7 Best HubSpot AEO Grader Alternatives in 2026

HubSpot’s AEO Grader gives a quick, free read on how three AI models describe your brand. Which alternative fits depends on whether you want another one-off check or a tracker that keeps asking. Below we compare seven tools, five paid trackers and two free checks, on engines, how often they run, price and how you start, with HubSpot’s grader as the baseline.

What HubSpot’s AEO Grader checks, as read on October 10, 2026

HubSpot’s AEO Grader address, hubspot.com/aeo-grader, now redirects permanently to hubspot.com/ai-search-grader, where HubSpot calls the tool the AI Search Grader. HubSpot describes it as a free, one-time brand check that needs no account. What HubSpot’s page states:

• Engines. HubSpot names GPT-5.4 mini (OpenAI), Perplexity and Gemini, queried at the same time, with results cross-checked across the three.
• What it asks. HubSpot sends your brand details to each model and asks how the model characterizes your brand from its training data. HubSpot does not say the grader runs your buyers’ own questions or records which pages are cited.
• What you give it. Company name, location, industry and product or service. HubSpot’s grader accepts any brand, so you can grade a competitor. To see the full report you complete a form.
• The score. A total out of 100 across five dimensions: Sentiment (up to 40 points), Presence Quality (20), Brand Recognition (20), Share of Voice (10) and Market Competition (10, which places you as Leader, Challenger or Niche Player). HubSpot adds a written interpretation and says the snapshot is ready in under two minutes.
• What comes next. HubSpot points to HubSpot AEO, its paid monitor, which tracks visibility week over week across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with prompts, competitor comparisons and prioritized recommendations. HubSpot AEO is $50 a month with no HubSpot subscription required, or included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise.

Why teams look past the grader

HubSpot’s grader is a good first look, and it is free. What it does not cover sends people elsewhere:

• One snapshot. AI answers change from day to day; a single run cannot show a drop or a recovery.
• Three engines. Claude, Grok, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews are not graded, and HubSpot AEO tracks the same three.
• Perception, not buyer questions. The grader asks what a model knows about your brand. HubSpot’s grader does not ask “what is the best tool for X?” and show who was recommended instead of you.
• A grade, not a change to ship. The written interpretation explains the score; HubSpot’s grader does not draft the page edits.

How we chose these seven

1. It answers a question the grader leaves open: whether engines name you on a schedule, or on more engines than three.
2. Its facts are on the vendor’s own page, with a price you can pay without a sales call, or free terms stated.
3. Two groups, ordered separately. Paid trackers that re-check (1 to 5) replace the grader with monitoring; Cituna comes first because it is ours, and the rest follow by first paid plan, billed monthly, cheapest first. Free one-off checks (6 and 7) replace the grader like for like, ordered by the number of engines the free result covers, most first.
4. Every fact is dated. HubSpot was read on October 10, 2026; Rankscale’s plans on October 9; Otterly.ai’s Lite plan on October 7; Peec AI’s reporting on October 5 and its trial on October 9; Peec AI’s plans and AthenaHQ on October 1; Ahrefs’ and Semrush’s free tools on September 28, 2026.

The numbers help you find an entry; they are not a score. For the full field of free tools, see our best free AI visibility checkers.

HubSpot AEO Grader alternatives at a glance

Paid trackers that re-check

1. Cituna (best for daily answers from seven engines, with fixes written)

Cituna does the part a one-time grade cannot: it keeps asking. Every day, on every paid plan, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode get the questions your buyers ask, and Cituna logs whether each answer named you, your position among the brands listed, which of your pages were cited and which competitors were recommended in your place. Where a rival wins, Cituna generates the schema, FAQ markup or llms.txt entry for the page that should have been cited, and for questions your site does not answer, AutoSEO writes up to 30 articles a month on Starter, held as drafts until you approve them. Search Console and API keys come with every paid plan, so a fix can be checked against real clicks and the data can go into your own reports.

• Best for: a team that ran the grader, saw a gap, and wants daily evidence on seven engines plus the change to ship.
• What it costs: Cituna Starter is $39 a month for one brand and 10 prompts checked daily on all seven engines (2,100 answers a month); Cituna Pro is $119 for three brands, 30 prompts and five seats, and adds keyword and SERP-rank data; Cituna Max is $399 for ten brands, 90 prompts and 15 seats. Every plan is on the pricing page.
• Where it falls short against HubSpot: Cituna gives no sentiment score, the dimension HubSpot weights most; HubSpot AEO is included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise, so a team already on those pays nothing extra to monitor HubSpot’s three engines; and Cituna’s trial is 3 days with a card, where the grader costs nothing.

2. Otterly.ai (best for Copilot on a short daily list)

Otterly.ai’s Lite plan is $29 a month, billed monthly, for 15 prompts checked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with unlimited team members (otterly.ai/pricing, October 7, 2026). On October 1, 2026, Otterly.ai sold Gemini and Google AI Mode as $9-a-month add-ons on Lite and Claude as a $29 add-on, and did not sell Grok.

• Best for: a small team that wants Copilot and Google AI Overviews, which the grader leaves out, checked daily.
• What it costs: Otterly.ai is $29, $189 or $489 a month.
• Where it falls short: Gemini, one of the grader’s three engines, is an add-on on Otterly.ai’s Lite plan, and Otterly.ai’s API and MCP access start at $189. See our Otterly alternatives.

