Otterly vs Ahrefs

Otterly monitors AI search on four base engines with audits and recommendations: mentions, sentiment, citations, a crawlability checker and prompt research. Ahrefs is the research index: backlinks, keywords and Brand Radar's 475M-prompt AI visibility database across seven AI platforms, powered by the web's second-most active crawler. They compete only where the categories overlap, and the chapters below walk every dimension a buyer would price: which AI engines each can see, how the tracking actually meters, what each produces on the content side, what surrounds the core product, and the full published tier lists.

Otterly is an AI search monitoring tool with real credentials: a Gartner Cool Vendor for AI in Marketing in 2025, a 4.8 rating badge, and 30,000+ marketing professionals by its own count, with Roche, Opera and BenQ among the logos on its pricing page. The surface covers brand mentions, sentiment and citations tracked daily, a Brand Visibility Index, domain citation tracking updated weekly, AI prompt research, a crawlability checker, content audits with specific improvement recommendations, and ChatGPT Ads and Shopping tracking.

Pricing model. Lite $29, Standard $189 and Premium $489 a month with 15% off annually and four engines included on every tier; Claude costs $29 to $439 a month extra by tier, Gemini and Google AI Mode $9 to $149 each, and Enterprise starts from $1,000 a month.

Ahrefs is one of the great research platforms in search, powered by the web's second-most active crawler and 10+ years of web-scale data. Alongside Site Explorer's backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit and Rank Tracker, it now runs Brand Radar: an AI visibility database of 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts spanning AI Overviews (323M), ChatGPT (31M), Gemini (31M), Copilot (30M), Perplexity (30M), AI Mode (21M) and Grok (6M), with YouTube, TikTok and Reddit source tracking in beta. Their FAQ is blunt about discounts: they never run them.

Pricing model. Lite $129, Standard $249 and Advanced $449 a month (annual saves up to 17%), plus a $29 Starter and a free tier for site owners; full Brand Radar runs $398 (selected platforms) to $699 (all platforms), custom prompt packs start at $50 for 2,500 checks, and Enterprise is $1,499 a month with an annual commitment.

Otterly. Four engines are included on every tier, verbatim from the pricing cards: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are sold as add-ons, with Claude at $29, $109 or $439 a month by tier and Gemini and AI Mode at $9, $59 or $149 each; Grok and DeepSeek appear on neither list.

Ahrefs. Brand Radar's index covers seven platforms: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, an index built from 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts. Claude and DeepSeek appear nowhere on the pricing or Brand Radar pages, and the $398 platform picker lists five options that do not include Grok.

Summarized: Otterly reads 4 included (ChatGPT, AIO, Perplexity, Copilot); Claude, Gemini, AI Mode as add-ons; Ahrefs reads index across AIO, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok. On Claude specifically, Otterly: add-on, $29 to $439/mo; Ahrefs: not listed anywhere.

Otterly. Prompt runs are daily on every tier, 15 prompts on Lite up to 400 on Premium, with extra prompts at $99 per 100 on the upper tiers. Domain Citation Tracking refreshes weekly per the features page, and sentiment classification tags mentions as enthusiastic, with caveats, or dismissed.

Ahrefs. Tracking your own prompts is metered three ways: 5 to 20 tracked AI prompts with 150 to 600 monthly checks on the core plans (updated daily), custom prompt packages from $50 a month for 2,500 checks with per-check overage, or full Brand Radar at $398 to $699. The Google Rank Tracker updates weekly on every tier including Enterprise, with 750 to 5,000 tracked keywords.

Otterly. The optimization surface is audit and advice: a content audit that produces specific improvements, a crawlability checker, prompt research and recommendations. There is no long-form writer and no CMS publishing anywhere on the public pages, so the output is a to-do list for your team.

Ahrefs. The Content Kit add-on, from $99 a month, is an AI Content Helper and Grader that aligns drafts with search intent and scores them, with an AI Content Inventory marked Soon. Nothing on the pricing page writes full articles or publishes to a CMS.

Otterly. There is no Google organic rank tracker and no local surface of any kind on the public pages; the product's scope is AI search.

Ahrefs. Classic SEO research is the backbone: the backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit with 100K to 1.5M crawl credits by tier, and Web Analytics plus Bot Analytics. A GBP Monitor ships in beta; no geo-grid or map-pack tracking appears on the pricing page.

Otterly. API and MCP access ship from the $189 Standard tier, metered at 2,000 requests a month each (5,000 on Premium), with a Google Looker Studio connector on the same tiers and CSV exports on every tier.

Ahrefs. API access and an MCP server ship on all tiers with rows metered by plan (100 to 500 rows per request, uncapped on Enterprise), plus a Looker Studio integration from Advanced and Report Builder as an add-on. Export rows run 500K to 4M a month by tier.

Every cell below was read from the vendors’ own rendered pages as of August 2026. Where a vendor’s public pages neither confirm nor deny a capability, the cell says so.