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Otterly.AI vs Ahrefs Brand Radar: both of them price the engine, and one of them charges eight times more for Claude

Read on 20 October 2026, Ahrefs publishes a check as its unit and states that Claude consumes eight checks per update. Otterly sells Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as add ons.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 20 October 2026

Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if you already pay for Ahrefs, because its custom prompt quota is included free from the Lite plan upward and its index of 492 million prompts gives you a market view with no setup at all. Choose Otterly.AI if AI answers are the measurement and you want a tool whose whole ladder is built around them, with daily tracking on every tier and unlimited brands and competitors. The field that separates them is not the feature list. It is that both of these companies make the engine a billing line, and they do it in two different ways.

The unit, in each company's own words

Ahrefs publishes a check. From ahrefs.com/brand-radar on 20 October 2026, HTTP 200 to a desktop browser: "Each prompt uses 1 check per platform, location and update", and beneath the plan table, "Each prompt is checked daily on every selected platform. 5 prompts on 1 platform = 150 checks/mo. Claude consumes 8 checks per update." The included custom prompt quota is published per Ahrefs plan: 5 a day on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced and from 83 on Enterprise, with monthly check allowances of 150, 300, 600 and from 2,500. The same page states "Free for every paid Ahrefs Lite plan and above" and that the cadence is choosable per platform, daily, weekly or monthly.

Otterly publishes a search prompt. From otterly.ai/pricing/ the same day, which answered HTTP 403 to a Chrome on Windows request and HTTP 200 to a Safari on macOS request minutes later: three tiers at 15, 100 and 400 search prompts with enterprise starting from 1,000, "Tracking of 4 AI Search Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, MS Copilot" on every published tier, and "Claude, Google AI-Mode, Gemini as extra Add-ons". Daily tracking frequency, unlimited team members, unlimited brands and competitors, unlimited countries and languages, with extra prompt capacity sold in blocks of a hundred.

So at Ahrefs the engine changes how fast you spend a fixed allowance, and Claude spends it eight times quicker than the others. At Otterly the engine changes the invoice, because three of the seven it tracks sit outside the published tiers. Same question, two different answers, and both are printed on the vendor's own page where you can check them.

What our own readings say about the two names

On 16 October 2026 we put 630 buying questions to ChatGPT and Gemini across three markets, took 1,260 readings and saved the answer text. Counting one naming per reading, Ahrefs appeared in the answer text of 253 readings and Otterly.AI in 265. That is the closest pair of totals in our whole set.

442 readings named at least one. 76 named both in the same answer, 189 named Otterly alone and 177 named Ahrefs alone. Gemini produced 48 of the joint appearances and ChatGPT 28. Two names of almost equal frequency that the assistants put together in only one answer in six is a useful signal: they are usually offered as answers to different questions rather than as rivals.

A name in answer text is a different event from a domain in a source list, and the two are counted and reported apart here.

The criterion, and what this page will not claim

We make a competing product, we have tested neither of these, and there is no score on this page. The criterion is each company's published metering: the unit, what one unit buys, and which engines change its cost. That is checkable by you on two pages in ten minutes and it is the field most likely to produce a surprise on the second invoice. One platform in this category now meters two different things at once, which is a pattern worth knowing before you compare any two quotes, and the SE Ranking plans metered in keywords a day and prompts a day is the clearest published example of it.

The two documents side by side

FieldOtterly.AIAhrefs Brand Radar
The unitA search prompt per tierA check: one prompt, one platform, one location, one update
Engine cost ruleThree engines are paid add ons on every published tierClaude consumes eight checks per update; the rest consume one
Included at entry15 search prompts, four engines, daily5 custom prompts a day and 150 checks a month on a paid Ahrefs Lite plan
Engines namedSeven: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, ClaudeIndex covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; custom prompts add Claude
Cadence controlDaily on every tierDaily, weekly or monthly, chosen per platform
Market view without setupPrompt research and a query fan out toolAn index of 492 million prompts modelled from its own keyword database
Who it is sold toAnyone, as a standalone product with its own tiersExisting paid Ahrefs customers, as part of the platform
Data outAPI and MCP access from the middle tier, Data Studio connectorExport is named on its own page as part of the workflow; confirm the format

No price figures from either company appear here. Both publish their own and those pages stay current in a way a copy on ours would not.

Do the arithmetic before the demo

Take Ahrefs' own example and extend it. Five prompts on one platform checked daily is 150 checks a month, which is exactly the Lite allowance. Add a second platform and the same five prompts cost 300. Add Claude as one of them and that platform alone costs eight times a normal one per update. The allowance is generous for a narrow question and it runs out quickly across several engines, which is why the page also offers larger check based packages.

Then take Otterly's. A hundred search prompts on the four included engines, refreshed daily, is a large number of saved answers a month, and adding Gemini and Claude is a quote question rather than an allowance question. Both routes are honest. They just put the decision in different places: one in your usage, one in your contract.

Who each one suits

  • You already pay for Ahrefs. Start with the included quota. Five prompts a day is enough to learn the shape of your own problem before spending anything new.
  • Your buyers ask Claude. Price it on both sides. It is an add on at Otterly and an eight times check multiplier at Ahrefs, and either way it is the most expensive surface in this comparison.
  • You want a market view with no setup. Brand Radar's index answers who gets mentioned in your market from 492 million prompts it has already run. Its own page notes this is best once your brand already appears in AI answers.
  • Your niche is too specific for any index. Both companies answer this with prompts you write. Ahrefs calls that Custom Prompts and says the data starts accumulating from the moment you begin. Otterly's whole ladder is built on prompts you define.
  • You report on many brands. Otterly publishes unlimited brands and competitors on every tier. For Ahrefs, the constraint is the daily prompt quota attached to your plan.

Questions buyers ask when choosing between Otterly.AI and Ahrefs Brand Radar

Is Brand Radar really free?

Its page states that custom prompts are free for every paid Ahrefs Lite plan and above, with a daily quota of 5, 10 or 20 depending on the plan. It is included in a subscription you are already paying for rather than free on its own, and larger check based packages are sold on top.

Why does Claude cost eight checks?

Ahrefs states the ratio on its own page and does not explain it there, so the reason is a question for them. What matters to a buyer is the arithmetic: one Claude platform on a prompt consumes the same allowance as eight of another platform, so a Claude heavy prompt set changes which plan you need.

Which one covers more engines?

Otterly's features page enumerates seven. Ahrefs' index covers six and its custom prompts add Claude for seven. The counts are close enough that the useful comparison is the per engine cost rather than the length of the list.

Is a 403 from otterly.ai a block on AI crawlers?

No. The same host returned 403 to a Chrome on Windows request and 200 with the full document to a Safari on macOS request within minutes on 20 October 2026. A refusal counts as a refusal when it repeats across different agents, different headers and a separate session hours later.

Why does this page not print the prices?

This site records prices and sends you to the vendor's own page for them. The metering rules are the durable part of a pricing document, so those are what we publish, with the date we read them.

The number both of these documents are really about

Every tool in this category eventually sells you the same thing: saved AI answers, on named engines, at a stated refresh rate. Once you convert two quotes into that one number, a check and a search prompt stop being different languages. We take those readings on a schedule for a living, we publish the counts behind ours including the run where our own name appeared zero times in 1,260 readings, and we think any vendor here should hand you the answer text that produced its chart.

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