The best AI SEO tools in 2026 depend on the job. Frase, Surfer and Writesonic help you write and improve pages. Ahrefs and Screaming Frog cover research and site audits. SE Ranking and Semrush bundle most SEO work with AI features. Depra AI, Otterly and Peec AI track what AI answers say about your brand.
The tools are grouped by job because "AI SEO tools" covers two different things. SEO, search engine optimisation, is the work of getting your pages found in search. Some tools use AI to do that work. Others are built for AI search, where ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or a Google AI Overview answers the buyer directly. A Google AI Overview is the AI summary above normal results.
Depra AI publishes this page and is one of the 10 tools on it. Inside each group the tools are listed A to Z, so the order is not a score. Every fact about another tool comes from that vendor's own page, read on 7 Oct 2026 and linked beside the fact. If the topic is new to you, start with what AI SEO is.
| Tool | Job | What it does | Starting price | Free plan or trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frase | Write and optimise content | Researches, drafts and scores content for Google and AI search | $49/mo Starter, or $39 billed yearly | 7 days, no card; free checkers |
| Surfer | Write and optimise content | Content score and optimisation guidelines for drafts; AI tracking from its AI Search Analytics plan | $49/mo billed yearly (Discovery) | 7 days, card required |
| Writesonic | Write and optimise content | AI article writing, site audits and AI search tracking | $79/mo Starter, billed annually | Free trial without a card |
| Ahrefs | Research and audits | Competitor and keyword research, site audit and rank tracking; Brand Radar for AI answers | $29/mo Starter; Brand Radar tracking from $129/mo Lite | Ahrefs Free for site owners; no trial listed |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Research and audits | Crawls your site to find broken links, errors and redirects, and to check page titles and meta data | Free up to 500 URLs; licence £199, $279 or €245 a year | Free version with a 500-URL limit |
| SE Ranking | All-in-one suite | SEO platform with rank tracking and site audits; AI Search add-on for AI answers | $129/mo Core, or $103.20 billed yearly | 14 days, no card |
| Semrush One | All-in-one suite | Semrush SEO Toolkit bundled with its AI Visibility Toolkit | $199/mo Starter, or $165.17 billed annually | 7 days on Semrush One; free plan with limits |
| Depra AI | Track AI answers | Tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity answer your buyers, from inside the country you pick | ₹1,999/mo Starter, excl. GST | No free plan; 3 days free, card or UPI AutoPay required |
| Otterly | Track AI answers | Monitors brand mentions and cited links in AI answers | $29/mo Lite | Pages disagree: 7 or 14 days, no card |
| Peec AI | Track AI answers | Tracks brand mentions, position and cited sources on 3 AI models you choose from 6 | $95/mo Starter | Free trial, length not stated |
What is an AI SEO tool?
An AI SEO tool is software that helps your brand get found in search. It either uses AI to do SEO work or measures AI search itself. The first kind speeds up familiar jobs: drafting pages, scoring content and auditing a site. The second kind checks what AI assistants say when a buyer asks what to buy, and which websites those answers cite.
Work on the second kind is also called GEO, generative engine optimisation, or AEO, answer engine optimisation. GEO vs SEO explains how it differs from ranking a page.
Which AI SEO tools write and optimise content?
Frase, Surfer and Writesonic are the three content tools on this list. Each one scores or drafts pages, and each adds tracking of AI answers on certain plans (Frase pricing, Surfer pricing, Writesonic pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). A content tool tells you how to improve a page. To see whether AI assistants name your brand afterwards, check the tracking on your plan or run a tracker next to it.
Frase: briefs, drafts and page scores
Frase researches, drafts and scores content for Google and AI search, and watches published pages for ranking decay (Frase pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). Starter costs $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly, for 10 articles and 50 audit pages. The free trial runs 7 days with no card. Frase also has free checkers, listed further down.
Surfer: a content editor with a score
Surfer gives drafts a content score and optimisation guidelines, with 1-click content optimisation and 1-click internal linking (Surfer pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). Billed yearly, Discovery costs $49 a month and has no AI tracking. AI Search Analytics costs $82 a month and tracks 50 prompts daily across five AI engines. A prompt is one buyer question the tool asks AI. New accounts get a 7-day free trial, and billing details are taken at checkout (Surfer trial, checked 8 Oct 2026).
