Free AI visibility checkers compared
Six free tools that check whether AI engines see your brand or can read your pages, opened and verified at source on 2026-08-06, with what each one covers and what it cannot tell you.
Each tool below was opened at its own URL on 2026-08-06 and the description reflects what that page stated on that date, including whether it required a signup. This is not an exhaustive list of free checkers; it is the set we verified at source. Free tiers in this category change quickly, so re-check before you rely on any of it.
Free AI visibility checkers split into two kinds. Brand-level checkers such as Ahrefs' free AI Visibility Checker and Profound's free AEO Report ask whether AI platforms mention your brand. Page-level checkers such as Otterly's GEO Content Check, Otterly's AI Crawler Simulation, Google's Rich Results Test, the Schema Markup Validator and Citedon's free scan ask whether an engine can read a specific URL. All of them give a snapshot, none tracks change over time on a free tier, and none can promise a citation. Pick by which question you actually have.
Search "free AI visibility checker" and you get a wall of tools that all appear to do the same thing. They do not. They answer two different questions, and running the wrong one is why people come away thinking the whole category is noise.
Question one: do AI platforms mention my brand? Question two: can an AI engine actually read this page? A tool built for one will not answer the other, no matter how good its score looks.
Everything below was opened at its own URL on 2026-08-06 and described from what that page said on the day.
Brand-level checkers
These ask AI platforms a set of questions and count whether you appear.
Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker. You enter a brand name. It queries ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode with what Ahrefs calls search-backed prompts, then reports total AI mentions, mentions by platform, top 5 topics, top 5 cited domains and top 5 cited pages. Its own FAQ states no signup, no credit card and no limit on how many brands you can check, and that the free tool shows a limited preview, top 5 results per section, with the full data in the paid Brand Radar product.
Profound free AEO Report. You submit a brand and get a report covering AI visibility, source citations, brand sentiment and content AEO. The page states it analyzes how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews respond, using responses captured from the consumer experience rather than API outputs. It is the free front door to a paid platform, which is a fair trade and worth knowing before you enter your details.
What both give you is a position. What neither gives you is a reason. If you are absent from ChatGPT, these tools will tell you that you are absent, and stop there.
Page-level checkers
These look at one URL and report what a machine could parse from it.
Otterly GEO Content Check. Paste a URL or the raw content and pick an output language. The tool page itself says only that it runs a multi-step GEO framework over what you give it; Otterly's own description of the check is that it scores static content, AI readiness and structured data, then tells you what to fix. No signup wall on the tool itself on the date checked.
Otterly AI Crawler Simulation. Enter a URL and it sends real HTTP requests using the user-agent strings of GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-Searchbot, Googlebot, GoogleOther, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Grok, then shows how your server responded. The tool states its own limit plainly: it does not read robots.txt, it only tests the server's response to the user-agent. That is a useful and unusually honest boundary, because a site can allow a bot in robots.txt and still return a 403 to it at the edge.
Google Rich Results Test. Free, URL or pasted code, and it tells you which Google rich results the structured data on your page can generate. It is a Google-surface tool, not an AI-answer tool, and it only evaluates the schema types Google supports.
Schema Markup Validator. The schema.org validator. Free, URL or code snippet, and broader than the Rich Results Test because it validates schema.org markup generally rather than only Google-supported types. It reports whether your markup is valid. It has no opinion on whether an engine will use it.
Citedon free scan. Enter one URL. It queries ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude and analyzes the page structure, then returns an agent-readiness score, the specific gaps behind it, and which of the four engines returned that page. Takes about a minute. First scan needs no signup.
The table
Verified at each tool's own URL on 2026-08-06.
| Tool | What it checks | Engines or surfaces named | Signup on the free tier | Stated free-tier limit | Tracks over time free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker | Brand mentions in AI answers | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode | No, per its FAQ | Limited preview, top 5 per section | No, one-time snapshot |
| Profound free AEO Report | Brand visibility, citations, sentiment, content AEO | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews | You submit a brand to generate it | Report scope set by Profound | No |
| Otterly GEO Content Check | Content, AI readiness and structured data on a URL, per Otterly's description | Not engine-specific, scores the page | None seen on the tool page | Per-check, single URL or pasted text | No |
| Otterly AI Crawler Simulation | Whether your server serves AI crawler user-agents | GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-Searchbot, Googlebot, GoogleOther, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Grok | None seen on the tool page | Does not read robots.txt, user-agent response only | No |
| Google Rich Results Test | Which Google rich results your structured data supports | Google Search surfaces only | No | Google-supported schema types only | No |
| Schema Markup Validator | Whether schema.org markup is valid | None, validation only | No | Validity only, no engine behavior | No |
| Citedon free scan | Whether four engines can read a page, plus the gaps | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude | No on the first scan | 1 scan per 24 hours anonymous, 3 a day signed in, one URL at a time | No, the scheduled watch is paid |
There are dozens more free checkers than these. We listed only the ones we opened and read, because the alternative is repeating a tool's marketing back to you.
What free checks genuinely cover
Free tools are good at three things, and you should use them for exactly those.
Establishing that a problem exists. A brand checker that returns zero mentions across five platforms has told you something real for nothing.
Finding a hard block. A crawler simulation that shows a 403 for GPTBot is a concrete, fixable fault with a clear owner.
Validating markup. If your JSON-LD is malformed, a validator will say so in seconds, and no amount of strategy fixes an unparseable script tag.
What free checks miss
They are snapshots, not series. Every free tier above runs once. Ask the same engine the same question twice and you can get two answers, so a single run is a data point, not a measurement. Turning one into the other means repeating it on a schedule, which is the thing free tiers do not do. The method is in how to measure your AI citation rate.
They are page-level or brand-level, rarely both. A brand checker cannot point at the service page that could not be parsed. A page checker cannot tell you that a competitor is being named instead of you.
Scoring is not shared. Each tool has its own scale. A 78 in one is not a 78 in another, and none of them is an industry metric. Compare a tool against itself over time, never against another tool.
They stop at the diagnosis. Not one of these applies a change to your site. The gap between knowing that your FAQ block is missing and having it live on the page is where most of this work actually dies.
Where Citedon sits, including what it does not do
Citedon's scan is in the table above on the same terms as everything else, so here are its limits stated plainly.
It scans one URL at a time, not your whole site. Anonymous, that is one scan per 24 hours; on the free tier signed in, three a day. It is a snapshot, exactly like the others, and the scheduled re-check that turns a snapshot into a series is a paid plan. It does not monitor competitors on a schedule and it does not report share of voice. And the automated fix runs only through the connected WordPress plugin with per-fix approval, so on Shopify, Wix, Webflow or a headless stack you get the diagnosis and do the work yourself.
What it adds over the other page-level tools is the four-engine citation check sitting next to the structural gaps, so the readout answers "could they read it" and "did they return it" in the same view. Whether that is worth anything to you depends entirely on whether you intend to act on it.
We do not promise that any engine will cite you. Nobody can. What is measurable is whether your page can be read, and that is the part you control.
Run one, then decide
Pick the question you actually have. If it is "does AI mention us", start with a brand checker. If it is "why not", start with a page.
The first Citedon scan is free, any site, no signup, and takes about a minute. You get the readiness score, the gaps behind it, and which of the four engines returned your page today. Run a free scan.