Which AI Visibility Tool Is Easiest to Start With? What the Free Trials Limit

Key takeaways

The short version of this page, in the order the sections below develop it. Each point is stated here in full so it can be read without the rest of the page, and the section that argues it gives the measurement and the source behind it.

• A trial is often not the plan you will pay for. Otterly's trial holds 50 search prompts and its Lite plan 15; Profound's trial leads to a custom Enterprise plan sold by demo.
• Profound's free trial runs a recommended prompt set that the user cannot customize, and its plan table lists history and exports for the trial as 'None'.
• Every stated trial length here is 7 days. At one run a day that is at most seven readings per prompt (our arithmetic): enough for a snapshot, not for a trend.

Which AI visibility tool is easiest to start with for a team new to GEO?

Which tool is easiest depends on how a team new to GEO wants to get in: with no signup, HubSpot's AI Search Grader; at the lowest published paid entry among the six tools below, Otterly Lite; with a free trial whose prompts are chosen for you, Profound. That is what the vendors' published terms supported on October 5, 2026. We name no best AI search optimization platform for beginners, because this is not a tested ranking: we have used none of these tools, and no public page can prove that a product is intuitive.

• No signup at all: HubSpot describes its AI Search Grader as "a free, one-time check" with "no account required".
• Lowest published paid entry of the six: Otterly's Lite plan is listed at $29 a month for 15 search prompts, after a 7-day trial that Otterly says needs no credit card.
• A free trial with the prompts chosen for you: Profound lists a free trial of 50 prompts run daily for 7 days, on a prompt set it recommends.

We looked at tools a team can start on their own: four standalone trackers (Otterly, Peec AI, Profound, Scrunch) and HubSpot's two products. The AI visibility products sold by SEO suites are a different decision, and Semrush's help page says its AI Visibility Toolkit "does not offer a free trial". For what trackers do in general, see our overview of AI visibility tracking tools.

This page is about the first week, not the bill. Four figures show the spread of published entry prices: Otterly Lite at $29 a month, HubSpot AEO at $50, Peec AI Starter at $95 (in dollars, as its page displayed where we read it) and Scrunch Core at $250. Profound publishes no price for brands. The full price table is in our article on AI visibility tool pricing.

What does each free trial give you?

Free trials differ: three of the six state a 7-day trial, two offer a trial without stating its length, and one is not a trial at all. Each row comes from the vendor's own pages. "Not stated" means the page is silent, not that the answer is no.

Rows are from the HubSpot grader and HubSpot AEO pages, Otterly's trial article, and the Peec AI, Profound and Scrunch pricing pages. Trial terms change often; confirm them at signup.

Which trial limits catch beginners out?

The limit that matters most is that a trial is often not the plan you will pay for: it can be bigger, lead to a different kind of plan, or run on prompts you did not choose. Every condition below is stated on the vendor's own page.

Prompts you cannot customize

Profound's trial runs its questions, not yours. Its pricing FAQ says:

So the trial shows how Profound reports on a set of industry questions, not on the questions your buyers ask. HubSpot's grader is fixed in the same way: HubSpot's AEO page says it "Runs pre-set queries on your behalf".

A trial that does not match the paid plan

Three mismatches are in the published terms.

• Otterly's trial is larger than its cheapest plan. The trial includes 50 search prompts; Lite includes 15. Load 50 during the trial, buy Lite, and the list no longer fits.
• Profound's trial leads to a sales conversation. Its page describes the trial as "For companies who want to trial Profound before getting a demo". The only other plan it shows for brands is Enterprise, priced "Custom".
• HubSpot AEO is the exception. It says the paid plan carries on with the "same 25 prompts, same three engines, no interruption to your data". The product is labelled beta.

Nothing to take away

Profound's plan table lists history, exports, API and support for the trial as "None". We read that as: do not count on leaving with a record. Copy down what matters while the trial runs.

HubSpot's grader has the same limit by design. HubSpot's own AEO page calls it "A good starting point, but a single moment in time."

Assistants the entry plan leaves out

No entry plan here covers every assistant. Otterly Lite tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot; Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are add-ons. Profound's trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Peec AI's Starter plan lets you choose 3 models. Scrunch Core supports ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with Claude and Gemini on its Enterprise list.

A second account you cannot merge

Otterly warns: "If you create a separate free trial account, you won't be able to be added to your team's existing account." Ask whether a colleague has already signed up before you start one.

