How to check your AI visibility: 7 free and freemium methods.

Several free and freemium tools claim to check your AI visibility, from Semrush and Wix to manual Perplexity and ChatGPT queries. Below is what each one actually measures, what it leaves out, and whether the output is something you can act on. Some now include competitor comparisons and brand-perception analysis, so the old line that “free tools only detect AI Overviews” is out of date. What remains true: no free option gives you exhaustive, reproducible coverage across every platform, model, location and user context.

This post covers free, one-off checkers. If you’re looking for paid ongoing AI visibility tracking platforms, that’s a different category: see the best AI visibility tools instead.

01: What "AI visibility" means before you check it

AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, your brand appears in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity,Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. It’s not the same as SEO rankings, and it can’t be measured with the same tools. For a full definition, see what is AI visibility.

The challenge with free checkers: AI visibility spans multiple platforms, each with different retrieval mechanisms. Most free tools cover one. That’s where the gaps start.

02: How I evaluated these

Worth being precise about what this article is, because “I tested N tools” posts rarely say. These write-ups come from hands-on use of the free tiers plus each vendor’s current product documentation, not from a controlled study with a fixed sample of sites and prompts. Where a feature sits behind a paid plan or was not available to my account, I say so rather than describing it as though I had used it.

That matters because AI answers are variable by design. The same prompt can return different results by model, location, account history and time of day, so anything here should be read as a point-in-time observation rather than a benchmark. If you want a number you can defend, run the checks yourself and record the model, search mode, location and date each time.

03: 7 free and freemium AI visibility checkers

Which one fits depends on the platform you need to monitor and how much time you have.

Semrush AI Visibility

What it checks: Semrush now spans several AI visibility features. Free accounts get a high-level visibility baseline in Domain Overview and can track Google AI Overview appearances through Position Tracking. Semrush One and the paid AI Visibility Toolkit add monitoring across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, including mentions, citations, sentiment, prompt research and competitor comparison.

What I found: The free features are enough to establish a directional baseline; the paid toolkit is where the cross-platform view lives. Either way the output depends on Semrush’s prompt database or the custom prompts you choose to track, so treat the score as a sample, not as coverage of everything real users ask.

What it misses: The free tier does not give you the depth, history or custom prompt tracking of the paid toolkit. And like every third-party tracker, it samples AI responses; it cannot promise that every user sees the same answer you do.

Best for: Teams that want SEO and AI visibility in one platform: a usable free baseline, with deeper monitoring behind the paid plan. Semrush AI Visibility documentation

Ubersuggest AI Search Visibility

What it checks: Ubersuggest runs relevant prompts across AI platforms including ChatGPT and Gemini, aggregates the responses, and reports brand visibility, industry rank, top prompts and competitor visibility trends. Its traditional rank tracking can also flag Google AI Overview appearances separately.

What I found: Broader than a plain AI Overview detector. The real value is the pattern across repeated prompts, particularly the questions where a competitor shows up and you do not.

What it misses: The prompts are generated or selected samples, not a log of what real users actually typed. Access, limits, platform coverage and history vary by plan, and results carry the usual AI-response variability.

Best for: Small businesses and SEO teams that want keyword research and AI visibility in the same product. Ubersuggest AI Visibility

Wix AI Visibility Overview

What it checks: Wix generates a set of likely customer questions from your site description, URL and business name, then checks whether the site is mentioned or cited across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Depending on availability the dashboard can show the full AI response, the cited sources, where the mention sits, brand perception, competitor visibility, AI-referred traffic and AI-bot activity.

What I found: Far more than an AI-traffic dashboard. The response-level and competitor views make it one of the more complete native options available to an eligible site.

What it misses: Wix sites only. The generated questions are plausible prompts, not verified user-query data, and results can differ from running the same question directly on the platform. Wix also needs enough site traffic before it will show the report at all.

Best for: Wix owners who want multi-platform visibility, citation, perception and traffic data without adding another tool. Wix AI Visibility Overview

Manual ChatGPT Query Method

What it checks: Running your core queries directly in ChatGPT (once with Search explicitly selected and once without) to see whether your brand comes up, what it says, and whether the description is accurate.

What I found: This is the most direct way to inspect what ChatGPT returns in your own account and session, but it is an observational sample, not universal ground truth. Responses generated with visible web search and those generated without it often differ, so run both. Use a Temporary Chat and record the model, date, location and at least three repeats; ChatGPT may search the web on its own, and memory can shape the answer. The limit is scale: manual checks cover 10–20 queries, not hundreds.

What it misses: No tracking over time. No competitor comparison. Time-intensive at any meaningful scale. Results can vary by session: ChatGPT’s responses aren’t perfectly consistent.

Best for: Any business that wants a first-hand look at what ChatGPT says about them right now, in one account and one session. The fastest first check. See also: how to get mentioned by ChatGPT.

Manual Perplexity Query Method

What it checks: Running your core queries in Perplexity to check whether your site is cited, which pages are pulled, and what text is extracted and displayed alongside your citation.

What I found: Perplexity is the most transparent platform to audit manually. It shows its sources explicitly: you can see which exact pages are cited, what text was extracted, and how your brand is described in the synthesized answer. That level of visibility makes it easier to identify inaccuracies than any other platform.

What it misses: Same limitations as ChatGPT manual: no scale, no historical tracking, no competitor comparison. Perplexity Pro shows fuller source attribution on some queries; free accounts see limited source data.

