on-site work is optimized for the easy half of the problem. Firms that combine answer engine optimization with earned media are pricing the harder half in.
How do the named vendors differ head to head?
Profound is the depth leader: 10 engine coverage, agent analytics, enterprise security, and now enterprise pricing to match; right for organizations that will staff against the data. Peec AI is the mid-market value pick: transparent $95 to $495 pricing, unlimited seats, fast setup, best for growth teams that want weekly numbers without procurement. Scrunch brought agent experience analysis and now lives inside Sitecore, which makes it strongest for companies already on Sitecore’s stack. Otterly.ai is the cheapest credible starting point at $29 and fits solo marketers validating whether AI visibility matters for their category before spending more. Peekaboo positions for agencies running many small clients.
None of the platforms create visibility. That is the honest limit of the whole tool category, and the platforms themselves say so: they surface which sources engines cite so someone can go earn presence in those sources. The work of earning it, publishing citable comparisons, securing press, building review depth, structuring data, is what separates the tool bands from the service bands, and it is where the budget should go once measurement confirms a gap. The full tool landscape, including monitoring options beyond these five, is mapped in AI visibility tracking tools.
The fastest way to pick your type: see your actual gap first. Get the free AI visibility audit, see which of your buyer queries cite competitors, and you will know within one read whether you need a $29 tracker or a citation building program.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI visibility company?
An AI visibility company helps brands appear in answers generated by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. The category spans software platforms that track how often engines mention or cite a brand (Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.ai, Scrunch) and service firms that do the optimization work: structuring content, building schema, earning press and reviews that engines cite. Tools measure the problem; services change the outcome. Many buyers eventually use one of each.
How much does AI visibility tracking software cost in 2026?
Entry tracking starts at $29 per month with Otterly.ai (15 prompts, 4 engines). Mid-market options run $95 to $495 per month at Peec AI and from roughly $250 at Scrunch. Profound offers a $99 per month single engine starter, but its enterprise deployments with full engine coverage and security features are custom priced and commonly reach five figures per year. Prompt count, engine coverage, and seat limits drive the differences between tiers.
Are AI visibility agencies worth it compared to tools?
It depends on your gap. If your brand already has strong third party presence and you only lack measurement, a $29 to $495 tool is sufficient and an agency is overpayment. If AI engines never cite you because little citable material exists about your brand, a tool will only document the problem, and a $2,000 to $10,000 per month service that builds citations, content, and press is what moves the number. Diagnose before buying either.
Which AI visibility platform is best for a small business?
Otterly.ai at $29 per month covers a small business’s realistic prompt universe, typically 25 to 50 buyer queries, across the major engines. Peec AI at $95 adds competitor benchmarking and more models. Enterprise platforms add little for single location businesses. For most small service businesses, the tracking layer matters less than fixing what it reveals: review depth, directory consistency, and the comparison content engines cite for local “best” queries.
What happened to Scrunch AI?
Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch in June 2026, folding Scrunch’s AI search visibility and agent experience platform into Sitecore’s digital experience stack. Scrunch had priced from around $250 per month and differentiated by analyzing how AI agents experience websites, not just how often brands are cited. Existing customers continue under Sitecore, and the deal signaled consolidation as enterprise software companies buy AI visibility capability rather than build it.
How many prompts should an AI visibility program track?
Most brands need 25 to 50 buyer intent prompts per market: the questions a real customer asks when deciding what to buy and whom to hire, plus a handful of comparison and alternative queries naming competitors. Platforms sell tiers with hundreds of prompts, but volume past the real buyer question set adds noise, not signal. Start narrow, confirm which queries produce citations and traffic, and expand only where the data justifies it.
The six types exist because AI visibility has two separable jobs, measuring and earning, and vendors cluster around one or the other at every price from $29 to five figures. Buy measurement when you lack sight, buy earning when you lack presence, and never pay service prices for tool output. The budget question resolves quickly once you see your own gap on the queries that precede revenue, and that costs nothing to check.
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