11 Best Conductor Alternatives in 2026 (Pricing and AEO Compared)

Conductor alternatives are worth a look if a five-figure contract, a sales-led rollout or AI search credits that only start on the Growth plan don't fit your team. Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform with no public prices, and Vendr puts its median contract at $49,020 a year.

These 10 Conductor alternatives, plus Orchly, range from like-for-like enterprise suites to AI search tools you can buy today. Prices checked in November 2026.

Conductor alternatives compared

Prices from each vendor's pricing page, or Vendr's estimates where none are published, checked November 2026. Monthly unless noted. AI engines are those on the entry plan that includes AI tracking.

Tool	Starting price	AI engines on entry plan	SEO data	Acts on findings	Setup
Conductor	Custom (Vendr median $49,020/year)	None on Essentials; from Growth: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Grok, Copilot, PerplexityFrom Growth	Full enterprise suite	Writing Assistant, AgentStack	Sales-led, free trial
Orchly	$49/month	ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, with Gemini, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Copilot as add-ons; also tracks Meta AI and DeepSeek+5 add-ons	Rank tracking, Search Console, GA4	Agents run the work	Self-serve, 7-day trial
BrightEdge	Custom (Vendr median $50,000/year)	ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini	Full enterprise suite	Site agents, Agent Edge	Sales-led, demo
seoClarity	From $2,500/month	ArcAI add-on: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, Copilot, AI Overviews, Claude, DeepSeek, Grok+ DeepSeek, add-on	Full enterprise suite	ClarityAutomate, content briefs	Sales-led, demo
Botify	Custom (Vendr median $74,200/year)	AI Visibility option: ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity	Technical SEO and logs	Edge fixes, AI bot pages	Sales-led, demo
Semrush Enterprise AIO	Custom	ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek+ DeepSeek	Semrush data	Forecasts, content audits	Sales-led
Profound	Custom	9 engines on Enterprise: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews, Exa+ DeepSeek, Exa	No	AI Marketer agents	7-day trial, 3 engines
Ahrefs	$129/month; Brand Radar from $199	Brand Radar: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot	Large keyword and backlink index	Reports only	Self-serve, no trial
SE Ranking	$129/month; AI add-on $89	AI Search add-on: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT; SE Visible adds Gemini	Full SEO suite	Reports only	Self-serve, 14-day trial
Search Atlas	$99/month; AI tracking from $199	ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode on Growth; Copilot, Perplexity and Claude on Pro+3 on Pro	Full SEO suite	OTTO deploys fixes	Self-serve, 7-day trial
Scrunch	$250/month	ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot	No	AXP on Enterprise	7-day trial
AthenaHQ	Free; paid from $295/month	ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot on the free plan; 11 models on Starter	No	Action Center, content agent	Free plan

1. Orchly: best Conductor alternative to track and improve AI visibility at a fraction of the cost

Orchly is an agentic AI search optimization platform. It tracks your brand every day in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with Gemini, Google AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Microsoft Copilot as paid add-ons (it also tracks Meta AI and DeepSeek), and its agents run on their own, on a schedule.

They analyze your AI visibility, your competitors, your SEO and your Search Console and GA4 data, decide what to write and which pages to refresh, and write and refresh them in your brand voice. They keep Brand Brain up to date, find the sites, people and Reddit threads worth reaching, run the outreach and draft the replies, and audit your site for technical SEO and AI search issues with the fixes ranked. You decide whether each agent runs on its own or waits for your approval.

Conductor gives big teams a system of record for SEO and AEO, plus agents you assemble through AgentStack. Orchly's agents run the loop end to end out of the box, from $49 a month with a 7-day free trial and no implementation project. You get far less enterprise SEO data than Conductor in exchange.

AI search tracking across eight engines

• Daily tracking. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews every day, with Gemini, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Copilot as paid add-ons (Orchly also tracks Meta AI and DeepSeek).
• The metrics you already report. AI Visibility Score, Share of Voice, sentiment, average position and a competitor leaderboard, with prompts tagged branded or non-branded and by intent.
• Why AI picks a source. The Citations tab groups every cited page, and Mention Gap shows pages that name your competitors but not you.

