Generative engine optimization (GEO) tools are software that help your brand get named and cited in answers written by AI, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews (the AI summary Google shows above normal results). They do four jobs: track whether AI names your brand, help you write or fix content, check that AI crawlers can read your site, and show which websites AI cites.
Most teams need a tracker first, because it shows what moved in AI answers after each change you make. Pick Depra if your buyers are in India and ask in English or Hinglish (Hindi typed in English letters), from ₹1,999 a month. Pick Ahrefs Brand Radar or the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit if you already pay for that SEO suite. Pick Frase or Surfer to rewrite pages. Start with free tools from Google, Bing and Cloudflare for data about your own site.
Depra publishes this page and is one of the tools in it. Every other vendor fact links to the page we read, checked 15 Sep 2026, prices are shown in the vendor's currency before tax, and the last section lists what Depra does not do. If the term is new, start with what GEO is.
| Job | What you learn | Paid tools in this guide | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Track whether AI names your brand | How often AI answers name you, in what position, next to which competitors | Depra, Peec AI, Profound, Otterly, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar | HubSpot AI Search Grader and the Semrush and Ahrefs checkers, as one-time snapshots |
| Write or fix content for AI answers | Which pages to write or change, with drafts, scores or briefs | Frase, Surfer, Writesonic, AirOps, Profound Agents | Frase GEO Score Checker, Otterly GEO score check |
| Check whether AI crawlers can read your site | Which AI bots your robots.txt allows or blocks, and which bots visit | Depra, Semrush AI Search Site Audit | Cloudflare AI Crawl Control, Ahrefs Bot Analytics (free in beta), Frase Agent Readiness Checker, Otterly crawlability check |
| See which sources AI cites | The websites and pages AI links to, and which of them leave you out | Depra, Peec AI, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar | Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance, for your own pages in Copilot answers |
How we picked and checked these GEO tools
We picked tools that sell at least one GEO job and publish what they do and what they cost. We grouped them by job, because a content writer and a mention tracker solve different problems and are hard to rank against each other.
For each tool we read the vendor's own pricing and product pages on 15 Sep 2026. If a page did not state something, this guide says "not published". We did not use any tool's paid data for the numbers here. The one study we quote is Depra's own Hinglish vs English study, with its method on the study page.
Two terms come up throughout. A prompt is a question your buyers ask AI, such as "best sunscreen for oily skin under ₹500". A citation is a website that an AI answer links to as its source.
Some vendors sell the same products as AEO (answer engine optimization) tools. For the difference in wording, read AEO vs GEO vs SEO. For a list built around answer engines, see AEO tools compared.
Which tools track whether AI names your brand?
A tracking tool asks AI engines the questions your buyers ask, on a schedule, and records whether each answer names your brand. Most also record your position in the list, the tone, and the websites cited. Share of voice is your share of all brand mentions across those answers.
AI answers change from one run to the next, so one manual check in ChatGPT tells you little. A tracker repeats each question every day or week and reports how often you appear across hundreds of answers. The six tools below are the paid trackers in this guide.
Depra: AI answers tracked from inside India, in English and Hinglish
Depra asks your buyers' questions to four AI engines from inside the country you pick, stores every full answer, and records whether each answer named you, in what order, in what tone and which web pages it cited. ChatGPT and Gemini answers are read from the consumer web apps, so you see the answers real people see there, and ChatGPT is checked with web search switched on.
At signup Depra drafts 5 topics with 8 buying questions each, none naming your brand, with Hinglish versions when India is one of your markets. Questions that already contain your brand name are left out of your scores. Your report shows a confidence range, the band a score could move by chance, next to each engine. The method is on how Depra measures AI visibility.
- Engines: ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Google AI Overviews daily. Perplexity weekly, through Perplexity's own answer model with live web search. Depra also records when Google showed no AI Overview at all.
- Price: Starter ₹1,999 a month plus 18% GST (20 prompts, 1 project, 3 competitors), Growth ₹7,499, Scale ₹12,499, Enterprise ₹25,000 invoiced. 7 days free on any plan, no card. See Depra pricing.
