--- title: 'Kite vs HubSpot AEO: The AI marketer that publishes the fix, not the tracker that assigns it' description: HubSpot AEO tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity answer your buyers' questions and ranks recommendations for your team to act on. Kite tracks the same kind of answers, then writes, publishes, and measures the fixes itself. slug: /compare/kite-vs-hubspot-aeo page_type: comparison primary_question: How does Kite compare with HubSpot AEO and HubSpot's free AEO Grader for improving how AI answers describe your business? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent competitor: HubSpot AEO competitor_domain: hubspot.com author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-11-09' date_modified: '2026-11-09' last_verified: '2026-10-30' --- # Kite vs HubSpot AEO: The AI marketer that publishes the fix, not the tracker that assigns it HubSpot AEO is HubSpot's AI visibility tracker. It runs your buyers' questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity every day, shows where competitors get named instead of you, and turns each gap into a ranked recommendation with a slot for the teammate who will do it. Kite tracks the same kind of answers, but as an AI marketer it takes the recommendation itself: it writes the page, publishes it once you approve, and checks four weeks later whether the answers changed. If you've just run HubSpot's free AEO Grader and are deciding what to do with the score, this page compares the two ways forward. Last verified October 2026 [Get started for free](/welcome?src=kite-vs-hubspot-aeo-hero-add-to-slack) · [See how Kite works](/product-marketing) --- ## Key Takeaways - HubSpot's free AEO Grader is a one-time score of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini describe your brand. HubSpot AEO, the paid tracker, costs $50 a month for 25 questions checked daily. Kite's free AI visibility checker asks the questions your customers ask and shows who AI recommends instead of you. - HubSpot AEO finds the gaps and ranks recommendations for someone on your team to pick up. Kite finds the gaps and closes them by writing and publishing pages, fixing structured data and crawler rules, and drafting pitches to the sites the answers cite. - On Marketing Hub, HubSpot can draft a blog post from a recommendation, which you finish in HubSpot's blog editor or paste into your own blog. Kite publishes to the site it hosts for you or to your Webflow, Contentful, Storyblok, Sanity, or Payload site. - Twenty-eight days after each change goes live, Kite compares the questions it targeted with the 28 days before and plans the next round from what worked. HubSpot AEO keeps tracking so you can judge the impact yourself. - Choose HubSpot AEO if your team already runs on HubSpot Marketing Hub or has a writer ready to act on recommendations. Choose Kite if nobody on your team has time to do the work. ## The expert who closes the gaps ### Kite Kite is a marketing expert that learns your business before it starts working. It reads your website, studies your competitors, and works out the questions your buyers are likely to ask an AI assistant. For your visibility in AI answers, Kite: - suggests the questions worth tracking and checks them every day in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode - reads the pages each answer cites, so it can see why a competitor got named and you didn't - writes new pages and refreshes existing ones in your brand voice, then publishes them when you approve - fixes what AI crawlers read, such as structured data, `llms.txt`, sitemaps, and crawler rules - drafts the pitch to each roundup or review site the answers rely on, ready for you to send AI answers are one part of Kite's job. It also builds and hosts websites, runs outbound email to lead lists it builds, writes social posts, and researches your competitors' ads. You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack, and your whole team shares one Kite that remembers your positioning, your brand voice, and every result so far. Choose Kite when you want an expert to raise your AI visibility by doing the work, with the rest of your marketing handled in the same place. Writes and publishes the fixes · Judges each change after 28 days · Marketing tools included ## The AI visibility tracker inside HubSpot ### HubSpot AEO HubSpot AEO is HubSpot's answer engine optimization software, currently in beta. You give it your brand name, domain, competitors, products, and ideal customer profiles, and it suggests a starting set of buyer questions, each tagged with a stage of the buyer's journey. It runs every question daily through ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and reports: - your brand visibility score and sentiment, by engine and over time - your share of voice against the competitors you track - which domains, pages, and content types the answers cite - ranked recommendations with a projected citation lift, plus a site audit for content