Best for: Anyone who wants to understand not just whether they’re cited, but which specific pages are being pulled and what content is being extracted from them. See also: how to get cited by Perplexity.

Manual Google AI Overviews Method

What it checks: Running queries in Google (in an incognito window) to observe whether an AI Overview appears and whether your site is cited within it.

What I found: Reliable for individual query checks. Incognito reduces the influence of account and browser history, but it does not produce a universal “cold user” result; Google still varies answers by location, language, device and current search context. AI Overview activation also varies by query type: higher for informational queries, lower for commercial and navigational ones. Reading the text directly is what lets you catch accuracy problems.

What it misses: No systematic tracking. AIO inclusion changes frequently. What you see today may differ from what a buyer sees in a week. This method is a point-in-time snapshot, not a monitoring system.

Best for: Quick manual checks on high-priority queries. Best combined with Google Search Console for scale and historical data.

Why Amplitude is not an AI visibility checker

What it checks: Amplitude is a product analytics platform, not an AI visibility checker in the brand citation sense. If you’ve searched for “Amplitude AI visibility,” you’re likely looking for one of two things: Amplitude’s AI-powered analytics features (which help analyze user behavior and product data), or its attribution tools for tracking which traffic sources (including AI-referred traffic) convert in your product.

What I found: Amplitude doesn’t offer a standalone checker for brand citations in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. It’s a behavioral analytics platform. If you’re trying to track AI-referred traffic in your conversion funnel after users arrive, Amplitude can help, but that’s a different layer than checking whether you’re being cited in the first place.

What it misses: It’s not designed for this job. Amplitude measures what happens on your site after users arrive. AI visibility is about whether they find you through AI search before they arrive.

Best for: Product and conversion analytics downstream. For AI citation visibility, use the other tools in this list.

Google Search Console: Generative AI performance report

What it checks: Google is rolling out a dedicated Generative AI performance report to eligible Search Console properties. It reports impressions for links shown in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, date and device. That activity is also folded into the wider Web search totals.

What I found: This is the most authoritative first-party source for aggregate visibility inside Google’s generative surfaces, and it is genuinely underused. It is not, however, a query-level citation tracker.

What it misses: Impressions only. Opening this report on one of my own properties on 2026-08-11, the only metric offered was Total impressions: no clicks, no CTR, no average position, and no query breakdown. An earlier version of this article described a “Search type: AI Overviews” filter showing impressions and clicks; that is not what the report currently provides, and the claim has been corrected. It also will not show you the answer itself or why a page appeared, and availability is still limited while the rollout continues.

Best for: Aggregate, first-party impression trends across AI Overviews and AI Mode. Set it up first, but pair it with manual checks, because it cannot audit an individual prompt. Google’s documentation on the report

04: Track it yourself: a simple log

Every method above answers one question at a time. The useful signal is what happens when you repeat the same prompts on a schedule and log the results yourself: that’s what turns a one-off check into an actual visibility picture. A simple spreadsheet with these columns is enough to start:

Run the same 10–15 prompts across the platforms that matter to your business, on a fixed schedule (weekly is enough for most businesses), and three numbers fall out of the log without any tool:

Prompt coverage: the share of your prompts where you show up at all, mentioned or not. Share of voice: of the prompts where any brand gets named, how often it’s you versus a competitor. Sentiment: not a score, just a Y/N read on whether the description is accurate and favorable, since that’s the one thing no automated tool can verify for you.

This is exactly the raw material a professional audit formalizes and scales. See a full sample report to see what the same log looks like run at 30 prompts across six engines with the analysis done for you.

05: What free checkers miss

Free and freemium checkers give you a signal, not a complete picture. The gaps are narrower than they were a year ago, but they are still gaps.

Four limits show up across the free tiers:

Platform coverage. Free tiers generally give you less platform coverage, prompt volume or history than the paid plans above them, though Wix and some freemium products now reach several AI platforms, so this is no longer the flat “one or two platforms” limit it once was.

Accuracy. Some tools now expose the full response, the citations, even brand perception. What no automated score can do is decide whether every statement made about your brand is factually correct. That still needs a human reading the answers.

Competitor context. Wix, Ubersuggest and the paid Semrush products do surface competitors. The limit is depth and customisation (which competitors, on which prompts, over what period), not the complete absence it used to be.

Actionable fixes. Several products offer recommendations or flag prompt gaps. None can reliably prove why an AI system included or excluded a brand, because the systems themselves do not publish that.

If you need cross-platform coverage (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO, and Gemini) with accuracy checking, competitor gap analysis, and a prioritized fix plan, that’s what a professional audit delivers.

06: When a professional AI visibility audit is worth it

A professional audit makes sense when:

• You’re losing business to competitors who appear in AI answers and you don’t
• You’re being cited, but AI platforms are describing your business inaccurately
• You’ve made technical or content changes and want to measure their actual effect
• You’re entering a new market and need to establish AI presence strategically

Free checkers are a starting point. An audit is a decision tool.

07: Frequently asked questions

For the full AI visibility strategy framework, see the hub. For paid ongoing tracking software, see the best AI visibility tools.

Hami Tahm is an AI visibility consultant based in Toronto.

Disclosure: This article is educational and also describes a service I sell. Tool features, pricing and platform availability change frequently; every product description above was last verified on 2026-08-11.