Best AI visibility tool for a small business: the entry tiers run from 15 tracked questions to 125, and a small business needs about eight

For a small business the useful question is not which tool is best, it is how small a commitment the market will sell you, because the cheapest tiers here are already bigger than the problem. Otterly's entry plan publishes 15 search prompts. Depra's publishes 16 prompt slots. Peec's publishes 50 prompts and Semrush's entry card renders "50 prompts to track daily", with its own FAQ naming 25 on the AI Visibility Toolkit. Scrunch's Core publishes 125 unique prompts and 5,000 responses a month. A business with one location and one list of services has about eight questions a buyer actually types before choosing, so the first decision is whether to buy at all this quarter.

Write the eight questions first, because they decide everything after

Not keywords. The sentences a customer says out loud to an assistant before picking somebody: who is good at this in my town, what does it cost, which of these two is better for my situation, is this firm any good, what should I ask before hiring one, can somebody do this by Friday, what goes wrong with this job, and who do people recommend. Write your eight versions of those, with your own business name absent from every one.

That list is the measurement. It also tells you immediately which vendors are large enough and which are much larger than you need, and it is the thing to hand any vendor when you ask what a month costs.

The criterion: the smallest published commitment, and the free route to the same answer

Vendor	Smallest published commitment	Free route first?
Otterly.AI	15 search prompts, 4 engines, daily, 1 workspace, 3 recommendations a week	Free trial
Depra AI	16 prompt slots, 1,600 checks a month, 4 engines, 1 project, 3 competitors, any of 40 markets	"Start 7 days free", "no account needed"
Semrush	25 prompts on its AI Visibility Toolkit per its own FAQ; its entry card renders 50 prompts to track daily	7-day free trial, plus a free AI Visibility Checker tool
Peec AI	50 prompts, "Choose 3 models", daily, 1 project, unlimited users	Sign up from the page
Rankscale	Credits, with unlimited search terms and execution limited only by credits	"Try Pro for Free"
Profound	50 prompts run daily for 7 days, then a demo	The trial is the only published tier
Scrunch	125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month	"Start 7-day free trial"
AI Knows Us	100 watched questions on all five AI apps, weekly, on our lowest plan that checks AI apps (GEO Growth); our cheapest plan publishes 12 pages a month and no AI checks	A free scan of 5 buyer questions on 2 AI apps, no account needed

The thing a small business should check before anything else, and it is not a tool

Ask your eight questions on two surfaces and look at what the answers cite. In our own measurement of citations across these categories, the sources assistants reach for are very often somebody else's property: directories, listings, review sites, local publications and association pages. For a small business that is the most actionable fact in this whole subject, because it means the work is often not on your website at all. It is on the pages that already rank for your town and your trade, and on making sure what they say about you is correct and current.

A tool is worth money once you have done that and want to know whether it changed anything. It is worth much less when the answer to "why does nobody name us" is sitting in a directory listing with the wrong opening hours.

So who should a small business buy, if anybody

• Nobody, this quarter, if your eight questions come back naming directories you can fix yourself. Do the fixing, re-read in a month, and buy later with a dated before reading in hand.
• Otterly.AI if you want the smallest paid commitment with four surfaces and daily checking. 15 prompts covers eight questions with room to spare, and unlimited team members means your bookkeeper can look at it too.
• Depra AI if you are in India, because seven days free with no card is the lowest-risk start in this set, the ladder is in rupees with GST stated, and its entry tier includes CSV download and the list of websites the engines cited, which is the half a small business can act on.
• Semrush if you already pay for SEO tooling, since adding this to a subscription you have beats a second login and a second invoice.
• Peec AI if you expect to grow into several markets, since its entry tier carries 50 prompts and its ladder adds multi-country.
• Rankscale if you would rather pay for what you run than for a ceiling, because a small question set checked monthly consumes very little and its per-engine weights are published so you can work it out first.
• AI Knows Us if what you want is the pages written as well as the reading taken, and the honest caveats are that we publish one full-access login, check weekly rather than daily, and have no checkout, so starting means talking to us.
• Scrunch and Profound are both built for larger teams. Scrunch's entry allowance is eight times what you need, and Profound's published route after seven days is a demo.

A small business in a competitive city is often a different problem again, where a handful of domains hold the whole field, and the version of this question for a trades business is ranked on which engine you ask. That page carries no durable inbound link from anywhere on this site, which is true of 147 of our live pages in this category, counted across 2,054 stored bodies.

Questions a small business owner asks about these tools

Is eight questions really enough?

For one location and one service list, yes, and it is better than thirty because you will actually read eight. The count should grow when you add a location or a language, since both multiply directly, and not because a plan offers more.

What is the cheapest way to find out whether assistants name me?

Ask them. Open two assistants, put your eight questions in without your business name, and write down who gets named and which websites are cited. Our own free scan asks 5 buyer questions on 2 AI apps and needs no account, if you would rather have it collected for you. Either route gives you a dated starting point, which is what any later claim of improvement has to be measured against.

How often should a small business check?

Monthly is enough to see change, and weekly only matters while you are testing a specific fix. Most of these vendors check daily by default, which is more about reassurance than about information at this size, and it is one reason the cheapest tier is usually fine.

Do I need all the surfaces?

Start with the two your customers mention. Four vendors here sell four surfaces at the bottom of the ladder and one sells three, which is plenty. Worth knowing that at four of eight vendors the surface list changes with the tier, so read the plan rather than the homepage.

Should a small business pay somebody to do this instead?

If the fixes are on other people's properties, which for a local business they often are, then the useful purchase is somebody's time rather than a dashboard. Ask any provider for a dated reading of your eight questions before and after, and judge them on whether they can produce one.

What should I never buy on?

A single visibility score with no question list behind it. Ask which questions produced it, in which market, on which surfaces, and on what date. A score without those four things cannot be reproduced next month, and reproducing it next month is the entire point.

The cheapest useful thing you can do about this is free

Write your eight questions this evening, ask them on two assistants, and note two columns: who got named, and which websites were cited. If your own site is absent and a directory is present, your next job is that directory and it costs nothing but an afternoon. If you are named and want to keep it that way, buy the smallest tier that covers eight questions and read it monthly. Either way the eight questions came first, and no vendor on this page will write them for you better than you can.