• What AI gets wrong. Fact check compares AI answers to your approved facts in Brand Brain and marks each claim Supported or Contradicted.

Google data next to AI data

Conductor users are used to seeing SEO and AEO side by side. Orchly keeps that. It tracks keywords daily by country and device, next to Search Console and GA4 clicks, conversions and revenue.

• One page, every signal. Page 360 shows a URL's Search Console, GA4 and AI visibility data together, and every tracked page gets SEO, AEO and GEO scores.
• AI crawler visits. On Pro, you can see GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot visits next to human referrals from AI, once you connect your hosting or CDN.

Agents that run on their own

• Content Agent. Runs on a schedule, uses lost prompts, citation gaps and decaying Search Console pages to decide what to write and refresh, drafts in your brand voice, and publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Framer, Wix, Sanity or Ghost, directly or after your approval.

• Activation Agent. Finds the publishers, people, Reddit threads and YouTube videos AI cites, runs the outreach from your Gmail, Zoho or SMTP inbox and drafts the Reddit replies, directly or after your approval.
• Site Health Agent. Audits your pages for technical SEO and AI search issues and ranks the fixes by priority.
• Custom agents. On Pro, you can build your own agents on a schedule, webhook or chat trigger. Here's how Orchly's agents work.

Where Orchly falls short

• Not an enterprise SEO data suite. Our keyword and backlink data is smaller than Semrush, Ahrefs or SE Ranking, and there's nothing like Conductor's 60,000+ keyword Enterprise tier. Large SEO programs may want to pair Orchly with one of those.
• Engines cost extra. Gemini, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Copilot are paid add-ons on every plan. Conductor includes all of them in its AI search tracking, from Growth up.

Orchly pricing

• Essential: $49/month for 25 prompts, 20 articles, 1 site and 1 user
• Pro: $125/month for 100 prompts, 50 articles, 3 sites and 5 users, with AI traffic analytics, custom agents and white-label reports
• Enterprise: custom, with a customer success manager
• There's a 7-day free trial, and yearly billing saves 25%.

See Orchly pricing or start a free trial.

2. BrightEdge: best like-for-like enterprise suite

BrightEdge is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform that adds AI Catalyst tracking and a set of AI agent tools to its long-running SEO suite, which suits Fortune 500 teams that want the closest like-for-like swap for Conductor. We haven't used BrightEdge ourselves, so this section is based on its product pages, press releases, Vendr data and user reviews.

AI Catalyst tracks mentions, citations and sentiment in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini. Archived copies of the page from February and August 2026 named only the first three.

Most of its 2026 releases are about how AI agents read your site. AI Hyper Cube and AI Agent Insights, which reads your log files to see how agents from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini reach your pages, launched on March 10. Agent Edge followed on August 26 and serves verified AI agents a lighter version of each page, such as Markdown, at the CDN.

Buying it looks a lot like buying Conductor. There's no public price, and Vendr puts the median contract at $50,000 a year across 46 purchases, against $49,020 for Conductor.

Key features

• AI Catalyst. Mentions, citations and sentiment in ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini.
• AI Agent Insights. Log-based reports on how AI agents crawl your site, and where their requests fail.
• Agent Edge. Recognizes verified AI agents at the CDN and serves them a token-light page.
• Site Agents Suite. The renamed Autopilot: agents for internal links, schema markup and publishing approved title, meta and H1 changes to your CMS.
• BrightEdge MCP. BrightEdge data inside ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and other AI tools.

Where it falls short

• No public price, and the Vendr median is about the same as Conductor's.
• AI Catalyst doesn't name Claude, Copilot or Grok, which Conductor tracks.
• Packaging for Hyper Cube, Agent Insights and Agent Edge isn't published, so ask what your contract includes.

