Ahrefs Brand Radar publishes its prices, per AI index and per pack of custom prompts, while Conductor sells credit-based AI tracking on contracts you only see after a sales conversation. Brand Radar suits teams that want a clear monthly number, and Conductor suits enterprises that want AI visibility, content drafting and technical monitoring under one agreement. DeepSmith is a strong alternative on the last step and on terms: it tracks AI answers, writes publish-ready articles, and publishes to five CMSs on public plans from $99 a month with no long-term contracts.
Most of the Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Conductor decision comes down to how you want to buy. Ahrefs lists what each index and prompt pack costs on its pricing page, so a budget owner can total it up before talking to anyone. Conductor lists allowances such as AI Search credits and Writing Assistant drafts but no dollar amounts, and the AI tracking runs on credits that cost different amounts depending on the engine. This page walks through what each one includes, how the money works, and where each fits, whether you searched Conductor vs Ahrefs Brand Radar or the reverse. DeepSmith sits alongside them as a third option that covers the step after tracking.
Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Conductor: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want tracking and publish-ready articles in one self-serve platform, with a public price from $99 a month, a 7-day free trial, and publishing straight to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful.
- Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if you want to research any brand's AI visibility without building a prompt list first, and you want prices you can read before you talk to sales, from $199 a month per index.
- Choose Conductor if you are an enterprise team that wants AI tracking, content drafting and 24/7 technical monitoring on one sales-led contract, and you can accept unpublished prices.
| Criterion | DeepSmith | Ahrefs Brand Radar | Conductor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo (Pro) | $199/mo per selected index | Not published |
| Annual price | $80/mo billed yearly (Pro) | Not listed | Not published |
| Free trial | 7 days | No | 3 weeks |
| Engines at entry tier | ChatGPT | Chosen per index | Not published per plan |
| Most engines on any plan | 10 (Enterprise) | 6 index platforms, plus Claude on custom prompts | 8 |
| Citation tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content generation | Yes | Not listed | Yes |
| CMS publishing | Yes | Not listed | No |
| Brand-context grounding | Yes | Not listed | Yes |
| Content repurposing | Yes | Not listed | Partial |
| Public API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SOC 2 report | Yes | Partial | Yes, Type II |
| Review rating | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.5/5 on G2 | 4.5/5 on G2 |
Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Brand Radar is the AI visibility module of Ahrefs, the SEO suite. It pairs two datasets. The AI Visibility Index holds pre-collected answers for 448M+ prompts that Ahrefs derives from its keyword data, so you can look up almost any brand without entering a prompt first. Custom Prompts let you track your own questions daily, weekly or monthly. Ahrefs says the index prompts come from real search behavior rather than made-up questions, which ties AI visibility back to search demand.
The standout is that instant research. You enter a brand, you see mentions, citations, cited pages and share of voice, and you can read the full answers behind them. The API has 21 endpoints, and there is a Looker Studio connector. The real limitation is scope. Ahrefs describes no content briefs, writing, optimization or CMS publishing inside Brand Radar, and its content tools are separate products. The broad indexes also refresh monthly on a 90-day window, so daily data means spending checks on Custom Prompts.
Review ratings are for the Ahrefs suite, not Brand Radar alone: 4.5/5 on G2 from 717 reviews as of September 2026. The one Brand Radar-specific reviewer in the record praised discovering citation sources across languages and AI systems, and the one Brand Radar complaint was that retroactive index updates changed historical numbers.
Conductor
Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform founded in 2006 and based in New York. It sells four connected products: Intelligence for AI search and keyword reporting, Creator for drafting and scoring content, Monitoring for 24/7 technical checks, and AgentStack for LLM apps, the MCP Server and the Data API. The AI tracking covers eight engines and can follow ChatGPT in both Auto and Search modes.
The standout is how much sits in one contract. Page-level citations, AI referral sessions and conversions through Google Analytics 4, sentiment scores, recommendations and technical monitoring with AEO checks all live in the same system. It also holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001. The real limitation is that you cannot see the price. Conductor shows plan allowances but no dollar amounts, and seats, prompt limits, engine access per plan and overage terms are not published. Its Writing Assistant also states that final publishing remains in your CMS.
