Every AI visibility vendor can show you a list of buyer questions where ChatGPT or Perplexity names a competitor. The useful comparison starts after that list exists: who writes the page, who publishes it, who re-runs the question, and what you pay for each step. This is that comparison for the six vendors our prospects ask about, with prices checked against pricing pages and public trackers on October 8, 2026.
A monitoring plan costs between $25 and $420 a month. The person who turns line 14 of its report into a published page costs more than that every week. So the price of a tool only tells you the price of the list. The comparison that matters is the price of a changed answer, and that depends on who does the next four steps.
Otterly, Peec and Profound rank prompts by volume or by competitor share of voice and leave the choice to you. Gushwork's strategy agent chooses. Lean Labs' strategists choose. SiteSonar ranks gaps by revenue impact (prompt intent, your closest page's AI readability score, and which competitor is winning) and puts the top items in your approval queue each weekday.
Otterly and Peec do not. Profound includes agent credits on its enterprise and agency plans. Gushwork's content agent writes service, comparison and location pages. Lean Labs writes as an agency. SiteSonar drafts an answer-first page, FAQ block and JSON-LD schema per gap, and on the Business and Founders offer our editors rewrite the draft before you see it. On both offers nothing publishes until you approve it.
Otterly and Peec hand you an export. Profound has integrations behind agent workflows. Gushwork auto-publishes to your domain, with optional human review. Lean Labs publishes as part of the engagement. SiteSonar publishes approved drafts to WordPress, Shopify, GitHub, Lovable, Cloudflare Workers or any CMS over MCP, in your site's design, on your domain.
This is the step most vendors skip. Trend tracking shows the overall rate moved; it cannot tell you which page moved it. SiteSonar re-runs the specific prompts seven days after each publish and logs the change per page against the baseline recorded on day one. Gushwork runs a refresh loop. Lean Labs and the three tools report the trend.
| Vendor | Type | Starting price | Writes | Publishes | Re-checks per publish | Guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | Monitor | $25/mo (annual) | No | No | Trend | No |
| Peec AI | Monitor | $80/mo (annual) | No | No | Trend | No |
| Profound | Monitor + agents | Custom; agencies $99 + $399/client | Agents | Integrations | Trend | No |
| Gushwork | Service | $900/mo | Yes | Yes, auto | Refresh loop | None published |
| Lean Labs | Agency | $12,000 one-time + $5,000/mo | Yes | Yes | Trend | None published |
| SiteSonar | Platform + managed | $599/mo (3 domains) or $1,200/mo managed | Yes, for approval | Yes, after approval | Day 7, per page | 90-day, fees refunded |
Sources: PricingSaaS pages for Otterly and Peec; GEO Toolbox's Profound pricing guide (checked September 28, 2026); Affinco's Gushwork review (September 30, 2026); Lean Labs' own AEO cost FAQ; sitesonar.ai/pricing. Vendors change these prices often. Profound changed plans three times in 2026.
SiteSonar's guarantee is judged at day 90 against the written baseline. Improvement means any one of: AI Visibility Score up 10 points, citation rate up 15 percentage points, or 5 net-new queries where an engine now cites you. If none is met, subscription fees for the period are refunded. The conditions are that you approve the recommended content, keep the platform connected, and attend one review call. We did not find published thresholds from any other vendor in this table.
Otterly is the cheapest way to see where you stand, and a good first check before you spend on anything. Peec has strong multi-model analytics for teams that already have a content function. Profound tracks up to nine engines and is built for enterprise procurement. Gushwork bundles an AI SDR that calls your leads, which we do not do. Lean Labs runs off-site authority at a scale we do not attempt. If one of those is your main gap, buy that.
DoodleWeb, the agency that built SiteSonar, went from zero to 60 percent citation coverage on its tracked buyer queries and recorded 246 ChatGPT visits and 19 leads in 84 days of GA4 data. Wildflower Hemp Co, a live customer engagement, moved from 40 percent to 50 percent citation rate across ten tracked queries in 14 days with 105 AI referral sessions. Baselines are published next to each result on the case studies page. They are specific engagements, not projections.
Run the free snapshot to see your baseline. No card, no trial signup. If the gaps are there, the Agencies offer has a 14-day trial and the Business and Founders offer starts with a call.
Related reading: How do I optimize content for AI search visibility in 2026? · Why monitoring is not enough · SiteSonar vs Otterly · SiteSonar vs Gushwork · SiteSonar vs Lean Labs