User reviews

“It stays up to date on trends like AI.” (Source)

“DataCube X, AI Catalyst and the AI automations make it a strong competitor to any SEO tool. But the credit-based pricing gets expensive fast when you track keywords across many countries and engines.” (Source)

“At over $55,000 a year, the key features it had over Semrush, Moz and Ahrefs didn't work at all, and power users found the interface slow.” (Source)

Pricing

• Platform: custom annual contracts through sales, with no published price
• Vendr estimate: median $50,000 a year, based on 46 purchases
• Demos only, with no self-serve plan.

3. seoClarity: best enterprise suite with published starting prices

seoClarity is an enterprise SEO platform with an AI search module, Clarity ArcAI, and published starting prices, which suits enterprise SEO teams that want Conductor's depth and a figure to start budgeting from. We haven't used seoClarity, so this section draws on its pricing page, ArcAI pages, announcements and user reviews.

Packages start at $2,500 a month for Research & Content, $3,200 for Technical SEO and $4,500 for Enterprise. A footnote says those prices are representative as of October 2022, but a February 2026 archived copy shows the same figures. ArcAI is an optional add-on with no published price.

ArcAI tracks nine engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode, Copilot, AI Overviews, Claude, DeepSeek and Grok. ArcAI 3.0 arrived on April 1, 2026 with AI shopping analysis, Accuracy & Narrative Control, prompt research from clickstream data, agents that write content briefs, and an MCP server.

In July it added LiveWire, which connects Claude and ChatGPT to seoClarity data over MCP and adds plugins for Excel, Google Sheets and Looker Studio.

Key features

• ArcAI Visibility. Nine AI engines, including Claude, DeepSeek and Grok.
• Accuracy & Narrative Control. Flags factual or qualitative errors about your brand in AI answers, with a workflow to correct them through your own content.
• ArcAI Shopping. Share of shelf in AI shopping results.
• ClarityAutomate. Rolls out on-page SEO changes and tests without a developer queue.
• LiveWire. seoClarity data in Claude, ChatGPT, Excel, Google Sheets and Looker Studio.

Where it falls short

• Five figures a year before ArcAI, which is quoted on top.
• The agentic workflow stops at briefs, so your team still writes and ships the pages.
• None of the user reviews we found mention ArcAI.

User reviews

“It replaced several tools I used to jump between. Now everything is in one place and easy to find.” (Source)

“ClarityAutomate lets us ship changes quickly, test and learn from them, and prioritize our dev requests.” (Source)

“Reporting is right up there with Semrush and Ahrefs, without their low export limits, but the interface is dated and charts lag when you hover over them.” (Source)

Pricing

• Research & Content: from $2,500/month
• Technical SEO: from $3,200/month, with unlimited crawl pages and log file analysis
• Enterprise: from $4,500/month, with 5,000+ keyword queries and the top support tier
• Rankings: custom, from 2,000 keyword queries. ArcAI is quoted separately, and multi-year deals get discounts.

4. Botify: best for very large technical and ecommerce sites

Botify is an enterprise technical SEO and AI search platform built around crawling, log analysis and fixes served at the edge, which suits ecommerce sites and publishers with millions of URLs. We haven't used Botify, so this section draws on its support docs, release notes, Vendr data and user reviews.

AI Visibility tracks ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity. Gemini and AI Overviews came in the April 2026 release, and since September you can refresh daily instead of weekly. It's an option on every plan, limited by your plan's answer budget.

Most of the year went into the bot side. LogAnalyzer added Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot and Google-Agent in April, and since June SpeedWorkers can serve a Markdown version of your pages to chosen AI bots. AgenticCatalog, announced in March as Agentic Feeds, went live for all customers in July and builds product feeds for AI shopping agents.

It's also the most expensive tool here. Vendr puts the median contract at $74,200 a year.

