The 7 Best Free AI Visibility Tools in 2026

The short answer: the best free AI visibility tool depends on the question you need answered. Start with Alice if you want one live brand question, one live buyer question, and a technical AI-readiness audit in the same no-signup check. Use Ahrefs or Semrush for a broader database view, Bing Webmaster Tools for first-party Microsoft citation history, and a manual check when you need to see the exact consumer experience.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization. You may also see the same work called AEO, AI search optimization, or AI visibility. The labels overlap, but the free tools behind them do not. A crawler audit, a database of brand mentions, and a live answer are three different measurements.

Disclosure: we build Alice at TranX, so it appears first. Competitor details below come from the vendors' public documentation checked on September 24, 2026. We did not run a controlled accuracy test across all seven options, so this is a capability comparison, not a performance ranking.

The best free GEO tools at a glance

We count a tool as free when you can get a useful result without starting a paid subscription. A free account is acceptable when the vendor clearly says what it unlocks. A time-limited trial is not the same thing, and we call it a trial when it comes up.

1. Alice: best combined live check and technical audit

Alice's free AI visibility check asks one question about your brand and one buyer question about your category across Google AI Overviews, an OpenAI model with web search, and the Anthropic API with web search. It reports whether each engine named you, which sites appeared instead, or whether the engine returned no AI answer. The OpenAI and Anthropic checks are web-search probes, not the ChatGPT and claude.ai consumer apps.

The same scan tests whether ten named AI crawlers are allowed by your robots.txt, whether the page's words arrive without JavaScript, and whether it contains useful schema markup. That combination matters because an answer check tells you what happened once, while the technical audit finds access and readability problems you can fix on your own site.

What is free: the 30-second scan needs only a URL and no account. A free Alice account adds five buyer questions with a weekly Visibility Snapshot, plus Search Console and GA4 snapshots.

The limit: two live questions are a baseline, not a market-wide visibility score. Paid plans check more buyer questions daily and keep the history. Passing the technical audit also does not guarantee that an answer engine will cite you.

2. Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker: best broad no-signup preview

Ahrefs' free checker accepts a brand name and returns a limited preview powered by Brand Radar. Ahrefs says it covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode using prompts derived from search behavior. The report separates brand mentions from citations, which prevents a common mistake: an answer can name your company while linking to somebody else.

What is free: no signup, no credit card, and no stated limit on the number of brands you can check. The report shows the top five results in each section.

The limit: this is a preview of a large existing dataset. It is useful for discovering topics and sources, but it does not replace tracking your own stable set of buyer questions over time. Historical data and fuller competitor analysis sit in Brand Radar.

3. Semrush AI Visibility Checker: best free domain benchmark

Semrush's checker starts with a domain rather than a brand name. It reports an AI visibility score, mentions, cited pages, topics, prompts, and estimated audience across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. Semrush says the checker draws from a database of more than 26 million prompts and responses and updates key visibility data daily.

What is free: three checks per day without registering or creating an account.

The limit: the free result is a high-level database view. Custom prompt tracking, deeper competitor work, and ongoing monitoring belong to the paid AI Visibility Toolkit. A database pattern can also differ from the answer you receive when you ask a consumer app yourself.

4. Bing Webmaster Tools: best first-party citation evidence

Bing Webmaster Tools is different from the public checkers because it reports data for a verified site. Its AI Performance report shows citations, cited pages, grounding-query groups, and changes over time across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated Bing summaries, and selected partner experiences. The data refreshes daily and can be exported.

What is free: the report is part of Bing Webmaster Tools. You need to add and verify the site, which you can also do by importing an existing Search Console verification.

The limit: the report covers Microsoft-supported surfaces, not the whole AI search market. Its data is aggregated and sampled, and grounding queries are grouped phrases rather than the exact questions users asked. It shows citation activity, not visits, conversions, or proof that a content change caused the movement.

5. HubSpot AEO Grader: best one-time brand diagnosis

HubSpot's AEO Grader is a free, one-time diagnostic. You enter a brand name and receive a visibility score, sentiment, competitive positioning, and a sample of recommendations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. HubSpot says the grader runs preset queries: ChatGPT and Gemini use training-data responses, while Perplexity uses live search.

What is free: the one-time grader, with no paid HubSpot subscription required.

The limit: you do not choose the grader's queries, and the report is one moment rather than a series. HubSpot's separate AEO product tracks chosen prompts daily, but its no-card access is a 28-day trial, not a permanent free monitoring plan.

