What's a good tool to monitor visibility in Perplexity? 17 tools compared

The short answer. A good Perplexity tracking tool asks your buyers' real questions on a fixed schedule, runs each question more than once, shows both mentions and cited sources, compares you with rivals, and tells you plainly how it collects answers. Many tools do this. Which one is good *for you* depends on your situation, so this guide compares 17 of them on the same criteria, with prices checked on 26 October 2026, and gives you a decision guide and a free method to start today.

Disclosure: this guide is published by WebVisiblity, which makes one of the tools below. We have not ranked the tools, we describe our own the same way as the others, including its limits, and every price and feature claim links to the vendor's own page.

What "visibility in Perplexity" means#

Perplexity is an AI search engine. Instead of a list of ten blue links, it writes one answer and puts numbered links next to it that point to the web pages it used. Perplexity's own help page says it searches the internet in real time and that each answer includes numbered footnotes linking to the original sources. [Perplexity, How Perplexity works]

That gives your company two separate ways to be visible:

• A mention. Your company's name appears in the answer text, for example "Top options include Acme, Brightline and Corex."
• A citation. One of your web pages appears in the numbered sources.

They are not the same thing, and they often do not happen together. You can be named while Perplexity links to a review site, or your page can be cited while the answer recommends a rival.

From those two building blocks, every tool calculates a version of the same four numbers:

1. Mention rate: out of all the answers to your questions, the share that name you.
2. Citation rate: the share of answers that link to one of your pages.
3. Share of voice: your mentions compared with your rivals' mentions for the same questions.
4. Sources: which websites Perplexity cites for your topic, whether or not they are yours.

The fourth one is the most useful for deciding what to do next, so check that a tool shows it.

How Perplexity builds an answer#

Understanding the process makes it much easier to judge a tool, because a tool can only measure what happens in these steps.

Three research findings explain what this means in practice:

• Perplexity leans on community sites. In an Ahrefs study of US queries, Reddit was Perplexity's most-cited website, with 21.6% of citation share among the top 50 domains, followed by YouTube at 20.8% and Wikipedia at 6.3%. Ahrefs called it the most concentrated top source of any assistant it looked at. [Ahrefs, 2026]
• Perplexity overlaps with Google more than other assistants do. Ahrefs found that 28.6% of the pages Perplexity cited also ranked in Google's top 10 for the same query, the highest of the assistants it studied, compared with about 8% for ChatGPT. [Ahrefs, 2025] So classic search work still matters more for Perplexity than for most AI tools.
• ChatGPT is not a stand-in for Perplexity. One vendor analysis found ChatGPT and Perplexity agreed on only about 11% of the domains they cited for the same questions. [Deepak Gupta, 2026] It is a single vendor study, but it matches what other research shows: each AI tool draws on different sources, so each needs to be checked on its own.

How big is Perplexity? The last official usage figure we could find was 780 million queries in May 2025, given by the CEO, about 30 million a day by MediaPost's count, growing more than 20% a month at the time. [MediaPost, 2025] Perplexity has not published an official 2026 total. Larger numbers that circulate online are estimates, so treat them with care.

API or real app: the question to ask first#

This is the most important difference between tools, and most comparison articles skip it.

A tracking tool can ask Perplexity a question in one of two ways:

• Through the API. The API is the access Perplexity sells to developers. It is cheap, fast and stable, which is why many tools use it.
• Through the real app. The tool opens Perplexity in a browser, types the question and reads the answer, as a buyer would. It is closer to what people see, but slower, costlier and more likely to break when the website changes.

Perplexity's own developer documentation is clear that these can differ: the API "uses the same search system as the UI with differences in configuration, so their outputs may differ", and "the underlying AI model might differ between the API and the UI for a given query." [Perplexity API FAQ]

There is also a 2026 change most guides have not caught up with. Perplexity ended support for its Sonar chat completions API on 27 September 2026 and now points developers to its Agent API, which can use models from several AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI. [Perplexity API docs] Older Sonar requests are now being converted into Agent API requests automatically, rolling out model by model, so results from tools that relied on Sonar may have shifted even if the vendor changed nothing. If a tool's numbers jumped or dropped from late September 2026, ask whether this was the reason.

What this means for you:

• API-based tools are good for steady trends at a low cost per question. They are less good at showing exactly what a signed-in buyer saw on a given day.
• App-based tools are closer to the buyer's screen. They cost more, and you still get a sample, not every buyer's personal answer.
• Many tools do not say which they use. In our research, about half the vendors did not state their method publicly. Ask before you buy.

