---
title: The 14 best free AI visibility checkers, and what each one actually checks
description: A guide to fourteen free AI visibility checkers that explains where each one gets its answers, what the free result shows, and which ones tell you whether AI assistants recommend your business today.
slug: /blog/the-best-free-ai-visibility-checkers-and-what-each-one-actually-checks
page_type: listicle
entity: Kite
category: AI marketing agent
author: Devon Wells and Kite
date_published: '2026-11-13'
date_modified: '2026-11-13'
related_use_cases:
  - /use-cases/ai-answer-visibility.md
  - /use-cases/ai-visibility-tracking.md
related_comparisons:
  - /compare/kite-vs-hubspot-aeo.md
  - /compare/kite-vs-ahrefs-brand-radar.md
  - /compare/kite-vs-semrush-ai-visibility-toolkit.md
related_guides:
  - /blog/best-ai-visibility-tools-for-small-teams.md
  - /blog/free-aeo-graders-compared-what-hubspot-mangools-and-the-other-free-che.md
---

# The 14 best free AI visibility checkers, and what each one actually checks

## Key Takeaways

- Free AI visibility checkers get their answers in very different ways. Some ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and the other assistants fresh questions while you wait. Some look you up in answers the vendor collected earlier. Some ask a model what it already believes about you, and some never ask an assistant anything.
- The most useful free check asks the questions a buyer would type, leaves your brand name out, and reads the live answers. Kite's free AI visibility checker does this across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude in about 45 seconds, with no account.
- Before you trust any checker, run it on a made-up brand. In one independent test, HubSpot's grader gave a brand that doesn't exist scores of 29, 13, and 30 out of 100, while live and stored-answer checkers correctly found nothing.
- Every free check is a snapshot. Live answers move between runs, so compare the same questions over time, and spot-check by hand before you act on a single result.
- A checker only shows where you stand. Getting recommended takes pages that answer buyers' questions and mentions on the sites the assistants already cite.

## What does a free AI visibility checker actually check?

A free AI visibility checker tells you whether AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude name your business when people ask them for recommendations. That's the promise on nearly every one of these tools. What sits behind the promise varies a lot, and it decides whether the result means anything for your business.

There are five ways these tools get their answers:

- **They ask the assistants live.** The tool writes buyer questions, sends them to the assistants with web search on, and reads what comes back. This is the closest you can get to what a new customer sees today.
- **They look you up in stored answers.** The vendor has already asked millions of questions and saved the responses. When you run a check, it searches that collection for your name.
- **They ask a model about you.** The tool gives a model your company name and asks what it knows, often from what the model learned in training rather than from today's web.
- **They look at the AI built into search engines.** Bing reports how its AI features cite your pages, and other free tools check which of your Google searches bring up an AI Overview.
- **They scan your website.** The tool checks whether AI crawlers can reach and read your pages. It never asks an assistant anything, so it can't tell you whether you're recommended.

The scores these methods produce don't line up. SUSO Digital, an SEO agency that offers its own free checker, ran Nike through nine free tools and got scores from 48 out of 100 to 100 out of 100 ([SUSO Digital](https://susodigital.com/thoughts/research-top-free-ai-search-visibility-checkers/)). Each tool asks different questions, in different numbers, and measures something different, so a 70 on one tool and a 70 on another aren't the same result.

The clearest way to see the difference is to test a brand that doesn't exist. AIVisibilityNerd, a review site that says no vendor pays it, ran 13 free checkers on October 9 and 11, 2026. One test brand was Quillvarn, a name it invented that had no website, no domain registration, and no search results ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). Semrush showed no data for it. Honeyb's live check said Gemini didn't recognize the brand. HubSpot's grader scored it 29, 13, and 30 out of 100 across its three models, both days. Mangools found it in none of its prompts, but four of six models described Quillvarn as a company anyway, mostly a maker of premium pens. A checker that scores a brand nobody has heard of is measuring something other than whether buyers hear about you.

The fourteen tools below are grouped by how they get their answers, starting with the ones that most directly answer the question most people bring: when someone who has never heard of me asks an assistant for a recommendation, am I named, and who gets named instead? Each entry covers what you type in, what the tool checks, what you get for free, and where it stops.

## Checkers that ask buyer questions and show you the answers

These tools send questions to the assistants when you run them and show you the result on screen within a minute. They give you the most current picture. Their limit is size, because a free run asks only a handful of questions, so a second run can come out differently.