and technical issues It works with any website and needs no other HubSpot subscription. In Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise, AEO is included, its question suggestions draw on your CRM data, and you can turn a recommendation into a blog post draft inside HubSpot's content tools. HubSpot also offers the free AEO Grader, which scores how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini describe any brand and can be run as often as you like. Choose HubSpot AEO when your marketing already runs in HubSpot, or when you have a writer ready to work through a ranked list and you want affordable daily data to guide them. $50 a month for 25 questions · Daily tracking on three engines · Ranked recommendations for your team --- ## Kite and HubSpot AEO, side by side | | Kite | HubSpot AEO | | --- | --- | --- | | What it is | Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. | HubSpot AEO is HubSpot's AI visibility tracker. It measures how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity answer your buyers' questions and recommends content to improve your visibility.¹ | | Who initiates work | Kite does (or you do). It proposes the questions to track, spots the ones where competitors are named instead of you, and adds each gap to your plan as a page to write, a page to refresh, or a pitch to send. Approve an item and Kite starts on it. You can also hand it a task or a goal. | HubSpot finds the gaps, and your team does the work. HubSpot suggests questions and competitors, runs the checks daily, and ranks recommendations. You assign each one to a teammate and update its status as they work on it.² | | Free check | The free 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. No account is needed. | The free AEO Grader asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini how they characterize your brand, then scores the result out of 100 across five dimensions with a written interpretation. It's free, has no usage limits, and works on any brand name.³ | | AI answer tracking | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. Checks run daily by default, or weekly or monthly to spend less, and you can run an extra check any time. You can track as many questions as you want. | ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, daily, with 25 questions on the $50 plan. A premium pack in beta adds Claude, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews. It uses twice as many answers per question, and extra answer capacity is a paid add-on.⁴ | | Work completed | New pages, blog posts, and refreshes written in your voice and published after you approve, to the site Kite hosts or to your Webflow, Contentful, Storyblok, Sanity, or Payload site. Structured data, `llms.txt`, sitemaps, and crawler rules. Pitches and social posts drafted for you to send or approve. | Ranked recommendations with a suggested title, audience, and keywords, plus site audit findings. On Marketing Hub, HubSpot can use HubSpot Credits to draft a blog post or LinkedIn article from a recommendation. You finish the blog post in HubSpot's editor or copy it to your own blog, and you paste the LinkedIn article into LinkedIn.⁵ | | After it ships | Twenty-eight days after a change goes live, Kite compares how often its target questions named you with the 28 days before, and it labels whether the difference is real or the normal day-to-day swing of AI answers. It saves the result and plans the next round from what worked. | Completed recommendations stay linked to their questions, and HubSpot keeps tracking mentions, visibility, and citations so you can evaluate the impact. In the site audit, you can track how often a specific page gets cited.⁵ | | Marketing beyond AI answers | Website building and hosting, A/B tests on sites Kite hosts, outbound email with lead lists from Apollo, Crustdata, and PredictLeads, social posts, and competitor ad research. More than 20 built-in data sources come with Kite. | The standalone tracker covers AI visibility. HubSpot for Marketers, which combines Marketing Hub and Content Hub with AEO included, is listed at $900 a month.⁶ | | Pricing | Per workspace, not per seat. Free plan with included usage, Growth at $100 a month with $100 in AI credits, and Business custom. AI visibility tracking runs under a monthly spending limit you set.⁷ | $50 a month, or $45 a month billed annually, for 25 questions on three engines, after a 28-day free trial. Extra questions are an add-on, and tracking another brand takes another $50 subscription. AEO is included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.¹ ⁴ | | Security | Built by Appsmith, a SOC 2 Type II certified company. Every site Kite builds runs in its own isolated sandbox with its own database.⁸ | SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 reports, AES-256 encryption for stored data, and SAML single sign-on on Enterprise tiers.