Best AEO Tools with an Open API for Custom Reporting and Data

You can see your AI search numbers in a dashboard. Getting them out is the hard part.

If you have ever wanted to drop mention rate into your own BI stack, pipe citation data into a warehouse, or fire an alert when your share of voice slips, you already know the feeling. The chart is right there, and you still cannot touch the data underneath it. That gap is exactly why aeo tools with api access matter for a serious reporting workflow.

Here is the good news. A handful of vendors now ship a real, documented programmatic interface, so you can pull your own numbers on your own schedule. This guide walks through the ones that actually qualify, what each one lets you extract, and how they authenticate.

How we picked

The gate for this list is narrow on purpose. A tool made the cut only if it exposes a documented API that returns the same mention, citation, prompt, share-of-voice, or sentiment data you see in its UI. A CSV button does not count. A one-way publishing webhook does not count. A general SEO api with no AI-answer layer does not count.

So what stays in? A programmatic surface, usually REST returning JSON, that a developer on your team can call to export ai search data into whatever lives downstream. That is the whole bar. It is also what separates real aeo tools with api access from trackers that only render a chart you cannot reach behind.

One clarification, because the terms blur together. An open api here means a documented endpoint that returns your live visibility data to a client you control. That is different from MCP, which is a protocol that lets an AI agent call a tool and fetch data on demand. Some vendors ship both. We will flag which ones as we go.

Five vendors clear the bar today: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI, AirOps, and Scrunch. DeepSmith takes the top slot, and we are going to be honest about why, including one caveat you deserve to hear up front.

One more thing before the table. Every API-bearing tool here uses bearer-token authentication and returns JSON, and every one of them publishes on a delay. Plan for 24 to 48 hours of lag when you wire up a dashboard or a warehouse refresh. That is normal across the category, so you are not doing anything wrong if last night's answers are not there yet.

Quick comparison

1. DeepSmith

Best for: marketing leads who want AI visibility tracking and publish-ready content production living in one workspace, not stitched together across five tabs.

Let's start with the honest part, because you would find it anyway. DeepSmith does not ship a public REST api for raw AEO mention or citation data today. Its programmatic surface is publishing webhooks that fire when an article goes live, direct CMS pushes to WordPress, Strapi, and Webflow, and Markdown or HTML export. For pulling data, you work from the in-app workspace or export from the dashboards. If a raw data endpoint is your single hard requirement, that is a real gap, and you should weigh it.

So why is it still first? Because it is the only tool here that closes the loop. Every other platform tells you where you are losing. DeepSmith tells you, then produces the article that fixes it, from the same shared context.

Here is how that plays out. The AEO module tracks mention rate, citation rate, share of voice, and visibility trend, with a per-platform breakdown, a competitor leaderboard, and the sources AI cites most for each prompt. When it finds a gap, Content Studio turns that gap into a finished article: an idea backlog, a planned calendar, an in-product Writer, scheduled Autowrite that publishes on its own date, and a Produced Content stage for review. Distribution comes built in, converting each piece into channel-native posts for LinkedIn, X, newsletter, Reddit, and more.

Engines by tier: Pro covers ChatGPT. Grow adds Perplexity. Scale adds Gemini. Enterprise covers all five, adding Claude and Google AI Mode.

Pricing: Pro is $99 a month ($80 billed annually) for 20 articles, 50 prompts, and 5 seats. Grow, the popular pick, is $199 ($160 annually) for 40 articles, 100 prompts, and 7 seats. Scale is $399 ($299 annually) for 90 articles and 200 prompts. Enterprise is custom, with all engines and a dedicated account manager. There is a 7-day free trial, and no long-term contracts.

Key features: mention and citation tracking across five engines, a competitor leaderboard, page-level citation attribution, a full production pipeline from idea to published, hands-off Autowrite, and native publishing to WordPress, Strapi, and Webflow plus custom webhooks.

