Method note. Scored against Ahrefs' own product documentation, checked 2026-09-29: help.ahrefs.com/what-is-brand-radar and ahrefs.com/brand-radar. The seven headings below are the rubric buyers actually use when they shortlist an AI-visibility platform: data accuracy, model coverage, agent analytics, LLM optimization, prompt volume, citation analysis, and metrics.
Two forces are why this rubric matters now. G2's April 2026 buyer behavior research found 51% of B2B software buyers now start research with an AI chatbot rather than Google, and BrightEdge data from February 2026 shows AI Overviews now trigger on 48% of all searches, growing 58% year-over-year. A brand-monitoring add-on bolted onto an SEO suite can still miss what buyers actually ask an AI engine.
This page scores Ahrefs on citation data as well as its feature list. The Machine Relations Index release mri_score_v2.0+2026-09-29+3d7cca280bd7 covers 18,368 monitored answer runs across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity from May 10 to September 29, 2026. Ahrefs's domain was cited in 33 of them, a 0.18% citation rate and #478 of 25,105 observed domains — well behind Semrush's 118 citations and Profound's 60, though still ahead of Conductor's 21. But the aggregate number hides where Ahrefs actually lands, which is on exactly the question buyers ask when they are building a shortlist:
| Buyer question shape | Cited runs | Observed runs | Citation rate | Standing among cited sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best tools | 16 | 142 | 11.27% | 16th of 421 |
| Is it worth it | 5 | 166 | 3.01% | 55th of 529 |
| Problem-first research | 4 | 161 | 2.48% | 37th of 505 |
| How buyers choose | 3 | 142 | 2.11% | 78th of 527 |
| Comparisons | 2 | 161 | 1.24% | 110th of 457 |
| Top lists | 1 | 101 | 0.99% | 196th of 558 |
ahrefs.com's strongest single result is "best tools" — 16th of 421 sources engines cite on that question shape, a materially stronger position than its 1.24% showing on head-to-head comparisons. In the separate 792-answer ledger of AI-visibility questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity that tracks how often engines name a vendor by name rather than cite its domain, engines named Ahrefs in 84 answers — behind Profound's 162 and Semrush's 134, ahead of Conductor's 16 (see the full Semrush review). Ahrefs shows up when engines list AI-visibility tools, less often when they compare two tools directly.
Brand Radar's AI Visibility Index runs on a static database of 405+ million search-backed prompts, per Ahrefs' own help documentation — derived from Google's "People Also Ask" questions and Ahrefs' keyword database, not synthetic prompts written by a model. That is the opposite tradeoff from Semrush's weekly-refreshed synthetic Prompt Database: real search demand behind every prompt, but Ahrefs does not publish a refresh cadence for the Index itself. Custom prompts are the exception — those can be checked as frequently as daily, user-configured per prompt.
Seven platforms named in the AI Visibility Index: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Grok — the widest named list in this comparison, ahead of Conductor's eight-minus-Copilot, Semrush's five, and Profound's nine only at enterprise tier. Two caveats sit inside that list. Ahrefs' own documentation states it is "temporarily unable to gather new data" for Grok following a policy change, and Claude is not in the Index at all — it is available only through custom prompts, tracked via API against Claude Sonnet 4.6 with web search, at a cost of 8 checks per check run.
Nothing in Brand Radar's documented feature set analyzes what a downstream AI agent does after it retrieves a page — the same gap found in Semrush and Conductor. Ahrefs' broader suite includes a Site Audit product that reports "good and bad bots crawling your website," but that is a separate general-SEO tool, not a Brand Radar feature, and it audits crawl access rather than agent behavior post-retrieval.
Ahrefs sells a separate "AI Content Helper" inside its main suite, described in its own documentation only as a tool to "improve your content with AI." Unlike Semrush's Content Toolkit, which scores a draft against factors Semrush's research found correlated with AI citation, nothing in Ahrefs' public documentation ties AI Content Helper's recommendations to Brand Radar's own citation data. The two products are not documented as talking to each other.
The largest raw prompt database in this comparison by a wide margin: 405+ million search-backed prompts across seven platforms, with no cap on the number of brands or domains a user can analyze, per Ahrefs' own documentation. Custom-prompt tracking is priced separately and scales further: $50/month for 2,500 checks, $100/month for 7,000, $250/month for 25,000, with per-check overage dropping from $0.020 to $0.015 at the higher tier. That undercuts Semrush's per-domain prompt caps and matches or beats Conductor's generated-prompt volume at a fraction of the cost.
Brand Radar separates Mentions (a brand name appearing in AI answer text) from Citations (an AI system linking to a specific page or domain as a source) as two distinct tracked metrics, per Ahrefs' own product page — more granular than Semrush's combined mentions-and-citations figure. A "cited pages" view, built on Ahrefs' own web index, shows which specific URLs are being cited. What it does not do, and what Conductor's does: tie sentiment to the specific cited source. Sentiment is absent from Brand Radar's documented metric list entirely.
AI Share of Voice, Mentions, Citations and Estimated Impressions (visibility weighted by the real search volume behind each cited prompt) sit at the core. Brand Radar then goes wider than any other tool in this comparison: Search Demand and Web Visibility as adjacent signals, plus YouTube, Reddit and TikTok visibility tracking, free while in beta. No other platform reviewed here tracks video or social surfaces as part of the same AI-visibility product.
Where Ahrefs stands overall: the largest prompt database and the broadest named platform list of any tool in this comparison, a citation-versus-mention split that beats Semrush's combined metric, and the only product here that extends visibility tracking into YouTube, Reddit and TikTok. Its rubric weaknesses are real: Grok data collection is currently paused, Claude requires a separate custom-prompt setup, there is no agent-behavior analytics beyond a general crawler audit, and its citation-share showing on head-to-head comparison questions (1.24%) lags well behind its "best tools" showing (11.27%).