- India and Hinglish: English and Hinglish on every plan, any of 40 markets, up to 10 per project, asked at country level. The English vs Hinglish split is shown in your report.
- Limits: Four engines only. No Google AI Mode, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Grok, no Hindi in Devanagari script, no team seats yet, and Perplexity runs weekly.
Peec AI: pick 3 engines, unlimited users
Peec AI is a Berlin-based tracker. Each plan includes 3 AI models chosen from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, with more models as paid add-ons (Peec AI pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026).
- Price: Starter $95 a month for 50 prompts, Pro $245, Advanced $495, Enterprise on request. Annual billing takes 15% off.
- India and Hinglish: 1 country on Starter, 3 on Pro and Advanced. Hinglish is not mentioned on its pricing page or its AI instructions page.
- Best for: Teams outside India that need Google AI Mode or Copilot and want many users on one account. Full breakdown: Depra vs Peec AI.
Profound: wide engine coverage on Enterprise
Profound tracks ChatGPT only on its Starter plan, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on Growth, and up to 9 engines on Enterprise (Profound pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). It also sells content-writing agents, covered in the content section below.
- Price: Starter $99 a month and Growth $399 a month, both shown billed yearly. Enterprise on request.
- India and Hinglish: 1 region and 1 language on Starter and Growth. The Profound pages we read do not name Hinglish.
- Best for: Large brands that want many engines and content agents in one contract. Full breakdown: Depra vs Profound.
Otterly: the lowest US dollar entry price
Otterly, based in Austria, tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot daily on every plan. Gemini and Google AI Mode are add-ons from $9 a month each on Lite (Otterly pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026).
- Price: Lite $29 a month for 15 prompts, Standard $189, Premium $489, Enterprise from $1,000.
- India and Hinglish: 50+ countries on every plan. Hinglish is not mentioned on its pricing page.
- Best for: Small teams outside India that want Copilot included and a low dollar price. Full breakdown: Depra vs Otterly.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: AI tracking inside an SEO suite
The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit tracks your own prompts daily in ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Gemini (Prompt Tracking guide). Its other reports draw on a Semrush database of more than 317 million AI prompts and answers (Semrush data sources, checked 15 Sep 2026).
- Price: $99 a month for 25 prompts. Semrush says the toolkit has no free trial (Semrush AI pricing, toolkit help).
- India and Hinglish: A language selector where a location has 2 or more languages. Hinglish is not mentioned on its help pages.
- Best for: Teams already on Semrush who want AI data in the same login. Full breakdown: Depra vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: an index of AI answers plus your own prompts
Ahrefs Brand Radar has two parts (Ahrefs Brand Radar, checked 15 Sep 2026). The AI Visibility Index lets you look up any brand across 457 million prompts in AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, with no setup. Custom Prompts tracks the questions you choose on those platforms plus Claude.
- Price: Custom Prompts are included in every paid Ahrefs plan (5 prompts on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced) or start at $50 a month on their own. The AI Visibility Index costs $199 a month.
- India and Hinglish: Hinglish is not mentioned on the Brand Radar page. Ahrefs says the index works best for brands with real search demand.
- Best for: Ahrefs customers, and anyone who wants to look up competitors without setting up prompts first.
Which tools help you write or fix content for AI answers?
Content tools score or draft pages so AI engines are more likely to quote them. The idea has research behind it: in the paper that named GEO, adding citations, quotations and statistics raised a page's visibility in AI answers by up to about 40% in a GPT-3.5 test setup (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024).
Google's own guidance is that no special files or markup are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that normal SEO best practice applies (Google Search Central). So treat content scores as a checklist for clear, sourced pages. The tools below also include some AI tracking, which is thinner than a dedicated tracker's.
Depra does not write or edit content. It tells you which page formats AI cites most in your category, such as comparison pages or how-to guides, and ranks up to 12 formats to publish on your own site. The AI action plan page shows how that list is built.
