Best free AI visibility tracker in 2026: what free actually gets you
The best free AI visibility tracker compared: Promptwatch Explore, AthenaHQ Essential, Foglift, Teun.ai and more, with the real limits of each free tier.
Free AI visibility trackers exist, but "free" means different things. For some it is a permanent plan with tight limits. For others it is a one-off scan, a credit allowance or a trial that ends in a week. Before you pick, decide what you want to learn. If you only want to know whether ChatGPT names you today, almost any free option works. If you want a trend over a month, the limits start to matter.
Everything below was read from vendor pages and catalog entries on 24 October 2026, except Promptwatch details, which come from its published plans.
What counts as a real free tier
We looked for a free option you can use without a sales call, that runs real AI engine queries, and that lets you re-check over time. One-time scans are useful, so we mention them, but they do not rank as trackers.
1. Promptwatch Explore: best free plan for a real tracker
Promptwatch has a permanent free plan called Explore: 1 project, 1 seat, 10 prompts and 310 responses, tracking ChatGPT only. That is a small panel, but it is a genuine tracker with daily runs, not a screenshot, and it gives you the same Visibility Score, Share of Voice, sentiment and position reporting that paid plans use.
There are also free tools outside the plan: an AI Visibility Report that scans without a login, an Agentic Readiness Check, a GEO Inspector Chrome extension that shows ChatGPT fan-outs and cited sources, an AI bots directory, and llms.txt and robots.txt generators.
Limits to know: ChatGPT only on Explore, no crawler logs, and a 7-day free trial for paid plans applies to monthly billing on the lower tiers. When you outgrow it, Essential is $95 a month, Professional $245, Business $579.
2. AthenaHQ Essential
AthenaHQ has a free Essential tier with 300 credits, where one credit equals one AI response. That is enough for a short experiment rather than months of tracking. Paid Starter is $295 a month with 3,600 credits across 11 models. Good for testing an action-oriented workflow before committing.
3. Foglift
Foglift is free at $0 with 200 tokens, weekly Perplexity monitoring, AI crawler analytics and one brand, plus an unlimited free technical audit. Paid plans start at $49 a month and meter monitoring in tokens across five engines. Free is narrower on engines, but crawler analytics on a free plan is unusual.
4. Teun.ai
Teun.ai leads with free tools that need no account: an AI Visibility Snapshot (ten commercial prompts on ChatGPT and Perplexity with a competitor overview), a GEO audit of a URL with a live Perplexity test, and a prompt explorer. Results show the raw AI output with a timestamp. A free account adds Google AI. Paid plans start at 29.95 EUR a month excluding VAT. These are snapshots more than ongoing tracking.
5. MentionsAPI
MentionsAPI is an API rather than a dashboard, with 300 free credits and paid plans from $5 a month. It suits developers who want to script their own checks.
6. Free tiers from agentic tools
Okara has a free AI CMO plan at $0, and Seology has a free Starter. Both focus on shipping SEO fixes rather than measuring visibility across engines, so they complement a tracker rather than replace one.
Free-adjacent: included with tools you already pay for
Ahrefs Brand Radar includes Custom Prompts free for every paid Ahrefs plan from Lite up, with a daily quota of 5, 10 or 20 prompts depending on the plan. It is not free if you are not an Ahrefs customer. Profound offers a free 7-day trial (50 prompts daily across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews), but that is a trial, not a free plan.
Comparison table
| Option | What is free | Main limit |
|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch Explore | Permanent plan, 10 prompts, 310 responses | ChatGPT only |
| AthenaHQ Essential | 300 credits | Credits run out |
| Foglift Free | 200 tokens, weekly Perplexity, crawler analytics | One brand, narrow engines |
| Teun.ai | No-account snapshots | One-off, not continuous |
| MentionsAPI | 300 credits | Needs code |
Who should pick which
- Pick Promptwatch Explore if you want a continuous tracker with proper reporting and a clear upgrade path.
- Pick AthenaHQ Essential if you want to try credits and an action center.
- Pick Foglift if technical audit and crawler data matter more than engine breadth.
- Pick Teun.ai for a quick Dutch-market snapshot.
What free cannot do
Free tiers cover a handful of prompts. They will not tell you which pages get cited at scale, whether crawlers hit errors, or how much AI traffic converts, and no tracker can promise that an engine will recommend you. Use the free plan to check ten prompts, read the full answers, and decide whether the findings justify paying for depth.