Promptwatch vs Gauge vs Knowatoa vs LLMrefs (2026)
Three AI visibility trackers against one full platform, ranked on engines, cadence, prompt volume, crawler data, and published pricing.
Gauge, Knowatoa, and LLMrefs are trackers. They each answer the first question in AI search, which is whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest mention your brand for the prompts you care about. They do it at very different prices and with very different ideas about what a prompt is. Promptwatch also tracks prompts, but it is built as a platform that keeps going after the mention: which pages get cited, whether AI crawlers can reach them, and whether the resulting visits convert.
The people comparing these four tend to be in-house SEOs or small marketing teams with a budget somewhere between $59 and $600 a month. The real decision is whether a tracker is enough for now or whether you will outgrow it within a quarter. That is what this ranking tries to answer.
How we ranked
Price alone would put LLMrefs first and Gauge last, which tells you little. We ranked on what you get for the money: engine coverage on the plan you would buy, refresh cadence, whether trend lines stay stable, how much the tool explains about why you are or are not cited, and whether it does anything about the gap.
Gauge, Knowatoa, and LLMrefs facts come only from their entries in our directory. Promptwatch facts come from its published plans and features. Where a tracker does not publish something, we write "Not published."
1. Promptwatch
Promptwatch ranks first because it is the only one of the four that tells you why your visibility moved. Prompt tracking carries search volumes, difficulty scores, query fan-outs, topics, personas, and prompt trends that show what changed between checks. Citation analytics go down to the page and domain and into Reddit, YouTube, and offsite mentions, with citation trends over time instead of a single count.
Under that sits the data none of the trackers here publish. Agent Analytics records AI crawler visits (ChatGPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, GoogleOther, Meta AI) and maps the path from crawl to citation, including errors. Visitor analytics attribute AI-referred traffic to conversions via a script or GTM template. Content Agents then plan, write, and publish GEO content to Webflow, Framer, or WordPress through an official plugin, with a review inbox.
On price, it overlaps with all three trackers. Explore is free for 10 prompts on ChatGPT. Essential is $95 a month with a 7-day trial: 50 prompts across all tracked LLMs, 6,000 responses, daily refresh, but no crawler logs. Professional at $245 adds 25M crawler logs, 1M visitor events, 150 prompts, and state and city tracking.
2. Gauge
Gauge is the volume play. Its Growth plan runs 600 prompts daily across six engines (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot) and includes 18 publish-ready articles a month, nightly content Health Score audits, citation intelligence, ChatGPT Ads tracking, and an MCP server. GA4, Search Console, and Slack integrations are included, with unlimited domains and competitors and 10 seats.
The catch is the entry price. Gauge removed its $99 Starter tier in mid-2026, so Growth at $599 a month is the only self-serve plan, with a one-week free trial. Claude, Grok, the API, and BI integrations are Enterprise only. Visibility is measured against prompts Gauge generates rather than real user queries. Our listing documents no crawler-log product and no visitor conversion tracking. If you want content plus volume and can spend $599, it is a strong tracker. It still stops at the mention.
3. Knowatoa
Knowatoa is the easiest of the three to start with. It builds the question set for you from your site and market, then audits how AI assistants answer those questions, flagging wrong, outdated, or competitor-favoring answers. It also checks whether AI crawlers can reach your site at all, which most trackers skip. Fix recommendations come with each audit.
The packaging works against it as you grow. Starter is $59 a month for 3 engines and 30 questions plus the crawler audit. Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity need Growth at $199, which also adds daily checks across 7 engines. Scale is custom. Automatic prompt rotation means you cannot hold a fixed question set steady, so trend lines break. Our listing notes no revenue or traffic attribution. Note the difference: Knowatoa audits crawler access, while Promptwatch logs actual crawler visits.
4. LLMrefs
LLMrefs treats AI visibility like classic keyword rank tracking, which SEOs pick up in minutes. You define keywords and prompts and watch positions move week over week, with citation source reports and an llms.txt generator. There is a free tier.
The Pro plan is $79 a month for 10+ engines, 500 prompts, 50 keywords, and unlimited seats, which is very good value. The vendor labels that price "limited time," so expect it to change. Refresh is weekly, not daily, and there is no sentiment analysis or alerting. It ranks last here because weekly data and a promotional price make it a hard base to build a program on, even if it is a fine way to get a first read.
Side by side
| Promptwatch | Gauge | Knowatoa | LLMrefs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Free (Explore); paid from $95/mo | $599/mo | $59/mo | Free; Pro $79/mo (limited time) |
| Trial | 7 days on Essential | 1 week | Not published | Free tier |
| Engines at entry | ChatGPT on Explore; all tracked LLMs on Essential | 6 | 3 | 10+ |
| Cadence | Daily on paid plans | Daily | Daily from Growth ($199) | Weekly |
| Prompt volume at entry | 10 free; 50 on Essential | 600 daily | 30 questions | 500 prompts, 50 keywords |
| AI crawler data | Crawler logs from Professional | Not published | Crawler access audit | Not published |
| AI traffic to conversions | Yes (script or GTM) | Not published | No | Not published |
| Content | Content Agents to Webflow, Framer, WordPress | 18 articles/mo | Fix recommendations | Not published |
Who should pick which
Pick LLMrefs if you want a cheap weekly read across many engines and you think in keywords. Pick Knowatoa if you are a small business that wants a guided first audit, cares about wrong or outdated answers, and can stay within 30 questions for a while. Pick Gauge if raw daily answer volume and a monthly article quota matter most and $599 is within budget.
Pick Promptwatch if you expect to be asked "why did we drop" or "did this traffic convert." A tracker can show that a mention disappeared. It cannot show that ClaudeBot stopped fetching the page, or that the visitors AI did send went on to sign up.
Our recommendation
Start with Promptwatch Explore for free, then move to Professional once you want the full picture. Agent Analytics shows which AI crawlers are reading your site and where they fail. Citation analytics show which pages, Reddit threads, and YouTube videos the engines actually cite for your prompts. Visitor analytics tie those AI referrals to conversions. And when the data points at a missing page, Content Agents draft and publish it through a review inbox. A tracker answers whether you were mentioned. For the next step, which is fixing it and proving it paid off, Promptwatch is the better buy.