Side-by-side matrix
| What you get | CitunaThat’s us | LLMrefs | Rankscale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price / month | $39 | $79 | $99 |
| Pricing model | Flat tiers | Flat monthly | Credit-based |
| AI engines at entry | 7 | 11 | 17+ |
| Claude tracked | |||
| Grok tracked | |||
| Microsoft Copilot | |||
| Google AI Overviews | |||
| Refresh cadence | Daily | Weekly | Hourly to monthly |
| Search Console integration | |||
| MCP access at entry | |||
| Generated fixes | Free tools | Page audits | |
| Content generation | Not published | Not published | |
| Publishes to your CMS | Not published | Not published | |
| Content languages | 50+ | Not published | Not published |
| Free trial | 3 days (card) | 7 days | 7 days (Pro) |
Compiled from each vendor’s public pricing page: LLMrefs figures from llmrefs.com/pricing, checked October 1, 2026; Rankscale figures from rankscale.ai/pricing, checked October 9, 2026. Rankscale: Pro includes 1,200 credits a month; Essentials is billed yearly only, at $204 a year. “Not published” marks a row the vendor does not state publicly; it is not a “no”. Cituna checks all seven engines daily and does not track Microsoft Copilot. MCP read tools are included from $39, write tools from Pro ($119); MCP is not exclusive to us. Prices change often: verify before buying. Spot an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
Published entry-tier price per month from each vendor’s pricing page (dates in the matrix note above). Read it against what each tier includes, a lower price can mean fewer engines or prompts.
| Engine | Cituna | LLMrefs | Rankscale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | |||
| Grok | |||
| Microsoft Copilot | |||
| Google AI Overviews |
The four engines coverage varies most on. A dash-ringed “?” means we have not confirmed that vendor’s position on that engine (shown as “Not published” in the matrix), never a no we have not earned.
Reading the difference
On cost per engine at entry, the crudest useful way to normalise these two, LLMrefs works out at about $7.18 per engine per month ($79 across 11) and Rankscale at about $5.82 ($99 across 17+). Rankscale is the better ratio, by roughly $1.36 per engine. Treat that as a sanity check rather than a verdict: an engine you do not care about is not worth anything, and LLMrefs’s number improves immediately if its engine mix happens to be the one you need.
The confirmed capability split between these two is narrow enough to state exactly: Rankscale covers an MCP server and LLMrefs does not. That is the whole difference on the rows both vendors publish, everything else in the matrix either matches or is unpublished by one of them, and an unpublished row is not a “no”.
Worth knowing before you shortlist either: neither LLMrefs nor Rankscale offers Search Console integration. If any of those is a requirement, this comparison is the wrong shortlist and you should widen it rather than pick the better of two tools that both miss what you need.
The tier ladders are worth reading side by side, because the entry price means something different on each. LLMrefs: One plan at $79 a month, marked “Limited time only” on its page: 500 prompts on every engine it lists, no per-engine fees. Rankscale: Essentials $204 a year (yearly only) · Pro $99 (1,200 credits, MCP) · Pro+ $229 (3,000 credits, REST API) · Growth $385 (5,500 credits) · Enterprise $780 (12,000 credits). That is where most of the apparent price gap between these two either disappears or widens sharply, depending on which engines you actually need.
They also genuinely overlap on Claude, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews and generated fixes, so those rows should not carry weight in the decision even though both vendors market them.
One practical difference that does not appear in any feature list: LLMrefs bills as flat monthly and Rankscale as credit-based. A credit-metered plan and a flat plan are hard to compare over a year because only one of them has a predictable ceiling, so run your expected prompt volume through both before treating the entry prices as comparable at all.
Which to choose
Choose Cituna if…
For seven AI engines checked daily and the fixes written, on one plan from $39 a month, the pick is Cituna rather than LLMrefs or Rankscale.
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, all seven checked daily on the $39 Starter
- the generated fixes to close the gaps, and articles written and published to your site
- a Search Console integration to prove the result; neither LLMrefs nor Rankscale offers one
- MCP access from the $39 Starter; Rankscale offers it too
What you give up:
- Microsoft Copilot, which LLMrefs and Rankscale track and Cituna does not
- more engines, which LLMrefs and Rankscale list
Choose LLMrefs if…
LLMrefs is an eleven-engine list on one flat plan, refreshed weekly. Against Rankscale specifically, it is the cheaper entry by $20 a month, it covers fewer engines at entry (11 against 17+) and it bills as flat monthly where Rankscale bills as credit-based.
- eleven engines, including Claude, Grok and Copilot, with no per-engine fees
- a 7-day free trial, then one flat plan with 500 prompts
- a set of free standalone tools alongside the tracker
What you give up:
- a weekly refresh rather than daily, so a change made on Monday may not be visible until the following week
- no Search Console integration and no MCP server
- the $79 price is marked “Limited time only” on its pricing page, so it may not hold
Choose Rankscale if…
Rankscale is a 17-plus engine list paid for in credits, checked on the schedule you set. Against LLMrefs specifically, you are paying $20 a month more than LLMrefs for it, it covers more engines at entry (17+ against 11) and it bills as credit-based where LLMrefs bills as flat monthly.
- a 17-plus engine list on every plan, including Claude, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and Mistral
- a 7-day free trial of the $99 Pro plan, so the first scans cost nothing
- broad coverage without an enterprise conversation
What you give up:
- credit-based billing means the $99 buys 1,200 credits a month, not a fixed number of checks: heavy use is not predictable from the headline
- no Search Console integration
- page audits rather than generated fixes, so the output is a finding rather than the change
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.