Writesonic: AI articles plus tracking in three engines
Writesonic combines AI article writing, site audits and AI search tracking (Writesonic pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). Starter costs $79 a month, billed annually, for 15 AI articles and 50 prompts. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. The free trial needs no credit card.
Which AI tools for SEO handle research and audits?
Ahrefs covers research, and Screaming Frog SEO Spider covers site audits. Research shows what your customers search for and what competitors rank for. An audit crawls your own site and lists what is broken.
Google Search Console is the free place to start (Google Search Console Help, checked 8 Oct 2026). Clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in its Performance report (Google Search Central, checked 8 Oct 2026). AI Mode is Google's chat-style search mode.
Ahrefs: research with a database of AI answers
Ahrefs lists Site Explorer for studying competitors' websites, Keywords Explorer for learning what customers search for, Site Audit and Rank Tracker. AI Content Helper, which improves content with AI, is part of its Content Kit add-on, from $99 a month (Ahrefs pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). Brand Radar looks up how AI answers mention any brand across 462M+ prompts that Ahrefs runs (Ahrefs Brand Radar).
Starter costs $29 a month. Ahrefs describes it as a credit-based plan for light use, with Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit and Rank Tracker (Ahrefs Starter plan, checked 8 Oct 2026). Lite costs $129 a month and includes 5 tracked AI prompts. Ahrefs Free gives a site owner Ahrefs data on their own site at no charge (Ahrefs pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). See also Ahrefs Brand Radar alternatives.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: a crawler with a free version
Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls a website and reports what it finds. Its feature list includes finding broken links, errors and redirects, and analysing page titles and meta data. It also generates XML sitemaps, the files that list your pages for search engines (Screaming Frog pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
The tool is free for crawls of up to 500 URLs. A licence lasts 1 year and costs £199, $279 or €245, by the currency you pick. It removes the 500-URL limit and adds features the free version leaves out, such as scheduling, JavaScript rendering and crawling with OpenAI and Gemini (Screaming Frog pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
Which all-in-one SEO suites have AI features?
SE Ranking and Semrush each put SEO research, rank tracking and site audits in one account. Rank tracking watches where your pages sit in Google's results. Both also sell AI answer tracking. A suite suits a team whose main job is Google rankings. Check how many prompts the plan includes and which AI engines run them.
SE Ranking: an SEO platform with an AI Search add-on
SE Ranking is an SEO platform with rank tracking and site audits. Core costs $129 a month, or $103.20 billed yearly, and lists 100 prompts tracked daily. Its AI Search add-on starts at $89 a month for 200 prompts. The pricing page lists AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT in the AI results tracker. The 14-day trial needs no credit card (SE Ranking pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
Semrush One: SEO and AI visibility in one bundle
Semrush One bundles the Semrush SEO Toolkit with its AI Visibility Toolkit. Starter costs $199 a month, or $165.17 a month billed annually. It includes 50 tracked prompts, 5 websites and 500 keywords (Semrush One pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). The AI Visibility Toolkit alone costs $99 a month per domain, billed annually, with 25 prompts (Semrush AI pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
Its AI Search Site Audit checks up to 100 pages against 8 AI crawlers, the bots AI companies send to read websites (toolkit help page, Semrush data sources, checked 8 Oct 2026). Full comparison: Depra AI vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.
Which tools track AI answers?
Depra AI, Otterly and Peec AI track what AI assistants say about your brand. A tracker asks the questions your buyers ask, on a schedule. It records whether each answer names you, in what position, and which websites it cites. AI answers change from one run to the next, so one manual check tells you little.
The wider field is in the best AI visibility tools, and every head-to-head page is in our tool comparisons.
Depra AI: AI answers tracked from inside India
Depra AI asks your buyers' questions to four AI engines from inside the country you pick and stores every full answer. ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Google AI Overviews are checked daily, and Perplexity weekly. Questions can be tracked in English and Hinglish, which is Hindi and English mixed and typed in English letters. More on Hinglish AI visibility tracking.