Key features

• AI Visibility. ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity, with up to 10 competitor sets.
• LogAnalyzer. How search and AI bots crawl your site, down to the URL.
• SpeedWorkers. Pre-renders pages for bots and can serve Markdown to AI crawlers.
• PageWorkers. On-page changes at the edge, now for AI bots too, with a visual editor since September 2026.
• AgenticCatalog. AI-ready product feeds for shopping agents.
• Botify MCP. Botify data in Claude and ChatGPT, with draft fixes sent back to Botify.

Where it falls short

• The highest Vendr median on this list.
• No public price, free trial or self-serve plan.
• No REST API for AI Visibility data; the MCP server is the way in.

User reviews

The reviews we could find on Capterra and TrustRadius date from 2019 to 2021, before Botify's AI features.

“The depth of the reporting is what sets it apart from tools that only audit sites.” (Source)

“There are a ton of filters, and it takes time to learn which one to use.” (Source)

“The crawler's analysis is detailed and professional, but it's expensive for startups and small agencies, even on the lowest plan.” (Source)

Pricing

• Platform: custom, through sales
• Vendr estimate: median $74,200 a year, with a range of $48,000 to $150,000
• AI Visibility is an option on all plans, sized by an answer budget.

5. Semrush Enterprise AIO: best for engine coverage on top of SEO data

Semrush Enterprise AIO is the enterprise AI visibility product from Semrush, an Adobe company since April 28, 2026, and tracks nine AI engines next to Semrush's keyword and backlink data, which suits enterprise teams that already run their SEO in Semrush. We haven't used Enterprise AIO, so its details come from Semrush's pricing page and docs.

Its engine list lines up with Conductor's: ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek. Semrush says enterprise setups track anywhere from 500 to 15,000 prompts a month.

We have used the self-serve AI Visibility Toolkit, which is the cheaper way in. At $99 a month per domain, its 25 prompts filled up quickly, and Claude, Grok and DeepSeek weren't on it at all. Those only come with Enterprise AIO.

Key features

• Nine AI engines. ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek.
• Forecasting and ROI attribution. Projects which prompts are worth the effort and ties visibility to results.
• Content audits. Audits and optimization actions for your pages.
• Prompt research. Semrush's prompt database with global coverage.
• Semrush Enterprise SEO next to it, with up to 25,000 keywords tracked daily.

Where it falls short

• Custom quote through sales, like Conductor.
• The self-serve Toolkit covers five engines, without Claude, Grok, Copilot or DeepSeek.
• Prompt allowances aren't published; Semrush quotes 500 to 15,000 a month depending on setup.

User reviews

We couldn't find independent user reviews of Enterprise AIO itself. The reviews on G2 and Product Hunt cover the self-serve Toolkit or Semrush in general.

Pricing

• Enterprise AIO: custom, through sales
• AI Visibility Toolkit: $99/month per domain for 25 prompts, billed annually
• Semrush One: from $199/month, with 50 prompts and the SEO toolkit

6. Profound: best for AI-only visibility depth

Profound is an enterprise AI visibility platform with nine engines, Prompt Volumes and AI Marketer agents, which suits large brands that want a dedicated AEO platform next to the SEO suite they already run.

We tested it on the 7-day trial. Profound chose 50 prompts for our industry and we couldn't change them, and only ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews ran, so we came away understanding the product better than our own market.

There's no SEO suite here at all. A Conductor team would keep its rank tracking, keyword research and audits in another tool and use Profound for the AI side.

Brands now buy through sales. Profound dropped its $99 and $399 self-serve brand plans in September 2026, the same month it raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation. Since October, AI Marketer agents can be set up from a plain-language request, they draw on credit wallets, and they also work inside Microsoft Teams.

Key features

• Nine engines on Enterprise. ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews and Exa.
• Prompt Volumes. Demand estimates from more than 1.5 billion prompts in 35 countries, refreshed weekly.
• AI Marketer. Content agents that use your brand context from Context Manager.
• Agent Analytics. AI crawler visits, with Search Console data in Pages since September 2026.
• Moz partnership. Announced October 9, 2026.

