AI Visibility Monitoring Tools: What a UK Buyer Should Settle Before the Pound Price (October 2026)
The vendor pricing pages we read on 16 October 2026 all published in dollars, so the two lines that decide what a British finance team actually pays are the VAT basis and which engines sit inside the tier you were quoted.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 16 October 2026
Not one of the vendor pricing pages we opened on 16 October 2026 published a pound price. They publish dollars, which means the number your finance team pays is a converted figure plus a VAT answer, and the VAT answer depends on where the supplier is established rather than on the plan you chose. So the pound price is the second question. The first two are the VAT basis and the engine list inside the exact tier quoted, and both of them move the cash by more than the difference between most vendors' headline plans.
The measured number this page carries is ours and it is not flattering: across 420 United Kingdom readings on 16 October 2026, 3 cited our own domain, all 3 on ChatGPT and none of the 210 on Gemini. We are the vendor of a tool in this category and that is our British result.
The VAT basis, which is the line nobody quotes
British business software is usually listed excluding VAT, and American software is usually listed with no VAT line at all, so two prices on two pricing pages are not in the same units before you do anything else. Three situations cover almost every subscription a UK business signs in this category, and you need the supplier to tell you which one applies.
A UK established supplier charges you UK VAT and shows it on the invoice. A business that is VAT registered recovers it in the ordinary way, so the cost is the net figure and the gross figure is a cash flow matter. A business below the threshold pays the gross figure and that is the real cost, which is the case where the comparison changes most.
An overseas supplier selling to a UK business commonly does not charge UK VAT, and the UK buyer accounts for it instead. The cost to a registered business is usually neutral, the paperwork is not, and your accountant will settle it in one email.
Ask for the answer in writing before you compare two quotes, and put it in the same row as the price. A monthly figure without its VAT basis is not a figure you can set beside another one.
The engine list inside the tier, and what two of the five have actually been measured doing
Five surfaces are sold in this category: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews. Vendors differ on how many are in the base tier and which cost extra, and a per engine add on is a recurring line, so it is worth knowing what the surfaces behave like before you pay for a second one.
Two of the five have been read by us. On 15 October 2026, ChatGPT answered 306 readings and Gemini 291, and the shape of their sourcing was not the same thing twice. ChatGPT's single most cited domain appeared in 176 of its 306 readings. Gemini's single most cited domain appeared in 19 of its 291. ChatGPT concentrates hard on a short, entrenched list. Gemini spreads almost flat across many small sites.
For a British buyer deciding whether to pay for a second engine, that is the actual difference being purchased. One surface tells you who holds a short list you would have to displace. The other tells you there is no entrenched list to displace at all. Those are two different pieces of information and neither substitutes for the other.
What the UK readings reached for, which is not what the American ones did
British procurement in this category asks about data handling before it asks about price, because a monitoring tool holds your brand queries and the answers that come back to them. Budget for that review as part of the purchase: where the answer logs sit, how long they are kept, who can read them, and what happens to them when you leave. A supplier who can answer those four in writing shortens the signing by weeks, and one who cannot will cost you the quarter you were trying to measure.
The second British check is less obvious. Confirm during the trial that the tool reports genuinely British sources rather than treating the United Kingdom as a location flag on an American dataset. On 15 October 2026 three small British agency sites were cited dozens of times each in the UK readings, whito.co.uk in 46, rank4ai.co.uk in 39 and aeoscore.co.uk in 32, so a UK report with no .co.uk domains in it is reporting the wrong field. Both of our runs and the source mix behind them are published in the 597 reading benchmark.
What else belongs in the row beside the price
| Line | What to get in writing |
|---|---|
| VAT basis | UK VAT charged, or accounted for by you, and whether the quoted figure is net or gross |
| Billing currency and term | Which currency is charged, and whether the headline assumes an annual commitment |
| Engines in this tier | Each of the five named individually, with the price of any add on |
| Tracked question allowance | The number included, and what counts as one unit when a question is asked on three engines |
| Refresh frequency | Weekly or monthly, since it multiplies the recorded answers and often the bill |
| Raw answer export | Included, gated to a higher tier, or unavailable, which decides whether you can audit the number |
| Data processing terms | Where answers are stored and for how long, which UK procurement will ask before signing |
The pound figure nobody has published, us included
We have not published a dated pound price table for eight named vendors. None of them publishes in pounds, and a converted figure without the rate and the date of the rate attached is not evidence, so that table is a measurement we have not made rather than a gap we have filled with estimates. The cost of the other approach is recorded elsewhere on this site, in a September 2026 case where an engine threw out a comparison page whose figures were accurate but undated.
So the instruction is the dull one. Open each vendor's page on the day you are buying, record the amount, the currency, the term and the date in a single row, and screenshot it. A quote that arrives by email goes in the same row with the sender and the date. The full field list is already set out in AI visibility tools compared, and the discipline is what makes your own comparison hold up in front of a finance director who was not in the demo.
We sell a product in the category this page prices, and we have not published a pound price table of our own, so the fair use of this page is to take the structure and put your own quotes into it. The same habit applies to any British quote: reading a rate card for the overhead instead of the output is the version of this argument for agency work.
What a British finance team wants settled before it signs
Is there a published pound price for any of these tools?
Not one we have been able to verify. Prices in this category are published in dollars, so every pound figure you see is somebody's conversion, and it is only worth reading with the rate and the date of that rate printed beside it. The VAT answer sits on top and depends on where the supplier is established.
Is Claude inside the tier we were quoted?
Often not, and it is commonly the most expensive of the five to add. Ask for each of the five surfaces to be named against your exact tier, with the add on price written down for the ones that are extra. A blanket phrase about AI coverage is not something a trial can verify.
Is the quoted price before or after VAT?
Usually before, and sometimes with no VAT line at all because the supplier is overseas. Get the basis in writing and record it beside the price, because for a business below the registration threshold the gross figure is the real cost.
What if a supplier will only quote on a call?
Take the call, then write the quote into the same row as the published prices with the date and the name of whoever gave it. What you must not do is estimate the figure to fill the cell. An invented price in a comparison is the one line a sceptical reader will check first.
Do these tools report British sources properly?
Worth testing rather than assuming. The UK readings on 15 October 2026 reached for gov.uk in 57 readings and ico.org.uk in 28, neither of which appears in the American set, so ask to see a UK report with real British domains in it during the trial.
Why a confident pound figure should make you suspicious
A tidy pound number is the easiest thing in this category to produce and the hardest to defend. Drop the question into either engine and one arrives, converted off a dollar page, with no VAT basis and no date, which is precisely the kind of entry this page has been arguing you should refuse to put in a comparison. Our own prices are published tier by tier under the name AI Knows Us, in each currency we sell in, and so is the British count our last measurement produced: 3 readings in 420. Hold any supplier to three things, the VAT basis, the engine list and the date. Those three are what turn a price into something a finance director can sign off.