Guide, with original data
Free AI visibility checkers, and what each one shows.
· Measured 1 to 25 September 2026
Free is enough to find out where you stand once. Google and Bing now report how your own pages appear in their AI answers, and eight vendors run a free one-off check of whether the assistants recommend you.
What free rarely gives you is the same questions again next week, and that matters more than it sounds. In our own data, asked the same question at the next run, the engines named only 54% of the same tools again.
Key takeaways
- Set up the two free reports first: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. They see your own pages in their AI answers, which no outside checker can.
- Eight free one-off checkers ask the assistants for you, each with its own limits: a few a day, no account, or some engines only.
- One check is a sample of one. Only 5% of repeated answers named exactly the same tools; 54% of the tools came back.
The two free reports every site should set up
These come from the search engines themselves, so they see something no third party can: your own pages' appearances in their AI answers.
Google Search Console: Generative AI performance report
How often links to your site were shown in Google's generative AI features, as impressions, with filters for text and multimodal searches.
Covers AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is part of Search Console, which Google describes as a free service, and Google says access is still rolling out.
Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance report
Total citations of your pages in AI answers, the grounding queries the AI used to find them, and citation counts per URL.
Covers Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It is part of Bing Webmaster Tools, which Bing describes as free, and the report is a public preview.
What neither shows is who was named instead of you, or on which questions you were missing. That is what the checkers below ask the assistants directly.
One-off checkers, and what each lets you do free
Each asks the assistants about your brand once and shows the result. The terms are each provider's own, checked on their sites on 25 September 2026.
| Checker | What it checks | Engines | What is free |
|---|---|---|---|
| AhrefsAI Visibility Checker | How a brand shows up in AI search results, as a preview of the top results in each section. | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode | No sign-up, no card, and no limit on how many brands you check. |
| SemrushAI Visibility Checker | A brand's visibility in AI search results. | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews | Three checks a day without registering. |
| SE RankingAI Visibility Tracker checks | Brand mentions and links in AI answers, and competitor visibility. | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews | Five free checks a day with no account. Ongoing tracking is a free trial, not a free plan. |
| HubSpotAI Search Grader | Scores a brand on sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice and market position, from live queries. | ChatGPT (GPT-5.4 mini), Perplexity, Gemini | A free one-time check with no account. |
| Search AtlasAI Visibility Checker | Whether answer engines include your brand for category questions, and who they name instead. | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI | No cost and no card, with results in under a minute. |
| FraseAI Visibility Checker | Whether the engines link back to your domain in their answers, with share of voice and sentiment. | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini | The ChatGPT result is free with no sign-up; an email unlocks Perplexity and Gemini, also free. |
| BacklinkoAI Brand Visibility Checker | Whether the engines recommend your brand, from live queries about your category, with Semrush data behind the suggestions. | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini | Listed as a free tool. |
| getaisnapshot.comAI visibility scan | Brand mention rate, competitor positioning and sentiment on live buyer-intent questions. | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok | A free scan covers two of the five engines and one question, three a day, with no email or sign-up. |
Utilities that test one technical thing
Not visibility checks, but worth a minute: whether the AI crawlers can read your pages at all is the question under every other one.
- Otterly.AI: GEO tools. A GEO readiness score for a URL, whether AI crawlers can read your site, whether your brand is recognized as an entity, and a query fan-out simulator. Each tool is labelled free.
- LLMrefs: AI SEO tools. Whether AI crawlers can read a page without JavaScript, an llms.txt generator, and a fan-out query generator. The crawlability checker and the llms.txt generator are labelled free.
- Greater Than Services: AI crawler checker. Reads a site's robots.txt and reports which of 16 AI crawlers are allowed, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. Free, with no sign-up.