### 1. Kite AI Visibility Checker

[Kite's free AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker) asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude the questions your customers ask, then shows whether they recommend you and who they recommend instead. You type in your website address and nothing else. It's free, needs no account, and takes about 45 seconds.

The questions are what make the result worth reading. Kite reads your homepage, works out what you sell and where, and writes three questions a buyer would ask an AI assistant. It leaves your business name out of them, because a buyer who doesn't know you yet won't type it. Kite then asks each question in all four assistants with web search on. For ChatGPT and Gemini, it reads the answer a signed-out visitor sees in the app, which is what a new buyer sees too. If an app can't be reached, Kite asks through that assistant's developer service instead and labels the result.

Kite counts an answer only when it recommends you or presents you as an option. A passing mention, or a line advising against you, doesn't count. The result is a plain count and a grid showing each question against each assistant. In the worked example on the page, a check of Appsmith (the company that makes Kite) on October 15, 2026 came back "Recommended in 6 of 12 answers." Every assistant recommended Appsmith at least once, none did for the question about security and running the platform on your own servers, and Retool and Microsoft Power Apps were recommended most often instead. The result ends with three changes most likely to get you named, such as publishing a security and deployment guide on Appsmith's own site.

Three questions is a small sample, and the page says so: treat any single check as a snapshot. The check is where the work starts. After you sign up, Kite [tracks the questions that matter to your business on a schedule](/use-cases/ai-visibility-tracking.md) and tells you when you start getting named or when a competitor does. It also does the work that changes the answer. It writes the pages that answer your customers' questions, finds the directories and articles the assistants already cite and drafts your listing requests and pitches, then asks the same questions again to see what changed ([how Kite improves your visibility in AI answers](/use-cases/ai-answer-visibility.md)). On a site Kite hosts, or one connected through Webflow, WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, or Storyblok, Kite publishes the changes once you approve them. Kite has a free plan, and its Growth plan is $100 a month.

### 2. Honeyb

Honeyb's free checker asks Gemini five buyer questions live with Google Search and shows who it recommends, where you appear, and what to improve ([Honeyb](https://www.honeyb.ai/tools/ai-visibility-checker)). You enter your website. Honeyb reads your homepage and writes the five questions, and you can edit them before it runs. There's no signup or email, and the first answer lands in about ten seconds.

The result shows how many of the five answers name you and in what position, which competitors Gemini recommends and how often, and the sites the answers cite. Honeyb also opens up to three of those cited pages and checks your robots.txt file (the file that tells crawlers what they may read), then gives you up to three findings. Being able to edit the questions is a real advantage, because you can make sure they match how your buyers talk.

The free check covers one assistant, so it tells you nothing about ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude. It also shows how much one run can swing. In AIVisibilityNerd's test, Honeyb scored Plausible Analytics, a well-known analytics brand, 10 out of 10 on October 9 and 4 out of 10 two days later, with the same domain and the same engine ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). Honeyb says this itself: answers vary between runs, which is why its paid workspace samples every day. That workspace starts at $23 a month billed yearly, covers up to eight engines, and includes a Content Agent that writes and publishes articles to your website ([Honeyb pricing](https://www.honeyb.ai/pricing)).

### 3. Search Atlas

Search Atlas runs a free ten-prompt snapshot across ChatGPT and Gemini and shows whether AI mentions you, which sources it cites, and which competitors appear instead ([Search Atlas](https://searchatlas.com/ai-visibility/)). You enter your brand, with no credit card or setup.

The report gives you a mention rate, a citation rate, and a competitor gap for each of the two assistants, plus prompt-by-prompt snippets showing where your brand appeared, which sources were cited, and who appeared in your place. Ten prompts is a bigger sample than most instant checks, and seeing the snippets lets you judge the answers yourself rather than trusting a number.

Search Atlas is unusually plain about where the snapshot stops. Its own FAQ says the report "does not diagnose why a brand is absent or produce a ranked list of fixes." The page also doesn't say whether the assistants search the web when they answer. The paid next step is Search Atlas's Growth plan at $199 a month, which adds Google AI Mode and ongoing tracking ([Search Atlas pricing](https://searchatlas.com/pricing/)).

## Audits that ask more questions and email you the report

These free audits trade speed for size. They ask dozens of questions, sometimes more than once each, and send the report to your inbox within minutes to a day. A bigger sample gives you a steadier picture than a three- or five-question check. In exchange, you give an email address, and some of these companies will follow up.

