Ahrefs Brand Radar researches any brand across a large pre-collected prompt index, while HubSpot AEO tracks your own prompts daily on three engines and turns the results into recommendations. Brand Radar suits teams that want to study the market, and HubSpot AEO suits teams that want a low-cost tracker that says what to fix. DeepSmith is a strong alternative when you want the next step too, because it tracks AI visibility and also writes and publishes the articles that close the gaps, on one self-serve plan.
If you are comparing Ahrefs Brand Radar vs HubSpot AEO, the first thing to settle is whether you need to research the market or track your own prompts and act on what you find. Brand Radar lets you look up almost any brand in a pre-built index, and HubSpot AEO runs the prompts you choose every day and suggests what to do next. This page compares the two on engines, data method, pricing and what happens after the numbers arrive. DeepSmith is covered alongside them for teams that want tracking and finished articles in one place.
Ahrefs Brand Radar vs HubSpot AEO: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want tracking and publish-ready articles on one self-serve plan: Pro is $99/mo with 50 tracked prompts and 20 articles a month, and the 7-day free trial gives you real data and real drafts before you pay.
- Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if you want to research how any brand shows up in AI answers without building a prompt list, from $199/mo per index, or from $50/mo if you only need your own tracked prompts.
- Choose HubSpot AEO if you want a low-cost daily tracker with recommendations attached: $50/mo for 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with a 28-day trial and no card.
| Criterion | DeepSmith | Ahrefs Brand Radar | HubSpot AEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo | $199/mo per index; custom prompts from $50/mo | $50/mo |
| Annual price (per month) | $80/mo | Not listed | $45/mo |
| Prompts at entry tier | 50 | 448M+ index prompts; about 83 custom prompts/day on the $50 package | 25 |
| Engines at entry tier | ChatGPT | Chosen per index or prompt | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Most engines on any plan | 10 (Enterprise) | 6 index platforms, plus Claude for custom prompts | 3 |
| Free trial | 7 days | No free trials | 28 days, no card |
| Citation tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Query fan-out | - | Yes, ChatGPT and Perplexity | Not listed |
| Recommendations | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Content generation | Yes | Not listed | Partial, Marketing Hub only |
| CMS publishing | Yes | Not listed | Partial, HubSpot blog only |
| MCP server | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Review rating | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.5/5 on G2 | 4.4/5 on G2 |
Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Ahrefs Brand Radar is the AI visibility module of the Ahrefs marketing platform. It pairs two datasets. The AI Visibility Index holds pre-collected answers for 448M+ prompts taken from Ahrefs' keyword data, across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, refreshed monthly on a 90-day window. Custom Prompts track the questions you pick daily, weekly or monthly, and add Claude.
It is built for marketing and SEO teams, especially people who already use Ahrefs and brands with real search demand. The standout is that you can search any brand, product or category right away, with no prompt list to build first, and the reports weight mentions by Google search volume. Fan-out queries, cited pages and a Brand Radar API with 21 endpoints are part of the package.
The main limit is scope and price. Each broad index costs $199/mo, or $699/mo for all of them, and the Ahrefs suite plans only include a small custom prompt allowance. The module describes no content briefs, writing or CMS publishing, and Ahrefs says it offers no free trials. On reviews, the ratings available are for the Ahrefs suite, not Brand Radar alone: 4.5/5 on G2 from 717 reviews, checked September 2026. One Brand Radar reviewer said retrospective index updates changed historical numbers, which is a single report and worth testing before you rely on trend lines.
HubSpot AEO
HubSpot AEO launched in April 2026, after HubSpot's December 2025 purchase of XFunnel, and it is still labelled beta. The standalone plan is $50/mo ($45/mo billed annually) for 25 prompts run daily, 2,500 answers a month, and three engines: ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It is also included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.
HubSpot positions it for marketers who are new to AEO, including small and mid-sized teams, and for existing Marketing Hub customers. The standout is the recommendations layer. Each recommendation carries a content type, channel, priority and projected citation lift, and a site audit checks pages against your tracked prompts. Sentiment is scored from -100 to +100, and the 28-day trial needs no card.
