Home/Prompt tracking cost
How Much Should a Tracked Prompt Cost?
AI visibility tools track how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others answer questions about your brand, and charge per tracked prompt. For daily tracking they charge $0.0840 to $0.6650 per prompt per engine per month. Doing it yourself through the official APIs costs an estimated $0.1725 to $0.9300. Prices verified October 2026.
Do-It-Yourself Cost Calculator
| Engine | Monthly |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | $16.57 |
| Gemini | $5.47 |
| Perplexity | $8.63 |
| Grok | $24.38 |
| Claude | $46.50 |
API fees only — no servers, storage or engineering time. Each answer = one question with live web search on the cheapest model that supports it. Engines may search more than once per question, which costs more.
AI Visibility Tools: Price Per Prompt Compared
Entry prices hide a big spread. Below, every self-serve plan is converted to the same units: price per tracked prompt (per engine, per month) and price per 1,000 AI answers. Sorted by price per answer. For reference, the cheapest official API costs $5.75 per 1,000 answers (Perplexity).
| Tool & plan | Per prompt | Per 1K answers |
|---|---|---|
| SE Visible · Core · $189/moChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity, AI OverviewsVisit SE Visible ↗ | $0.0840 | $2.80 |
| SE Visible · Basic · $99/moChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity, AI OverviewsVisit SE Visible ↗ | $0.0990 | $3.30 |
| Gauge · Growth · $599/moChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, CopilotClaude and Grok with your own API key, billed by the provider.Visit Gauge ↗ | $0.1664 | $5.55 |
| Promptmonitor · Pro · $129/moChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI OverviewsCapped at 14,000 responses a month, so not every prompt runs on every engine daily.Visit Promptmonitor ↗ | $0.1075 | $9.21 |
| AIclicks · Pro · $189/mo4 of 11 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Claude, Copilot, …)Visit AIclicks ↗ | $0.3150 | $10.16 |
| LLM Pulse · Starter (daily) · $95/moChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, GeminiBilled in EUR (€79); USD price from the vendor's currency selector.Visit LLM Pulse ↗ | $0.3800 | $12.67 |
| Otterly.ai · Standard · $189/moChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, CopilotVisit Otterly.ai ↗ | $0.4725 | $15.75 |
| Otterly.ai · Lite · $29/moChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, CopilotAI Mode and Gemini +$9/mo each, Claude +$29/mo.Visit Otterly.ai ↗ | $0.4833 | $16.11 |
| Peec AI · Pro · $245/mo3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, NaverVisit Peec AI ↗ | $0.5444 | $18.15 |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar · Custom prompts Basic · $50/mo1 platform per check (AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot)Check-based: ~83 prompts daily on one platform. Extra checks $0.02 each.Visit Ahrefs Brand Radar ↗ | — | $20.00 |
| Rankscale · Pro · $99/moChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot, AI Mode, AI Overviews, …Credit-based: up to 4,800 answers on the cheaper engines; Claude and DeepSeek use more credits.Visit Rankscale ↗ | — | $20.63 |
| Peec AI · Starter · $95/mo3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, NaverExtra engine $30/mo.Visit Peec AI ↗ | $0.6333 | $21.11 |
| Goodie · Core · $399/moChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, AI Mode, CopilotVisit Goodie ↗ | $0.6650 | $22.17 |
| Scrunch · Core · $250/moChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, CopilotCadence not stated; 5,000 responses a month for 125 prompts × 4 engines.Visit Scrunch ↗ | $0.5000 | $50.00 |
| AEOTrack · Pro · $99/moChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, AI ModeVisit AEOTrack ↗ | $0.2200 | $50.77 |
| LLM Pulse · Starter (weekly) · $59/moChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, GeminiBilled in EUR (€49); USD price from the vendor's currency selector.Visit LLM Pulse ↗ | $0.2360 | $54.48 |
| AEOTrack · Starter · $39/moChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, GrokVisit AEOTrack ↗ | $0.3120 | $71.96 |
| AthenaHQ · Starter · $295/moChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, MistralCredit-based: 3,600 AI responses a month.Visit AthenaHQ ↗ | — | $81.94 |
- Monthly billing. Weekly plans run about 4.3 times a month, so their per-prompt price buys fewer answers.
- Profound sells self-serve plans to agencies only ($99/mo plus $399/mo per client workspace); brand plans are contact-sales.
- Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit ($99/mo for 25 prompts) doesn't say whether a prompt on several engines uses several slots.
- Evertune's $800/mo Pro plan counts each prompt 100 times per model, so its prompt count isn't comparable.
- Tool names are trademarks of their owners. PromptCost is independent and earns nothing from these vendors.
API Cost of One Search-Grounded Answer
The web_search tool costs $2.50 per 1,000 calls. Perplexity ended Sonar Chat Completions on Sep 27, 2026 in favour of the Agent API.
Official pricingOpenAI's web search tool costs $10 per 1,000 calls; retrieved pages are billed as input tokens.
Official pricingxAI's web_search tool costs $5 per 1,000 calls; retrieved pages count as input tokens and the model may search more than once.
Official pricing5,000 grounded searches a month are free on the paid tier (shared by Gemini 3.x models), then $14 per 1,000. Gemini 3 bills each search query, and one prompt can trigger several.
Official pricingAnthropic's web search tool costs $10 per 1,000 searches; results are billed as input tokens.
Official pricingGoogle offers no API that returns AI Overview or AI Mode answers; Gemini with Search grounding is a different system.
No public pay-per-call API returns Copilot's answers. Grounding with Bing ($14 per 1,000) only works inside Azure AI Foundry.
Per answer at heavy (8,000 in / 500 out) tokens, search fee included.
Prompt Tracking Cost — FAQ
For daily tracking, self-serve AI visibility tools charge between $0.0840 and $0.6650 per prompt per engine per month (October 2026 prices). Doing it yourself through the official APIs with web search costs about $0.1725 (Perplexity) to $0.9300 (Claude) per prompt per engine per month, before any engineering time.
Through the official APIs, tracking 300 prompts every day on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Claude sends about 45,000 answers a month and costs roughly $665 a month in API fees (estimate at 8,000 input tokens per answer). Self-serve tool plans covering at least 300 daily prompts cost $189 to $599 a month, and several also track Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Copilot, which have no public API.
3 of the 18 plans compared charge less per AI answer than the cheapest official search API (Perplexity at about $0.0057 per answer). Tools don't publish how they collect answers; capturing the consumer apps or search results pages, or reusing one answer across customers, would cost less than paying per API call, but that is an inference, not something the vendors state.
Not with an official one. Google offers no API that returns AI Overview or AI Mode answers; Gemini with Search grounding is a different system. No public pay-per-call API returns Copilot's answers. Grounding with Bing ($14 per 1,000) only works inside Azure AI Foundry.
Weekly tracking runs each prompt about 4.3 times a month instead of 30, so plans are cheaper but deliver far fewer answers. Weekly self-serve plans compared here, cheapest per answer first: AEOTrack Pro: $99/mo, 75 prompts × 6 engines, $50.77 per 1,000 answers; LLM Pulse Starter (weekly): $59/mo, 50 prompts × 5 engines, $54.48 per 1,000 answers; AEOTrack Starter: $39/mo, 25 prompts × 5 engines, $71.96 per 1,000 answers. Weekly is usually enough to spot trends; daily catches day-to-day swings in AI answers.
One question the tool asks AI engines on your behalf, such as "best CRM for small business". Plans differ in how many engines each prompt runs on and how often, so compare price per prompt per engine per month — or price per answer — rather than the plan price.