⁹ | ¹ hubspot.com/products/aeo, October 2026, in US dollars. ² hubspot.com/products/aeo/how-to-use and HubSpot's knowledge base article on reviewing and managing AEO recommendations, October 2026. ³ hubspot.com/aeo-grader-aeog-vs-otterly and the FAQ on hubspot.com/products/aeo, October 2026. ⁴ HubSpot's knowledge base article on managing AEO settings and hubspot.com/products/aeo/ai-search, October 2026. ⁵ HubSpot's knowledge base article on reviewing and managing AEO recommendations, October 2026. ⁶ hubspot.com/products/marketing/aeo, October 2026, in US dollars. ⁷ kite.ai/pricing, October 2026. ⁸ Appsmith SOC 2 Type II, report available at security.appsmith.com. ⁹ legal.hubspot.com/security, October 2026. --- ## HubSpot AEO assigns the recommendation. Kite carries it out. What decides this choice is what happens to a recommendation once it exists: HubSpot AEO gives it a priority and an assignee, and Kite does the work. Most AIs wait for instructions. Kite finds what needs doing and does it. Say you sell scheduling software to dental practices. Office managers ask ChatGPT and Perplexity, "What's the best scheduling software for a small dental practice?" Both answers name two of your competitors, and both cite the same software roundup on a dental trade site. HubSpot AEO would spot this. The question shows low visibility, the Citations tab shows the trade-site roundup, and the Recommendations tab suggests a comparison page to create and the roundup's publisher to contact, ranked by projected citation lift. From there, someone on your team takes over. They write the comparison page, or on Marketing Hub they generate a draft and rework it in HubSpot's blog editor. Then they publish it, track down the roundup's editor, and write the pitch. Kite takes the same gap and works it through to the end: - it opens the roundup and both competitors' pages and lists the questions they answer that your site skips - it plans two changes, a new page comparing you with those two competitors and a rewrite of your online booking page - it drafts both in your voice, with FAQ answers and structured data, and puts a preview in front of you - it publishes both to your Webflow site after you approve and replies with the two URLs - it writes the email to the roundup's editor explaining why your product belongs on the list, for you to send You approve two pages and send one email. For a marketing team of one or two people, that is the difference between a recommendation that ships this week and one that waits in a queue. ## HubSpot's grader scores your reputation. Kite's checker asks your buyers' questions. HubSpot's free AEO Grader and Kite's free AI visibility checker test different things: the grader asks AI models what they think of your brand, and the checker asks them what your buyers ask. To run the grader, you enter your brand name, location, industry, and products. HubSpot asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini how they characterize your brand, and it scores the answers on sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice, and market competition. HubSpot describes the grader as measuring brand perception, and it calls the result a single moment in time. It's a good way to learn whether AI describes you accurately and favorably. The [free AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker) starts from the buyer instead. It asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude the questions your customers ask, such as "best scheduling software for a dental practice," and shows whether they recommend you and who they recommend instead. Someone who hasn't heard of you yet asks that second kind of question, so it's the one that decides whether new customers find you. Either check gives you a starting point. When you add Kite, the questions you're missing from become tracked questions, and the gaps become pages, fixes, and pitches in your plan. ## HubSpot AEO charts the trend. Kite judges each change and picks the next one. After a fix ships, HubSpot AEO keeps the charts running for you to read, while Kite reaches a verdict on each change and uses it to choose what to do next. HubSpot links each completed recommendation to the questions it was meant to improve, and it keeps tracking your mentions, visibility, and citations so you can evaluate the impact. HubSpot recommends reading trends over several weeks, because AI answers shift from day to day. Deciding whether the comparison page worked, and what to try next, stays with you. Kite ties every change in your plan to the questions it was meant to win. Twenty-eight days after the change goes live, it compares how often those questions named you with the 28 days before, and it labels the result as a real gain, a real loss, or no measurable change. For a page it published, it also compares Search Console clicks and impressions from before and after, once you've connected Search Console. Each verdict goes into what Kite knows about your business, so the next plan leans on the kinds of changes that moved your numbers. ## HubSpot AEO