Best AEO Audit Tools to Score Your AI Citation Readiness

You searched your brand in ChatGPT, saw a competitor cited instead of you, and now you want a number that tells you why. That is exactly what AEO audit tools give you. They scan your site, score your AI citation readiness against a clear rubric, and hand you a prioritized list of fixes. No more guessing whether Perplexity or Google AI Mode can parse and trust your pages. You get a diagnostic, then a to-do list.

If this feels like a lot, take a breath. You only need one tool to start, and by the end of this guide you will know which one fits your team. Let's walk through it together.

What an AEO audit tool actually does (and what it does not)

An AEO audit tool answers one question: can AI engines read, trust, and cite the pages on your site? When you audit site for AI search this way, the output is usually an AEO readiness score, broken into weighted dimensions like schema, FAQ structure, heading clarity, entity identity, and AI crawler access, plus a fix list you can act on.

This roundup stays in that lane. Every tool here scans a domain or a URL and returns a score or grade against AI-readiness criteria. It is not a list of ongoing monitoring platforms whose only job is tracking mentions over time, and it is not a list of content generators. When a tool does more than audit, the audit surface is what we judge here.

Here is the honest framing before you spend a dollar. No audit tool can guarantee a citation. What these tools do is raise the probability of being cited by making your site easier for AI engines to parse and trust. That is the right expectation to carry in.

How we picked these tools

A tool made the list only if it met all five of these:

• Site-side diagnostic. It scans your domain or a specific URL and returns a score or grade, not just mentions across prompts.
• Documented scoring rubric. The criteria and weights are public or reliably cited, so the score is explainable, not a black box.
• A prioritized fix list. The output gives you something to do, not just a number.
• Active in 2026. A product or pricing update within the last twelve months.
• Reachable for a marketing lead. Published pricing, a free tier, or a self-serve trial that gets you to the score.

Tools that are primarily monitoring platforms (Profound, Peec AI, Writesonic GEO, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs Brand Radar) show up later for context, because their main output is tracking, not a per-page readiness score.

The AEO audit tools at a glance

Two notes on the table. "Free tier" means you can run the audit at zero cost. "Lowest paid price" is the entry tier that includes audit functionality. These AEO scoring tools each weigh the dimensions a little differently, so read the rubric before you commit. Now let's look at each one.

1. DeepSmith

Best for: content and marketing teams (and agencies) who want to audit their AI citation readiness and produce the closing content inside one platform, instead of buying a diagnostic that hands them a score and sends them somewhere else to write.

Every other tool on this list either audits and stops, or audits and monitors. DeepSmith is the only one that pairs an audit-style read with a production engine that turns the gaps into published work. That is why it earns the top slot here.

The audit surface is the AI Visibility module, and it works in three views. The Overview gives you mention rate, citation rate, and share of voice with trends, a per-platform breakdown, a competitor leaderboard, and the sources AI cites most. The trend line answers the diagnostic question directly: are you gaining readiness or losing it? The Prompts view tracks the exact questions buyers ask, with per-prompt mention and citation rates and full answer history. Discover Prompts generates a starter set from your product, persona, and buyer-stage context, so your audit can begin before you have built a prompt list yourself.

The Pages view is the page-level readiness read. It shows which of your pages AI actually cites, each page's share of your total citations, and the prompts driving them. Competitor citations then show who wins the same prompts, on which exact pages, and how each rival performs by platform. Every losing prompt becomes a candidate article. That is your fix list, generated from real answer data.

The Sitemap module brings in every published page, gives each an AI summary and a classification, and keeps it current. From an audit standpoint, this is your inventory: what you already have that AI might or might not be using.

Here is where DeepSmith goes past a diagnostic. Content Studio turns each gap into a finished, brand-grounded article with SEO and AEO formatting, internal and external links, a cover image, and publish-ready metadata. Autowrite runs scheduled articles hands-off. Produced Content publishes to WordPress, Strapi, Webflow, or your own webhooks. Deep IQ grounds every draft in your real brand context, and the Apps Library repurposes each published piece into channel-native posts.

Pricing is $99/mo Pro, $199/mo Grow, and $399/mo Scale, or $80, $160, and $299 per month billed annually, plus custom Enterprise. There is a 7-day free trial with real data and real drafts, and no long-term contracts. Engine coverage rises by tier: Pro tracks ChatGPT, Grow adds Perplexity, Scale adds Gemini, and Enterprise covers all five, including Claude and Google AI Mode.