6. Mangools AI Search Grader: best quick multi-model comparison

Mangools generates niche prompts, checks which brands appear, and calculates a score using visibility, average position, and an estimate of each model's market share. The public free version covers ChatGPT through GPT-5 Nano, Mistral Small 3.2 24B, and Meta's Llama 3.3 70B Instruct. A free Mangools account unlocks additional models and more searches.

What is free: limited use across three models without an account. Mangools describes the account tier as forever free and says it does not require a credit card.

The limit: these are named model endpoints rather than a claim to reproduce every consumer search product. Treat the weighted score as Mangools' summary of its own test, not a universal measure that can be compared directly with another vendor's 0 to 100 score.

7. A manual AI visibility check: best reality check

A spreadsheet and the AI products your buyers actually use remain a useful free method. Write five buyer questions before you start: a category question, a use-case question, a comparison, an alternative to a known competitor, and a problem-led question. Ask each one in the same market and language, then record the date, answer, brands named, links cited, and any failed or citation-free response.

What is free: whatever access the consumer products already give you. You choose the exact questions and see the same interface a buyer sees.

The limit: answers vary by location, personalization, model, and time. Manual checks are slow, easy to perform inconsistently, and do not create a reliable trend unless you repeat the same process on a schedule. Our five-step manual AI recommendation check gives you a repeatable worksheet for this method.

Which free AI visibility tool should you use?

• You want one place to start: run Alice for live answers and technical readiness.
• You want a broad market snapshot: compare the Ahrefs and Semrush reports, remembering that each uses its own dataset and score.
• You own the site and want observed citation history: verify it in Bing Webmaster Tools.
• You care about sentiment and competitive positioning: add HubSpot's one-time grader.
• You want to compare model outputs quickly: try Mangools, then check the important questions manually in the consumer products.

Do not average the scores from different tools. The denominators, prompts, engines, dates, and collection methods differ. A 40 in one product and a 70 in another do not mean your visibility changed. They mean two instruments measured different samples.

A free 30-minute GEO audit

1. Run your domain through Alice's free check. Save the two live answers and fix any blocked search crawlers, missing server-rendered content, or broken schema before interpreting the result.
2. Check the brand in Ahrefs and the domain in Semrush. Write down the topics, cited pages, and third-party sources that appear in both reports.
3. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools. If the AI Performance report has data, export the cited pages and grounding-query groups.
4. Ask your five buyer questions manually. Separate a brand mention from a link to your own site, and do not count a failed response as an absence.
5. Keep the questions unchanged and repeat the check later. The first run is a baseline. The second run is the beginning of a trend.

When a paid GEO tool becomes useful

Free tools are enough when you are establishing a baseline, checking a technical problem, or deciding whether AI visibility deserves a place in your marketing review. A paid tool becomes useful when somebody needs stable prompts, scheduled checks, country or language controls, saved answers, competitor history, and a workflow for acting on the findings.

Before paying, use the same five buyer questions in every demo. Ask which product or model was checked, whether the answer came from a live consumer experience or an API, how failed checks enter the score, and whether mentions are separated from citations. Our broader AI visibility tool comparison covers the paid decision in more detail.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free GEO tool?

Alice is our pick for a first check because it combines two live AI-answer questions with crawler access, server-rendering, and schema checks. Ahrefs and Semrush are stronger for broad database discovery, while Bing Webmaster Tools is stronger for first-party Microsoft citation history. No single free tool measures all three jobs.

Are GEO and AEO tools the same thing?

The terms are commonly used for overlapping work. GEO usually emphasizes earning mentions and citations in generative answers. AEO emphasizes structuring information so an answer engine can select and present it directly. Most products labeled GEO, AEO, or AI visibility combine parts of both.

Can a free tool measure my visibility in ChatGPT?

It can measure a sample, but you must read the method. Some tools query an OpenAI model or API, some inspect a stored dataset of ChatGPT answers, and some ask the consumer product. Those are useful but different observations, and none represents every answer every user sees.

Is a free AI visibility score enough?

A score is enough to start a diagnosis, not enough to prove improvement. Save the underlying questions, answers, dates, mentions, and citations. Repeat the same questions later, and connect any visits or conversions separately rather than treating a higher visibility score as business impact.

Run the free Alice AI visibility check. It takes about 30 seconds and does not require an account.