Blog · 24 September 2026 · By HeardOf

The vendors' own "best AI visibility tools" lists: 14 of 14 put the author first

Who comes first in the AI-visibility vendors' own best-of lists?

The author, in every one. Fourteen best-of and top-N lists of AI visibility tools on the Profound, Otterly, AthenaHQ and Geoptie blogs name two or more tools, and all fourteen put the author's own tool at position one — Profound first in its three, Otterly first in its two, AthenaHQ first in its one, Geoptie first in its eight — rendered in a browser on 24 September 2026. None of Peec's 44 posts matches the rule.

Four more AthenaHQ pages carry a best-of title and name no tool but AthenaHQ: "Best AI Discovery Tools for E-commerce in November 2026", "Best AI Search Solutions for Enterprise Brands in November 2026", "Best AI Search Tools to Use in November 2026" and "Best GEO Optimization Platforms for Startups in November 2026", each dated 15 February 2026 in its structured data. Their headings are sections about AthenaHQ, not entries for other tools. A fifth AthenaHQ page matched the rule on its slug alone and is about prompt volume, not tools; it is in the table and in no count.

A second group of four lists carries the title "AI SEO tools" rather than an AI-visibility term. Three of the four put the author first. The fourth, Otterly's "The 25 Best AI SEO Tools in 2026" of 4 August 2026, lists Profound first and OtterlyAI second; no other list the rule returns, and none of the 24 posts we rendered, opens with a tool that is not the author's.

Which posts count as a best-of list?

Every post in the 574-post census of the five blogs whose slug or title carries three things: the word best, or top with or without a number; a plural tool noun — tools, platforms, solutions, trackers or providers; and an AI-visibility term — AI visibility, AI search, GEO or generative engine optimization, AEO or answer engine optimization, LLM, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, AI Overviews or AI discovery. The five sitemaps were fetched again on 24 September 2026 and list the same 574 posts as on 23 September, so the set is the census set read a day later.

Nineteen posts match: Profound 3, Otterly 2, AthenaHQ 6, Geoptie 8, Peec 0. The plural noun is what keeps out a press release titled "Cementing Role as Best AI Search Monitoring Tool", three award announcements and two versus pages asking which is "the best" platform; Geoptie's nine "Best X Alternatives" posts are a different page shape and are not counted here. Four lists match on the term AI SEO instead and are reported as their own group, because two of them are mostly content tools. A check for titles that lead with a number and no best or top — "12 AI visibility tools compared" — found none.

Do the prices these lists print match the vendors' own pages?

Not all of them. The fourteen core lists print 179 amounts about one of the nineteen tools in what nineteen AI-visibility tools charge; checked against those tools' pricing pages rendered on 24 September 2026, 117 are drawn by the page as it opens, 19 are not drawn as the page opens — 12 behind a billing tab or in a hidden block, and 7 monthly add-on prices of Peec's that its page implies with a discount label and does not print — 30 are not on the page at all, and 13 are printed for Profound, whose page shows no figure. Eleven of the 30 are euro amounts for Peec and Scrunch, whose pages drew dollars from our location; the pages could price in euros elsewhere, and we did not vary location.

Nine of the nineteen core posts print any price for a tracked tool, and all nine print at least one that the tool's page does not draw. The other ten print none: Profound's three lists print no price for any tool, Otterly's AI Overview list and Geoptie's free-tools list print none for the nineteen, and AthenaHQ's four single-tool pages, and AthenaHQ's prompt-volume page, print none. The four AI SEO lists add 44 amounts: 21 drawn by the page, 18 not on it, 5 for Profound's page.

Which printed amounts are not on the page they describe?

Ahrefs Brand Radar at $398 a month, Scrunch at $300 and $500, AthenaHQ at $545 and $2,000, and Peec in euros are the amounts that recur without a match on the tool's own page. Ahrefs at "$398/mo" for Brand Radar appears in four Geoptie lists; ahrefs.com/brand-radar as rendered draws $199 a month for its AI Visibility Index, $699 for all models and custom prompts from $50. Scrunch at "$300/mo" with "$250/mo billed annually", and "Growth — $500/mo", appears in Geoptie's ChatGPT and Claude lists; scrunch.com/pricing draws one figure, Core $250 a month, and showed no billing toggle. Peec's agency Scale plan at $795 a month appears in Geoptie's AEO list; peec.ai/pricing draws Starter $95, Pro $245 and Advanced $495 and a link reading "See agency pricing" with no figure, so the $245 and $495 the same list gives for agency Essential and Growth are amounts the page draws under other plan names. AthenaHQ "Growth" at $545 and "Enterprise from $2,000" appear in Geoptie's AI search visibility list; athenahq.ai/plans draws a $25 credit, Starter $295 and a $300 credit.

