Key takeaways
- Vendors count different things. Promptwatch sells "responses," Peec sells "AI answers," and Otterly sells prompts. Convert everything to cost per response before you compare.
- On published pricing, Promptwatch lands at roughly $0.0136 to $0.0158 per response across its three paid tiers, and every tier covers all models.
- Peec AI is $0.0157 to $0.0211 per answer, but it caps you at 3 models on Starter, Pro, and Advanced.
- Otterly is the cheapest way in at $29/mo, but its response count is an estimate and extra engines are paid add-ons.
- A response is not a citation. Perplexity and AI Overviews cite about twice as many sources per answer as ChatGPT, so cost per citation observed is a useful second metric.
Why sticker price tells you almost nothing
A $29 plan and a $579 plan are not comparable until you know what each one actually measures. I have watched teams pick the cheapest tool on the pricing page, then discover six weeks later that they can only afford to track a handful of prompts on a single engine.
The core problem is vocabulary. One vendor says responses, another says answers, a third only lists prompts. Those are three different units. A prompt is the question you want to monitor. A response is one run of that prompt on one engine. If you track 50 prompts on 4 engines every day for a month, that is 50 x 4 x 30 = 6,000 responses.
So the formula is:
responses per month = prompts x engines x runs per month
cost per response = monthly price / responses per month
Everything below uses that, with the arithmetic shown so you can check it against a current quote. Prices change, so confirm them on each vendor's pricing page before you buy.
What counts as a tracked response
A tracked response is one prompt, run once, on one AI engine. That is all. It is not the number of web searches the engine runs behind the scenes, and it is not the number of sources it cites.
This distinction matters because those underlying numbers move. Promptwatch Data on ChatGPT query fanouts shows ChatGPT averaging about 2.15 distinct web searches per response in early December and about 1.84 by early March, with fanouts returning in April at 1.0 per response and average query length dropping to roughly 53 characters. The billing unit stays the same while the signal inside it shifts.
One more thing to check: how the data is collected. Promptwatch collects from the real user interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and AI Overviews, because user-facing answers can differ from what an API returns. A cheap response that comes from an API may not reflect what your customers see.
The pricing math, tool by tool
Promptwatch
Promptwatch publishes response counts directly, which makes the math easy. Prices below are monthly, and the pricing page has an annual toggle (12 months for the price of 10).
| Plan | Price | Prompts | Responses | Cost per response |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | $95/mo | 50 | 6,000 | about $0.0158 |
| Professional | $245/mo | 150 | 18,000 | about $0.0136 |
| Business | $579/mo | 350 | 42,000 | about $0.0138 |
Each prompt gets 120 responses a month, roughly 4 a day. That works out to several models run daily. Every paid tier tracks all models, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and Google's AI surfaces, so you are not choosing which engines to give up.
The Professional tier is the value sweet spot on raw math. Business is slightly higher per response, but it is buying you something else: state and city tracking, Shopping Insights, Ads Radar, the automated Content Agent, and audit logs. If you do not need those, Professional is the better deal.
Peec AI
Peec publishes a "monthly AI answers" figure calculated as prompts x active models x frequency, which is the same idea as responses.
| Plan | Price | Prompts | Models | Monthly answers | Cost per answer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $95/mo | 50 | 3 | 4,500 | about $0.0211 |
| Pro | $245/mo | 150 | 3 | 13,500 | about $0.0181 |
| Advanced | $495/mo | 350 | 3 | 31,500 | about $0.0157 |
The prices match Promptwatch at the first two tiers, but the answer count is lower: 4,500 versus 6,000 at $95, and 13,500 versus 18,000 at $245. Peec also limits you to three chosen models on those plans and a small number of countries. Unlimited users, competitors, and languages are nice for agencies. Wider model access sits in the custom Enterprise column.
Note for anyone reading older roundups: some third-party posts quote Peec at around $199 for 100 prompts. The current pricing page shows a different structure, so treat those figures as stale.
Otterly.AI
Otterly does not publish a response count, only prompts. Here are the prompt prices, plus my estimate of responses assuming 4 engines tracked daily over 30 days.
| Plan | Price | Prompts | Price per prompt | Est. responses | Est. cost per response |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $29/mo | 15 | about $1.93 | 1,800 | about $0.016 |
| Standard | $189/mo | 100 | $1.89 | 12,000 | about $0.0158 |
| Premium | $489/mo | 400 | about $1.22 | 48,000 | about $0.0102 |
The base engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode, and Gemini are paid add-ons, and I could not find add-on prices. Every engine you add raises the denominator but also the bill, so the real figure depends on your engine mix. Extra prompts cost $99 per 100 on Standard and Premium. Lite has no API access.
The Premium estimate looks great, but it comes from my own assumption, not a vendor-stated number. Ask for the actual response volume in writing.