### 4. Verticality

Verticality's free checker asks ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews forty or more buyer questions, each more than once, and emails you a report within 24 hours ([Verticality](https://www.verticality.co/tools/ai-visibility-checker)). You give it your website, your brand name as buyers would type it, a description of what you sell, and a work email. There's no signup or card.

Two choices make its numbers easy to trust. It counts only questions that don't name your brand, so the answer has to choose you. It also asks each question more than once on the same day, because the same question can get a different answer on the next run, and a person on its team reviews the report before it goes out. Your score is the share of answers that name you, shown separately for each engine: if ChatGPT names you in 12 of 120 answers, your ChatGPT score is 10 percent. Verticality's worked example, an online tech interview prep platform, was named in 3 of 120 ChatGPT answers while its top competitor appeared in 31 percent.

The free check covers only two engines and only US English. It leaves out Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Google AI Mode, and it doesn't include a fix list. Verticality says working out which page should win which question is the job of its full audit, which starts with a call. Verticality is an agency, and it says it may follow up about your report.

### 5. ProStar SEO

ProStar SEO's free audit asks fifteen buyer questions in ChatGPT, ChatGPT with search, and Google AI Overviews, live on the day of the audit, and emails you the result within one business day ([ProStar SEO](https://www.prostarseo.com/free-ai-visibility-audit)). You give it your website, your brand name, a one-line description of what you sell and where, and an email address. Agencies can request it for a client.

Its report is built around names rather than a score. You get a grid of fifteen questions against three answer sources, showing whether you were named in each answer and who was recommended instead. It ranks every business the models named by how many answers mention it, and lists the domains the answers cite most and what kind of page they are, such as review platforms, directories, best-of lists, and Reddit threads. ProStar explains why it skips a score: "A number out of 100 would hide the only thing that matters: which names the model gave, and why." Asking ChatGPT both with and without search is useful too, because it separates what the model remembers about your category from what it finds on today's web.

The report ends with ranked next steps, but ProStar is an agency, and its pitch is that its team takes the report and does the work on a monthly retainer. The page gives no price. Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Google AI Mode are kept for its paid tracking.

### 6. Searchable

Searchable's free report asks ChatGPT 100 buyer questions about your business and emails you the result, usually within a few minutes ([Searchable](https://www.searchable.com/free-visibility-report)). You enter your website, say whether it's for your own business or a client, and verify your email with a six-digit code. No payment details are needed.

A hundred questions is the largest free sample on this list. Searchable writes the questions from your website, with and without your brand name, and lists every question in the report. Your visibility score is the share of answers that mention you, so appearing in 65 of 100 answers gives you 65 percent. You also get share of voice against competitors, a sentiment score, a health check of your homepage, and three 30-day goals from Searchable's own agent, each with a weekly checklist.

The free report checks ChatGPT only, and Searchable says the questions don't come from real searches and have no search volume attached. Getting the report may also take more than an email. AIVisibilityNerd, using a free Searchable account it already had, found the report sitting behind a "Choose your plan" page and got no result ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). Searchable's paid plans start at $125 a month ([Searchable pricing](https://www.searchable.com/pricing)).

## Checkers that look you up in answers collected earlier

These tools don't ask anything new when you click. They search a large collection of answers gathered earlier from questions built on search data. That gives you a broad view of popular topics in seconds. A small or new business may barely appear in the collection, and the result can be blank.

### 7. Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker

Ahrefs' free checker shows how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode mention your brand, drawn from questions based on real searches ([Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/ai-visibility-checker)). You type a brand name the way your audience would say it. There's no signup, no credit card, and no limit on how many brands you check, so you can run your competitors too.

The free report shows your total mentions, mentions by platform, and the top five topics, cited domains, and cited pages. It separates a mention, where the assistant names you, from a citation, where it links to your site. Its questions come from Ahrefs' keyword database, which means they reflect what people actually search, and six platforms is the widest coverage of any free tool here.

Ahrefs calls the free report "a limited preview" and "a one-time snapshot," and caps each section at the top five results. The data behind it comes from Brand Radar, Ahrefs' paid product, whose question sets are re-tested monthly on a 90-day reporting window. Ahrefs says that collection "works best for established brands or topics with meaningful search demand" and may have limited coverage for brands with little search volume ([Ahrefs Brand Radar](https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar)). On the checker's page, Brand Radar starts at $199 a month for a single platform and costs $699 a month for all of them.