What changes a Perplexity answer#

Two people asking the same question can get different answers. A good tool controls for this, and if you test by hand, you need to as well.

• Mode. A quick answer, Research and Labs are different jobs. Perplexity says its research mode performs dozens of searches and reads hundreds of sources, so it can cite a very different set of pages from a quick answer. [Perplexity, 2025]
• Model. Paying users can pick the AI model, and the API can use models from several companies. Note which one you test.
• Location. Perplexity's API lets a request set a country, region and city, and the documentation says city and region significantly improve location accuracy. [Perplexity API docs] For a local or regional business, location can change who gets named.
• Memory. Perplexity added memory in 2025, so answers can be personalised for signed-in users based on past conversations. [Perplexity, 2025] Test signed out, in a private window, or with memory turned off.
• Where you ask. The website, the apps and Comet, Perplexity's browser, which became free for everyone in October 2025, are separate places to ask. [Engadget, 2025] Pick one and stay with it.
• Chance. Even with everything fixed, answers vary from run to run. A SparkToro study found less than a 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI returned the same brand list twice. [Search Engine Journal, 2026] That study did not test Perplexity, but a summary of University of St. Gallen data by ThriveStack reported that repeat Perplexity runs on the same day shared only about half their brands. [ThriveStack]

One more useful pattern: LLM Pulse, a tracking vendor, measures how much Perplexity's answers change from week to week across about 95,000 repeated prompts. In the week of 19 October 2026, the websites cited changed far more than the brands named, about five times more on raw change. [LLM Pulse] In plain terms, your mention rate is the steadier headline number, and cited sources are better read as a trend over several weeks.

For more on why answers change, see does ChatGPT recommend the same brands every time. For a full measurement method across all AI tools, see how to measure AI visibility.

How we compared the tools#

We looked at 17 tools that say they track Perplexity. For each one we checked the vendor's own pricing page, plan pages and help articles on 26 October 2026, and recorded only what the vendor states. Where a vendor's pages contradicted each other, we say so. Where something is not published, we write "not stated" rather than guess.

We compared every tool on the same seven questions:

1. Is Perplexity in the cheapest paid plan, or only in higher plans?
2. What is the lowest price that includes Perplexity?
3. How does it collect answers: real app, API, or not stated?
4. How often does it check?
5. Does it show cited sources, not just mentions?
6. Can you track rivals and see share of voice?
7. Can you try it before paying?

What we did not do: we did not run a paid head-to-head test of every tool on the same questions, so this is not a ranking of accuracy. Any vendor that claims to be "the most accurate Perplexity tracker" should be able to show you its method and a sample of raw answers. Prices change often. Always confirm on the vendor's page before you buy.

The comparison table#

Prices are in US dollars per month as shown on each vendor's site on 26 October 2026. "Annual" means the monthly price when you pay for a year upfront.

Three patterns stand out:

• A famous name does not mean Perplexity is included. Profound, Writesonic and Gauge include Perplexity only on enterprise plans, and Knowatoa leaves it out of its entry plan.
• "Tracks Perplexity" can mean very different things. In Semrush's toolkit, Perplexity appears in a weekly report, while its daily prompt tracking covers other AI tools. SE Ranking tracks Perplexity in one product but not in its standalone SE Visible product.
• Prompts are counted differently. Some tools count prompts, others count credits, where one credit can be one prompt on one AI tool on one day. Compare the number of Perplexity answers you get per month, not the headline number.

Tool by tool#

Each summary covers what the tool is, how it handles Perplexity, who it fits, and what to check. Tools are in alphabetical order. The order is not a ranking.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs is a large SEO suite. Brand Radar is its AI visibility product, with two parts: a ready-made database of AI answers, and Custom Prompts where you add your own questions. Perplexity is included in both. Custom Prompts come with paid Ahrefs plans from Lite upward (5 prompts on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced), with larger add-ons from $50 a month. The full database starts at $199 a month and all platforms cost $699 a month. [Ahrefs]

• Fits: teams already on Ahrefs who want AI visibility next to their search data.
• Check: the small number of included prompts, and that the collection method is not stated publicly.

