Jack F, Co-founder
Jack F, Co-founderPart of Answyn Compare.
Now readingUK fit
If you are a UK marketing team choosing answer engine optimisation software, the shortlist worth your time is Answyn, Profound, Peec AI, Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit and Ahrefs Brand Radar. Which one fits depends on whether you need UK-default measurement, enterprise scale, or something that plugs into a stack you already pay for.
Fair warning before we go any further: this is our page, we make one of these tools, and we have put ourselves at the top of it. So we have published the criteria we used further down. If you disagree with the weightings, re-rank it. That is the whole point of showing them.
Most AEO platforms were built for a US market and had other countries added afterwards. That sounds like a detail until it starts affecting your numbers.
If you are a team of one or two choosing your first tool, start with AEO platform for small brand teams. This piece is for UK marketing teams ranking a shortlist.
What UK fit actually means
Four things are worth checking.
Does it default to UK answers? AI assistants give different answers to the same question depending on where they think you are. If the platform tracks US results by default and you are selling in Manchester, you are measuring somebody else's market. Ask what the default market is, not whether the tool "supports" the UK.
Does it cover Google properly? Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode carry a lot of weight in the UK, more than they do in some other markets. A tool that is strong on ChatGPT and thin on the Google surfaces will show you a partial picture here.
Where does your data live, and who is the contract with? If you need a UK or EU entity on the paperwork, a DPA that your legal team will actually sign, and no surprise data residency conversation six months in, check before you buy. Several of the well-known options are US-hosted.
Are you billed in pounds? Minor, but real. Dollar pricing means your monthly cost moves with the exchange rate and your finance team asks about it every quarter.
The shortlist
Prices below were checked against vendor pages on 22 August 2026, converted at £1 = $1.36 and £1 = €1.17. Vendors change pricing often, so treat these as a starting point rather than a quote.
| Platform | Entry price | AI surfaces | Strongest for a UK team | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answyn | £149/month | Gemini and ChatGPT daily on Pro; four surfaces on Business; Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude on Custom | UK entity, UK default market, GBP billing, full Google coverage on Business and Custom | Pro caps you at 2 brands, no SOC 2, self-serve is UK-only |
| Profound | ~£73/month | 3 at Growth, up to 9 at Enterprise | The deepest option if you have got enterprise budget | US data hosting, the starter tier is ChatGPT only, multi-region needs Enterprise |
| Peec AI | ~£73/month | 3 selectable from 11 | European measurement, popular with agencies | Three-model limit on self-serve, no content briefs, no UK entity |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | ~£73/month | 4 in the toolkit | Teams already paying for Semrush | Built on clickstream data rather than direct prompt queries, and it is $99 per extra domain |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | ~£241/month all in | 7, though 4 refresh monthly | Prompt discovery backed by real search data | Monthly refresh on most surfaces, no sentiment analysis, no crawler analytics |
| Authoritas | Not published, free tier covers 100 questions | 7+ | The other UK-headquartered option | Pricing is completely opaque |
Our full ten-platform comparison, including Searchable, Similarweb and Conductor, is in the main guide.
How we scored these
Seven weighted criteria. Feature completeness 25%, value for money 20%, engine coverage and cadence 15%, measurement honesty 15%, UK fit 10%, enterprise readiness 10%, evidence of scale 5%.
Three things we deliberately left out: how much a vendor spends on marketing, how many model APIs they claim to hit, and any accuracy assertion nobody can check.
The one we would argue is most overlooked is measurement honesty. That means a published methodology, and the ability to click a headline number and trace it back to the individual answers underneath it. A visibility score you cannot take apart is a score you cannot defend in a board meeting.
Where each one wins
Choose Profound if you are enterprise. Genuinely. It is the deepest platform in the category, it has got the scale behind it, and if you have got the budget and a US-hosting arrangement is fine with your legal team, it is a strong pick. We score below Profound on evidence of scale and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Choose Peec AI if you are an agency running lots of clients across Europe. The project structure suits multi-client work and the model roster is broad.
Choose Semrush if you are already in Semrush. The marginal cost is low and the data sits next to everything else you look at. Just know that clickstream measurement answers a slightly different question than direct prompt querying does.
Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if prompt discovery is your bottleneck. It is backed by real search data, which is a genuine advantage when you are working out what to track in the first place.
Choose Answyn if you want UK-default measurement that closes the loop. UK entity, UK market as standard, billing in pounds, and ChatGPT plus Gemini collected daily on Pro, with the four main Google and OpenAI surfaces on Business. Where we think we are meaningfully different is what happens after the measurement: customer journey mapping that shows which stage you are losing visibility at, prioritised actions, and content briefs that come out of the gaps rather than out of a keyword tool.
What we are not
We are not SOC 2 certified. Our self-serve product is UK-only. The Pro tier tracks 2 brands, which is fine for an in-house team and not enough for an agency. And we are smaller than Profound and Peec by any measure you would care to use.
If SOC 2 is a hard requirement in your procurement process, we will fail it today. Better you know now than three calls in. Current details are on the pricing page.
How to test any of them properly
Do not judge on the demo. Ask each vendor for the same three things.
- Show me the raw answers. Pick one tracked question and ask to see the actual text that came back from each engine, on a specific date. If a platform cannot show you that, its headline numbers are not auditable.
- Show me the market setting. Ask them to prove the answers were collected as a UK user, not a US one.
- Ask what happens next. Once the tool has told you you are invisible on a question, what does it hand your writer? A dashboard is a diagnosis. You still need the prescription.
Run the same three questions past all of them and the shortlist usually sorts itself out.
Questions people ask
- What is AEO software?
- AEO software tracks whether AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot mention your brand when people ask questions in your category. The better platforms also record which sources those answers cite, so you can see whose content the answer was built from.
- What is the best AEO platform for a UK marketing team?
- It depends on what constrains you. Profound is the deepest if you have enterprise budget and US data hosting is acceptable. Semrush makes sense if you are already paying for it. We would argue Answyn is the best fit if you want UK-default measurement, GBP billing and a clear route from a visibility gap to the page that closes it, which is why we have ranked ourselves first on our own criteria.
- Does it matter if an AEO tool is US-based?
- It matters for two reasons. Answers vary by the market the query is run from, so a US-default tool can show you results your UK customers never see. And US data hosting can be a procurement problem depending on your legal team's position, so it is worth raising early rather than late.
- How much should a UK team expect to pay for AEO software?
- Entry tiers across the category run from roughly £20 to £150 a month, and realistic working setups tend to land between £250 and £400 once you account for the prompt volumes and add-ons a real programme needs. Watch for per-domain fees and paid engine add-ons, because they are where the quoted price and the actual invoice diverge.
- Do I need a separate tool for AI crawler tracking?
- Not necessarily, but check, because it is frequently sold as a tiered feature or an add-on rather than being included. Crawler tracking tells you which AI bots are fetching your pages, which is a different question from whether the answers mention you, and you generally want both.
- How often should AEO data be collected?
- Daily collection is the standard worth holding out for on the surfaces that matter most to you. AI answers move around a lot, so monthly refreshes can miss changes entirely and make it hard to tell a real shift from normal variation.
We build Answyn, so treat our ranking as an argued position rather than a neutral audit. Criteria and weightings are published above so you can apply your own. Prices verified against vendor pages on 22 August 2026 and re-checked quarterly.