### 8. Semrush Free AI Visibility Tool

Semrush's free tool gives your domain an AI Visibility Score from 0 to 100 across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews ([Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/)). You enter a domain, and you can run it three times a day without an account.

The report is the fullest of any instant free tool. It includes your mentions, citations, coverage by platform, an estimate of how many people see your brand in AI answers each month, your most-cited pages, your best topics, and a side-by-side with competitors. The score compares your mentions with the median for your top competitors, which Semrush picks automatically ([Semrush Knowledge Base](https://www.semrush.com/kb/1493-ai-visibility-toolkit)). Semrush draws on what it calls "a database of 26M+ prompts and responses," updated daily.

Because it reads a stored collection, Semrush works well for brands already in it and returns nothing for brands that aren't. In AIVisibilityNerd's test, Plausible Analytics scored 37 on both days, while a real site that had launched one day earlier showed no data on every tile ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). The tool lists six ways to improve, such as earning mentions on review sites, and leaves those to you. Its paid AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month.

## Graders that ask a model what it believes about you

These tools hand a model your brand name and ask what it knows or how you'd likely fare. They're useful for seeing how models describe you when someone asks about you by name. They're weak at telling you whether a buyer who has never heard of you would get you recommended today, and some will score a brand that doesn't exist.

### 9. HubSpot AI Search Grader

HubSpot's AI Search Grader, which HubSpot's own pages also call the AEO Grader, scores how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini describe your brand ([HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/aeo-grader)). You fill in four fields: company name, location, your product or services, and industry. HubSpot says the tool "sends your brand information to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and asks each model how it characterizes your brand based on its training data." Its paid product page adds that Perplexity answers from live search while the other two use training data ([HubSpot AEO](https://www.hubspot.com/products/aeo)).

The score is out of 100 and leans toward perception: sentiment is worth up to 40 points, presence quality and brand recognition up to 20 each, and share of voice and market competition up to 10 each. Scores appear in under two minutes, and the full report with a written interpretation sits behind a short form. It's free with no HubSpot subscription, which makes it the best-known grader on this list.

Read its numbers as a description of perception, not as a count of recommendations. In AIVisibilityNerd's test, the grader returned identical scores and sub-scores on both days for all three brands, including 29, 13, and 30 for the made-up Quillvarn ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). HubSpot's paid next step is HubSpot AEO at $50 a month, which tracks 25 prompts across the same three engines.

### 10. Mangools AI Search Grader

Mangools' AI Search Grader writes prompts from your brand and niche, runs them through several AI models, and reports how often you appear and in what position ([Mangools](https://mangools.com/ai-search-grader)). You type in a brand name and a short description of your niche. The result arrives in under a minute with no account.

Free use covers three models: GPT-5 Nano, Mistral Small 3.2, and Llama 3.3. A free Mangools account adds Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, and DeepSeek V3. These are small developer versions of each model, not the ChatGPT or Gemini apps your buyers use, and the page doesn't say whether they search the web. The AI Search Score runs from 0 to 100 and combines how often you appear in the top 20 with your average position. Mangools does show its work: in AIVisibilityNerd's runs, it listed all 30 prompts it used and showed how each model described the brand.

Those descriptions are also where to be careful. For the made-up Quillvarn, which the testers entered as invoice software, the models described a pen maker, a creative writing platform, and an academic writing tool, and none mentioned invoicing ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). Mangools was also the tool that gave Nike a perfect 100 in SUSO Digital's test. Its next step is AI Search Watcher, which comes in Mangools' SEO bundles starting at $452.40 a year ([Mangools pricing](https://mangools.com/plans-and-pricing)).

### 11. SEOcrawl AI Visibility Checker

SEOcrawl's free checker reads your homepage and has an AI model estimate how you'd show up in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity for your category ([SEOcrawl AI](https://seocrawl.ai/ai-visibility-checker)). You enter a domain, with no signup, and you get up to three new reports a day plus a PDF and a shareable link.

The report is generous: a visibility score, a summary of how AI models describe you, a competitor breakdown, the sources and content patterns that drive citations, the prompts you should appear for, and a prioritized checklist of content changes. SEOcrawl is also honest about its method in its FAQ: "It is an estimate, not a live measurement."