Conductor shows 4.5/5 on G2 from 788 reviews as of September 2026. Reviewers repeat praise for responsive support and for keeping AI visibility next to traditional SEO reporting. The common complaints are a learning curve and price pressure for smaller teams.
DeepSmith: the alternative that publishes the pages and prices them in public
Both tools do the measuring well, and the gap for a marketing lead is what happens after the measurement. Ahrefs describes no content creation or CMS publishing for Brand Radar. Conductor drafts content and its vendor says every draft should be reviewed by people, but it publishes nothing to a CMS. Neither record describes turning a finished article into LinkedIn, newsletter or X versions. DeepSmith covers that last stretch, and it does it on prices you can read.
DeepSmith tracks how AI engines answer questions about your brand, with Mention Rate, Citation Rate, Share of Voice and Sentiment, a Pages view of which of your pages AI cites, and competitor citations by page and platform. Opportunity Agents turn that data into content ideas, and each idea carries the data point that justifies it. The Writer then turns a planned idea into a finished article that is researched, linked inside and outside the site, and delivered with a cover image and publish-ready metadata. Deep IQ keeps your product, personas, voice and content types as structured context, so each article is grounded in them. Autowrite can write on a scheduled date without anyone in the app.
From Produced Content you review the article, edit the body and metadata, and publish straight to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful, or to your own webhooks. Each finished article arrives with social posts already written, and the Apps Library makes platform-native versions for LinkedIn, X, Medium, Substack, email, Reddit and more.
The plans are Pro at $99 a month, Grow at $199 and Scale at $399, or $80, $160 and $299 a month billed annually. Pro includes 20 articles a month and 50 tracked prompts, Grow 40 articles and 100 prompts, and Scale 90 articles and 200 prompts. Engine coverage rises by tier, from ChatGPT on Pro to Perplexity on Grow and Gemini on Scale, and Enterprise covers all ten engines. There is a 7-day free trial and no long-term contracts. DeepSmith is rated 4.8/5 on G2 and is SOC 2, GDPR and ISO certified.
Pricing and value
On pricing, Ahrefs Brand Radar wins for anyone who needs a number today, and Conductor gives you no number to compare. This is the main question behind Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Conductor pricing, so the details are worth laying out.
Ahrefs charges $199 a month per selected index and $699 a month for all platforms. Ahrefs does not say on its pricing page whether $199 covers one platform or several, but the checkout showed it as $199 per selected index, which fits the $699 all-platform price. Custom Prompts are separate: $50 a month for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000 and $250 for 25,000, with overage at $0.020, $0.015 and $0.010 a check. One check is one prompt on one engine in one location for one update. The Basic pack works out to about 83 prompts a day on one platform. Paid suite plans start at $129 a month for Lite and include only a small Custom Prompts allowance, 5 tracked prompts on Lite, not the broad indexes. There is no free trial, and Ahrefs says you can cancel any time from account settings, effective at the end of the billing period.
Conductor publishes allowances instead of prices. Essentials and Growth list 2,500 AI Search credits a year, and Enterprise is custom. Third-party research reports that a tracked response costs between 0.1 credits (Google AI Overviews and AI Mode) and 2 credits (ChatGPT Search and Gemini). If those rates hold, 2,500 credits is about 1,250 responses a year at the top rate and about 25,000 at the lowest, so your engine mix decides how far the allowance goes. Essentials adds 60 Writing Assistant drafts a year and Growth adds 180. The free trial runs three weeks.
The contract side differs too. Conductor's published US terms, dated May 2024, set fees in an order form, invoiced in advance, noncancellable and nonrefundable by default, with automatic renewal unless you give 90 days' notice. Those terms favor longer commitments, and a budget owner should confirm what applies to a given quote. Ahrefs Enterprise, at $1,499 a month, requires an annual commitment, but the rest of the Brand Radar prices are monthly.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith publishes four plans with every limit visible: $99, $199 and $399 a month, or $80, $160 and $299 billed annually, plus a custom Enterprise plan. Tracked prompts, seats, engines and the monthly article allowance are all on the plan. The tracking and the writing sit on the same plan, so you do not buy a tracker and then add a content product on top, and there are no long-term contracts or cancellation fees.