Frase: briefs, drafts and GEO scores
Frase researches, drafts and scores content for Google and AI search, and watches published pages for ranking decay (Frase pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). Its AI visibility tracking covers ChatGPT and Google AI on Starter, adds Perplexity on Professional, and adds Claude and Gemini on Scale.
- Price: Starter $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly, for 10 articles and 50 audit pages. Professional $129, Scale $299. Free 7-day trial, no card.
- India and Hinglish: Frase says it writes in 70+ languages. Hinglish is not mentioned on its pricing page.
Surfer: content editor, AI tracking from $82 billed yearly
Surfer gives drafts a content score and optimisation guidelines, with 1-click content optimisation and 1-click internal linking (Surfer pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). The cheapest plan with AI tracking is AI Search Analytics, which tracks 50 prompts refreshed daily across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini. Standard tracks 25 ChatGPT prompts refreshed weekly, and Pro tracks 50 prompts daily across the same 5 engines.
- Price (billed yearly): Discovery $49 a month with no AI tracking, AI Search Analytics $82, Standard $99, Pro $182, Peace of Mind $299. Monthly billing costs more.
- India and Hinglish: Hinglish is not mentioned on its pricing page.
Writesonic: AI articles plus tracking in three engines
Writesonic combines AI article writing, site audits and AI search tracking (Writesonic pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). Starter, Basic and Growth track ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise lists 10 AI platforms.
- Price (billed annually): Starter $79 a month for 50 prompts and 15 AI articles, Basic $199, Growth $399, Enterprise custom. Free trial, no credit card.
- India and Hinglish: Custom regions and languages are listed on Enterprise. Hinglish is not mentioned.
AirOps: content workflows for larger teams
AirOps sells workflows for producing content at scale, plus AI search insights (AirOps pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). Solo shows ChatGPT insights only. Pro lists insights across 7+ answer engines.
- Price: Not published. Pricing is based on task volume, and the page offers a 14-day free trial.
- India and Hinglish: Multiple regions and languages are listed on Enterprise. Hinglish is not mentioned.
Profound Agents
Profound's plans include agents that create and optimise content: 100 credits a month on Starter and 400 on Growth (Profound pricing, checked 15 Sep 2026). They sit alongside Profound's tracker, so one contract covers both jobs.
Which tools check whether AI crawlers can read your site?
AI engines send bots to read web pages. Your robots.txt file tells each bot which pages it may read. If it blocks the bot an AI search feature uses, your pages cannot be fetched for those answers.
OpenAI runs three main bots (OpenAI crawler documentation, checked 15 Sep 2026). OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT search, and sites that block it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot collects pages that may be used for model training. ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a person asks, and OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to it. So you can block training and still allow search.
Google AI Overviews use Googlebot, the same crawler as normal Search. Google-Extended is the robots.txt token that controls use of your content for training in other Google AI systems (Google Search Central). The robots.txt report in Google Search Console shows only Google's own fetch, so it cannot tell you whether GPTBot or ClaudeBot is blocked. For the full list of bots, see our AI crawlers list.
Depra AI crawler check (inside the app)
Depra checks 41 AI crawlers from 26 vendors against your robots.txt and your competitors', with the exact rule that allows or blocks each one. It splits bots that learn from your site from bots that fetch it to answer a question right now, lets you test a single URL, checks whether you publish llms.txt (a plain-text guide to your site written for AI), and flags bots documented to ignore robots.txt as advisory.
It can also read AI bot visits from the logs your web server or hosting network keeps (CloudFront, Cloudflare, Vercel, nginx or Apache formats, or a file upload) and show which bots hit errors. Log setup is manual. The check sits inside the logged-in app and is not a free public tool. Details: AI crawler checker.
