Best free AI visibility tools in 2026: what each free plan really covers
Ten AI visibility tools with a genuinely free plan or free tool, compared on engines, prompt limits, and what each one leaves out. Free trials don't count.
Quick verdict
You can learn a lot about your AI visibility for free in 2026, as long as you accept that each free plan covers one slice. Promptwatch's Explore plan is the best free prompt tracker to start on if ChatGPT is where your buyers are. Trendos has the most generous free prompt allowance across engines. Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control is the best free look at which AI bots visit your site. Use two or three of them together for a month, then pay for one tool when you need the pieces in one place.
What counts as free here
We only included tools whose catalog entry lists a free plan, free tier, or free tool. A free trial that ends in a charge doesn't count, so plenty of good trackers with 7 or 14 day trials are left out on purpose. Every limit below comes from our catalog listing for that tool, or for Promptwatch, from its published fact sheet.
Free AI visibility tools fall into three types:
- Prompt trackers run a small set of prompts against AI engines and report mentions.
- Crawler and referral tools read your traffic to show which AI bots fetched your pages and which AI apps sent visitors.
- One-shot graders give you a score once, with no history.
No free plan we found covers all three. That's the honest headline.
Free AI visibility tools at a glance
| Tool | Type | What the free plan includes | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch Explore | Prompt tracker | 10 prompts, 1 project, 1 seat | ChatGPT only |
| AthenaHQ Essential | Prompt tracker | About 300 credits | Works as a trial; credits run out |
| Trendos | Prompt tracker | 20 custom prompts, 600 answers a month, daily runs, up to 10 brands | Engine list differs between its homepage and FAQ |
| Contentstack Canoe | Prompt tracker | 1 brand, 20 prompts a month on ChatGPT and Gemini, monthly report, site audit, no expiry | Monthly cadence |
| Foglift | Tracker plus audits | 200 tokens, weekly Perplexity monitoring, unlimited technical audits, AI crawler analytics, 1 brand | Perplexity only on free |
| Amplitude AI Visibility | Tracker inside analytics | Included in Amplitude's Free plan with limited capabilities | ChatGPT and Google AI Overview only |
| Known Agents | Crawler and referral analytics | 1 project, 100K events a month | No prompt tracking |
| Cloudflare AI Crawl Control | Crawler analytics | AI crawler dashboard, allow or block per crawler | Only traffic through Cloudflare; referral data needs a paid plan |
| LLMrefs | Prompt tracker | Limited tracking, llms.txt generator | Free limits not detailed on our listing |
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | One-shot grader | A score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, no account | No history or custom prompts |
The tools in detail
1. Promptwatch Explore
Explore is free with 10 prompts, one project, and one seat, on ChatGPT only. That's narrow, but it's the same platform the paid plans run on, so you learn the workflow you'd use later. For a brand whose buyers ask ChatGPT first, ten carefully chosen prompts is a meaningful baseline.
What Explore doesn't include is the reason most teams eventually pay. Multi-engine tracking starts on Essential ($95 a month, 7-day trial), along with visitor analytics that tie AI referrals to conversions and content gap analysis. Agent Analytics, the AI crawler log view, starts on Professional ($245).
2. AthenaHQ Essential
AthenaHQ's free tier gives you about 300 credits, at one credit per AI response. It's best treated as a real trial of the full product, including a look at the Action Center workflow, rather than an ongoing free plan.
3. Trendos
The most generous free tracker on our list. Twenty custom prompts, 600 analyzed answers a month, unlimited countries, up to 10 brands, and daily runs. Trendos also lists an Ad Radar for competitor ads in ChatGPT answers and an MCP, though our listing doesn't say which plans include them. It also notes that its homepage and FAQ disagree on the engine list, so check which engines your free answers come from.
4. Contentstack Canoe
A free plan with no expiry: one brand, 20 prompts a month on ChatGPT and Gemini, a monthly report, a site audit, and the top two recommendations. The monthly cadence makes it a check-in tool, not a monitor.
5. Foglift
Foglift's free tier is unusual because it mixes both worlds. You get weekly monitoring on Perplexity only, but also unlimited single-page technical audits and AI crawler analytics on one brand. Our listing doesn't detail how its crawler analytics is collected.
6. Amplitude AI Visibility
If you already use Amplitude, or are willing to start on its free plan, AI Visibility is included with limited capabilities. Its strength is the analytics side: AI-referred traffic tied to funnels and conversions. Coverage is two engines, ChatGPT and Google AI Overview, and the prompts are LLM-generated, per Amplitude's FAQ.
7. Known Agents
Known Agents doesn't track prompts at all. It tracks the other side: which AI agents visit, which pages they hit, errors and redirects, and human visits from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity. The free plan covers one project and 100K events a month. Its own guidance suggests budgeting about twice your human visits in events, so busy sites outgrow the free tier quickly.
8. Cloudflare AI Crawl Control
If your site runs through Cloudflare, this is already in your dashboard on every plan, Free included. You see AI crawler requests by crawler and path, status codes, and robots.txt violations, and you can allow or block crawlers. On the Free plan detection relies on user-agent strings, and AI referral metrics need a paid plan (Pro from $20). It shows fetches, not whether AI recommends you.
9. LLMrefs
LLMrefs has a free tier with limited tracking and an llms.txt generator. Our listing doesn't spell out the free limits. The paid Pro plan is $79 a month, labeled limited-time pricing.
10. HubSpot AI Search Grader
Now called AEO Grader, per our listing. Enter a brand and get a score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini without an account. Scores vary between runs, so use it once as a conversation starter, not to measure progress.
A free stack that actually works
For a month of free baseline data, combine one tracker with one crawler tool:
- Promptwatch Explore for your ten most important ChatGPT prompts.
- Trendos or Contentstack Canoe for a second view across other engines.
- Cloudflare AI Crawl Control or Known Agents to see whether AI bots reach the pages you want cited.
That setup answers "are we mentioned?" and "can the bots get in?" It can't connect the two. You'll see a crawler hit in one dashboard and a missing mention in another, with no view of which page the engine cited instead or whether AI visitors converted.
When to stop using free tools
Move to a paid plan when one of these happens: leadership asks what AI traffic is worth, a competitor starts winning a prompt and you can't see why, or you're spending more time stitching dashboards together than acting on them.
At that point the gap is integration, not features. Promptwatch puts the pieces into one workspace. Prompt tracking covers every model it monitors on paid plans. Citation analytics names the page, Reddit thread, or video the engine used. Agent Analytics shows crawler fetches next to the citations they led to, and visitor analytics shows conversions. Essential at $95 a month is the natural next step from Explore. Professional at $245 is the plan to choose if crawler logs are what your free stack was missing.
FAQ
Is there a completely free AI visibility tracker?
Several have free plans. Promptwatch Explore (ChatGPT, 10 prompts), Trendos (20 prompts, 600 answers a month), and Contentstack Canoe (20 prompts a month on ChatGPT and Gemini) are the most usable.
Can I see AI crawler activity for free?
Yes, with Cloudflare AI Crawl Control if your site runs through Cloudflare, or Known Agents' free plan. Foglift's free tier also lists AI crawler analytics.
Are free trials included in this list?
No. Tools whose only free option is a time-limited trial were left out.