That honesty matters when you read the competitor list. Web Aloha, a small agency, ran SEOcrawl on its own brand and got 22 out of 100, along with six named competitors. None of those six appeared in any of the twelve answers the agency collected by hand that same day. The report also told it to add an llms.txt file and Organization markup, both already live on its site ([Web Aloha](https://webaloha.co/best-ai-search-visibility-tools/)). SEOcrawl's paid Prompt Tracking runs your real prompts against the four assistants every week, starting at $53 a month, or $36 a month billed yearly ([SEOcrawl pricing](https://seocrawl.ai/pricing)).

## Free reports on the AI inside search engines

These two tools measure the AI features built into search engines rather than chat assistants. Neither tells you whether ChatGPT recommends you. One of them is the only free tool on this list that reports real citation data about your own site.

### 12. Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows how often Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries, and some partner services cite your pages as sources ([Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview)). You verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, which takes a few minutes, and the report appears inside it.

This is your own data rather than a sample of questions. You see total citations over the dates you choose, the average number of your pages cited each day, the pages cited most, and the "grounding queries" Copilot used to find your content. Tamara Hellgren of Momentic Marketing explains that grounding queries aren't what people typed. They're the shorter searches the AI runs in the background, so she reads them as topics ([Momentic Marketing](https://momenticmarketing.com/blog/bing-wmt-ai-performance-report)). For one industrial B2B client, 86 percent of grounding queries were about the core product category, and the client's most thorough explainer page had ten times the citations of the next page. That tells you which pages AI already trusts and where to build next.

The report covers only Microsoft's AI surfaces, not ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude. It counts citations, not clicks, and Microsoft says the grounding query data is a sample. It's still worth turning on, because it's free and gives you a history to compare against.

### 13. SEO.com AI Overview Checker

SEO.com's free checker looks at your site's top 100 keywords and shows which of them trigger a Google AI Overview ([SEO.com](https://www.seo.com/tools/ai-overview-checker/)). You give it your domain, a keyword, and an email address.

The report shows the share of your top keywords that have an AI Overview and an estimated range of monthly traffic lost to them. For any one keyword, it shows what the AI Overview says, which sources it cites, and how many of the top 20 organic results made it into the citations. That makes it useful if most of your traffic comes from Google and you want to know which rankings now sit under an AI answer.

It measures Google's AI Overviews for keywords, not whether AI assistants mention your brand, so it answers a narrower question than the rest of this list. SEO.com is an agency, and the tool is how it meets prospective clients.

## Scanners that check whether AI can read your site

These tools never ask an assistant a question. They check whether AI crawlers can reach and read your pages, which is worth knowing but is a different question from whether you're recommended. Am I Visible on AI and Arobis work this way too.

### 14. Hostinger AI Visibility Checker

Hostinger's free checker tests whether AI tools can access and read your website, and its page says plainly that "It doesn't track brand mentions in AI answers" ([Hostinger](https://www.hostinger.com/ai-visibility-checker)). You enter a website address, and it reads your homepage, robots.txt, sitemap, and llms.txt file (a newer file that summarizes your site for AI tools) the way an AI agent would.

It runs more than 25 checks across seven areas and gives you a score out of 100 and a letter grade. It tests whether crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity are allowed, and it requests your homepage as an AI agent to catch firewalls or bot protection that block AI even when your robots.txt allows it. That second check catches a problem many owners don't know they have. Hostinger cites a study by LightSite that found 27 percent of 2,870 sites accidentally block at least one major AI crawler. Each failed check comes with steps to fix it and a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT or send to whoever manages your site.

A good score here means AI can read you, not that it recommends you. AIVisibilityNerd's one-day-old site scored higher than Plausible Analytics on a similar scanner while Semrush and Mangools found no mentions of it, and the reviewers put it simply: "A readiness score isn't a mention" ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). Web Aloha saw the same thing: two scanners scored its site 100, and none of its four discovery questions named it in ChatGPT or Perplexity ([Web Aloha](https://webaloha.co/best-ai-search-visibility-tools/)). Run a scanner once to catch blocked crawlers, then use a checker that asks buyer questions.

