Jack F, Co-founder
Jack F, Co-founderPart of Answyn Compare.
Now readingHours not budget
If you are a small brand team starting out, spend nothing for the first month. Use a free checker to confirm you have actually got a problem, then pick a paid tool based on whether it tells you what to write next, not on how many AI engines it claims to cover. Hours are the binding constraint, not the sticker price.
This is our page and we sell one of these tools, so we have been explicit below about where we would send you instead of us. Take the ranking as an argument rather than a verdict.
Most advice for small teams starts with price. We think that is the wrong starting point, and it is the reason a lot of small teams buy a platform and stop opening it after six weeks.
If you are a UK marketing team with procurement constraints, read AEO software for UK marketing teams as well. This piece is for teams of one or two who need the next page named.
The constraint is not budget, it is hours
If you are a team of one or two, you do not have a spare afternoon a week to interpret a dashboard. What you need is something that gets you from "we are not showing up" to "here is the page to write" without a research project in between. A cheaper tool that leaves you staring at a chart costs you more than a slightly dearer one that hands you a brief.
So the question is not really "which is cheapest". It is "which one closes the loop".
Start free, genuinely
Before you pay anyone, including us, do this.
Write down ten questions a customer would actually type. Not keywords. Questions, in the words they would use, that do not include your brand name. Something like "who does same-day plumbing in Bristol" rather than "plumber Bristol".
Then run them yourself across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and note whether you appear. It takes about an hour. Authoritas has a free tier covering 100 questions, and HubSpot's AI Search Grader will give you a quick read too.
If you appear in most of them, you do not need a platform yet. Come back in six months. If you appear in almost none, you have confirmed the problem is real, and now the spend makes sense.
We would rather tell you that than sell you a subscription you will cancel in March.
The paid shortlist for small teams
Prices checked against vendor pages on 22 August 2026, converted at £1 = $1.36 and £1 = €1.17.
| Platform | Entry price | What you get at that price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.ai | ~£21/month | 4 engines included, more as paid add-ons | The cheapest genuine entry point in the category |
| Profound | ~£73/month | 3 surfaces at Growth, starter tier is ChatGPT only | Teams who will grow into an enterprise tool |
| Peec AI | ~£73/month | 3 selectable models from a roster of 11 | Small agencies juggling a few clients |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | ~£73/month | 4 surfaces inside the toolkit | Anyone already paying for Semrush |
| Answyn Pro | £149/month | 50 tracked prompts, ChatGPT and Gemini daily, 2 brands, 10 competitors, briefs and journey mapping included | Small teams who need the "what next" answered for them |
If your budget genuinely tops out at £25 a month, Otterly is the sensible choice and we would say so on a call. It is a real tool at a real price and it will tell you whether you are being mentioned.
What to ignore while you are small
Engine count. Vendors compete on this and it is mostly noise at your stage. The engines overlap heavily on what they retrieve. Covering ChatGPT and the Google surfaces properly beats covering nine surfaces badly, and a monthly refresh across nine is worth less than a daily read on four.
Composite scores you cannot take apart. Some platforms give you a single number out of 100 without showing the working. That is fine for a screenshot and useless for a decision. You want to be able to click the number and see the answers underneath it.
Enterprise features. SSO, SOC 2, API access, multi-market. All genuinely important at 200 people and irrelevant at four. Do not pay for them yet.
Anything that needs a dedicated analyst. If the onboarding call involves the phrase "once you have configured your taxonomy", think hard about who is doing that.
What actually matters when you are small
Three things.
- Does it tell you what to write? The gap between knowing you are invisible and knowing what to publish is where most small teams stall. Some platforms stop at the dashboard. Some hand you a brief. That difference is worth more to you than two extra engines.
- Can you see the raw answers? When ChatGPT recommends a competitor instead of you, you want to read the actual answer and see which sources it was built from. That is how you work out what to do, and it is also how you check the tool is not making things up.
- Will you still be opening it in three months? Be honest with yourself about this one. The best platform for a small team is the one that survives contact with a busy quarter.
Where we fit
Answyn Pro is £149 a month for 50 tracked questions, ChatGPT and Gemini collected daily, 2 brands and 10 competitors. Content briefs and customer journey mapping are included rather than being enterprise add-ons, which is the bit we would point at for a small team, because that is the loop-closing part.
We are more expensive than Otterly and Peec at entry. If price is your binding constraint, they are better answers and we would rather you got a working tool than nothing. Where we would argue we earn the difference is that you are not paying for a dashboard, you are paying to skip the step where you work out what to do with it.
We are also not SOC 2 certified and our self-serve product is UK-only, so if either of those is a blocker, we are out. Current details are on the pricing page.
A sensible first ninety days
- Month one, run the free check and confirm the problem.
- Month two, put a paid tool on 30 to 50 questions and leave it alone to gather a baseline.
- Month three, pick the single topic where the gap is widest and start there.
Do not judge anything before four weeks. New content takes days to get crawled and a couple of weeks to become citable in AI answers, so checking after a fortnight will tell you it failed when it simply has not started yet.
Questions people ask
- Which AEO platform should a small brand team start with?
- Start with a free check rather than a subscription. Once you have confirmed you are missing from answers, Otterly.ai at around £21 a month is the cheapest genuine entry point, and Answyn Pro at £149 makes sense if you would rather be handed content briefs than interpret a dashboard yourself. Choose on whether the tool tells you what to do next, because that is the step small teams get stuck on.
- Do small teams actually need AEO software?
- Only once you have confirmed there is a gap. Run ten unbranded customer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews by hand first. If you are showing up in most of them, spend the money elsewhere for now.
- How much does AEO software cost for a small team?
- Entry tiers start around £21 a month and run to roughly £149 for tools that include content briefs and journey mapping. Watch for paid engine add-ons and per-domain fees, which are the usual reason the invoice does not match the pricing page.
- How many AI engines does a small team need to track?
- Fewer than vendors would like you to think. The engines overlap substantially in what they retrieve, so covering ChatGPT and the Google surfaces well, collected daily, is more useful than a wide roster refreshed monthly.
- How many questions should a small team track?
- Thirty to fifty unbranded questions is plenty to start. Enough to spot patterns across topics, few enough that you can actually read the answers when something interesting happens.
- How long before we see results?
- Pages get crawled within days and become citable in AI answers within a couple of weeks. Being consistently preferred over a competitor takes months. Plan in quarters, and give any single piece at least four weeks before you judge it.
We build Answyn, so this is an argued position rather than a neutral audit, and we have named the cases where a competitor is the better buy. Prices verified against vendor pages on 22 August 2026 and re-checked quarterly.