SparkToro/Datos data shows 58.5% of US searches end without a click, jumping to 72% when AI Overviews appear according to a randomized field experiment published on SSRN. Pew Research found only 8% of users click a traditional link when an AI summary appears, and Seer Interactive's analysis of 25 million impressions found organic CTR dropped 61% when an AI Overview appears. Whatever platform you choose needs to measure both, and, per the rubric above, whether it can trace a citation back to the placement that earned it.
The four alternatives below are the platforms buyers most often weigh against Ahrefs' Brand Radar, ordered by how often AI engines name them on AI-visibility questions.
Profound is the vendor AI engines name most often in this category, in 162 of the 792 ledger answers against Ahrefs's 84. Its Enterprise plan covers nine answer engines, adds log-based agent analytics with crawler verification, and includes a prompt-volume dataset Profound describes as more than 1.5 billion conversations. Pricing is custom beyond a free seven-day trial. See the full Profound review and alternatives.
Best For: Teams that want dedicated agent-behavior analytics and the deepest AI-visibility feature set, and that can absorb custom enterprise pricing.
Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is named in 134 of the 792 ledger answers, second only to Profound, and semrush.com out-cites ahrefs.com on every buyer question shape but "best tools." It tracks five engines (no Claude, no Copilot) on a weekly refresh, starting at $99/month standalone. See the full Semrush review and alternatives.
Best For: Teams already running Semrush for SEO that want AI-visibility tracking bundled into a suite they already pay for.
Conductor tracks eight named engines via API-first collection and ties sentiment to the specific cited source — a granularity neither Ahrefs nor Semrush documents. It starts at a $26,800/year contract floor, and engines name it far less often than Ahrefs in practice (16 of 792). See the full Conductor review and alternatives.
Best For: Enterprise teams that need citation-to-sentiment granularity and API-first data collection, and that can justify a five-figure annual contract.
BrightEdge is a mature enterprise SEO platform with AI Catalyst layered on for AI Overview monitoring. Enterprise pricing averages $127K/year according to industry benchmarks, and like Ahrefs it does not attribute a citation to the earned-media placement behind it. See the full BrightEdge vs. Conductor comparison.
Best For: Large enterprises managing multiple brands or international sites that need traditional rank tracking and AI Overview monitoring in one dashboard.
| Platform | Starting Price | Model Coverage | Citation Analysis | Named in AI answers, of 792 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/month standalone (single index) | 7 named platforms; Grok paused, Claude custom-prompt only | Mentions vs. citations split, no sentiment | 84 |
| Profound | Custom, free 7-day trial | 9 engines on Enterprise | Sources, co-citation, uncited-prompt detection | 162 |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/domain/month, standalone | 5 engines (no Claude, Copilot) | Combined mentions-and-citations metric | 134 |
| Conductor | $26.8K/year floor, $48.9K median | 8 engines, 160+ countries | Mentions vs. citations, sentiment tied to source | 16 |
| BrightEdge | ~$12K/year entry, avg $127K/year enterprise | AI Catalyst (AI Overviews) | Basic AI Overview monitoring | 15 |
Ahrefs wins the scale argument: the largest prompt database of any tool here, the widest named platform list, and metrics that reach beyond AI chat into YouTube, Reddit and TikTok. What a tracker — Ahrefs included — measures is whether your brand shows up in an AI answer, not why. Brand Radar's own "cited pages" view can show you which URL got cited; nothing in its documentation can tell you that a specific Forbes placement or press mention is what put that URL in front of the model in the first place.
The same holds for your brand. A tracker can show which third-party sources your category's answers are built from. Getting your company into those sources is earned media: coverage in the publications and reviews engines already cite. Machine Relations is the discipline that treats measurement and earned coverage as one system. AuthorityTech is the earned-media practice that applies it for clients.
A single AI index is $199/month standalone, per Ahrefs' own Brand Radar page; all platforms together are $699/month, which includes 2,500 custom-prompt checks. Brand Radar is also bundled into core Ahrefs plans with smaller AI-prompt allowances: Lite $129/month, Standard $249/month, Advanced $449/month, and Enterprise from $1,499/month. Custom-prompt-only packages start at $50/month for 2,500 checks.
Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Grok, per Ahrefs' own Brand Radar documentation. Grok data collection is currently paused following a policy change on Grok's side. Claude is tracked only through custom prompts, via API against Claude Sonnet 4.6 with web search, not inside the core AI Visibility Index.
No. Brand Radar's "cited pages" view shows which of your pages an AI system linked to as a source, but nothing in its documentation connects that citation back to the specific earned-media placement, journalist, or outlet that produced it. What any tracker can show is which third-party sources engines cite in your category and whether your brand appears in them.
On raw prompt-database scale, nothing in this comparison matches it: 405+ million search-backed prompts across seven platforms at $199 to $699/month. On citation share, Ahrefs trails Profound and Semrush overall but leads on "best tools" questions specifically. A team that needs agent-behavior analytics, sentiment tied to a cited source, or guaranteed Claude and Grok coverage will find Profound or Conductor go further, at a materially higher price.
Machine Relations is the discipline of earning AI citations and recommendations for a brand by making it legible, retrievable, and credible inside AI-driven discovery systems. It is not a replacement for a platform like Ahrefs Brand Radar; it addresses the step upstream of citation tracking: earning a place in the third-party sources engines already cite.
Published 2026-09-29: scored against Ahrefs' own current product documentation on the seven-point buyer rubric (data accuracy, model coverage, agent analytics, LLM optimization, prompt volume, citation analysis, metrics), with Machine Relations Index citation data added the same day.
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