Where it falls short

• No rank tracker, keyword research or site audit.
• No self-serve plan for brands.
• The trial runs 50 preset prompts on three engines.
• No Grok since Exa replaced it in September 2026.

User reviews

“We use it as an AI visibility navigator: how often and in what context our brand comes up, and how we compare with other BMW dealers.” (Source)

“It only covers a select number of LLMs.” (Source)

“The metrics and terms are so new that finding where things live in the product takes a while.” (Source)

Pricing

• Brands: custom Enterprise pricing through sales
• Agencies: a separate self-serve Agency Growth plan
• Trial: 7 days, with 50 preset prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews

7. Ahrefs: best for SEO research data at a lower price

Ahrefs is an SEO research suite with one of the largest keyword and backlink indexes, plus Brand Radar for AI visibility, which suits teams leaving Conductor that mostly need research data at a published price. Brand Radar has no trial, so we haven't used it, and this section is based on Ahrefs' pricing page, help docs and G2 reviews.

Plans run from $129 a month for Lite to $1,499 a month for Enterprise, a fraction of a typical Conductor contract.

Brand Radar works differently from Conductor's prompt tracking. Instead of your own prompts, it looks your brand up across more than 496 million synthetic prompts built from search data, on AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Grok tracking is paused, and Claude only shows up in custom prompts.

It costs $199 a month for one AI platform or $699 for all of them.

Key features

• Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer. Backlink, keyword and competitor research.
• Brand Radar. 496M+ prompts on six AI platforms, with no setup.
• Custom prompts. Your own prompts on top, with 2,500 checks on the $699 plan and packs from $50.
• History. AI Overviews data from August 2024 and chatbots from May 2025.
• Site Audit and Rank Tracker inside the same subscription.

Where it falls short

• Prompts are modeled from search data, not your buyers' own questions, unless you pay for custom checks.
• Grok is paused, and Claude is limited to custom prompts.
• The chatbot index refreshes monthly.
• No content agents or client-ready Brand Radar reports.

User reviews

“Clean, simple and accurate, which makes keyword research fast. The plan limits on date ranges and keyword counts get in the way.” (Source)

“The AIO queries feature is still in beta, so the data may be a little inaccurate.” (Source)

“It turns broad SEO work into clear priorities.” (Source)

Pricing

• Lite: $129/month; Standard: $249/month; Advanced: $449/month
• Enterprise: $1,499/month
• Brand Radar: $199/month per AI platform, or $699/month for all with 2,500 custom checks
• Yearly billing saves 20%. There's no free trial.

8. SE Ranking: best budget SEO suite with AI tracking

SE Ranking is a self-serve SEO suite for rank tracking, audits, backlinks and keyword research, with AI search tracking through an add-on and its SE Visible dashboard, which suits mid-size teams and agencies that want to cut a Conductor-sized bill.

Core costs $129 a month, or $103.20 billed yearly, for 10 projects, 2,000 keywords and 100 prompts tracked daily. The AI Search add-on, $89 a month, tracks AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT and includes SE Visible with 200 prompts.

We used SE Visible on its trial. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews daily, and the prompts are pooled across your projects, which made it easy to move them between brands.

Exports come as CSV or XLSX. There's no PDF or white-label report in SE Visible, and SE Ranking's Agency Pack white label doesn't cover it yet, which we noticed as soon as we thought about client reports.

Key features

• Rank Tracker. Daily rankings by location and device.
• AI Search add-on. AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT tracking with competitor research.
• SE Visible. Mentions, citations and sentiment on ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews.
• Agency Pack. White label for the platform and reports, +$69/month billed yearly.
• API and MCP. 25,000 API credits and MCP access on Core.

Where it falls short

• SEO and AI dashboards live in two products on separate plans.
• No Claude, Copilot or Grok yet. Claude is listed as coming soon.
• Keyword and prompt limits sit far below Conductor's Enterprise tier.