One honest limitation: DeepSmith is an analytics-and-content platform, not a literal per-URL technical grader that returns a single 0 to 100 score against a published weighting table. If you specifically want that static scan, use the Pages view as your page-level read and pair it with one of the scoring tools below.

2. Foglift

Best for: solo marketers, dev-first teams, and agencies who want a free AEO readiness score, a published rubric, content briefs, and developer access on every paid plan.

Foglift is the most directly audit-shaped tool here. Its AI Readiness Score is a 0 to 100 number calculated as a weighted sum across eight dimensions, and the weights are public: Structured Data Richness (15%), FAQ Quality (15%), Content Depth (15%), Heading Clarity (12%), Entity Identity (12%), AI Crawler Access (11%), Citation Formatting (10%), and Topical Authority (10%). Scores map to letter grades from A+ down to F, so a non-technical stakeholder can read the result in seconds.

The free tier is genuinely useful: unlimited technical audits, a full scan, an AI action plan, and PDF export, with no credit card. Paid plans start at $49/mo Launch and add daily monitoring across six AI models, with Growth at $129/mo and Enterprise at $299/mo. Every paid tier includes API, CLI, and MCP access, which dev-first teams will appreciate.

One data point worth carrying with you: Foglift's Q2 2026 study found the median scanned site scored 46 out of 100 on AEO, even though those same sites typically passed traditional SEO checks. If your first score comes back low, that is normal. Almost everyone starts there.

One honest limitation: Foglift audits and briefs, but it does not produce finished articles. You will still need a production layer to turn the fix list into published pages.

3. Troovue

Best for: SEO and AEO teams who want a reproducible, evidence-based score with no LLM-call black box.

Troovue's core output is the Visibility Eligibility Index, a deterministic 0 to 100 score. Three properties define it: fixed, documented weights; observable evidence for every signal; and reproducibility, meaning the same input always produces the same output. That is the opposite of LLM-judged scoring, and it is the whole point of the tool. Scores map to four risk tiers, commonly reported as Low, Moderate, Elevated, and Critical, each with a recommended action.

The factor weights are published. Topical Authority carries 25%, Citation Readiness 20%, Crawl and Index Readiness 15%, Authority Signals 15%, and the remaining 25% splits across additional factors. That 20% on Citation Readiness (header structure, entity clarity, machine-readable blocks, source attribution) puts it in the same "very high" bucket as topical authority, which tells you where to focus first.

One honest limitation: pricing is not published, so you will need to contact the vendor for a quote, and the knowledge base is the primary source of methodology detail. Free calculators and checkers are available if you want to try before you talk to sales.

4. Airefs

Best for: startups, SMBs, and agencies that want an audit plus prompt tracking plus AI drafting in one budget tool.

Airefs runs a free AI visibility audit that returns a score in about two minutes. It identifies content gaps where competitors are mentioned and you are not, and it analyzes the sources AI models lean on so you can see exactly where you are missing. The audit is more "where are the citation gaps on prompts buyers actually ask?" than deep on-page schema grading, which suits a lean team that wants direction fast.

Pricing starts at $24/mo (billed yearly) for the self-serve product, with a fully managed agency engagement from $250/mo. The 7-day free trial maps to the Pro plan limits and includes one free AEO-optimized article. Beyond the audit, Airefs tracks AI crawler impressions, real clicks from AI answers, prompt share of voice, and more.

One honest limitation: Airefs is primarily a monitoring-and-content platform with an audit add-on, focused mostly on ChatGPT and Google AI Overview for the audit side. It is not a deep technical site grader.

5. Otterly.AI

Best for: SMBs and marketers who want a real per-URL audit module bolted onto a monitoring product, at a low entry price.

Otterly's GEO Audit Engine scores any URL across 25+ AI-visibility factors, covering citation readiness, fluency, and technical schema. The audit checks crawlability (which bots your robots.txt allows or blocks), schema and structured data, on-page SEO and metadata, and it generates prioritized, actionable fixes. Otterly has been named a Gartner Cool Vendor 2025 and a G2 Top SEO Software for Q4 2025.

Pricing starts at $29/mo Lite, which tracks four engines, then Standard at $189/mo adds Claude and Google AI Mode, and Premium sits at $989/mo.

One honest limitation: Otterly's primary product is monitoring. The GEO Audit is one module among several, and the broader engine coverage starts at the $189 tier, not the $29 one.

6. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Best for: teams already paying for Semrush who want AEO bolted onto their existing SEO stack.

If your team lives in Semrush, this is the low-friction path. The AI Visibility Toolkit adds a Visibility Overview, competitor analysis across AI search, an AI Search Site Audit, prompt research and tracking, an AI Visibility Score, and citation intelligence, all inside a tool you already know. It runs $99/mo per domain as a standalone (billed annually), and it is also bundled into Semrush One Starter and Pro+ plans.