What can a 7-day trial show, and what can it not?

A 7-day trial can show whether the tool works for you; it cannot show a trend. Every trial above with a stated length is 7 days. If a tool runs each prompt once a day, that is at most seven readings per prompt (our arithmetic, not a vendor figure).

What a week can show:

• Whether setup is as quick as the vendor says.
• Whether your company is named in the answers that week, and who is named instead.
• Whether your team can read the reports without help.

What a week cannot show:

• A trend. Assistants can answer the same question differently from one run to the next, and seven readings do not separate that variation from a real change.
• The effect of anything you change. We do not know how long a change to your content takes to reach an assistant's answers, and none of these vendor pages says.
• A full first day. Peec AI's quickstart says first insights arrive "within 24 hours".

What do the vendors' setup guides ask you to do?

The vendors' setup guides ask you for the same inputs: your brand, a list of prompts, a list of competitors, then a wait while the tool collects answers. Only Otterly and Peec AI publish a step list for this; what the others say about setup is in the table above.

Otterly

Otterly's onboarding guide offers a "5-minute quickstart" in five steps:

1. Sign up or log in.
2. Run prompt research from a few SEO keywords or your website URL.
3. Create a brand report from those prompts and add competitors.
4. Check your brand visibility against those competitors.
5. Invite a teammate.

Peec AI

Peec AI's quickstart has four steps: set up prompts, identify competitors, read the dashboard, read the sources. It sets two tasks, "Add your first 10 prompts" and "Add 3 to 4 competitors and your social channels", and states the wait:

What should you prepare before starting a trial?

Prepare the inputs every setup guide asks for, so the trial days go to reading results and not to writing prompts. This list is ours, built from what the two quickstarts request.

1. Write ten unbranded buying questions. No company name in them. Ten matches the first task in Peec AI's quickstart.
2. List three or four competitors. Include the spelling variants of each name, and of your own.
3. Decide which assistants matter. Check that the trial and the entry plan both cover them.
4. Ask the ten questions by hand once. A manual baseline tells you whether the tool's first numbers are plausible. The method is in how to check whether ChatGPT mentions your brand.
5. Set a decision date before day seven. Write down, in advance, what result would make you buy.

When is no tool the right way to start?

No tool is the right way to start when you have not yet asked the assistants by hand, or when nobody on the team will operate the tool after the trial. A tracker measures where you stand; it does not change the answer. If the hand check shows your company is absent, the next question is budget and scope, which we cover in is GEO worth it for a mid-size company.

For teams that do not want to operate a tool at all, a service is the other route. UPAI is one: we run a free check by hand across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, then do the work of getting the company into the sources those assistants cite. We do not sell a dashboard; if monitoring is all you need, a tool is the purchase to make.

Questions people ask next

These are the follow-ups we are asked most often once the answer above has landed. The same rule applies to each: where a figure appears, its source and year sit in the same sentence, and where we do not know something we say so rather than estimate it.

Which AI search optimization tool is the most intuitive?

We do not know, and we have not tested them. No vendor's public page can settle it either, because every vendor describes its own product as simple. What you can check before signing up is the trial: its length, whether it needs a card, how many prompts it holds and whether you can write them.

Do I need a credit card to try an AI visibility tool?

Not at Otterly or HubSpot AEO: both state that no credit card is required for the trial. HubSpot's AI Search Grader needs no account, only a short form to open the full report. The pricing pages of Profound, Scrunch and Peec AI do not say whether their trials ask for a card, so check at signup.

What happens when the free trial ends?

It depends on the vendor. HubSpot AEO says you continue at $50 a month with the same 25 prompts and no interruption to your data. Otterly's trial holds 50 search prompts and its Lite plan 15, so a full trial list does not fit Lite. Profound's only other plan for brands is a custom Enterprise plan reached through a demo.

Related

Other questions in this library that cover the ground next to this one. Each is answered the same way — the direct answer first, then the measurement behind it — and each carries its own sources, so you can check any of them on its own page without taking this one on trust.

• SEO Suite or Dedicated AI Visibility Tracker: Which One Should Track Your Brand?
• Which AI Visibility Platform Reports the Most Useful Metrics?
• AI Visibility Tool Pricing: What Profound, Peec AI and Otterly Charge, and Per What