covers AI answers. Kite covers the marketing around them. Getting named in ChatGPT pays off only when the office manager who clicks through books a demo, and Kite works on that part too. When Kite hosts your site, its built-in analytics show where visitors from AI answers land and whether they fill out your demo form. If the booking page loses them, Kite can test a new headline against the current one and tell you which version brought in more demo requests. When your site runs elsewhere, Kite reads the same numbers through your connected analytics account. When you want to reach practices directly, Kite builds the list with Apollo and Crustdata, scores each practice against your best customers, writes each email from research on that practice, and sends it from your team's Kite address once you approve. Those tools come with your Kite plan. Kite includes more than 20 built-in data sources and connects to more than 2,300 apps when a job needs one of your own accounts, such as your CRM. HubSpot AEO on its own covers AI visibility, and HubSpot's content and campaign tools come with Marketing Hub. ## When to choose Kite vs. HubSpot AEO ### Choose Kite if: - You want the pages, refreshes, and pitches done, not assigned to someone on your team. - Nobody on your team has time each week to write and publish what a tracker recommends. - You want each change judged against the questions it was meant to win. - You want Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode tracked daily as part of your plan. - You want AI visibility handled together with your website, outbound email, and social posts. - Your site runs on Webflow, Contentful, Storyblok, Sanity, or Payload, or you'd like Kite to build and host it. ### Choose HubSpot AEO if: - Your marketing team already works in HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, where AEO is included and draws on your CRM data. - You have a writer or SEO lead who acts on recommendations and wants daily tracking for $50 a month. - You want a free, repeatable score of how AI models describe any brand, including your competitors'. - You want to ask about your AEO data from inside ChatGPT or Claude through HubSpot's connector. Some teams use both: HubSpot AEO next to the CRM reports they already read, and Kite to write, publish, and measure the fixes. ## FAQ ### Is there a free alternative to HubSpot's AEO Grader? Yes. Kite's [free AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker) asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude the questions your customers ask, and it shows whether they recommend you and who they recommend instead. It's free and needs no account. HubSpot's grader is also free, and it answers a different question: how AI describes your brand when asked about it directly. ### Is Kite a HubSpot AEO alternative? For teams that want the fixes done, yes. Kite tracks AI answers daily and then writes the pages, publishes them after you approve, and measures each one. You can see the full approach on the page about [improving your visibility in AI answers](/use-cases/ai-answer-visibility.md). ### How does Kite's price compare with HubSpot AEO's? HubSpot AEO costs less if tracking is all you need, at $50 a month for 25 questions. Kite has a free plan, and Growth is $100 a month with $100 in AI credits, priced per workspace so your whole team is covered. That price includes the writing, publishing, and measuring. Before you add questions, Kite shows what tracking them will cost, and you set a monthly spending limit. ### Which AI engines does Kite track, and can I read the answers? Kite tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode, daily by default. You can switch to weekly or monthly checks or run an extra check whenever you want. In the Kite web app, you can open each answer and see which brands it named and which pages it cited. ### What does Kite publish on its own? By default, Kite asks for your approval before it publishes a page, sends an email, or posts on social media. You approve with a button or a reply, in the Kite web app or in Slack. Tracking, research, and drafting run without waiting for you, and you can give Kite more autonomy as you come to trust its work. ### When is HubSpot AEO the better choice? HubSpot AEO is the better choice when your team runs its marketing in HubSpot and has someone who writes and publishes the pages. In that setup, AEO comes with Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise, and its suggestions draw on the CRM data you already keep there. If what you need is the work itself, that's Kite. --- ## HubSpot AEO hands your team a ranked list. Kite works through it. Start with the free [AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker) and see who AI recommends when your buyers ask. Then add Kite, and the questions you're missing from turn into a plan of pages, fixes, and pitches, with the first ones ready for your approval. 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