Every notable free AI visibility checker, with the thing the roundups never state: exactly what you get before the paywall, and what the paywall is.
Free AI visibility checkers are everywhere in 2026 because they’re excellent lead generation. That’s not a criticism — a free snapshot is genuinely useful — but the checkers differ enormously in what they give away and what they’re funneling you toward. Below is each one’s exact free scope, verified on July 19, 2026, so you can grab the free value without wandering into a sales pipeline you didn’t want.
Inclusion rule: the tool must give a genuinely free result — no credit card, no “free trial” countdown — that tells a business something real about its AI visibility. We note precisely where each free tier ends. Trials (Otterly’s 7 days, BrightLocal’s 14) are good but different animals, so they’re listed at the end, not ranked.
| Tool | Entry price | Free option | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIMention | $30 one-time | Free score, letter grade, and gap count — no credit card, no trial clock | A free scored diagnosis of your website — not just an appearance check |
| SE Ranking | About $218 a month (Core plan + AI add-on) | Free on-page AI Visibility Checker — your domain plus up to 5 competitors, 5 checks a day, no account; plus a 14-day suite trial | Checking yourself against competitors, repeatedly, with no account |
| Mangools AI Search Grader / Watcher | From $15.60 a month billed annually (AI Search Watcher Pro, standalone) | AI Search Grader — free 35-prompt snapshot with a 0–100 AI Search Score; 3 AI models with no account, all 8 with a free account | The widest free AI-model coverage anywhere |
| HubSpot AEO Grader | Free (related ongoing product, HubSpot AEO, is $50 a month) | Completely free one-time check — no account, no credit card, results in under 2 minutes | The fastest zero-commitment brand snapshot |
| Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | Free (the full Brand Radar product requires an Ahrefs plan plus AI index add-ons — realistically $828 and up a month for full coverage) | Free check of brand mentions and citations, no signup | A free check across the most AI surfaces (six), backed by crawl data |
| Birdeye | Not published — quote only | Free AI Visibility Checker — one location, one snapshot, ChatGPT only: visibility score, share of voice vs local competitors, citations, sentiment | A local-competitor share-of-voice snapshot — if you’re fine giving contact details |
| Knowatoa | $59 a month (Starter) | Free brand audit across its 7 tracked AI services, no credit card (exact scope not published) | A free audit across seven AI services, including Claude and Meta AI |
AIMention’s free tier is a real score, not a teaser pixel: your overall AI Visibility Score (0–100), a letter grade, and how many fixable gaps we found on your site — derived from the same six-dimension audit the paid report explains in full. No credit card, no phone number. The paywall line: the full breakdown, prioritized fix list, and 48-answer AI Presence Scan are the one-time $30 report.
SE Ranking’s free AI Visibility Checker is the most generous appearance-checker here: your domain plus up to five competitors, five checks a day, no account required. It’s the one to bookmark for recurring free spot-checks. It reports whether you appear — diagnosis of why is beyond any free tool’s scope.
Mangools’ AI Search Grader runs 35 prompts and scores you 0–100 — across three AI models with no account, and all eight (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral, Meta Llama) with a free account. No other free tool covers Claude, Grok, and the open models. The paid upsell, AI Search Watcher, is also the cheapest tracker on the market from about $15.60 a month.
HubSpot’s AEO Grader takes your brand name, location, and industry and returns a 0–100 score across sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice, and market competition — in under two minutes, no account. Its main caveat: analysis leans on model training data rather than live retrieval, so results can lag reality.
Ahrefs’ free AI Visibility Checker reports brand mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews, and AI Mode with no signup. The full product above it, Brand Radar, is one of the priciest upgrades in the space — realistically $828 and up a month for full coverage — so enjoy the free tier as exactly that.
Birdeye’s free AI Visibility Checker returns a visibility score, share of voice against local competitors, citations, and sentiment for one location — on ChatGPT only. It’s a real report, and also the top of a quote-priced enterprise sales funnel: Gemini and Perplexity coverage require talking to sales.
Knowatoa’s free audit checks how its seven tracked AI services handle your brand in about a minute, no credit card. The exact scope of the free audit isn’t published, which costs it points here — but the engine breadth at $0 is hard to argue with.
| Your situation | Our honest pick |
|---|---|
| You want a free scored website diagnosis | AIMention’s free score |
| You want to spot-check appearances weekly, free forever | SE Ranking’s free checker (5 checks a day) |
| You want Claude, Grok, and open models covered free | Mangools AI Search Grader |
| You want the fastest no-signup snapshot | HubSpot AEO Grader or Ahrefs’ checker |
| You’d trade contact details for local share-of-voice | Birdeye’s free checker |
| You want to trial real monitoring | Otterly (7 days) or BrightLocal (14 days) — trials, not free tiers |
They’re accurate for what they measure — a snapshot of whether you appear in some AI answers right now. The limits are scope (often one platform, one query set, one moment in time), not honesty. Treat any single free check as a smoke alarm, not an inspection.
Almost all of them are lead generation for a paid product, which is fine — but the paywall line varies enormously. Some are free forever with real output; some are one-shot teasers that hand your phone number to a sales team. This page states the exact line for each.
Your overall AI Visibility Score (0–100), a letter grade, and how many fixable gaps we found on your site — free, no credit card. The full six-dimension breakdown, prioritized fix list, and 48-answer AI Presence Scan are in the $30 one-time report.
Pay when you need the why and the what-now: which specific gaps are hiding you from AI, in what order to fix them, and proof of how AI answers about you today. If a free check shows you’re invisible, the follow-up question is worth paying for once — and only worth paying for monthly if you need ongoing trend data.
Overall AI Visibility Score, letter grade, and your gap count — free, in about a minute.
Check Your ScoreYour score is free — no credit card. The full report with every fix, prioritized, is a one-time $30.