If you are budgeting for AI search tracking, you need to compare the cost of the same workload across products. Products in this category charge for six different units, and the plan names tell you nothing. This page converts them into one number you can compare.
The six meters
Every AI search product bills on one of these, and the first job is identifying which.
| Meter | What it counts | Examples, read 2026-09-05 |
|---|---|---|
| Prompts on plan | How many prompts you may track, at a fixed frequency | Profound 50 and 100; Peec 50, 150, 350; Otterly 15, 100, 400 |
| Prompts per day | A daily entitlement that does not accumulate | Semrush 50, 100, 200; SE Ranking 100, 250 |
| Checks | One prompt, one platform, one location | Ahrefs, 2,500 for $50, 7,000 for $100, 25,000 for $250 |
| Credits | A pool consumed by prompts times engines times frequency | Rankscale, at 0.75 credits per run |
| Credits per year | An annual pool | Conductor, 2,500 a year on its Growth tier |
| Calls | One item, one provider, one day | OppAlerts, a weekly allowance |
A plan advertising "100 prompts" without stating the engine count and the frequency has not quoted a workload. One hundred prompts on one engine weekly and one hundred on three engines daily differ by a factor of twenty-one.
Step 1: write down your actual workload
Three numbers, and be honest about the third.
- Prompts. How many questions you need tracked.
- Engines. How many assistants must appear in the report.
- Frequency. How often the answer must be refreshed before anyone would act differently.
Multiply them for a monthly figure. One hundred prompts, three engines, weekly, is 100 × 3 × 4.3, or about 1,290 collections a month. The same set daily is about 9,000.
Frequency is where money goes, and it is the number teams inflate. Ask what decision changes if a figure is a week old. For most reporting the answer is none.
Step 2: convert to one unit
Use the check as the common denominator, because Ahrefs publishes a rate for it and defines it precisely: tracking one prompt, on one platform, in one location uses one check. Its packages run $50 for 2,500, $100 for 7,000 and $250 for 25,000, with overage at $0.020, $0.015 and $0.010 a check.
That gives a market rate of roughly one to two cents per collection, which is a reference for comparing every quote.
Converting the other meters:
- Prompts on plan: multiply by the engines included and by the runs per month. Profound Growth's 100 prompts across 3 engines, refreshed daily, is about 9,000 collections in a 30-day month.
- Prompts per day: multiply by 30. Semrush Starter's 50 daily prompts is about 1,500 a month, and unused days do not carry forward.
- Credits: apply the vendor's own rate. Rankscale publishes 50 prompts at 0.75 credits a run, weekly, as 162.5 credits a month.
- Credits per year: divide by twelve. Conductor's 2,500 a year is about 208 a month, which is a small figure beside any self-serve tracker and worth spotting before a contract.
- Calls: multiply the weekly figure by 4.3.
Step 3: add the costs that are not in the meter
Three of these routinely change which product is cheapest.
Seats. Ahrefs includes one user and charges $40, $60 or $80 a month for each additional one. Frase charges $29 a seat. Scrunch Core includes five licenses; Profound Starter includes one. Peec, Rankscale, AccuRanker, Talkwalker, Hunter and OppAlerts charge nothing per user.
For a team of five this can exceed the difference in tracking capacity. Price every quote for your real headcount rather than for one login.
Engines behind a tier. Profound Starter tracks ChatGPT only, and reaching three engines means moving to a $399 plan. Scrunch Core covers four, with nine at Enterprise. Otterly lists the same four on every plan, so its engine count costs nothing extra. Peec sells additional models as an add-on rather than a tier jump.
Capabilities sold separately. Ahrefs plans include only 5, 10 or 20 tracked AI prompts, so real tracking means Brand Radar from $199 a month plus a package on top of the plan. Surfer sells content and tracking as two lines at $99 and $158.
Step 4: check the units are comparable at all
Two mistakes produce false comparisons.
A mention allowance is not a collection allowance. Monitoring products like Brand24 sell mentions returned rather than searches run, so the bill scales with how much is said about you. Two companies on identical plans can have opposite experiences. Estimate your volume before choosing a tier.
Source and model counts are not comparable. Talkwalker states 150 million data sources, Mention a billion, Serpstat 140 AI models. These are counted differently by each vendor and a source is not a document. Ask instead whether the ten publications or the three engines you need are covered.
Step 5: ask the two questions nobody publishes
Both change the value of everything above, and no competitor pricing page read for this site answers either.
- How many times is one prompt executed per collection, and is the reported result one answer or an aggregate? Answers vary between runs. A single run per period is a noisy observation presented as a measurement.
- Does a failed collection consume the allowance? If it does, a bad week costs money as well as data.
Get both in writing. A vendor answering them clearly is usually the better purchase even at a higher headline price.
The OppAlerts answers, so you can hold this page to its own standard: each prompt runs once per provider per scheduled collection and the report stores that one answer, not an aggregate. Credits are checked when the weekly assignment is saved rather than spent call by call, so a failed collection carries no separate charge and no separate refund.
A worked comparison
Take a team wanting 200 prompts across 3 engines, twice a week: about 5,160 collections a month.
- Ahrefs: above the 2,500-check package, so the $100 package at 7,000 checks, plus Brand Radar from $199, plus a plan from $129. Roughly $428 before extra seats.
- Peec: 200 prompts exceeds the 150-prompt tier, so the 350-prompt plan, at daily frequency whether or not you need it. Seats free.
- Semrush: 200 daily prompts is the $549 Advanced plan, and it includes keyword tracking and site auditing you may already be paying for elsewhere.
- Rankscale: 200 × 3 × 8.6 runs a month at 0.75 credits is about 3,870 credits, against published plans at $99 and $385.
The ranking changes with team size, with whether you need the extras, and with whether daily collection is required. That is the point of doing the arithmetic rather than comparing plan names.
Before approving a subscription, calculate your intended workload using the vendor's actual billing unit. You can then compare costs against the research you plan to run.