Why one check is not enough
We ask the same 20 questions on every run. Comparing each answer with the same question on the same engine at the previous run, across 250 pairs:
| Engine | Tools named again | Identical list |
|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | 67% | 10% |
| Google AI Overviews | 53% | 11% |
| ChatGPT | 53% | 2% |
| Claude | 51% | 4% |
| Gemini | 45% | 0% |
Tools named again: of the tools an answer named, the share named again at the next run. Identical list: how often the whole list came back unchanged. Perplexity was the steadiest and Gemini the least. On any engine, a free check run once tells you who was named that day.
Free ways into the paid tools
Some trackers let you start without paying or without a card. In their own words:
- Semrush: A free AI visibility checker you can run three times a day without an account, and a seven-day trial of Semrush.
- Profound: A free Trial plan: 50 prompts a day for seven days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
- Ahrefs: A free AI visibility checker with no sign-up and no card.
- AthenaHQ: A free Essential plan that includes a credit allowance.
- SE Ranking: Five free checks a day on its tracker page with no account, and a free trial with no card.
- Writesonic: A seven-day free trial with no card.
- Surfer: A free AI visibility audit by email, with no account or card.
- LLMrefs: A seven-day free trial with no card.
- Ayzeo: A 14-day free Pro trial with a card, and a free audit with no card.
- Ranketta: A seven-day free trial on every plan, and a free audit report with no card.
- Frase: A seven-day free trial with no card, plus free checker tools.
- Siftly: A free audit with no sign-up.
- Dageno: A free check with no login.
- Omnia: A 14-day free trial with no card.
How to get the most from a free check
- Ask what a buyer asks, not your name. "Best [what you sell] for [who you sell to]" decides a sale; "what is [your brand]" only tests whether the engine has heard of you.
- Write down who was named, and the sources. The names tell you who you lost to; the sources tell you which pages to be on.
- Check each engine. They disagree, so one engine's answer says little about the others.
- Ask again next week, the same way. The change between readings is the only part you can act on.
Where we fit
Our free contribution is the AI crawler checker, which needs no sign-up, and a preview workspace with ten weeks of history that needs nothing from you. Greater Than Services itself is a tracker, not a free checker: the three-day trial needs a card, and the paid plans ask your questions every week and keep every answer.
How we measured this
These are buyer questions we track for our own product, Greater Than Services, in our own workspace. Each run puts every question to five engines, asking as a buyer in the United States. It ran four times, on 1, 2, 10 and 25 September 2026. 20 questions drew 391 answers.
- ChatGPT: OpenAI's GPT-4o with web search, through the API
- Claude: Claude Haiku 4.5 with web search, through the API
- Gemini: Gemini 2.5 Flash grounded in Google Search, through the API
- Perplexity: Sonar, which always searches the web
- Google AI Overviews: read from Google's own results page
Named means the tool appears in the answer's own words. The engines write their sources into the text as links, and a link to a vendor's blog is a source, not a recommendation, so links are removed before names are matched. Own site read means the tool's website was among the sources the engine cited for that answer. A tool named in the question itself is not counted for that question, because every answer repeats it.
Across all 20 questions, Google showed an AI Overview for 71 of the 80 searches, so the other 9 are not counted as answers. Answers move from week to week: asked the same question on the same engine at the next run, the engines named 54% of the same tools again.
The full method, the questions we left out, and the data as a CSV are on the main ranking.
Questions people ask
Is there a free AI visibility checker?
Several. Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking, HubSpot, Search Atlas, Frase, Backlinko and getaisnapshot.com each run a free check, with limits their sites state: some need no account, some allow a few checks a day, some cover only some engines for free.
Is Google Search Console's AI report free?
Yes. The generative AI performance report sits inside Search Console, which Google describes as a free service. It shows impressions of your pages in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says it is still rolling out to every property.
How accurate is a free AI visibility check?
As accurate as one reading can be. Across our data, when the same question went to the same engine at the next run, the engines named 54% of the same tools again, and only 5% of the lists came back identical. A check tells you about that moment.
What is the difference between a free checker and a tracker?
A checker asks once and shows you the answer. A tracker asks the same questions on a schedule, keeps every answer, and shows what changed, which is what you need once you start changing your site to be named.