Side-by-side comparison
| Tool | Entry price | Best cost per response (published or estimated) | Models on mid tiers | Counting unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | $95/mo | about $0.0136 (Professional) | All models | Responses (stated) |
| Peec AI | $95/mo | about $0.0157 (Advanced) | 3 chosen | AI answers (stated) |
| Otterly.AI | $29/mo | about $0.0102 (Premium, estimated) | 4 base, add-ons extra | Prompts only |
On a like-for-like basis, the three are closer than the sticker prices suggest. The differences come from what you get inside the number: how many engines, how many countries, and what else the plan includes.
Cost per citation: the second metric
A response is not equally informative everywhere. Promptwatch Data on average sources per response shows ChatGPT citing about 5 sources per web-search answer, Google AI Overviews about 10 with a steady count, and Perplexity almost exactly 10 every day. Copilot swung from under 2 to nearly 17 within weeks, then settled low.
That means a Perplexity or AI Overviews response gives you roughly twice the citation data of a ChatGPT response. If you pay a flat price per response, your cost per citation observed is about half on those engines.
cost per citation observed = cost per response / average sources per response
At $0.0136 per response, that is roughly $0.0027 per citation on ChatGPT (5 sources) and $0.0014 on Perplexity (10 sources). Use this when deciding which engines deserve the most prompt budget. For understanding what ChatGPT cites, Promptwatch's data on unique domains per response is also worth a look, since almost half of ChatGPT responses cite 10 or more unique domains.
Quoted-only tools: how to price them yourself
Several well-known tools do not publish clean response counts, or I could not verify their current pricing. Figures below come from secondhand roundups and should be confirmed with the vendor.
| Tool | Reported entry price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Around $99/mo per domain (reported) | Strongest if you already live in Semrush. Costs grow with domains and users |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/mo per AI index or $699 bundled, plus a base plan (reported) | Third-party reviews put full monthly cost far above the headline |
| AthenaHQ | From about $295/mo (reported) | Credit-based, free tier with 300 credits |
| Goodie AI | $295/mo Core (reported) | Engine count rises by tier |
| Scrunch AI | From about $250/mo (reported) | Strong on brand safety |
For these, send the vendor the same three questions: how many prompts, how many engines, and how many runs per month at this price? If they cannot answer in those units, you cannot compute value, and that is itself information.
What the cheapest option hides
A few traps come up repeatedly when I look at these plans.
- Engine caps. Three models sounds fine until you realize your buyers use ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini. Your effective cost goes up if you have to buy a second plan.
- Add-on engines. Otterly-style add-ons raise the real price of every plan.
- Per-domain or per-seat pricing. Agencies and multi-brand teams get hit hard by this on SEO suites.
- Refresh frequency. Daily versus weekly runs change the response math by a factor of seven.
- Region. Country, state, and city tracking multiply the responses you need for the same prompts.
- Monitoring only. A cheap tracker tells you that you are invisible. It does not tell you why, or fix it.
That last one matters more than people admit. Monitoring cost is only half the budget. If the plan cannot show you crawler activity, AI-referred traffic, or content gaps, you end up paying for another tool or an agency to act on the numbers. Promptwatch's higher tiers bundle crawler logs, visitor analytics, content gap analysis, and the Content Agent, which is why cost per response is not the only line on the spreadsheet.
A worked example
Say you are a mid-size SaaS marketing team with 100 prompts you care about, tracked on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews daily.
100 prompts x 4 engines x 30 days = 12,000 responses/month
Here is what that looks like across three plans at published prices:
- Promptwatch: Professional gives you 18,000 responses at $245 for 150 prompts, so you have headroom, and all engines are covered. About $0.0136 each.
- Peec AI: 100 prompts across only 3 models needs roughly 9,000 answers, which fits Pro at $245. The fourth engine is not available on that tier.
- Otterly: Standard at $189 covers 100 prompts, but Gemini is an add-on, so the real number is higher than $189.
If you need the fourth engine, the cheapest plan stops being cheapest. If you only need three and want the lowest cost, Otterly or Peec may win. Do the math with your own numbers.
How to run your own pricing math
- List the prompts you would actually act on. Most teams overbuy here. Start with 50 to 100.
- Pick the engines your buyers use, not every engine on the list.
- Decide your refresh rate. Daily is standard for most tools.
- Compute responses: prompts x engines x runs per month.
- Divide the monthly price by that number. Include required add-ons.
- Divide again by average sources per response to get cost per citation for each engine.
- Subtract the value of anything bundled that you would otherwise pay for separately, like crawler logs or content tooling.
Then run a trial. Promptwatch and several others offer a 7-day trial on their entry plans, and Otterly has a 14-day trial with no card required. Spend the trial checking whether the responses match what you see when you ask the engine yourself.
Where to look for more options
The catalog of GEO vendors is long and changes monthly. The GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com is a good place to scan alternatives once you know your response budget.
Bottom line
On published numbers, Promptwatch gives the lowest verified cost per response with all models included, roughly $0.0136 on Professional. Peec costs more per answer and limits you to three models. Otterly is the lowest entry price and may be the lowest per-response price at Premium, but the number is my estimate and add-ons change it. Compute responses first, compare second, and ask every vendor for the unit they actually bill in.