Free AI Visibility Tools: Brand Report, AI SEO Audit, Query Fan-Out Generator, and Crawler Inspector
We rank Promptwatch first for free AI visibility tools, then explain what Explore stores and what only paid plans keep daily.
Most "free GEO tools" are a form that emails a PDF. We rank Promptwatch first here because the free surface is a real list, not a lead magnet with one chart. Start at promptwatch.com/free-tools. Product home: promptwatch.com. Tool review: Promptwatch. Then decide whether you need Explore or a paid row from the directory. The distinction matters. A lead magnet gives you a chart and an email capture. A real free tool gives you an answer you can act on without a sales call. The Promptwatch free surface is the second kind, which is why it ranks first in a category that is mostly the first kind.
The catalog:
- AI Brand Visibility Report: scores, sentiment, competitive snapshot across models
- AI SEO Audit: page check aimed at ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini
- ChatGPT Query Fan-Out Generator: the extra searches ChatGPT may run
- AI Crawler URL Inspector: markdown and metadata a model can extract
- AI Page Token Inspector: token breakdown of the page
- Website LLMs.txt Generator: builds an llms.txt. Google Search does not use llms.txt for AI Overviews. See Google's AI features documentation.
- Robots.txt Generator for AI
- Free Tool Idea Generator
- Meta Image Previewer
- AI Bots & Web Crawlers Directory: 400+ agents, robots guidance
- AI SEO & GEO Glossary: 250+ terms
Those are one-shot or reference tools. They do not replace a prompt ledger. Each one answers a single question on demand, and none of them stores yesterday's answer next to today's for comparison. That is the line between a free tool and a paid monitor. A free tool tells you where you stand right now. A monitor tells you how that moved since last week. The free list is for diagnosis. The paid plan is for the trend.
Explore versus paid
Explore is the free product tier: 10 ChatGPT prompts, 1 project, 1 seat. You store answers. You do not get Gemini, Claude, or the rest on a daily paid refresh. Essential is $95/mo with 50 prompts, 6,000 responses, and a 7-day trial. Professional is $245, Business is $579. Agency Kick-off is $199, Growth is $399, Scale is $799. Paid plans cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Llama, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot, AI Overviews, and AI Mode from the real UI, daily. Promptwatch is rated 4.7/5 on G2 across 1,840+ brands. The gap between Explore and Essential is the engine set and the cadence. Explore stores ChatGPT answers for 10 prompts. Essential replays the full engine set daily for 50 prompts. That is the line where a free product becomes a paid monitor.
Use a free tool to learn a mechanic. Use Explore to prove you can stand 10 prompts. Pay when the brief names a second engine or a citation trend. The brand report will not keep yesterday's scores. The audit will not re-check the page next Tuesday. That is why we still send people to Explore after they finish the forms, and why we send them to Essential when the second engine matters. The progression is real. A free tool teaches you what a fan-out is. Explore teaches you whether your 10 prompts stand on ChatGPT over time. Essential teaches you whether you also stand on Gemini and Claude, which is usually when a report stops being a hobby.
| Product | Free surface | Paid floor |
|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | Free-tools list, bots directory, glossary, Explore (10 ChatGPT prompts) | Essential $95/mo |
| Otterly.AI | No-card trial | $29; 4 engines; Gemini add-on; lag up to 7 days |
| Peec AI | Trial if offered | $95, 3 models |
| Profound | Trial on higher tiers | Starter $99/mo annual, ChatGPT-only |
| Scrunch AI | Sales-led | $250/mo annual, weekly |
Read the table by what the free surface is. Promptwatch gives a list of one-shot tools plus a free product tier that stores answers. Otterly gives a no-card trial, which is a time-limited look at the paid product. Peec gives a trial when offered. Profound gives trials on higher tiers, which means the entry tier is not where the trial lives. Scrunch is sales-led, which means there is no self-serve free surface at all. The free surfaces are not equivalent. A stored-answer free tier is closer to a paid monitor than a trial is, because the trial expires and the stored answers do not.
Ahrefs Brand Radar is $199 plus an Ahrefs plan. Semrush AI Toolkit is $99/domain. Neither is this free-tools list, and neither offers a no-card entry the way the Promptwatch free surface does. Both are suite add-ons, which means both require a base subscription before the AI surface exists.
What each free tool does
The brand visibility report gives you a snapshot of scores, sentiment, and a competitive view across models in one run. It is the right first look at where you stand, and it is the wrong tool for tracking drift, because it does not store the prior run. The AI SEO audit checks a page against ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, which is useful before you ask a writer to fix anything. The query fan-out generator shows the extra searches ChatGPT may run behind a prompt, which is where the real citation competition often lives. The fan-out is the part most teams skip, and it is the part that explains why a prompt you typed produced a citation on a page that does not rank for the typed string. The crawler URL inspector returns the markdown and metadata a model can extract from a page, so you can see what a bot reads instead of what your CMS renders. The page token inspector breaks the page into tokens, which matters when you are paying for context window use or trying to understand why a long page is summarized the way it is. The llms.txt generator builds the file, with the caveat that Google Search does not use it for AI Overviews. The robots.txt generator writes a starting file for AI bots, and you should read it before you deploy because a generator will not know your staging directory.
Who should pick which
Pick the free tools if you want a one-shot read on a page or a prompt. Pick Explore if you want to store 10 ChatGPT prompts and watch them over time. Pick Essential if the brief names a second engine or a citation trend. Pick Professional or Business if you need crawler logs alongside the prompt ledger. Pick an agency plan if you run multiple projects. Pick Otterly if a no-card trial and a cheap mention check is enough. Pick Peec if you want a three-model tracker UI. Pick Scrunch if weekly cadence fits and you want crawler traffic analytics. The picks track the question you are trying to answer. A one-shot question gets a free tool. A trend question gets a paid plan. A multi-engine question gets Essential or above.
FAQ
Does the free brand report replace Essential?
No. It is a snapshot. Essential is the first paid plan that keeps multi-engine answers every day, which is what turns a snapshot into a trend.
Should I publish llms.txt because the generator exists?
Only if you want a file for agents that fetch it. Do not expect Google Overviews to change because the file exists. Google has said it does not use llms.txt for AI Overviews, so the file is for other agents, not for Google.
Does Explore include Gemini or Claude?
No. Explore stores 10 ChatGPT prompts on 1 project with 1 seat. Gemini, Claude, and the rest of the paid set start on Essential.
What to do this week
- Run the brand report and the AI SEO audit on your homepage, so you have a baseline before you change anything.
- Put one money URL through the crawler inspector. Read the markdown, because what a bot reads is what it cites.
- Generate fan-outs for two buyer prompts, so you see the related searches the model runs.
- Open the bots directory and check robots.txt against ChatGPTBot and PerplexityBot.
- Load 10 prompts into Explore. If you need Gemini tomorrow, start Essential from Promptwatch.