Starter costs ₹1,999 a month plus 18% GST for 16 prompt slots. There is no free plan. Starter, Growth and Scale start with 3 days free, card or UPI AutoPay required (Depra AI pricing).
What Depra AI does not do: it reads AI answers, and it does not show where a page ranks in Google's list of links. It has no technical site audit, and it does not write or edit pages. It does not track Google AI Mode, Claude or Microsoft Copilot. Tools in the other three groups do those jobs, so you still need a writer or a content tool.
Otterly: a $29 start with four engines
Otterly monitors brand mentions and cited links in AI answers. Every plan includes ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, tracked daily. Lite costs $29 a month for 15 prompts (Otterly pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). India is on its country list. Full comparison: Depra AI vs Otterly, or see Otterly alternatives.
Peec AI: three models of your choice
Peec AI tracks brand mentions, position and cited sources in AI answers. Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts, 1 project and 1 country per project. Each plan includes 3 AI models you choose from 6, and all brand plans list unlimited users (Peec AI plan details, checked 8 Oct 2026). Full comparison: Depra AI vs Peec AI.
Are there free AI SEO tools?
Yes, for parts of each job. Free AI SEO tools give you data about your own site or a one-time snapshot. None of the free options below writes your pages or tracks your own buying questions every day.
- Google Search Console. Free (Google Search Console Help, checked 8 Oct 2026). Its Generative AI performance report shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode on their own.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Free for crawls of up to 500 URLs (Screaming Frog pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Ahrefs Free. Ahrefs data on your own site, at no charge (Ahrefs pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Frase. Free checkers: a GEO Score Checker for one page, an AI Visibility Checker and an Agent Readiness Checker (Frase free tools, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- HubSpot AI Search Grader. A free one-time check of what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about your brand, with no account needed (HubSpot AI Search Grader, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Semrush. Its free AI search visibility checker gives a one-off score for a domain (checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Depra AI. No free plan. You can check AI answers by hand with our 15-minute AI visibility check.
Which AI SEO tools fit an Indian ecommerce brand on a small budget?
Start with the free layer, then pay for one tool per job. Google Search Console is free, and Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free for sites of up to 500 URLs (Search Console Help, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, checked 8 Oct 2026). For content, Frase starts at $39 a month and Surfer at $49 a month, both billed yearly (Frase pricing, Surfer pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026). For AI answers, Depra AI starts at ₹1,999 a month plus GST and bills in rupees, and Otterly starts at $29 a month in US dollars. Each price is linked in the tool entries above.
The rupee-priced trackers are compared in the best AI visibility tools in India. Brands that sell direct to consumers, called D2C, can start from the best AI visibility tools for D2C brands. Shopify stores can also read the best Shopify SEO apps.
How do you choose an AI SEO tool?
Start from the job that is holding you back, then check the plan and the trial. Four checks cover most decisions.
- Name the job first. A content tool, a crawler and a tracker solve different problems.
- Ask what the AI does. In some tools AI drafts text. In others it scores a page, or AI search is the thing being measured.
- Read the row for your plan. Prompt counts, AI engines and countries change by plan.
- Measure after each change. Run a tracker before and after you publish. How to measure AI visibility explains the four numbers to watch.
How we chose and checked these tools
We picked tools that do one of the four jobs and show a price or a free version on their own site. The list is our choice and is not complete. We grouped them by job, because a content editor and an answer tracker are hard to rank against each other.
We read the Screaming Frog and Ahrefs pricing pages on 7 Oct 2026 for this page, and checked the Ahrefs and Screaming Frog pages again on 8 Oct 2026. The other vendor facts were read on each vendor's own pages the same day for our other roundups. We did not test these tools hands-on, so this page compares what vendors publish.
Depra AI publishes this page. The first three groups are tools that use AI to do SEO work, and the fourth is tools that measure AI search. Inside each group, tools are listed A to Z, so the order is not a score. That rule puts Depra AI first in the tracking group, ahead of Otterly and Peec AI. For lists built around AI answers only, see AEO tools compared and GEO tools grouped by job.