3. Peec AI (best for sentiment and share of voice)

Peec AI reports visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice each day against the competitors you name (read October 5, 2026), which makes it the closest daily version of the dimensions the grader scores. Peec AI’s Starter is $95 a month billed monthly, or $80 billed annually, for 50 prompts on three models chosen from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with unlimited users; Peec AI’s Pro at $245 holds 150 prompts and Peec AI’s Advanced at $495 holds 350 (peec.ai/pricing, October 1, 2026). Peec AI offers a free trial, length not stated (October 9, 2026). HubSpot publishes its own HubSpot-versus-Peec AI comparison.

• Best for: a brand team that liked the grader’s sentiment and share-of-voice view and wants it every day.
• What it costs: Peec AI is $95, $245 or $495 a month; Enterprise is quoted.
• Where it falls short: three engines at a time, the same count as the grader, with Claude and Grok kept for Peec AI’s Enterprise plan. See our Peec AI alternatives.

4. Rankscale (best for the longest engine list)

Rankscale sells credits whose cost depends on the engine: on October 9, 2026, Rankscale’s calculator charged 0.25 credits for a ChatGPT run and 2 for a Claude run. Rankscale’s monthly plans start at Pro, $99 for 1,200 credits, which Rankscale estimates at about 4,800 AI responses; Rankscale’s Pro+ at $229 adds a REST API, Growth at $385 adds white-label reports, and Rankscale lists Enterprise at $780 (rankscale.ai/pricing, October 9, 2026). Rankscale’s home page counts 17 or more engines on all plans, Claude, Grok and Microsoft Copilot included, and Rankscale offers a 7-day trial of Pro.

• Best for: a team that wants far more engines than the grader’s three and can manage a credit budget.
• What it costs: Rankscale is $99, $229, $385 or $780 a month.
• Where it falls short: a Claude run costs eight times a ChatGPT run, so the monthly Rankscale bill is harder to forecast. See our Rankscale alternatives.

5. AthenaHQ (best for a free tier before paying)

AthenaHQ charges one credit per AI response. AthenaHQ’s free Essential tier gives 300 credits on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, two more engines than the grader. AthenaHQ’s Starter, at $295 a month (17% less billed annually), buys 3,600 credits on eleven named models, adding Google AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral, and connects GA4 and Search Console (athenahq.ai/plans, October 1, 2026).

• Best for: a team that wants to stay free a little longer, on more engines than the grader, before choosing a paid tracker.
• What it costs: AthenaHQ is free, then $295 a month; Enterprise is custom.
• Where it falls short: the step from AthenaHQ’s free tier to paid is $295 a month, and it buys credits rather than a fixed prompt count. See our AthenaHQ alternatives.

Free one-off checks

If you want another free snapshot rather than a tracker, these two brand checks cover engines the grader leaves out. Before either, it is worth knowing whether AI crawlers can read your site at all: our free AI visibility checker tests eight AI crawlers against your robots.txt and reads what your homepage serves before JavaScript runs, with no signup. Our checker asks no engine a question, so it sits beside these checks rather than among them. For the wider field, see our best free AI visibility checkers.

6. Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker (best for six engines, no signup)

Ahrefs’ free checker needs no signup or card and covers six engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Ahrefs returns your total AI mentions, mentions by platform, and the top five topics, cited domains and cited pages, as a preview of Ahrefs Brand Radar, which runs from $199 to $699 a month (ahrefs.com/ai-visibility-checker, September 28, 2026).

• Best for: a free one-off check on twice the grader’s engines, with no form to fill.
• Where it falls short: Ahrefs shows the top five per section, from one run, with no Claude or Grok. See our Ahrefs Brand Radar alternatives.

7. Semrush Free AI Visibility Tool (best for you against two rivals)

Semrush’s free tool needs no account and allows three checks a day, enough to set your domain against two rivals. Enter a domain and Semrush returns an AI Visibility Score out of 100, mentions, citations, top cited pages and a competitor comparison across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode (semrush.com free AI visibility tool, September 28, 2026).

• Best for: a score out of 100 like the grader’s, but from citations and mentions rather than training-data perception, compared with two competitors.
• Where it falls short: Semrush’s free tool covers four engines, without Perplexity, Claude or Grok. See our Semrush AI Toolkit alternatives.

Which alternative fits you

If the grader told you what you needed and you only want a second opinion, a free one-off check is enough: Ahrefs for six engines, Semrush for a rival comparison, and our crawler check if the score looks too low to be true. If you want to watch the answers move, choose a tracker:

• Seven engines daily, Claude and Grok included, fixes written: Cituna, from $39.
• Copilot on a short list: Otterly.ai, from $29.
• HubSpot’s three engines, staying with HubSpot: HubSpot AEO, $50 a month, weekly.
• Sentiment and share of voice daily: Peec AI, from $95.
• The most engines, on credits: Rankscale, from $99.
• A free tier first: AthenaHQ, then $295.

Drafted with AI assistance from our own research and Search Console data, and reviewed by Rahul A before publishing. Rules and prices change; check the linked official source before you act.