User reviews

“They keep adding ways to monitor visibility across search platforms, at great value for money.” (Source)

“What we didn't like was the big price increases over the last 4 years.” (Source)

“There are so many tools that newcomers get confused, the UI hides some of them, and some services cost extra.” (Source)

Pricing

• Core: $129/month ($103.20 billed yearly) for 10 projects, 2,000 keywords and 100 daily prompts
• Growth: $279/month ($223.20 billed yearly) for 30 projects, 5,000 keywords and 250 prompts
• AI Search add-on: $89/month for 200 prompts, including SE Visible
• SE Visible alone starts at $99/month for 200 prompts. SE Ranking has a 14-day free trial with no card.

9. Search Atlas: best for automated on-site fixes

Search Atlas is an all-in-one SEO automation platform with OTTO, a pixel-based agent that deploys on-site fixes, and LLM Visibility tracking, which suits lean SEO teams and agencies that want fixes applied for them. We haven't used Search Atlas, so this section is based on its pricing page, archived copies of it, and Capterra and Trustpilot reviews.

Plans run from $99 a month for Starter to $999 and up for Agency, all drawing on shared Universal Credits. AI tracking starts on Growth at $199, with 100 queries on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Mode, and Pro at $399 adds Copilot, Perplexity and Claude. Claude wasn't on the page in our August 4 archived copy.

OTTO is why people buy it. You add a pixel, and it scans the site and pushes fixes live, on autopilot unless you switch on approval mode. That saves a small team a lot of time, but plenty of enterprise dev and legal teams won't sign off on a script that edits production pages.

Key features

• OTTO SEO. Technical and on-page fixes deployed through a pixel, with an optional approval mode.
• LLM Visibility. Mentions, position in AI answers, sentiment and share of voice.
• Atlas Agent. A conversational agent on every plan.
• Content Genius. AI content writing, on version 5 since September 2026.
• White-label reporting from Pro.

Where it falls short

• No AI tracking on Starter, and only three engines on Growth.
• JavaScript edits on live pages may not pass enterprise review.
• Trustpilot holds it at 3.9 from 352 reviews, with billing and cancellation complaints among them.

User reviews

“OTTO now handles a big chunk of our technical SEO and on-page fixes almost on autopilot, which frees up hours every week.” (Source)

“It's a tool, not a magic button. You have to work it on a weekly schedule, not set it and forget it.” (Source)

“Who knows if the LLM data is real. Billing runs on an odd quota, and it's easy to burn quota just by clicking the wrong button.” (Source)

Pricing

• Starter: $99/month for 1 project and 2,000 keywords, with no AI tracking
• Growth: $199/month for 2 projects, 3 seats and 100 AI queries on 3 engines
• Pro: $399/month for 4 projects, 5 seats, 6 AI engines and white label
• Agency: from $999/month. Every plan has a 7-day trial with free onboarding.

10. Scrunch: best for serving AI-ready pages to bots

Scrunch is an AI search visibility platform, owned by Sitecore since June 3, 2026, with prompt tracking, AI crawler data and AXP for serving AI-ready pages to bots on Enterprise, which suits enterprise brands, especially Sitecore customers, that want AI-only tooling.

We used it on the 7-day trial. New prompts ran daily for their first 14 days and then every 72 hours, so the trend lines filled in more slowly than we expected.

The self-serve plan is narrow next to Conductor's engine list. Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews and Copilot. Claude, Gemini, AI Mode, Grok and Meta AI, along with AXP and the API, are on Enterprise.

What we liked was the bot side. Agent Traffic shows which pages AI crawlers visit once your CDN or host is connected, and the GA4 AI referral report, improved in October 2026, shows the human visits that come after.

Key features

• Core tracking. 125 prompts and 5,000 responses a month on four engines.
• Agent Traffic. AI crawler visits by page.
• GA4 AI referrals and an MCP server.
• Site audits. 5 a month on Core.
• AXP. AI-optimized versions of your pages for bots, on Enterprise.

Where it falls short

• Five of its nine engines, AXP and the API are Enterprise only.
• No rank tracking or keyword research.
• New prompts slow to a 72-hour cycle after two weeks.