## How the 14 free checkers compare

The table shows what each tool needs from you, where its answers come from, and what the free version gives you.

| Checker | What you enter | Assistants or surfaces covered | Where the answers come from | What's free |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Kite | Website address | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude | Asked live, web search on, three buyer questions without your name | Full result in about 45 seconds; no account |
| Honeyb | Website address | Gemini | Asked live with Google Search, five editable questions | One engine; no signup for the first check |
| Search Atlas | Brand | ChatGPT, Gemini | Ten prompts; the page doesn't say whether search is on | One-time snapshot; no card |
| Verticality | Website, brand, what you sell, email | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews | Asked live, 40 or more questions, each more than once | Emailed within 24 hours |
| ProStar SEO | Website, brand, description, email | ChatGPT, ChatGPT with search, Google AI Overviews | Asked live, 15 questions | Emailed within one business day |
| Searchable | Website, email code | ChatGPT | 100 AI-written questions | Emailed in minutes; one tester hit a plan page |
| Ahrefs | Brand name | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode | Stored answers from search-based questions | Top five results per section; unlimited brands |
| Semrush | Domain | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode | Stored database of 26 million prompts and answers | Three checks a day |
| HubSpot | Company, location, products, industry | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini | Models asked about your brand; mostly training data | Scores free; form for the full report |
| Mangools | Brand and niche | Three small models, six with a free account | Generated prompts in developer models | Free, with usage limits |
| SEOcrawl | Domain | Labeled ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity | One AI model's estimate | Three reports a day |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Verified site | Copilot, Bing AI summaries, some partners | Your real citation data, sampled | Free with a Bing Webmaster account |
| SEO.com | Domain, keyword, email | Google AI Overviews | Your top 100 keywords | Free with an email |
| Hostinger | Website address | None | Scans your site; asks no assistant | Free |

Prices, limits, and engine lists come from each tool's own pages and the tests cited above as of November 2026. Free tools change often, so confirm the details before you rely on them.

## How to choose a free checker, and how to test it before you trust it

Start with the question you need answered, because each kind of tool answers a different one.

- **If you want to know whether assistants recommend you when buyers ask,** use a checker that asks buyer questions live. Kite's free checker covers the four major assistants with your name left out of the questions. If you want a bigger sample and can wait for an email, Verticality and ProStar SEO ask more questions on fewer engines.
- **If you're an established brand and want a broad view across many topics,** Ahrefs and Semrush give you a fast read from their stored answers, and Ahrefs lets you check competitors without limits.
- **If you want to know how models describe your brand,** HubSpot's grader is built for that. Read it as perception, not recommendations.
- **If you get meaningful traffic from Bing or Google,** turn on Bing's AI Performance report and run SEO.com's checker. They show how search engines' own AI features use your pages.
- **If you suspect AI can't read your site,** run Hostinger's scanner once to catch blocked crawlers.

Then test the result before you act on it. AIVisibilityNerd's advice is the best on offer: run the checker on a made-up brand first, then run your own brand twice, a day or more apart. Identical figures can mean a stored result, and figures that swing mean one run is one sample ([AIVisibilityNerd](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/)). You can also spot-check by hand. Open ChatGPT signed out or in a temporary chat, turn on web search, start a fresh conversation, and ask a question a customer would ask without naming your business. Write down every business recommended and every website cited, then do the same in Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. If the tool's answer and yours disagree, trust the one you watched happen.

The result tells you where to work. The businesses recommended in your place show who you're competing with in AI answers, and the sites the answers cite show where the evidence comes from. Assistants recommend the businesses they can find good evidence for, which usually means pages that answer the buyer's exact question and mentions on the directories, review sites, and comparison articles the assistants already read. No free checker does that work for you. Kite is built to: it tracks your buyer questions, writes and publishes the missing pages once you approve them, drafts the pitches to the sites assistants cite, and measures again. For a look at paid tracking tools, see [the best AI visibility tools for small teams](/blog/best-ai-visibility-tools-for-small-teams.md).

## Common questions

### Can I check whether ChatGPT mentions my brand for free?

Yes, and you have two good ways to do it. You can run [Kite's free AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker), which asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude three buyer questions in about 45 seconds with no account. Or you can check by hand in about half an hour: use ChatGPT signed out, turn on web search, ask three questions a customer would ask in fresh conversations, and note who gets recommended and which sites are cited. If you serve one area, include your city in the question, as in "Who are the best family dentists in Denver for nervous patients?"

