OtterlyAI vs Rankscale, converted to AI answers per dollar on figures both of them publish

These two are the easiest pair in the category to compare properly, because between them they publish every number the conversion needs. Read on 31 October 2026, otterly.ai/pricing sells search prompts, 15 on Lite at $29 a month, 100 on Standard at $189 and 400 on Premium at $489, with daily tracking frequency on all three and four engines included. On the same day rankscale.ai/pricing sells credits and prints what each credit buys, with its own comparison table converting them for you: 120 credits equals up to 480 answers from AI engines on Essentials, 1,200 equals 4,800 on Pro, 3,000 equals 12,000 on Pro+, 5,500 equals 22,000 on Growth and 12,000 equals 48,000 on Enterprise.

The conversion, with the assumptions stated

The arithmetic below is ours, not either vendor's. For Otterly we assume the four engines its tiers include, checked daily, over a 30 day month, which is what its own page publishes as the tracking frequency. For Rankscale we use the answer counts printed in its own comparison table. Monthly prices, not annual.

Plan	Published price a month	AI answers a month	Cost per answer, our arithmetic
Rankscale Essentials, yearly only	$20, or $17 yearly	480, published	About 4.2 cents
Rankscale Pro	$99	4,800, published	About 2.1 cents
Rankscale Pro+	$229	12,000, published	About 1.9 cents
Rankscale Growth	$385	22,000, published	About 1.8 cents
Rankscale Enterprise	$780	48,000, published	About 1.6 cents
Otterly Lite	$29	About 1,800, our arithmetic	About 1.6 cents
Otterly Standard	$189	About 12,000, our arithmetic	About 1.6 cents
Otterly Premium	$489	About 48,000, our arithmetic	About 1.0 cent

On that measure Otterly is the cheaper vendor at every comparable size, and the gap widens as the plan gets bigger. Read it with the condition attached, because the condition is the whole argument: those Otterly answers are on four engines, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot, and its own page states that Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are extra add ons at every self serve tier. Rankscale's answer counts are spendable on 17 or more engines with no add on, and its own calculator prices them individually.

Where Rankscale's credits stop being equivalent

A credit is not a fixed amount of answer at Rankscale, and it says so. Its credit calculator publishes a weight per engine: Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini at 0.25 each, DeepSeek at 1 and Anthropic Claude at 2, and its FAQ states that a query typically costs 0.25 credits per engine per prompt. The four to one conversion in the table above, 1,200 credits to 4,800 answers, assumes the 0.25 engines throughout.

Put Claude into the set and the arithmetic changes sharply. A prompt run on Claude costs eight times what the same prompt costs on ChatGPT, so a buyer tracking 50 questions on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude is spending 2.75 credits a run rather than 1, and Pro's 1,200 credits now cover roughly 436 runs a month rather than 1,200. Rankscale publishes a calculator on the page so you can do this before buying, which is more than most of this category offers. It is still the step where a plan that looked sufficient stops being sufficient.

What each one gives you beyond the answer count

Published line	OtterlyAI	Rankscale
Containers for separate brands	1 workspace on Lite, unlimited from Standard	Brand dashboard slots, 2, 10, 25, 50, 100 by tier, extra slots addable in app
People	Unlimited team members on every tier	Team workspaces with unlimited seats
Unused capacity	100 extra search prompts at $99	Credit rollover, up to two times and up to three times by tier, top up any time
Scheduling	Daily	Hourly to monthly
Your own pages	1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 GEO URL audits a month	10, 50, 100 and 200 page audits a month by tier
White label	Not published	White labelled dashboard links, with API
Reporting pipes	Data Studio connector, 2,000 or 5,000 API and MCP requests	REST API from Pro+, MCP, Data Studio integration, CSV and Sheets exports
Annual terms	15 per cent off, $25, $160, $422	Save 15 per cent, $17, $84, $195, $327, $663

The two decisions this actually comes down to

First, how many engines you need and which ones. If four engines without Gemini or Claude answer your market, Otterly is cheaper per answer at every size and it also publishes the larger allowance for auditing your own URLs by an order of magnitude. If you need Gemini or Claude measured, Rankscale includes them in the same credit pool and Otterly sells them as priced add ons, published further down its own page at $9 a month for Gemini on Lite, $59 on Standard and $149 on Premium, and $29, $109 and $439 for Claude. Those figures are small enough at the bottom of the ladder to leave Otterly ahead on cost per answer and large enough at the top to close the gap.

