Why should I care what AI says about my product?

Because 85% of B2B buyers now ask AI before visiting your website. If ChatGPT says your pricing is 'expensive' or Perplexity recommends a competitor instead of you, buyers never tell you why they didn't book a demo — they just don't show up. AI buyer perception is the gap between what's true about your product and what AI tells your buyers.

What do I get that a visibility score doesn't give me?

AI visibility tools give you a score — 'you were mentioned 47 times.' That tells you nothing about deal impact. Perciva shows you the actual problems: 'AI is telling buyers your pricing starts at $79 (it's actually $29)' and 'CompetitorX replaced you on 4 comparison prompts this week.' Every alert comes with a specific fix — which page to update and what to add.

Which AI engines do you support?

We currently monitor ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — the four AI engines most frequently used by B2B buyers during software research and evaluation. Support for Copilot and other emerging AI interfaces is actively being added as buyer adoption grows.

How do I fix AI misinformation about my brand?

Perciva tells you exactly which claims are wrong and which pages to update. Common fixes include updating your pricing page with clear numbers, adding integration documentation with proof points, and publishing case studies that AI engines can cite as authoritative sources.

Do I need any technical setup?

No. Perciva is fully self-serve — you enter your brand name, add competitors, and select prompt packs. Monitoring starts automatically within minutes. There is no code to install, no integrations to configure, and no IT involvement required.

How does the free snapshot work?

Enter your brand name and work email. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a report showing how AI describes your brand on key buyer-intent prompts, including risky claims, competitor positioning, and 3 fast fixes.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Every plan includes a 7-day free trial with full access to all features — prompt monitoring, claim extraction, competitor tracking, and alerts. No credit card required to start. You can also request a free AI Buyer Perception Snapshot with no trial needed.

How much does one wrong AI answer cost my pipeline?

If an AI engine tells a buyer your product doesn't support their key integration, and that buyer moves to a competitor without ever visiting your site, that's one lost deal. For most B2B SaaS companies, a single deal is worth $5K–$50K+ annually. One wrong claim across thousands of buyer queries adds up fast. Perciva starts at €49/mo.

How quickly do AI engines update after I fix my content?

It varies by engine. Some changes are reflected within days (especially in engines with web browsing), while others may take 2–4 weeks as models re-index sources. Perciva tracks these updates so you can confirm when your fixes have taken effect.

What if I only have 1-2 competitors?

Even with few competitors, the combination of prompt categories (pricing, integrations, security, comparisons) and AI engines (4+) creates dozens of monitoring points. A single wrong pricing claim or competitor displacement on one prompt can impact pipeline significantly.

How often is monitoring run?

All plans include weekly monitoring that automatically runs prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. You can also run on-demand checks whenever you need an immediate answer — for example, after publishing new content or launching a product update.

Can agencies use this for clients?

Absolutely. The Team/Agency plan supports up to 5 projects with white-label branded exports, making it ideal for agencies managing AI perception across multiple client brands. Each project has independent competitor tracking, prompt packs, and alert settings.

Can I see a sample report before signing up?

Yes. We've published a full sample AI Buyer Perception Report using a fictional brand so you can see exactly what you'll get — risky claims, competitor displacement alerts, citation analysis, and prioritized fixes. View it at perciva.ai/sample-report.

How is this different from SEO tools?

SEO tools optimize for Google search rankings. Perciva monitors what AI chatbots say about you on buyer-intent prompts — a completely different surface. You can rank #1 on Google and still be misrepresented in ChatGPT answers that buyers rely on.

Best Free (and Freemium) AI Visibility Tools

2026-07-24 · 7 min read · By Perciva Team

The honest answer: Otterly.ai is the only tool on this list with a genuinely free ongoing tier for AI visibility tracking, and it is where most teams should start. Knowatoa offers a free audit, HubSpot's AEO Grader is a free one-off snapshot, and Perciva offers a free one-time AI Buyer Perception Snapshot plus a 7-day trial with no credit card. Everything else marketed as "free" in this category is a time-limited trial: Trakkr and ZipTie.dev give 14 days, Gauge gives 7. Rankscale is not free but is the cheapest paid entry at around $20/mo.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A free tier lets you build a baseline and watch it move. A free trial lets you look once. AI answers drift week to week, so a single snapshot tells you almost nothing about direction — which is why the manual method at the end of this article is sometimes a better free option than another trial.

How we picked

Perciva is our product, and it is not ranked first here because our free tier is a one-time snapshot rather than ongoing monitoring. Criteria:

Free forever vs trial: can you keep using it at zero cost after week one?
What the free tier actually includes: prompts, engines, refresh frequency.
Upgrade honesty: whether the free tier is useful or purely a lead magnet.
Setup time, since free tools compete with doing it by hand.