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ is a dedicated AI visibility platform. Unusually, Perplexity is included even on its free Essential plan, which gives 300 credits, where one credit is one AI response. The Starter plan is $295 a month for 3,600 credits across 11 AI models. [AthenaHQ]

• Fits: teams who want to test Perplexity tracking at no cost before committing.
• Check: how often prompts run and how answers are collected are not stated, so ask before you rely on the numbers.

Gauge

Gauge tracks AI visibility for brands and agencies. Its pricing page states that Perplexity tracking requires the Enterprise plan. The $599 Growth plan covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. [Gauge] Gauge's own blog says it runs Perplexity prompts through the real front end, daily. [Gauge blog]

• Fits: larger teams that want real-app data and are already talking to enterprise vendors.
• Check: the custom price, and that the method detail comes from Gauge's own blog.

Goodie

Goodie includes Perplexity in its entry Core plan at $295 a month, with 110 prompts run daily across five AI tools. Pro is $999 a month. [Goodie]

• Fits: brands, including ecommerce, that want daily data on a mid-sized prompt set.
• Check: the collection method is not stated publicly, and each plan covers one brand.

Hall

Hall lists Perplexity among its supported AI platforms and has a page showing which of your pages Perplexity cites. It has a free Lite plan with 25 questions checked weekly, then Starter at $199 a month, with 500 questions checked daily. [Hall]

• Fits: anyone who wants a free starting point with a clear upgrade path.
• Check: Hall does not state which plans include Perplexity, so confirm that the free plan covers it before you start.

Knowatoa

Knowatoa covers seven AI tools, but its $59 Starter plan leaves Perplexity out. Perplexity starts on the $199 Growth plan. [Knowatoa]

• Fits: teams that want broad coverage and are comfortable at the $199 level.
• Check: question limits per plan are not published.

LLMrefs

LLMrefs offers one plan at $79 a month, marked limited time, with 500 prompts across about 10 AI tools including Perplexity, and a 7-day free trial. [LLMrefs]

• Fits: small teams wanting many prompts for a low price.
• Check: its pages give different refresh rates, weekly in one place and daily in another, and it describes itself as ChatGPT-first. [LLMrefs]

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI includes Perplexity on every plan. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts checked daily, Standard is $189 for 100 prompts, and Premium is $489 for 400. There is a free trial. [Otterly.AI]

• Fits: small businesses and consultants who want the lowest-cost paid entry with Perplexity included.
• Check: 15 prompts is a small sample, and the collection method is not stated.

Peec AI

Peec AI is a dedicated AI visibility tool that says it mostly reads the real interface rather than the API. Plans start at $95 a month for 50 prompts checked daily. Its pages disagree about Perplexity: one lists it as included in every plan, while the pricing page shows it as an add-on model on lower plans. [Peec AI]

• Fits: teams that value real-interface data on a mid-sized budget.
• Check: ask in writing whether Perplexity is included in your plan or costs extra.

Profound

Profound is an enterprise AI visibility platform that says it captures answers from the consumer browsing experience, not from model APIs. [Profound] Its pricing page lists Perplexity only under the Enterprise plan, at a custom price. Its free 7-day trial covers three other AI tools and does not include Perplexity. [Profound pricing] A pricing tracker recorded that Profound removed its lower self-serve plans in September 2026. [PricingSaaS]

• Fits: large brands and agencies that want real-app data and enterprise support.
• Check: you cannot test Perplexity tracking in the trial.

Rankscale

Rankscale includes Perplexity from its Pro plan at $99 a month, or $84 a month paid yearly, with 1,200 credits. It runs some checks in a browser and some through APIs and lets you schedule from hourly to monthly. Its Perplexity page offers a 7-day trial of Pro. [Rankscale pricing] [Rankscale, Perplexity]

• Fits: hands-on users who want control over how often checks run.
• Check: which method it uses for Perplexity is not stated, and credit-based pricing takes some working out.

Scrunch

Scrunch includes Perplexity on all plans. Starter is $300 a month, or $250 a month paid yearly, for 350 prompts. It uses browser automation and official APIs depending on the AI tool, and records the full response with citations. New prompts run daily for 14 days, then every 72 hours by default. [Scrunch pricing] [Scrunch FAQ]

• Fits: marketing teams wanting a large prompt set with full answers and sources.
• Check: the default schedule after the first two weeks is every three days, not daily.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking, an SEO suite, tracks Perplexity in its AI Results Tracker, part of an AI Search add-on whose prices are not shown on its help page. [SE Ranking] Its separate product, SE Visible, from $99 a month, does not list Perplexity among the AI tools it covers, though the add-on includes access to it. [SE Visible] [SE Visible pricing]

• Fits: existing SE Ranking users.
• Check: make sure you are buying the product that includes Perplexity.