The real limits are three engines on every plan, a 25-prompt base that grows in $20/mo packs of 10, and one owned domain per setup, with extra brands needing another $50/mo instance. HubSpot does not say how answers are collected or which model versions run. On G2 it holds 4.4/5 from 145 reviews, checked September 2026. Reviewers call it easy to set up, and the common complaints are the prompt cap, no Claude, and recommendations that read as generic.
DeepSmith: the alternative that tracks and writes
Both tools stop at a similar point. Ahrefs Brand Radar is strong on research, and its pages describe no writing or publishing, because content tools are separate Ahrefs products. HubSpot AEO takes you further with recommendations, and it can draft a blog post from one, but that step needs Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise. Professional starts at $800/mo billed annually plus a $3,000 one-time onboarding fee, each draft uses 1,000 HubSpot Credits, and the draft lands in the HubSpot blog editor, so a blog on another system means copy and paste.
DeepSmith is an AI search analytics and content production platform in one, so the gap you track is the gap you write for. It checks your prompts on a schedule and reports mention rate, citation rate, share of voice and sentiment, with a per-engine breakdown and a competitor leaderboard. DeepSmith builds tracking around the prompts you define, and Discover Prompts generates a starter set from your product, persona and buyer-stage context. The Pages view shows which of your pages AI actually cites and which prompts drive those citations.
From there, Opportunity Agents read your tracked data and return content ideas, and every idea carries the data point that justifies it. Ideas move into Planned Content, and the Writer turns a planned idea into a finished article that is researched, linked inside and outside your site, and delivered with a cover image and publish-ready metadata. It writes in the voice, persona and content type stored in Deep IQ, so you are not re-briefing for each piece. Autowrite can do this on a set date with no one in the app.
Finished articles land in Produced Content, where you review, edit and publish to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful, or to your own webhooks. Repurpose adds the channel posts, and the Apps Library turns one article into versions for LinkedIn, X, newsletters and more.
Pro costs $99/mo ($80/mo billed annually) and includes 20 articles a month and 50 tracked prompts. Grow is $199/mo and Scale is $399/mo, with 40 and 90 articles, and there are no long-term contracts. DeepSmith is rated 4.8/5 on G2.
Engine coverage
Ahrefs Brand Radar has the wider coverage of the two. Its index covers Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, and Custom Prompts add Claude, which uses 8 checks per update. Ahrefs' help center also lists Grok, but says new data cannot be collected for the time being, so it does not count as covered as of September 2026. The wider coverage has a price attached, since each index is bought separately at $199/mo.
HubSpot AEO tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity on every plan, and nothing else. Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot and Claude are not listed, and G2 reviewers ask for Claude and broader coverage.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith covers ten engines across its plans: ChatGPT on Pro, Perplexity added on Grow, Gemini added on Scale, and all ten on Enterprise, including Claude, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Grok, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot and DeepSeek. The per-engine bars sit next to the competitor leaderboard, so a weak engine shows up in the same view as your overall position.
Tracking depth and data method
The two tools get their data in different ways, and each fits a different habit. Ahrefs Brand Radar wins on breadth of data, and HubSpot AEO is simpler for a fixed set of prompts.
Brand Radar's index prompts come from Ahrefs' keyword database and are re-tested monthly, so they are a sample of what people search, not a live feed. Ahrefs says its own prompt sampling leans toward English and that visibility estimates are directional. For daily data you use Custom Prompts, where one check is one prompt on one engine in one location. Lite includes 150 checks a month, which is 5 daily prompts, and the packages run from 2,500 to 25,000 checks. The Fanout queries column shows the sub-queries ChatGPT and Perplexity ran, which HubSpot AEO does not list.
