Tool or agency
Is an AI visibility tool enough, or do you need an agency?
A tool tells you where you appear and suggests what to change. An agency does the changing. Most companies need the measurement either way; the question is who does the work.
Short answer
A tool is enough if someone on your team will act on what it shows every week. Choose an agency if the work the tool points to, such as new pages, third-party articles and community presence, will not get done otherwise.
IThe main tools, from their own pages
| Tool | What it does | Beyond measuring | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|
| AthenaHQ | AthenaHQ calls itself a command center for AEO and GEO: it tracks how a brand appears in AI-generated answers and shows where it wins or loses visibility. It then recommends on-page and off-page fixes. | Beyond measurement: a recommendation engine (AthenaHQ Content) for citation gaps, an AI copilot (Ask Athena) that answers questions on your data, content gap analysis, AI-friendly templates, citation-ready press kits, and on the Starter plan a content optimization agent. | Essential: free with 300 credits (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot). First paid plan: Starter at $295/month, 3,600 credits (1 credit = 1 AI response). Enterprise custom. |
| Otterly.AI | Otterly.AI is an AI search monitoring and optimization platform that tracks how brands and websites appear in AI-generated answers. It adds content and GEO audits that recommend changes to earn more citations. | Beyond measurement: prompt research, crawlability and AI-readiness audits, citation-potential scores before publishing, generated content briefs for weak pages, and on-page GEO recommendations. It suggests and briefs; it does not publish. | Lite: €29/month (home page says from $29/month; FAQ says prices are in USD or EUR, excl. tax), 16 prompts, 4 of 7 engines. Standard €189, Premium €489; Enterprise custom. |
| Peec AI | Peec AI is AI search analytics for marketing teams: it runs tracked prompts across AI models and reports brand visibility, position and sentiment against competitors. It also shows which sources and citations shape those answers. | Mostly measurement with guidance: an Actions/recommendations layer suggests what to improve (e.g. review sites, community discussions, digital PR), plus source tracking, prompt suggestions and an agent that investigates the data. Execution stays with the team or its agency. | Starter, $95/month billed monthly: 50 prompts, choose 3 models. Pro $245/month, Advanced $495/month; Enterprise custom (annual). |
| Profound | Profound is an AI marketing platform that tracks and helps improve how a brand shows up in AI search answers. It pairs visibility analytics (answer engine insights, prompt volumes, AI bot and citation analytics, sentiment) with an AI Marketer that drafts work for human approval. | Beyond measurement: an AI Marketer that identifies tasks and drafts them for approval (page rewrites, content calendars, social posts and images), plus pre-built agents such as FactCheck, which traces inaccurate claims to publishers and drafts corrections. Work is staged for a human to approve. | not public |
| Scrunch | Scrunch positions itself as an AI customer experience platform that shows how a brand appears across AI platforms and helps act on it. It combines monitoring and citation insights with AI bot crawl observability. | Beyond measurement: the Agent Experience Platform (AXP) creates a parallel, lightweight version of your site translated for AI agents; also citation analysis, AI-bot crawl error detection and a real-time bot traffic feed. | Starter: $250/month billed annually or $300 month-to-month, 350 custom prompts. Growth $417/month annual or $500 month-to-month; Enterprise custom. |
From each vendor's own pages, checked November 2026.
IIWhat a tool leaves to you
- Deciding which buyer questions matter for revenue.
- Writing and shipping the pages, and changing the existing ones.
- Getting into the third-party articles, communities and videos the engines cite.
- Connecting visibility to visits, signups and pipeline.
Several tools now suggest or draft content, and some run agents that prepare tasks for approval. Someone still has to approve, publish and earn the off-site mentions.
IIIIf you choose an agency
16 agencies compared on the same criteria.
| Agency | Who it serves | Focus | Price | One published result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DerivateX | B2B SaaS, $5M to $50M ARR | SaaS specialist | From $5,000/mo | Gumlet: Share of AI answers 22.0% to 37.7% (Jul to Aug 2026) |
| Discovered Labs | B2B SaaS | SaaS specialist | From €6,995/mo | Gladia: 7x sales-accepted leads in four months |
| Earleads publisher | B2B and B2C companies already selling | SaaS and others | From $7,500/mo after a $4,000 audit | none published |
| First Page Sage | Midsized companies, with a SaaS offer | SaaS and others | not public | Anonymous AI writing and communication assistant: Cited in 23% to 77% of tracked prompts |
| Flying Cat Marketing | B2B SaaS, Series A to enterprise, 5 languages | SaaS specialist | From $2,000/mo | D2L: Recommended in 12% to 33% of tracked AI answers |
| Graphite | Not stated; clients include Webflow | SaaS and others | not public | Webflow: LLM share of voice 33% to 64%, 2x LLM signups |
| Growtika | Security, infrastructure and developer-first SaaS | SaaS specialist | not public | Reco: 500% organic traffic growth, 5x pipeline (home page) |
| iPullRank | Startups to Fortune 500 | All industries | not public | Anonymous major telecommunications provider: +253% AI Overviews visibility in 12 months |
| LoudFace | B2B SaaS and fintech | SaaS specialist | From $5,000/mo | Toku: 97.8% visibility on one tracked buyer prompt |
| Obility | B2B tech in hyper-growth | SaaS and others | From $5,450/mo | Fastly: AI Overview citations 17 to 139 in five months |
| Omniscient Digital | B2B software companies | SaaS specialist | From $120,000/yr | Convert: LLM prompt visibility 31% to 55% |
| Omnius | Software companies only | SaaS specialist | not public | Unnamed Series B RegTech company: AI answer share 2.9% to 31.9% |
| Optimist | B2B tech and SaaS, Series A to public | SaaS specialist | From $3,000/mo | Glide: 14x weekly leads and signups from content |
| SimpleTiger | B2B SaaS and AI, seed to enterprise | SaaS specialist | not public | Invoca: $3M revenue, 41:1 ROI in under 10 months |
| TripleDart | B2B SaaS, Series A to enterprise | SaaS specialist | From $5,000/mo | Signeasy: LLM sessions from 15-20 to 700-750 a month |
| WebFX | All industries | All industries | From $3,000/mo, 6-month term | URAC: +188% traffic from AI channels |
Every cell comes from the agency's own website, checked November 2026. Results are as each agency states them. Open a profile for the source links.
Common questions
Do agencies use these tools?
Many do, and some include the tool cost in their fee. Ask which tool an agency reports from and whether you get access to it.
Which tool should a small SaaS team start with?
Pick the one that tracks the engines your buyers use and lets you enter your own buyer questions. Compare the entry plans below, then check how many questions each plan tracks.
This guide is published by Earleads, a GEO agency that appears in it. Earleads is recommended only for the one situation where its published offer is the closest fit, and every agency, Earleads included, is described from its own website with the source linked. How we compare.