Where free tiers run out

Free AI visibility tools are all constrained in one of four ways, and knowing which constraint you have hit tells you what to buy next.

Prompt caps. Free tiers typically track a handful of prompts. Real buyer coverage — comparisons against each named rival, pricing, integrations, security — needs a few dozen.
Engine caps. Free usually means one or two engines, and rarely includes Claude. If your buyers are developers or technical evaluators, that is a meaningful blind spot.
Refresh frequency. Free tiers refresh slowly, so you learn about a change after it has been costing you deals for weeks.
Depth. Almost every free tier counts mentions. None of them read the answer and tell you that the reason you lost the recommendation is a claim about your pricing that has been wrong since your last repricing.

The fourth is the one that catches teams out. Mention counts can look healthy while every mention positions you as the budget fallback. If your free dashboard is green and your win rate is not, depth is the constraint, and no free tool in this category resolves it.

1. Otterly.ai — the only genuine free tier

Verdict: the default free choice, and good enough that many small teams never upgrade.

Otterly is a self-serve AI brand mention tracker with a free starter plan that carries quota caps on prompts and engines. You get scheduled tracking rather than a one-off audit, which is the thing that makes it genuinely useful — you can watch a trend rather than take a photograph.

Best for: founders and small teams establishing an AI visibility baseline. Pricing: free starter tier; paid plans from about $29/mo.

Pros:

Ongoing free tracking, not a trial
Minutes to set up
Clean interface

Cons:

Quota caps on prompts and engines
Mention-level only — it will not tell you what was said

2. Knowatoa — best free technical audit

Verdict: free where it counts, because crawl access problems are binary and cheap to check.

Knowatoa offers a free audit to start, testing whether AI bots can reach your site. Paid Starter is $59/mo (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode); Growth at $199/mo unlocks all supported AI services plus API, MCP and Looker Studio reporting.

Pros: the free audit answers a real question; genuinely technical output. Cons: ongoing monitoring is paid; entry tier is three surfaces.

3. HubSpot AEO Grader — best free one-off snapshot

Verdict: a free readiness check from a company with no reason to upsell you a monitoring tool.

After HubSpot acquired xFunnel in 2025, much of that capability resurfaced in HubSpot's free AEO Grader. It is a snapshot audit of your answer-engine readiness — not continuous monitoring, no competitor tracking, no change history — but it costs nothing and takes minutes.

Pros: free; fast; no commitment. Cons: one-off snapshot; no ongoing tracking. See xFunnel alternatives for what replaced the standalone product.

4. Perciva — free snapshot plus a no-card trial

Verdict: the deepest free look at buyer-intent answers, but a snapshot rather than a free tier.

Perciva offers a one-time free AI Buyer Perception Snapshot for any company, plus a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. The snapshot shows how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude answer buyer-intent questions about you, including the verbatim answers and which claims they make. After that it is paid: Starter €49/mo, Growth €129/mo, Team €299/mo.

Pros: claim-level output at no cost; no credit card for the trial. Cons: no free forever tier; B2B SaaS focus.

5. Rankscale — cheapest paid alternative to free

Verdict: when free is not enough, this is the smallest cheque in the category.

Credit-based pricing from around $20/mo covering 17+ engines and 240+ regions. For roughly the cost of two coffees you get broader engine coverage than most free tiers allow.

Pros: very low entry; widest engine list. Cons: not free; credit budgeting is manual.

6. Trakkr — best 14-day trial with everything unlocked

Verdict: the most generous trial, because all tracked models are included rather than gated.

Trakkr's 14-day free trial includes all eight tracked AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI). Paid plans start around £79/mo (roughly $100) for one brand and 50 prompts.

Pros: nothing gated during the trial; white-label reports on paid plans. Cons: trial only; entry tier caps at one brand.

7. ZipTie.dev — best trial for SEO teams

Verdict: 14 days is enough to get real optimization briefs out of it.

Real-browser monitoring of Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity with a 14-day free trial; Starter is $69/mo afterwards. Pros: actionable briefs during the trial. Cons: trial only; three engines.

Comparison table

Tool	Free offering	Ongoing?	Paid entry
Otterly.ai	Free starter tier	Yes	~$29/mo
Knowatoa	Free audit	No	$59/mo
HubSpot AEO Grader	Free grader	No	Not applicable
Perciva	Free snapshot plus 7-day trial	No	€49/mo
Rankscale	None	No	~$20/mo
Trakkr	14-day trial, all models	No	~£79/mo
ZipTie.dev	14-day trial	No	$69/mo
Gauge	7-day trial	No	$99/mo

The free method that needs no tool

If you have no budget at all, this takes about an hour a month and beats a stale dashboard.