Semrush

Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month per user. [Semrush] According to its knowledge base, Perplexity is covered in the Brand Performance report, updated weekly, while its daily prompt tracking covers other AI tools. Semrush says answers are captured from real requests rather than AI company APIs. The toolkit has no free trial. [Semrush]

• Fits: existing Semrush users who want a weekly view of Perplexity next to their SEO data.
• Check: if you need daily Perplexity tracking of your own questions, this report may not be enough.

Similarweb

Similarweb's AI brand visibility tracker covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity, with daily updates and citation detail down to exact URLs. [Similarweb] The AEO Intelligence package is $129 a month, or $99 paid yearly, for 150 prompts and one user. [Similarweb packages]

• Fits: teams already using Similarweb for traffic and competitor research.
• Check: which AI tools each package includes is not listed, so confirm Perplexity for your package.

WebVisiblity (ours)

WebVisiblity's Live AI Monitoring asks Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude the same buyer questions every week, checks Google AI Overviews for them, shows each answer in full with the sources Perplexity cited, and names the rivals mentioned instead. The plan is $79 a month for 25 questions; Radar mode is $199 for up to 100. There is a 14-day trial with no card. [WebVisiblity]

• Fits: small and mid-sized B2B companies that want Perplexity next to other AI tools, with the actual answers to read.
• Check: it uses Perplexity's API in a clean session, not the real app, so a signed-in buyer may see a different answer. It checks weekly, not daily.

Writesonic

Writesonic, known for AI writing, has an AI visibility tracker that it says reads the web interface, not APIs, daily. Perplexity is only on the Enterprise plan. The lower plans, from $79 a month billed yearly, cover ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. [Writesonic]

• Fits: existing Writesonic users at enterprise level.
• Check: the trial is on plans that do not include Perplexity.

Other tools you may see

Other companies publish Perplexity tracker pages, including Sitechecker, Keyword.com, LLM Pulse, SEOmator, Dageno, Trakkr, Rankability and AiRefs. We did not review them in depth, so they are not in the table. The same seven questions above apply to them.

Which tool fits your situation#

Use this guide from the top and stop at your first yes.

In more detail:

• You already use an SEO suite. Start with its AI add-on, because the data sits next to your search data. Confirm three things: that Perplexity is in your plan, how often it checks, and whether you can add your own questions. Relevant tools: Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush, SE Ranking, Similarweb.
• You need the real app, screen for screen. Choose a tool that states it reads the front end. Expect enterprise pricing for Perplexity at most of them. Relevant tools: Profound, Gauge and Writesonic on enterprise plans, and Peec AI, which says it mostly reads the interface.
• Small budget, or just testing. Start with the free method below, or a free or low-cost plan that includes Perplexity. Relevant tools: AthenaHQ and Hall (free plans; confirm Perplexity on Hall's), Otterly.AI, LLMrefs, WebVisiblity.
• An agency with many clients. Look for pricing per prompt or credit, white-label reports and exports. Most dedicated tools above have agency plans; compare the cost per Perplexity answer, not per seat.
• None of the above. A dedicated tool with Perplexity on its entry plan, cited sources shown, rival tracking, and checks at least weekly. Relevant tools: AthenaHQ, Goodie, LLMrefs, Otterly.AI, Rankscale, Scrunch, WebVisiblity.

Whichever you choose, run the trial on 10 of your own buyer questions and compare a few answers with what you see in Perplexity yourself.

The questions to ask any vendor before you buy#

Copy these into an email. A good vendor answers all of them in writing.

1. Do you collect Perplexity answers from the real app or through the API? Which mode and model?
2. Did your results change when Perplexity ended support for the Sonar API in September 2026?
3. Is Perplexity included in the plan I am buying, or is it an add-on?
4. How many times do you run each question, and how often?
5. Which location do you ask from, and can I set it?
6. Do you show the full answer text and every cited URL, or only a score?
7. How do you count a mention: exact name only, or also product names and spelling variants?
8. Can I export the raw answers?
9. How long do you keep history, and does it stay if I change plans?
10. What happens to my numbers when Perplexity changes how it works?

A free way to track Perplexity: the spreadsheet method#

You do not need a tool to start. This method takes about an hour to set up and 30 to 60 minutes a week for 10 questions.