One honest limitation: at $99/mo you get one domain and a limited prompt allowance, GPT tracking on its own and larger prompt volumes require an upsell, and there is no free trial. This is a bolt-on, not a deep standalone AEO tool.

7. Scrunch

Best for: enterprise brands and agencies that want per-page audit scoring plus prompt monitoring in one platform.

Scrunch's Site Maps feature shows how AI consumes your site page by page, with a per-page Audit Score covering technical health and AI optimization. Its site and URL auditing flags issues across access controls, content, and AI crawlability, and it adds Agent Traffic tracking and prompt management around that. Pricing is demo-led; third-party reviews place the entry point around $100/mo.

One honest limitation: Scrunch is built for enterprise, so SMBs will find the entry price higher than the audit-only tools. It also does not include full SEO tools like keyword research or content editing; it is the AI-specific audit, not a general one.

8. HubSpot AEO Grader

Best for: any marketing lead who wants a 10-minute sanity check before paying for anything.

The HubSpot AEO Grader is free, one-time, and needs no account. It grades your brand across five dimensions (Sentiment, Reach, Accuracy, Visibility, Consistency) based on how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini currently represent you, with a written read on the results.

One honest limitation: it is a one-shot. No monitoring over time, no per-page audit, no fix list, no production. Use it as a starting check, not as your ongoing tool.

A few free and lightweight scanners worth naming

Not ready to pay yet? Start here. These free AEO scoring tools give you a first-pass read in under a minute:

• BlueShore AI Search Readiness Score: free, results in under 30 seconds, checks 15 signals. A solid entry-level scan.
• Forkoff AEO Checker: a page-level audit of static HTML across six dimensions, with a per-LLM grade band. Fast and reproducible, no LLM queries.
• AI Search Rankings AI Answer Readiness Score: a free URL-level scan against a proprietary 0 to 100 metric.

None of them replace a paid audit on a real site, but each one answers "how does my brand look right now?" for free.

The monitoring-first tools (so you know the difference)

You will run into these while shopping, so it helps to place them. Profound, Peec AI, Writesonic GEO, AthenaHQ, and Ahrefs Brand Radar are monitoring platforms. Their primary output is tracking how often AI engines mention or cite you over time, not a per-page readiness score with a published rubric. If your real question is "am I being cited, and is that changing week to week?", those are the tools to track AI citations over time. If your question is "can my site be cited at all?", stay with the audit tools above.

How to choose the right one for you

Not sure where to start? Match the tool to your very next action, not to the longest feature list.

If you need to diagnose a single site and ship a prioritized fix list, and you do not yet need finished content, Foglift is the most directly audit-shaped pick, with a published rubric and free unlimited scans. Troovue is the right call if you value reproducible, deterministic scoring and can contact sales for pricing. BlueShore and Forkoff are your free first-pass options if budget is the gate.

If you want the audit output to become articles, social posts, and published pages in the same system, DeepSmith is the only tool here that pairs an audit-style read with a production engine. Otterly.AI is a fair fallback if you need a real audit module and can accept the Lite tier's four-engine limit, and Scrunch is the right answer at enterprise scale.

If your stack is already Semrush, bolt on the AI Visibility Toolkit rather than adopt a second vendor, just watch the one-domain and no-free-trial limits. If you are a startup or agency on a tight budget that needs an audit plus prompt tracking plus AI drafting in one low-cost tool, Airefs at $24/mo is the cheapest entry that delivers all three.

And if you just want a free 10-minute sanity check, the HubSpot AEO Grader, BlueShore, or Forkoff will answer the "how do I look in AI answers right now?" question before you commit to anything.

Start with your gap, then close it

Here's the good news: you have already done the hardest part by deciding to measure. Whichever tool you pick to audit site for AI search readiness, the workflow is the same. Run the audit, capture the per-page score and the fix list, then separate the quick wins (FAQ schema, allowing GPTBot and ClaudeBot in robots.txt, cleaning up heading hierarchy on your top pages) from the structural rewrites. Apply the quick wins this week. Drop the bigger rewrites into your content queue so they become scheduled articles, not a backlog that ages out.

If you want that handoff from audit to published content to live in one place, DeepSmith is built for exactly that. The 7-day free trial builds your brand profile, starts tracking how AI engines answer your buyers' questions, and generates your first ideas before you pay anything. Start your DeepSmith free trial and turn your first audit into shipped work.