Goodie at "$479/mo" in Geoptie's GEO list and "$495/mo" in its AI SEO list; higoodie.com/pricing draws Core $399 and Pro $999 billed annually. Otterly "Enterprise from $1,000/mo" in two Geoptie lists and "Pro $989/mo" in a third; otterly.ai/pricing draws $29, $189 and $489. Writesonic "from $49/mo" and Rankscale "from around $19/mo" in Otterly's AI SEO list; the pages draw $79 and $20. SE Ranking at $65, $119 and $259 in Profound's AI SEO list and "around $65" in Otterly's; seranking.com draws $129 and $279 a month, $103.20 and $223.20 on annual billing. Surfer at $219, $999 and $95 in the same Profound list; surferseo.com draws 49, 82, 99, 182 and 299 dollars a month billed yearly. Peec in euros, 16 amounts in 10 lists, against a page that drew dollars here: €89 in 8 of them; €85 and €199 in Otterly's AI SEO list; €199 and €499 in Geoptie's; €75, €169 and €424 in Geoptie's AI search visibility list; €120 in AthenaHQ's top-10 list; and Scrunch at €89 in Geoptie's AI search visibility list. Beside those euro figures, Geoptie prints seven approximate dollar conversions of its own — $87, $196 and $493 in one list, $104, $232 and $580 in another, and $95 for Scrunch — which are the author's arithmetic and are not counted here.

Whether a list was right on the day it was written is not something this read can say. Eleven of the nineteen core posts carry no date within 90 days of 24 September 2026; prices move, and a figure that was on the page in May may not be on it now. Whether lists of this shape are cited by the engines at all is a different question; five third-party studies on it, each with its sample, its engine and its date, are compiled in "best X" lists as AI sources.

What do the authors print about their own prices?

Three authors print prices for their own tool that their own pricing page does not draw: AthenaHQ, Otterly and Profound. AthenaHQ's top-10 GEO list, dated 3 August 2026, prints "Growth plan at $900/month, with one free month on annual plans"; athenahq.ai/plans, rendered 24 September 2026, draws $25, $295 and $300 and no $900. Otterly's AI SEO list, dated 4 August 2026, prints "Pro $989/mo"; otterly.ai/pricing draws a third tier named Premium at $489. Profound's AI SEO list, dated 30 November 2025, prints "Starter: $99/month" and "Growth: $399/month"; tryprofound.com/pricing draws no figure, and the 18 amounts eight lists print for Profound — $99, $399, $332.50, and in two Geoptie lists $499 — are figures tryprofound.com/pricing did not show as rendered on 24 September 2026. They are the authors' figures, printed on the dates their posts carry; the pages are as they rendered on 24 September 2026. What the help pages of Google, OpenAI and Perplexity say a company can do when an AI answer gets it wrong is in when ChatGPT gets your company wrong.

How was this measured?

The five sitemaps were fetched with curl on 24 September 2026 at 17:37 UTC and compared with the 23 September census under the same post rule; nothing had changed. The rule above was run over the 574 slugs and titles by script, and every match was fetched twice: once with curl and a browser user-agent, once in Chrome 153 headless with JavaScript, a nine-second wait, two scrolls and the page's visible text saved, between 17:40 and 17:46 UTC. The author's position and the tool count come from the numbered or headed entries of each rendered list; the printed amounts come from the text under each entry, read entry by entry; each amount was then looked for in the tool's pricing page as rendered between 16:28 and 16:38 UTC the same day, and, where absent, in that page's served HTML with its currency sign. A right amount under a different plan name counts as on the page; the plan names were not compared. Each amount counts once per plan per list: both ends of a range are two amounts; a second currency printed beside a figure counts; a figure repeated for the same plan is not counted again; an approximate conversion the author marks with a tilde is excluded as the author's arithmetic, as is a sum the author computed; and a range stated for two or more tools together is attributed to neither.

What this does not cover: amounts printed for tools outside the nineteen, which is most of the entries in the longer lists; Geoptie's own prices, since geoptie.com is not among the rendered pages; whether any of these lists ranks for anything, for which no results page is on record; and what any page would show from another country. Everything this post says about our own system comes from us and carries its date in the sentence that says it; you cannot check it. Everything else carries a site, a day and a rule. The audit this site sells is described in the post on which engines we check, as updated 23 September 2026, and that description is the source of the one sentence about it in the closing.

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