Cloudflare AI Crawl Control
If your site runs through Cloudflare, AI Crawl Control shows which AI services visit your content, lets you allow or block each crawler, and tracks which crawlers follow your rules. Cloudflare lists it as available on all plans, the free one included (Cloudflare AI Crawl Control, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Semrush AI Search Site Audit
Part of the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. It checks up to 100 pages for issues that stop AI bots reading your site, tested against 8 AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (toolkit help, Semrush data sources, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Ahrefs Bot Analytics
Shows when AI crawlers read your pages and which pages they visit most. Ahrefs lists it as free while in beta, installed on your site (Ahrefs Brand Radar, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Free public checkers from Frase and Otterly
Frase's Agent Readiness Checker tells you whether AI agents can reach and read your pages, with no signup for your first result (Frase free tools). Otterly lists a free AI crawlability check among its free GEO tools. Both give a one-time result; neither tracks changes over time.
Which tools show the sources AI cites?
When AI engines answer with live search, they link to the pages they used. Those pages decide a lot: if a "best X in India" list names your competitor and skips you, AI answers built from that list will too. A sources tool shows which sites AI cites in your category and which of them never mention you, so you know where to pitch, list or review.
Language changes the sources as well. Our study asked the same buying questions from inside India in English and in Hinglish, and compared how often each answer cited a source.
Gemini cited sources in 90.0% of English answers and 41.3% of Hinglish answers. (Depra Hinglish vs English study, 480 answers, fieldwork 14 Aug 2026)
Depra citation gap analysis
Depra lists every website AI cites in your category, labelled by type (editorial, company site, forum, reference, marketplace, directory, government or your own site), and every cited page labelled by format, such as listicle, comparison, how-to or product page. Gap analysis shows the websites that recommend your competitors but never mention you, at domain, subdomain and page level, with competitors' own sites filtered out.
Those gaps become a ranked list of up to 12 places to get mentioned. When you mark one done, Depra shows your visibility before and after. That view compares two dates and does not prove the action caused the change. Details: citation gap analysis.
Peec AI sources
Peec AI reports the domains and URLs AI engines cite, for any source, and sorts them into five types: editorial, corporate, user-generated content (UGC, such as forum posts), reference and your own website (Peec AI instructions page, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Semrush Sources report
Semrush lists the pages AI cites for your tracked prompts, with a suggestion for earning a mention on each (Prompt Tracking guide, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Ahrefs Brand Radar cited pages
Brand Radar has a cited pages report showing which domains and pages AI links to, and it adds Reddit, YouTube and TikTok visibility, free while in beta (Ahrefs Brand Radar, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance (free)
For your own site only. The AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner services: total citations, average cited pages per day, citation counts per URL, and the search phrases the AI used to find your content. Microsoft released it as a public preview in February 2026 (Bing Webmaster blog, checked 15 Sep 2026).
Are there free generative engine optimization tools?
Yes, and each one covers part of one job. Free tools give you data about your own site or a one-time snapshot of your brand. None of the free options below tracks your own buying questions every day.
- Google Search Console. Clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report under the Web search type (Google Search Central). They are mixed in with normal Search, so you cannot see AI traffic on its own.
- Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance. Citations of your pages in Copilot and Bing AI summaries, per URL, inside Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Cloudflare AI Crawl Control. See and control AI crawler visits, on every Cloudflare plan, the free one included.
- HubSpot AI Search Grader. A free one-time check of what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about your brand based on their training data, with a score out of 100. No account is needed, and you fill in a short form to see the full results (HubSpot AI Search Grader, checked 15 Sep 2026).
- Semrush and Ahrefs checkers. Semrush's AI search visibility checker gives a one-off score for a domain. Ahrefs offers a free preview of its AI Visibility Index on the Brand Radar page.
- Frase and Otterly free tools. Frase has a GEO Score Checker for one page, an AI Visibility Checker and an Agent Readiness Checker (Frase free tools). Otterly's GEO tools page lists a GEO score check, a crawlability check and a prompt calculator, next to a free guide and an email course.
Is Depra free?
No. Depra has no free plan. Every plan starts with 7 days free and no card, and your first scan starts at signup. After that, plans start at ₹1,999 a month plus GST. Start 7 days free.
Which GEO tools work for Indian and Hinglish searches?
Hinglish is Hindi-English typed in English letters, the way most Indians ask ("sabse accha protein powder kaunsa hai"). It matters for GEO because the same buying question in Hinglish can get different brands, and on Gemini, far fewer answers cite sources.
