The honest answer is that AI visibility tracking costs anywhere from nothing to more than $500 a month, and the spread is wide because the tools are solving different sizes of the same problem. At the bottom is the free, manual route: asking the chatbots yourself. In the middle sit one-time scans and affordable subscriptions. At the top are enterprise platforms priced for large marketing teams. This page breaks down what each tier actually buys, what really drives the price, and where the honest cheapest option stops being good enough.
One note on why we can write this fairly: we ran our own category as a test, 60 buyer questions across 7 engines. The pricing questions were fragmented, with no single tool owning the answer, and the phrase 'cheapest way to monitor AI mentions' often resolved to generic tools like Google Alerts rather than a dedicated AI-visibility product. So there is no settled market price yet. That is good news if you are buying.
The short answer, by tier
Free and manual gets you a rough look. A one-time scan, around $249, gets you a real, full picture once. Affordable subscriptions, roughly $100 to $250 a month, keep a single brand tracked. Enterprise platforms start higher and climb into four figures a month for teams that need seats, integrations and support. More money mostly buys more engines, more frequent sampling, and more hand-holding. It does not automatically buy more accuracy.
Price tiers side by side
| Approach | Typical price | Engines | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask the chatbots yourself | Free | One at a time, by hand | A snapshot of whether you are named today, no history, no sources | A first gut check |
| General mention monitoring | Free to ~$50/mo | Not AI-specific | Alerts on brand mentions across the web, not built for AI answers | Watching the open web, not AI recommendations |
| One-time AI visibility scan | Around $249 once | All major engines in one run | Full leaderboard, website audit, cited sources, an action plan | Learning exactly where you stand, once |
| Mid-market subscription | ~$100 to $250/mo | A few, more on higher plans | Ongoing tracking of one brand, dashboards, alerts | A marketing team watching a single brand |
| Enterprise platform | $500/mo and up | Broad on top tiers | Large question sets, seats, integrations, account support | Enterprise teams with budget and headcount |
What actually drives the price
Five things move the number, and it is worth knowing them so you do not overpay for coverage you will not use.
- Number of engines. Checking ChatGPT alone is cheap and misleading. Covering ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and Mistral costs more to run, and it is the difference between a real picture and a partial one, because the engines disagree about who to recommend.
- Sampling frequency and depth. AI answers shift, so a serious measure asks each question more than once and repeats over time. More questions and more repeats cost more compute, which shows up in the price.
- Whether a website audit is included. Knowing you are invisible is half the job. Knowing why, because your pages are not answerable or not cited, is the half that leads to a fix. Audits add value and cost.
- Whether the fixes are done for you. Most tools stop at the chart. Paying for implementation is a different and higher tier, because it is service, not software.
- Team and agency features. Seats, white-label reports, and per-client tracking add cost and are worth it only if you actually manage multiple brands.
The cheapest way, honestly
The genuinely cheapest way to check AI visibility is free. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and ask them the questions your buyers actually ask: best plumber in your city, best CRM for your category, best product for a given need. Write down whether you are named and who is named instead. This costs nothing and it is a reasonable first look.
Be clear-eyed about where it stops working. You are testing one engine at a time, on one run, with no sampling, so a single lucky or unlucky answer can fool you. You get no history, so next month you cannot tell whether anything moved. You do not see which sources the engine pulled from, so you cannot tell why a competitor keeps winning. And doing it by hand across seven engines, repeated, on a real question set, quickly costs more of your time than a paid scan costs in money. Free is a fine way to confirm there is a problem. It is a poor way to measure or fix one.
What Saymetry costs
Saymetry is priced to be the low-commitment, honest entry point. The Scan is a one-time $249. It runs your buyers' questions across all 7 engines, audits your own website with the evidence quoted, and hands you a ranked leaderboard, the cited sources, and a prioritized action plan, with the report delivered within the hour and one free re-run. There is no subscription to start and no card kept on file beyond the one purchase.
If you then want to watch it move after making changes, Tracking continues from your dashboard at $149 a month rolling, or $119 a month billed yearly. Agencies use a $199 a month licence plus $149 per tracked client, with reports white-labelled under their own brand. If you would rather not touch your site at all, done-for-you implementation is available at fixed prices, where we make the fixes ourselves and measure again so you can see them land.
The reason to start with the one-time scan rather than a subscription is simple. You do not know yet whether you have a problem worth tracking. The scan answers that for a fixed price, and if the answer is that you are already winning, you have spent $249 and learned something real instead of signing up for a monthly bill.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest way to check AI visibility?
Free and manual: ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity your buyers' questions yourself and note whether you are named. It costs only your time. The limits are real: one engine at a time, one run with no sampling, no history, and no record of the sources behind the answer. A fine first look, a poor ongoing measure.
Is a one-time scan enough, or do I need ongoing tracking?
A one-time scan is enough to learn where you stand and what to fix first. Tracking earns its cost after you have made changes and want to confirm they landed, because AI answers shift week to week. Most people start with a scan and add tracking only later.
Why do enterprise platforms cost so much more?
Higher price pays for more engines, more frequent sampling, larger question sets, seats, integrations and support. It does not automatically mean more accurate. A smaller tool that samples carefully across the same engines can measure the same reality for far less.
Is free DIY monitoring good enough?
For a one-off gut check, yes. As a real measure, no. AI answers are probabilistic, so a single manual ask can mislead you. Without repeated sampling and a record of the sources, you cannot separate a real change from noise, and you cannot see why a competitor is winning.
How much should a small agency budget?
Start by scanning a few clients at $249 each to prove the value in pitches, then track the ones you keep. The agency plan is a $199 a month licence plus $149 per tracked client, with white-labelled reports, so the fixed cost stays low until the roster grows.