HubSpot AEO runs every tracked prompt daily and reports a visibility score, sentiment, share of voice, the exact answer each engine gave, and citations by domain, URL, content type and channel, including a top owned citations list for your own pages. HubSpot advises reviewing trends over days or weeks and calls the first few weeks directional. The pages do not say whether answers come from model APIs or consumer interfaces.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith checks your tracked prompts on a schedule and keeps the full answer history. Each prompt shows its own mention rate and citation rate per engine, and the Competitors view lists who wins citations on which exact pages. Because the same data feeds the Content Map and the Opportunity Agents, a prompt where you are missing can become a content idea without leaving the platform.
Pricing and value
HubSpot AEO has the lower entry price, at $50/mo for 25 prompts, and it is the only one of the three with a no-card trial of 28 days. Extra capacity is $20/mo per 10 prompts and 1,000 answers. The standalone plan is not the whole picture if you want the content features, because blog generation and CRM-based prompt suggestions sit in Marketing Hub, which is $890/mo monthly or $800/mo annually for Professional and starts at $3,600/mo for Enterprise.
Ahrefs Brand Radar pricing has more parts. The broad index is $199/mo per selected index or $699/mo for all platforms, and custom prompt packages are $50/mo, $100/mo and $250/mo for 2,500, 7,000 and 25,000 checks. The suite plans, from Lite at $129/mo to Enterprise at $1,499/mo, include 150 to 2,500 checks a month and not the broad indexes. Annual prices for Brand Radar were not published, and there is no free trial.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith prices tracking and production together. Pro is $99/mo ($80/mo annual) with 50 prompts and 20 articles, Grow is $199/mo ($160/mo annual) with 100 prompts and 40 articles, and Scale is $399/mo ($299/mo annual) with 200 prompts and 90 articles. Billing is monthly or annual, with no long-term contracts and no cancellation fees.
From insight to action
HubSpot AEO wins this one between the two. Recommendations come from the citation patterns for each tracked prompt, across owned content, social amplification on LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube, and outreach. The detail panel suggests a title, summary, target audience and keywords. On Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, a recommendation can become a drafted blog post, and a social recommendation can produce a LinkedIn article and post to copy over.
Ahrefs Brand Radar surfaces mention and citation gaps through its report filters, and its academy walks through manual gap workflows, but it describes no automated recommended actions. Content briefs, writing and optimization sit in the separate Content Kit add-on, from $99/mo.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith takes the whole path in one place. Opportunity Agents turn tracked gaps into ideas with the evidence attached, such as the competitor page winning the citations. The Writer produces the publish-ready article, Produced Content publishes it to your CMS, and Repurpose adds the channel posts. Autowrite can run the sequence on a schedule, which makes the content calendar something that runs on its own.
API, MCP and security
Ahrefs Brand Radar has the stronger data access, with a Brand Radar API of 21 endpoints, a Looker Studio connector, and a hosted Ahrefs MCP server whose Brand Radar coverage is not stated. SSO is on the Enterprise plan only, ISO 27001 is documented, and SOC 2 appears on its trust center without a verified report.
HubSpot AEO has a beta read API, a connector for Claude and ChatGPT, and the HubSpot platform's SOC 2 Type II, though AEO is not named in that report's scope on the page. Neither record lists a native BI connector for AEO data.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith is SOC 2, GDPR and ISO certified. Its REST API is read-only with scoped keys, its MCP server gives an AI assistant 23 read-only tools for visibility, competitors, the Content Map and the content library, and signed webhooks fire on content status changes.
Which should you choose
If you land on HubSpot AEO vs Ahrefs Brand Radar as your final two, the choice depends on whether you want to research or to act. These are the readers each one fits.
- DeepSmith: teams that want tracking, ideas, finished articles and publishing in one platform, from a marketing lead running a lean team to an agency managing several brands in separate workspaces.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar: teams already on Ahrefs, or brands with real search demand, that want to research how any brand or topic appears in AI answers and can fund a per-index price.
- HubSpot AEO: marketers new to AEO who want a low-cost daily tracker with recommendations on three engines, and Marketing Hub customers who want it inside HubSpot.
Start a DeepSmith free trial to see your tracked prompts, the gaps behind them and the first drafts that close them, before you pay.