Our Hinglish vs English study asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity 10 buying questions from inside India, in both languages, 8 times each. Perplexity's list of recommended brands changed 23.4 points more between English and Hinglish than between two reruns of the same question, against 7.8 points on Gemini and 2.2 on ChatGPT. A tool that tracks only English questions misses that shift.
Of the 14 tools in this guide, Depra is the only one whose pages we read name Hinglish. Several others offer many countries or languages, set per project, and some list India as a location. If your buyers are in India, check two things before you buy: can the tool ask from inside India, and can it track the same question in English and Hinglish side by side.
Depra does both on every plan, and your report shows English and Hinglish visibility in one table. It does not track Hindi in Devanagari script, and location is set per country, with no city targeting. More on this: Hinglish AI visibility tracking.
GEO tools compared side by side
The table lists every tool in this guide with its main job, the AI engines it covers, its starting price and whether its pages name Hinglish. Prices are monthly, before tax, in the currency the vendor uses.
| Tool | Main job | AI engines covered | Starting price | Hinglish named |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Depra | Track mentions, sources, crawler access | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Perplexity | ₹1,999 plus GST, 7 days free | Yes, every plan |
| Peec AI | Track mentions, sources | 3 of ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot | $95 | No |
| Profound | Track mentions, write content | ChatGPT on Starter, 3 on Growth, up to 9 on Enterprise | $99, billed yearly | No |
| Otterly | Track mentions | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; Gemini and AI Mode as add-ons | $29 | No |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Track mentions, sources, site audit | ChatGPT Search, AI Mode, Gemini for your prompts | $99, no free trial | No |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Track mentions, cited pages, bot visits | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot; Claude on Custom Prompts | In Ahrefs paid plans, or $50 | No |
| Frase | Write and fix content | ChatGPT and Google AI on Starter, more on higher plans | $49, or $39 billed yearly | No |
| Surfer | Write and fix content, track mentions | ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini on AI Search Analytics and Pro; ChatGPT only on Standard | $49 billed yearly, no AI tracking; AI tracking from $82 | No |
| Writesonic | Write content, track mentions | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews; 10 on Enterprise | $79, billed annually | No |
| AirOps | Content workflows | ChatGPT on Solo; 7+ on Pro | Not published | No |
| Google Search Console | AI Overviews traffic inside Search totals | Google AI Overviews, AI Mode | Free | Not applicable |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Citations of your pages | Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI summaries | Free | Not applicable |
| Cloudflare AI Crawl Control | AI crawler visits and blocking | Not applicable | Free, on all Cloudflare plans | Not applicable |
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | One-time brand check | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, from training data | Free | No |
How do you choose a GEO tool?
Start from the job you need done this quarter, then check the market and the budget.
- You do not know if AI names you yet. Run a free one-time check, then pick a tracker. A tracker repeats the same questions on a schedule, so it shows what moved after each change you make.
- Your buyers are in India. Pick a tracker that asks from inside India and covers Hinglish. Depra does both from ₹1,999 a month. Compare the wider field in AI visibility tools compared.
- You already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs. Try their AI modules first, since you avoid a second login. Check which engines your plan covers and whether it names your market.
- You know what to fix and need pages written. A content tool such as Frase, Surfer or Writesonic fits. Keep a tracker running so you can see whether the new pages get cited.
- AI never cites your site at all. Check crawler access first. A blocked OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers however good your pages are.
What Depra does not do
Depra is a tracker with sources, actions and a crawler check. These are the jobs in this guide it does not cover today:
- Content: Depra does not write, edit or score pages, and it does not audit schema, headings or internal links.
- Engines: No Google AI Mode, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek or Meta AI. Perplexity runs weekly.
- Free tools: No free plan and no free public checker. The crawler check is inside the app.
- Traffic: No AI referral traffic or sales data. AI bot visits come from your own logs, set up by hand.
- Team and data: No alerts, team seats or public API. CSV export and a printable report are live.