How we test and rank

The short version

Every buyer's guide on AI Ranked is built from facts you can check yourself. Prices, plans and features come from the vendor's own live pages, and each one is linked where it appears. When a tool can be tried without a sales call, we run it ourselves and mark that part of the entry Our test, with what we entered and what came back. Agencies are scored on five public checks. Every entry says who the option suits and where it falls short.

How we evaluate AI visibility software

We record the same fields for every tool, so you can compare entries line by line:

• Engines covered: plan by plan, which of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode the tool tracks. An engine that only the top tier includes doesn't count for the cheaper plans.
• Prompt limits and price: how many prompts each plan tracks and what that works out to per prompt per month. A low sticker price with 25 prompts is often the expensive option.
• Refresh rate: how often answers are re-run. Daily and weekly data tell you different things.
• What you can export: raw answers, cited URLs and competitor data, or only a score.
• Free plan, trial and cancellation: whether you can try it before paying and whether you can cancel without talking to sales.

When a vendor page and a third-party review disagree, we go with the vendor page and link it. When a vendor doesn't publish a number, the entry says so instead of guessing.

What we run ourselves

Free checkers, free plans and self-serve trials get a hands-on run. We test against the same public sites each time, so results can be compared across tools, and we report what the tool returned, including errors, empty results and anything that needed an email or card to see. A hands-on result is labeled Our test in the entry. Tools that only open after a sales demo are described from their public documentation, and the entry says that.

How we evaluate GEO, AEO and AI SEO agencies

We start from agencies whose own site names generative engine, answer engine or AI search optimization as a service, then score each one on five checks a buyer can repeat before a first call:

• The AI service is described on the agency's site, with the engines it covers.
• Measurement is explained: which prompts, which engines and how often answers are re-checked.
• A price or budget floor is public, along with any minimum term.
• The agency publishes at least one AI result of some kind (mentions, citations, share of answers or AI referrals) and says what period it covers.
• The agency is willing to name the clients it isn't right for.

We do not hire the agencies we review, so any result in an entry is the agency's own claim, linked to the page it came from.

How a list is ordered

We order each list by fit for the use case in the title, not by overall size. A tool that is right for an enterprise team can sit below a cheaper one in a guide written for small teams. Each entry carries a "best for" line and a "falls short" line so you can jump straight to the options that fit your budget and stack.

What changes a ranking

A position moves when the facts move: a price change, a new engine or feature, a result we can verify, or a correction a reader sends with a source. If you spot something wrong, write to editors@airanked.ai with the page and a link to the correct fact. Verified corrections are noted at the end of the article, as our corrections policy describes.

Our own research

Beyond the guides, we collect our own data and publish it with the method and the CSV: a study of AI crawler access across 261 major websites and an analysis of 742 AI Overview citations on B2B software queries. Both datasets are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.

Frequently asked questions