Second, whether your checking rate is even. Rankscale's hourly to monthly scheduling plus credit rollover is built for a question set where ten questions matter daily and two hundred matter quarterly. Otterly's daily frequency on a fixed prompt count is built for a set where everything matters at the same rate. Neither is better; they are shaped for different reporting cycles, and reading your own cycle first is what makes this a ten minute decision instead of a three week one.

What this conversion does to us, said plainly

We sell in this category and we publish both halves of the same conversion, so run it on us. Our pricing page, read 31 October 2026, publishes GEO Growth at $299 a month with 100 buyer questions and 1,200 scheduled answers, and GEO Scale at $599 with 300 questions and 3,500 scheduled answers. Divide those the way the table above divides theirs and we are far more expensive per AI answer than either vendor on this page. That is the correct reading of those two numbers and we are not going to dress it up.

The reason is on the same page rather than behind it. Those plans also include 20 pages a month written and published on Growth and 40 on Scale, five engines rather than four with Claude included at 3 credits against 1, and the work of changing what the engines say rather than only recording it. A buyer who wants a monitor and will do the writing themselves is buying the wrong thing from us, and Otterly at $29 or Rankscale at $20 on an annual term is the honest recommendation for that buyer. Rankscale also publishes two things we do not, a public changelog and unlimited seats against our published one login with full access.

If Otterly is the side you are leaning towards, the companion read is Otterly alternatives for a small team or on a budget.

Questions about converting prompts and credits into the same unit

Where did the 1,800 answers on Otterly Lite come from

Our arithmetic on its published figures: 15 search prompts on 4 included engines at the daily tracking frequency its page states, over a 30 day month. Otterly does not publish a monthly answer cap, so this is a derived number and it is labelled that way everywhere it appears here.

Does Rankscale publish its own conversion

Yes. Its comparison table prints Monthly credits and Answers from AI engines, up to, side by side for all five tiers, which is where 480, 4,800, 12,000, 22,000 and 48,000 come from. The four to one relationship holds only for engines weighted at 0.25.

Which one is cheaper if I must have Claude

Both publish a figure, so compare them directly. Rankscale puts Claude inside the credit pool at a stated weight of 2 against 0.25. Otterly sells Claude as an add on priced at $29 a month on Lite, $109 on Standard and $439 on Premium. At the Lite end $29 plus $29 is cheaper than Rankscale Pro at $99; at the Premium end $489 plus $439 is not. A figure that is not published cannot be compared, so this answers the version of the question that the two pages can settle.

Can I carry unused capacity forward at either vendor

Rankscale publishes credit rollover of up to two times and up to three times depending on tier, and top ups that stay active through the subscription. Otterly publishes no rollover and instead publishes the price of more capacity, 100 extra search prompts for $99.

Which has more brand containers for an agency

Otterly from $189, on unlimited workspaces. Rankscale publishes a specific count per tier, 50 slots on Growth at $385 with white labelled dashboard links and an agency programme. If you need exactly ten client containers, Rankscale Pro publishes ten; if you need forty, compare Otterly Standard against Rankscale Growth and read the engine list rather than the slot count.

Is hourly checking worth paying for

It is worth it for the handful of questions where an answer changing matters the same day, usually a launch, a recall or a competitor campaign. Rankscale is the only vendor in this pair that publishes hourly as an option, and the sensible use is a small subset of your prompts, with the rest set to weekly or monthly so the credits last.

How we know this

We read the assistants rather than guessing what they do. In our own audit of 1,260 saved answers from ChatGPT and Gemini across the United States, the United Kingdom and India, 82.0% of every citation landed on a site the business itself owned, and review directories took 0.7%. Counted as one domain per reading, 16,516 of 20,143.

That is the whole asymmetry: the pages you own are the pages an assistant quotes back to a buyer. See the dated readings and the method on our proof page.

Find out whether assistants name your business, on your own domain and your own buying questions.

By Aditya Goel, Founder, AI Knows Us. Reviewed 1 November 2026.