Engine coverage
Conductor has the wider tracked set among the two, and Ahrefs has the larger pre-collected prompt base. Conductor tracks eight engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Grok, with ChatGPT split into Auto and Search modes. It does not publish which engines come with which plan.
Ahrefs covers six index platforms: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Claude is available for custom prompts only and uses 8 checks per update. Grok is listed in the help center, but Ahrefs says it cannot collect new Grok data for now, so it is not counted here. Because the indexes are priced per platform, wider coverage costs more, up to $699 a month for all of them.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith tracks ten engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Grok, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot and DeepSeek. Coverage rises by plan, with ChatGPT on Pro, Perplexity added on Grow, Gemini added on Scale, and all ten on Enterprise, and the plan page tells you which you get.
Tracking depth and data method
Conductor goes deeper on configuration, and Ahrefs goes deeper on volume. Conductor lets you set a persona, intent, location and language for each tracked prompt and choose a daily, weekly or monthly cadence. It says it collects answers through official APIs where it can, which it argues is more stable than scraping. It shows fan-out queries, keeps full responses, and exports to XLSX.
Ahrefs leans on its keyword data. Its index prompts are modeled on real searches, and impressions weight mentions by search volume. Fan-out queries are shown for ChatGPT and Perplexity. The method has limits that Ahrefs states itself: prompt sampling reflects its keyword sources and skews toward English, and the estimates are not measured AI referral traffic. Treat both tools as directional, and compare the same set of prompts over a few months before trusting any single week's change.
What DeepSmith does: You define the questions, and DeepSmith checks them on a schedule and keeps the full answer history for each prompt. Discover Prompts generates a starter set from your product, persona and buyer-stage context. Each prompt shows its own mention and citation rate, and the Pages view shows which of your pages AI cites and which prompts drive those citations.
Security and contract terms
On security, Conductor vs Ahrefs Brand Radar is not close on documentation, and Conductor wins. Its Security Center lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001, and SAML SSO is on Growth and Enterprise. Ahrefs lists ISO 27001 and SSO on its Enterprise plan only. Its trust center also shows SOC 2, but no report type or date was verified and a legal page describes SOC 2 as a future step, so the SOC 2 row above reads Partial.
On terms, Ahrefs is the easier commitment, with monthly billing and no contracts, though it does not issue refunds in general. Conductor's terms lean toward longer, prepaid commitments. DeepSmith is SOC 2, GDPR and ISO certified, and its terms are the lightest of the three, with monthly or annual billing and no long-term contracts.
From insight to action
Conductor wins on what you can do after the data, with a caveat on the last step. Its Recommendations panel ranks actions from mentions, citations and sentiment, and it links into the Writing Assistant, which produces outlines and full drafts with Content Score, Content Profiles and internal link suggestions. Publishing is still done in your own CMS.
Ahrefs shows you the gaps through report filters and describes no automated recommended actions. Its own content products, AI Content Helper and AI Content Grader, are a separate Content Kit add-on from $99 a month, outside Brand Radar.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith keeps the loop inside one plan. Opportunity Agents read your visibility data and the Content Map, and return ideas with the data point behind each one. The Writer produces the article, Autowrite can schedule it, and Produced Content publishes it to your CMS or sends it to your webhooks. The article then arrives with channel versions for LinkedIn, X, newsletters and more, so distribution does not become a second project.
Which should you choose
- DeepSmith fits marketing teams that want to see where they appear in AI answers and also publish the content that closes the gaps, from one self-serve plan with a public price. It suits teams that need a quote-free budget, a 7-day trial, and publishing to their CMS without rebuilding the workflow around a second tool.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar fits teams that already live in Ahrefs or want to research any brand's AI visibility without building a prompt list. It is the better pick between the two when you need a price you can read, a monthly commitment and a low-cost way to start tracking custom prompts.
- Conductor fits large enterprise SEO and content teams, often with several sites or brands, that want AI visibility reporting next to keyword, analytics, content drafting and technical monitoring data, and who can buy on a sales-led usage-based contract.
Try DeepSmith free for 7 days and see tracking and publish-ready articles on one plan at app.deepsmith.ai.
