Answer engine optimization tools, sorted by the job each one does

What answer engine optimization tools are for

Answer engine optimization tools help you get named in the answers AI assistants give. An answer engine is an assistant such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini that writes one answer instead of a list of links, so there is no page two to land on.

Most lists of these tools sort them by price. This one sorts them by job, because the jobs are where they differ. A tool that measures well and writes nothing is the right buy for a team with writers, and the wrong buy for a team without them.

We make Agentcites, which is one of the tools below. The jobs were set before any tool was placed, and every tool, ours included, is judged against them. Every fact about another tool comes from that tool’s own page, read on 10 October 2026 and linked. "Not stated" means we could not find it on the pages we read. It does not mean the tool cannot do it.

The five jobs of AEO, as the criteria

AEO work happens in five jobs, in this order. Each one is a criterion in this guide.

The order matters. Access comes before measuring, because a blocked crawler makes every later count meaningless. Explaining comes before fixing, because a loss to a review site needs outreach, not a new page.

Which answer engine optimization tools do which job

The table shows, for each job, what each tool’s own pages say. The tools are ordered by lowest published monthly price, the same order used in the AI visibility tools comparison, which puts Agentcites fourth of seven.

Job by job: what each tool says it does

Each job below names the tools whose pages describe it, quoting their words where the wording matters.

Finding the questions

Peec AI’s pricing page lists prompt suggestions, described as "Prompts worth adding, drawn from your brand context and coverage gaps", and prompts built from keywords. Semrush’s toolkit page includes 1,000 daily queries in Prompt Research. OtterlyAI’s home page lists a free AI keyword research tool. Agentcites reads your site and writes up to 50 buyer questions, which you review before anything is asked.

Checking access

Peec AI’s pricing page describes a crawlability audit showing "Which AI bots your robots.txt allows, partially allows, or blocks, across 40+ bots". Semrush’s page includes AI search checks in Site Audit for up to 100 pages. OtterlyAI’s home page lists a free AI crawler simulation. Scrunch’s trial includes five page audits. Agentcites reads robots.txt for five AI crawlers, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, and quotes the lines that block one. It has no entry for DeepSeek yet. Peec AI’s check covers far more bots than Agentcites does.

The crawler that matters differs by assistant. OpenAI’s documentation says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", while GPTBot is about training. Perplexity’s guide says PerplexityBot is "designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity". A tool that only checks GPTBot is checking the wrong line for ChatGPT search.

Measuring

Every tool here measures, and they differ in how much. On entry plans, OtterlyAI tracks 15 prompts, Semrush 25, Peec AI and Agentcites 50, and Scrunch 125, as their pricing pages state. OtterlyAI, Peec AI and Profound’s trial say they track daily. Agentcites scans weekly.

Measuring has a catch every tool shares. Answers change between runs. A study by SparkToro and Gumshoe, reported by Search Engine Journal, found the same brand list came back "less than 1% of the time across repeated runs" of the same prompt. More prompts and more runs make a count steadier. They do not make one answer reliable.

Explaining a loss

OtterlyAI’s help centre says each recommendation carries a reasoning, "Why OtterlyAI flagged this as an opportunity, based on your data", and a suggestion. Peec AI’s pricing page lists "Ranked opportunities to improve AI visibility, grouped by earned and owned" and a gap analysis of sources that name competitors but not you. Semrush’s page mentions AI-generated strategic recommendations. AthenaHQ’s pricing page lists content recommendations on its free tier.

Agentcites names who won each lost question and suggests a possible reason, shown as a model’s reading rather than a proven cause. It also estimates whether a page might help. The method page sets out what is counted and what is inferred.

Fixing it

Profound’s agents page says its agents "generate optimized drafts, and publish directly to your CMS". AthenaHQ’s Starter plan includes a "Content optimization agent". Scrunch’s agent experience page describes routing AI retrieval traffic to an "AI-optimized experience" while "Humans keep the full experience". Peec AI’s instructions page says it "deliberately does not write or publish content itself". Agentcites drafts a page aimed at one lost question, up to 50 a month, and you publish it yourself.

Where each tool is ahead

Every tool here leads on something. These are the strengths each one’s own pages support.

Agentcites focuses on four assistants. It asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and DeepSeek today, not Google AI Overviews, Copilot or Claude. It checks weekly rather than daily, and it has no API or single sign-on. It does not yet measure whether a published page changed the answers.

A worked example: one lost question through the five jobs

Following one question through all five jobs shows where each kind of tool stops. The company, the question and the rival below are made up, and so is every detail.

Say a small accounting firm sells bookkeeping to restaurants. A buyer asks an assistant, "Who does bookkeeping for restaurants near Leeds?" The assistant names two other firms and links to a directory page.

1. Find the questions. The question only gets measured if it is on the list. A tool that writes questions from the firm’s own site would likely include it, because restaurants are named on that site.
2. Check access. If the firm’s robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT search cannot show its pages at all, and the next three jobs are wasted until that line is changed.
3. Measure. The question is asked of each assistant and the answer is kept. The firm is named in none of them, so it counts as a loss.
4. Explain. The answer leaned on a directory page and the two rivals both have pages about restaurant bookkeeping. The firm has no such page, so the reason is a missing page.
5. Fix. Someone writes a page about bookkeeping for restaurants, with prices and the area served, and asks the directory to list the firm. Then the same question is asked again, more than once, to see whether anything moved.

A tracker carries this example to step three and stops. A tool that explains carries it to step four. A writer drafts the page in step five, but no tool here can get the firm onto the directory for it, because that is a request one business makes to another.

That last point is easy to miss. Some losses are won on other people’s pages, and the right fix there is outreach rather than writing. A tool that only writes would draft a page that does not touch the reason the firm lost.

How to pick an AEO tool for your team

Start from the job you cannot do today, not from the longest feature list.

1. Check access yourself first. Open your robots.txt and look for OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. It is free and it can make every later number meaningless.
2. Decide who writes. If you have writers, a tool that measures and explains is enough. If you do not, pick one whose pages say it drafts or changes pages.
3. Count the assistants your buyers use. If they use Copilot or Google AI Overviews, pick a tool that asks them.
4. Decide how many questions you need. Fifty covers one product line. Several products or markets need hundreds.
5. Ask every vendor to open the answer behind one of its figures. If it cannot, the figure is hard to check.

An AEO tool is worth what it changes. Measuring a loss every day does not win it back, so be sure someone or something does the fifth job.

If you want a free first look before choosing, several companies offer one-off checkers. The free AI visibility checkers guide lists the ones we could verify, and the comparison pages set Agentcites against five tools one at a time.

What this guide does not cover

It reads what tools say about themselves. It does not test them, and it does not rank their accuracy.

• It covers seven tools. Ahrefs, HubSpot and others sell AI visibility products not listed here.
• It relies on public pages. A feature behind a demo or a login is not counted.
• It does not cover classic SEO tools, schema plugins or writing assistants that are not built for AI answers.
• Prices and plans change often, so read each tool’s page again before buying.