### Why did my result change when I ran the same checker again?

Your result changed because AI assistants rarely give the same answer twice. In a study by SparkToro and Gumshoe, about 600 volunteers ran 12 recommendation prompts nearly 3,000 times across ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI. There was less than a 1 in 100 chance that two responses listed the same brands, but how often a brand appeared across many runs was far steadier ([Omni Online Strategies](https://omnionlinestrategies.com/blog/free-ai-visibility-checker-tools-compared)). Checkers that ask live will move between runs. Checkers that return identical numbers every time are usually reading stored data or a model's fixed opinion. Track the same questions over several weeks and watch the trend.

### I rank well on Google. Why don't AI assistants mention me?

Ranking on Google and being cited by an assistant overlap less than you'd expect. When Ahrefs searched 15,000 long-tail questions in Google and then asked the same questions of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, only about 12 percent of the links the assistants cited appeared in Google's top 10 for that question, and about 80 percent didn't rank anywhere in Google for it ([Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-search-overlap/)). Assistants run several related searches behind the scenes and lean on pages that answer the exact question, such as comparison articles, directories, and detailed service pages. Ranking for your own name doesn't make you the answer to a buyer's question.

### Do I need a paid tracker after a free check?

You need something that repeats the same questions over time, because no free checker that asks questions keeps a history for you. Web Aloha suggests that a small business write 10 to 20 real buyer questions, run them by hand each month while signed out, save the answers, and pay for monitoring only when that gets too slow ([Web Aloha](https://webaloha.co/best-ai-search-visibility-tools/)). Paid trackers from Ahrefs, Semrush, HubSpot, and others automate the asking and leave the fixes to you. Kite tracks your questions and also does the follow-up work, then compares how often you were named before and after each change.

## Sources

- [Free AI Visibility Checker](https://ahrefs.com/ai-visibility-checker), Ahrefs
- [Brand Radar: Study how your brand shows up in AI](https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar), Ahrefs
- [Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google's Top 10 for the Original Prompt](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-search-overlap/), Ahrefs
- [Free AI Visibility Tool](https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/), Semrush
- [AI Visibility](https://www.semrush.com/kb/1493-ai-visibility-toolkit), Semrush Knowledge Base
- [AI Search Grader](https://www.hubspot.com/aeo-grader), HubSpot
- [Answer Engine Optimization Software](https://www.hubspot.com/products/aeo), HubSpot
- [AI Search Grader: Free Generative Engine Optimization Tool](https://mangools.com/ai-search-grader), Mangools
- [Plans and pricing](https://mangools.com/plans-and-pricing), Mangools
- [Free AI Visibility Checker](https://www.honeyb.ai/tools/ai-visibility-checker), Honeyb
- [Pricing](https://www.honeyb.ai/pricing), Honeyb
- [See How AI Sees Your Brand](https://searchatlas.com/ai-visibility/), Search Atlas
- [Pricing](https://searchatlas.com/pricing/), Search Atlas
- [Free AI Visibility Checker](https://www.verticality.co/tools/ai-visibility-checker), Verticality
- [Free AI Visibility Checker: 15 Buyer Questions, 3 AI Models, One Report](https://www.prostarseo.com/free-ai-visibility-audit), ProStar SEO
- [Run a free AI visibility check on ChatGPT](https://www.searchable.com/free-visibility-report), Searchable
- [Pricing](https://www.searchable.com/pricing), Searchable
- [AI Search Visibility Checker](https://seocrawl.ai/ai-visibility-checker), SEOcrawl AI
- [SEO + GEO in one platform](https://seocrawl.ai/pricing), SEOcrawl AI
- [Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (Public Preview)](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview), Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog
- [Initial Thoughts on AI Performance Reports in Bing WMT](https://momenticmarketing.com/blog/bing-wmt-ai-performance-report), Momentic Marketing
- [AI Overview Checker](https://www.seo.com/tools/ai-overview-checker/), SEO.com
- [Free AI Visibility Checker: Can AI tools like ChatGPT read your website?](https://www.hostinger.com/ai-visibility-checker), Hostinger
- [Free AI visibility checkers, tested twice](https://aivisibilitynerd.com/free-tools/ai-visibility-checkers/), AIVisibilityNerd
- [Best AI Visibility Tools (2026): Free Checkers Tested, Paid Trackers Compared](https://webaloha.co/best-ai-search-visibility-tools/), Web Aloha
- [Top 9 Free AI Search Visibility Checkers](https://susodigital.com/thoughts/research-top-free-ai-search-visibility-checkers/), SUSO Digital
- [Free AI Visibility Checker Tools Compared](https://omnionlinestrategies.com/blog/free-ai-visibility-checker-tools-compared), Omni Online Strategies