User reviews

“They really know AI search, keep improving the product and listen to feedback.” (Source)

“New features roll out all the time, and they keep agencies like ours up to date.” (Source)

“The data is good, but terms shifted several times during negotiation, so check every line of the contract.” (Source)

Pricing

• Core: $250/month for 125 prompts, 4 engines, 5 user licenses and 5 site audits
• Enterprise: custom, with 9 engines, AXP, API and SSO
• Core has a 7-day free trial.

11. AthenaHQ: best for wide engine coverage at mid-market prices

AthenaHQ is a Y Combinator-backed AI search platform with a free plan, 11 models on its $295 Starter plan and an Action Center, which suits mid-market brands that want broad engine coverage without an enterprise contract. AthenaHQ asked us to book a sales call before giving access, so this section is based on its docs, pricing page, product updates and G2 reviews.

Usage runs on credits, one per AI response. Starter's 3,600 credits a month spread across 11 engines work out to about 10 prompts a day if you run every engine daily.

Its August 2026 update added Shopping Pages with automatic Shopify catalog sync, a ChatGPT Ads tab and coverage of 185 markets down to city level.

Self-serve plans track one country at a time, though, and personas, the Recommendation Engine, BI exports and SSO are Enterprise only.

Key features

• 11 models on Starter, including AI Mode, Copilot, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.
• Free Essentials plan. 300 credits on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot.
• Action Center and a content optimization agent, from Starter.
• ChatGPT Ads reporting and Shopping Pages, since August 2026.
• Unlimited seats on every plan.

Where it falls short

• No plan between free and $295 a month.
• One country on self-serve plans.
• No SEO suite, so rankings and technical SEO live elsewhere.

User reviews

“Within three months our visibility score went from 15% to 52% on our target prompts, and the GA4 integration finally lets us show AI referrals to the board.” (Source)

“There's no consolidated view across brands yet. We've asked for one, and it isn't available.” (Source)

Pricing

• Essentials: free, with 300 credits on 5 engines
• Starter: $295/month, about $245 billed yearly, for 3,600 credits on 11 engines
• Enterprise: custom

What changed with Conductor in 2026

• AgentStack (April 20). A suite of Conductor apps in ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, an MCP server, APIs and ready-made agents, now open to all Conductor Intelligence users. The MCP has since added the fan-out queries behind AI answers and, in beta, content tools that go from brief to finished draft.
• Optimizely partnership (June 10). Optimizely's log-based AI agent traffic data now sits next to Conductor's AEO and SEO data in Optimizely's AEO platform.
• New CEO (September 24). Chief Product Officer Wei Zheng became CEO, co-founder Seth Besmertnik moved to the board, and Conductor said AEO is now its focus. It also reported 12x year-over-year customer growth for Conductor AI and tripled quarter-over-quarter new-logo growth (Business Wire).
• C3 on October 28. Conductor planned new AEO products for its C3 conference in New York.
• AI search still starts on Growth. Per the pricing page, Essentials includes no AI search credits, Growth includes 2,500 a year and Enterprise lists 2,500+.

When to stay with Conductor

• You run a big multi-site SEO program. Enterprise covers 60,000+ tracked keywords, 75+ competitors and 10+ sites, with 24/7 monitoring for sites of any size.
• You want nine AI engine options in one enterprise contract. Conductor tracks ChatGPT (Auto and Search), Claude, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Grok, Copilot and Perplexity in more than 160 countries.
• Your team works inside ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. AgentStack brings Conductor data into those tools through official apps and the MCP server.
• Your renewal is close. See what Conductor launched at C3 on October 28 before you move.

Which Conductor alternative should you choose?

• You want AI search and SEO data with agents that run the work, for far less: Orchly.
• You want another full enterprise suite: BrightEdge or seoClarity.
• You run a huge technical or ecommerce site: Botify.
• You already run SEO in Semrush: Semrush Enterprise AIO.
• You mostly need SEO research data at a published price: Ahrefs or SE Ranking.