Write down ten buyer questions: "best [category] tool," "[you] vs [top rival]," "how much does [you] cost," "does [you] integrate with [key system]," and so on.
Run each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, logged out or in a fresh session to reduce personalization.
Paste every answer into a dated document. This is the part people skip and the part that matters — without stored answers you cannot detect change.
Mark three things per answer: were you named, were you recommended, and was anything factually wrong.
Repeat monthly and diff against the previous run.

The limits are obvious: it is slow, it samples once rather than repeatedly, and personalization means your results and your buyer's may differ. But it produces the one thing free dashboards usually do not — the actual answer text, which is what you need to write a fix.

How to choose

Start with the free tier that keeps running, add a free technical audit to rule out crawl problems, and only pay once you know which questions are broken. If you find that AI is naming you but describing you wrongly, no free tool in this list will fix it — that is where paid claim-level monitoring starts to pay for itself.

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Perciva — AI Buyer Perception Monitor for B2B SaaS

Perciva is an AI Buyer Perception Monitor that tracks what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude say about your B2B SaaS product on buyer-intent prompts. It detects incorrect claims, competitor displacement, and citation loss before they cost you pipeline.

How It Works

Configure monitoring — Add your brand, competitors, and select prompt packs.
Monitor buyer prompts — Perciva runs prompts across major AI engines and captures full answers.
Detect changes & risks — See what changed in claims, recommendations, and citations.
Alerts & action hints — Get email alerts on critical changes with clear action hints.

Key Features

Answer Capture — Full AI answer snapshots from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
Answer Diffs — Side-by-side diff showing exactly what changed
Claim Extraction — Auto extract claims about pricing, features, positioning
Risk Flags — Alerts for incorrect claims, weakened positioning, displacement
Competitor Tracking — Track when competitors gain or lose visibility
Citation Monitoring — See which URLs AI cites
Email Alerts — Notifications on critical changes
Action Hints — Each alert includes a recommended fix

Pricing

Starter: €49/mo · Growth: €129/mo · Team: €299/mo — All plans include a 7-day free trial.

FAQ

What is AI buyer perception?: AI buyer perception is how AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude describe and position your product when potential buyers ask comparison, pricing, or evaluation questions.
How is Perciva different from AI visibility tools?: Most AI visibility tools give you a score or mention count. Perciva monitors the actual buyer-intent prompts that drive purchasing decisions and tells you exactly what AI is saying about your brand.
Which AI engines do you support?: We monitor ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.
How do I fix AI misinformation about my brand?: Perciva tells you exactly which claims are wrong and which pages to update. Common fixes include updating your pricing page, adding integration documentation, and publishing case studies.
Do I need any technical setup?: No. Perciva is fully self-serve. No code, no integrations, no IT involvement.
Who is this product for?: B2B SaaS companies with 10–200 employees. Ideal for Heads of Marketing, SEO Leads, Product Marketing, and Growth teams.
What is competitor displacement in AI answers?: Competitor displacement occurs when an AI engine starts recommending a competitor instead of your product on buyer-intent prompts.
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?: GEO is the practice of optimizing your web content so that AI engines cite, reference, and accurately represent your brand in their responses.
How does the free snapshot work?: Enter your brand, website, a main competitor, and your category. Within 24 hours, you receive a report showing how AI describes your brand on key buyer-intent prompts — including risky claims, competitor positioning, and 3 fast fixes.
Is there a free trial?: Yes. Every plan includes a 7-day free trial with full access to all features. No credit card required. You can also request a free AI Buyer Perception Snapshot with no trial needed.
How often is monitoring run?: All plans include weekly monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. On-demand checks are always available.
Can agencies use this for clients?: Absolutely. The Team/Agency plan supports up to 5 projects with white-label branded exports — ideal for agencies managing AI perception across multiple client brands.
How is this different from SEO tools?: SEO tools optimize for Google search rankings. Perciva monitors what AI chatbots say about you on buyer-intent prompts — you can rank #1 on Google and still be misrepresented in ChatGPT.

Who Is Perciva For?

Perciva is built for B2B SaaS companies with 10–200 employees who have clear competitors and a category where buyers research and compare using AI. Ideal users are Heads of Marketing, SEO Leads, Product Marketing Managers, and Growth teams.

Resources

Contact: hello@perciva.ai · perciva.ai