Step 1. Write 10 buyer questions. Use the words a buyer would type before they know your name, such as "best packaging machine makers for pharma in India" or "which wealth managers in Mumbai work with NRIs". Avoid your brand name. For help choosing questions, see how to check if ChatGPT recommends your brand; the same method works for Perplexity.

Step 2. Fix your test setup. Use a private browser window, signed out, from the same location, with the default quick answer mode. Write the setup at the top of your sheet so you repeat it exactly.

Step 3. Ask each question three times. Open a fresh window for each run. A link in this form opens the question directly: perplexity.ai/search?q=your+question.

Step 4. Record each answer in one row. Use these columns:

Step 5. Calculate weekly. Your mention rate is the number of Yes answers in "Named?" divided by all runs. With 10 questions and 3 runs, that is out of 30. Do the same for citations, and count how often each rival and each source appears.

Step 6. Read it as a trend. With 30 answers a week, a change of one or two answers is noise. Look at four-week averages. Our AI visibility report template shows how to present the results to a boss or client.

When to move to a paid tool: when you want more than about 20 questions, more than one AI tool, daily checks, or rival share of voice without counting by hand. By then you will also know which features matter to you.

What to do with the data#

Tracking only helps if it leads to action. The data usually points to one of four fixes:

• You are missing from answers about your category. Look at the sources Perplexity cites for those questions. If they are review sites, directories, Reddit threads or YouTube videos, that is where you need to be described accurately. Our guide to why AI recommends your competitor walks through this.
• You are named but not cited. Perplexity knows you but prefers other pages. Publish a clear page that answers the exact question, with facts, prices or specifications where you can share them.
• You are cited but not named. Your page is useful, but it does not say clearly who you are and what you offer. Make your company name, category and location obvious near the top.
• Rivals win the same sources every week. That tells you which publications, lists and communities matter most in your market.

Because Perplexity's citations overlap with Google's top results more than other assistants' do, ordinary search work, such as ranking for the questions buyers ask, helps here too. See AEO vs SEO vs GEO for how the two fit together.

Check that Perplexity can read your site#

No tool can show you in Perplexity if Perplexity cannot reach your pages. Check this once before you start tracking.

• PerplexityBot is the crawler that finds pages for Perplexity's search results. Perplexity says it is not used to train AI models, and recommends allowing it in your robots.txt file if you want to appear. [Perplexity crawlers]
• Perplexity-User fetches a page when a person asks about it. Because a person requested it, Perplexity says this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt.
• Changes are not instant. Perplexity says changes to robots.txt can take up to 24 hours to take effect.
• Check your firewall. In August 2025, Cloudflare accused Perplexity of crawling sites that had blocked it, and Perplexity disputed the claims. [TechCrunch, 2025] If your site uses Cloudflare or a similar service, check whether its AI crawler settings block PerplexityBot without you knowing.

Our guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt shows how to check and what to allow. On the separate question of llms.txt, see does llms.txt help AI visibility.

Can you pay to appear in Perplexity?#

Not in a way that replaces organic visibility. Perplexity began testing ads in late 2024, but in February 2026 it was reported to be winding down advertising, citing user trust. [Campaign US, 2026] Search Engine Land reported that Perplexity stopped testing ads and had no plans to bring them back, though it could revisit. [Search Engine Land, 2026]

For online shops there is a separate route: since November 2025, PayPal merchants can be discovered in Perplexity and US shoppers can check out inside the chat. [PayPal, 2025] This matters for ecommerce, not for most B2B companies. For everyone else, being named depends on what the web says about you, which is exactly what a tracking tool measures.

Sources: Perplexity, How Perplexity works · Perplexity API FAQ · Perplexity, Sonar API retirement · Perplexity, location filter · Perplexity, crawlers · Perplexity, memory · Perplexity, Deep Research · Ahrefs, most-cited domains in Perplexity · Ahrefs, AI search overlap with Google · MediaPost, Perplexity query volume · Search Engine Journal, SparkToro study · ThriveStack, AI visibility tracking variance · LLM Pulse, Perplexity Tremor index · Deepak Gupta, AI citation drift · Engadget, Comet free · TechCrunch, Cloudflare and Perplexity · Campaign US, Perplexity ads · Search Engine Land, Perplexity ads · PayPal, Instant Buy · Vendor pricing pages linked in each tool section, checked 26 October 2026.