Five free tools, what each one checks, and the gaps a person still has to read.
Free AI visibility checkers are good at one thing: a fast, rough read on whether AI tools name your brand. What they miss is most of what a B2B SaaS buyer sees. They pick the questions for you, they count mentions without checking the facts, and they can’t tell you why a competitor’s page gets cited instead of yours. Run one first. Just don’t mistake its score for an audit.
Below are five free checkers, what each one does by its own description, and what’s left for a person to read.
Five free checkers, side by side
I read each tool’s own page on October 27, 2026. This table is what the vendors say their free versions do, not my test results. Tools change often, so check the page before you rely on it.
| Tool | What it asks, and where | What you see | Limits it states |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | Asks GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity and Gemini how they describe your brand, based on their training data | A score out of 100 across five areas. Sentiment is worth 40 of the 100 points | A one-time check. You fill in a form to see the full report |
| Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | Search-backed prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google’s AI features | Total mentions, mentions by platform, top 5 topics, top 5 cited domains and pages | A limited preview: top 5 results per section. No signup |
| Semrush AI Visibility Tool | Prompts from Semrush’s database, across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews | A 0 to 100 visibility score, mentions, citations, top cited pages, a competitor comparison | Three free uses a day without an account |
| RankSurf AI Visibility Scan | 10 buyer questions it writes from your domain, sent to ChatGPT with live web search. Also reads your robots.txt | How many of the 10 name you, who’s named instead, cited pages, a list of what to do | ChatGPT only. Up to 3 scans per day |
| Zene AI Visibility Checker | Three questions: two about your category, one asking for alternatives to you | Whether you’re named, who’s named instead, the answer text | ChatGPT through the API (gpt-4o-mini), no web search, one run per question |
Zene deserves credit for saying plainly what its free check does and doesn’t do. That’s the standard to hold every tool to.
What free checkers are good for
Used for what they are, these tools earn their place:
- A quick baseline. Are you named at all? On which platforms? That’s worth knowing before you spend anything.
- Competitor names. Seeing who gets named instead of you is often the first useful surprise.
- Cited sources. Ahrefs, Semrush and RankSurf say they show cited pages or domains. Even a top-5 list tells you which sites shape the answers.
- Crawler basics. RankSurf says it reads your robots.txt. A blocked search bot is the first thing I’d check anyway.
- A cheap trend line. The same tool, run the same way each month, can show direction.
What they can’t see
Here’s where a free score and a B2B SaaS buyer’s experience part ways.
Your buyers’ real questions
In the free versions, as their pages describe them, you enter a brand or a domain and the tool picks the questions. That’s fine for “best [category] software”. It misses the questions buyers ask late in the deal: “[you] vs [competitor] for a 200-person team”, “does [you] integrate with [tool]”, “is [you] SOC 2 compliant”. Your sales team hears those every week. A tool’s prompt database may never ask them.
Whether the answer is right
A checker counts a mention as a mention. If ChatGPT names you and quotes last year’s pricing, or says you lack a feature you added in spring, that can still score as a win. HubSpot’s grader weighs sentiment most heavily, which tells you about tone, not accuracy. None of the five free reports, as their pages list them, checks the answer against your real pricing or features. For SaaS, wrong facts are often the most urgent finding.
Which kind of answer you’re reading
Some tools test answers with web search on. Others test what the model learned in training. HubSpot says it asks about training data. Zene says its check runs without web search. RankSurf says it uses live web search. Those are different problems. A miss with search on usually points to a page or access issue. A miss with search off is about what the model learned, which is slower to change. A score that blends them can’t tell you which fix to make.
Why a competitor wins
A list of cited domains tells you who won. It doesn’t tell you why. For that, someone has to open the cited page and compare it with yours. Does it answer in the first sentence? Is it the page for that exact question? Does it state prices in plain text? That comparison is the step in a good audit that turns findings into fixes.
How much answers vary
AI answers change from run to run. Zene runs each question once and says to treat the result as a snapshot. That’s honest, and it’s true of any single run. On the questions that matter most, one answer is a sample of one.
The classic SEO half
Google says a page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. If your pricing page isn’t indexed, no AI tweak will help. None of the five pages says its free check looks at indexing. That’s not what they’re built for.
A free checker tells you whether you were named. A person tells you what to fix.
A short run by hand, for comparison
If you want to see the gap yourself, take ten questions from sales calls, mostly comparison and detail questions. Run each one twice in ChatGPT with search on, in Perplexity and in Google. For every answer, write down four things: were you named, which page was cited, were the facts right, and who was named instead. Then put that next to your free checker’s report. The tool will likely tell you how often you appear. The log tells you why, and what’s wrong.
When a free tool is enough
A free check may be all you need if:
- You’re curious and early. You want to know whether AI tools have heard of you at all.
- Your category is simple. Buyers don’t ask long comparison or detail questions before they sign up.
- You’re watching a trend. You run the same tool monthly and only need direction.
- You’re checking basics. Whether the right bots can reach your site, and whether you’re named at all.
Pair it with my free Found and Cited checklist, 33 checks in a 6-page PDF, and you can cover a lot of ground for $0.
When it’s time for a person
Paying for a manual look makes sense when:
- You’re named, but the facts in the answer are wrong or out of date
- A competitor keeps winning the comparison questions, and you don’t know why
- You need a short fix list you can hand to a writer or developer
- You’re about to change pricing, rename or launch into a new category
Published prices I found in October 2026 run from automated reports under $300 to agency projects above $1,500, with analyst-run audits mostly between about $400 and $1,500. I broke down what an AI search audit should cost, with published prices from the market.
Where my audit fits
Want a person to read the answers? That’s the audit. My AI search and SEO audit starts at $275 for 5 pages and 10 buyer questions in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, with a prioritized fix list. Standard and Advanced add more pages and questions, Gemini and Grok, and named competitors. It covers your key pages and your buyers’ questions, and I test the questions that matter more than once. AI tools help me research and draft. I check every answer and edit every line.
To see what a full report should contain, read what a SaaS SEO and AI search audit should include.
Common questions
Is there a free AI visibility audit?
There are free AI visibility checkers. HubSpot, Ahrefs, Semrush and smaller vendors all offer one. They give you a quick snapshot of whether AI tools name your brand. They aren't a full audit, because they pick the questions for you and don't check whether the answers get your facts right.
Which free AI visibility checker is best?
It depends on what you want to know. If you care about ChatGPT with search on, pick a tool that says it uses live web search. If you want to see sources, pick one that lists cited pages. Whatever you pick, use the same tool each month so the trend means something.
Why do two free checkers give me different scores?
They ask different questions, in different AI tools, with or without web search, and they score the answers their own way. AI answers also change from run to run. Different scores don't mean one tool is broken. They mean the score depends on the setup.
Can a free tool replace a paid audit?
For a first look, often yes. It can't tell you that an answer quoted your old pricing, why a competitor's page gets cited instead of yours, or which page on your site to fix first. That takes a person reading the answers.