One honest limitation: no public REST api for AEO data yet. If your whole reason for reading this is a raw citation tracking api endpoint, another tool on this list serves that need directly. DeepSmith wins when the bottleneck is the production loop, not the data pull.

2. Profound

Best for: mid-market and enterprise brands and agencies that want the deepest data feed and the broadest engine coverage, backed by an engineering-grade API.

Profound is the pick when your data team wants room to build. The api is REST, ships with a full OpenAPI spec, and authenticates with a bearer token in the Authorization header or an X-API-Key alternative. The base URL is api.tryprofound.com.

The endpoint groups are wide. You get agents, organization domains, regions, categories, personas, and prompts, plus reports for citations, fanouts, sentiment, and visibility. Profound also publishes an API Cookbook with ready recipes for a Visibility Score, Citation Share, and Citation Rank leaderboards, built for BI ingestion, internal dashboards, and scheduled reports. This is a genuine citation tracking api, not a thin export wrapper.

It also plays nicely with the rest of a modern stack. Documented integrations include Adobe Experience Manager, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Analytics, Google Cloud Platform, Netlify, Vercel, and WordPress, so the ai visibility api data can land wherever your team already works.

Engines: up to 10, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT Shopping, with more on Enterprise add-ons.

Pricing: Starter is $99 a month for ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, and 1 seat. Growth is $399 for three engines, 100 prompts, and 3 seats. Agency Growth and Enterprise are custom, and Enterprise adds up to 10 engines, SSO, and SOC2.

One honest limitation: API access is Enterprise-tier only. Starter and Growth customers cannot self-serve it, so the deepest feed sits behind the highest plan. Agent usage also runs on monthly credits that reset, so heavy automation needs a budget eye.

3. Peec AI

Best for: teams that want to feed AI visibility data into AI agents through MCP, or push it into a warehouse through Looker, and are comfortable on Enterprise to unlock the API.

Peec is the most agent-forward option here. The api is REST at api.peec.ai, authenticates with a bearer token, and is currently labeled beta, so expect endpoint shapes to shift. Its resources cover Projects, Brand Mentions, Sources, Tags, and Prompts, with matching list endpoints for competitors and search engines.

What sets it apart is the companion MCP server. It exposes the same data to Claude, Cursor, VS Code through GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible agent. If you want an agent to fetch your ai visibility api data on demand rather than on a schedule, that is a real advantage. A Looker integration on Advanced and Enterprise tiers handles the warehouse side.

Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Pricing: Starter is $95 a month for five prompts a day and one user. Pro is $245 for three projects and two users. Advanced is $445 for five projects, three users, and the Looker integration. Enterprise is custom and unlocks API access.

Peec is a newer entrant with a smaller public footprint than Profound, so its beta label is worth respecting. Pin your integration to specific endpoints and watch the changelog.

One honest limitation: the API is Enterprise-tier only, and lower tiers cap prompts per day rather than per month, which can pinch a heavy tracking cadence.

4. Otterly AI

Best for: solo marketers, small teams, and budget-conscious agencies who still want a working programmatic API without an enterprise contract.

If price is the thing standing between you and a real api, start here. Otterly is the only vendor on this list that ships an API on every paid tier, not just the top one. The api lives at data.otterly.ai under a /v1 path, authenticates with a bearer token, and you generate keys yourself at app.otterly.ai.

The resources cover Accounts, Workspaces, Engines, Brand Reports, Audits, and Prompts. You can list engines, list brand reports, and even create content checks and crawlability checks through the api. A Claude Skill ships alongside it, so an agent can consume the data without custom glue. Otterly markets the api plainly as a CSV-export alternative, which is exactly the job most small teams need done. For a solo marketer who just wants numbers flowing into a spreadsheet or a lightweight dashboard, that framing fits the reality.

Engines: every tier includes ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Premium adds Claude and Gemini.

Pricing: Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts and one user. Standard is $189 for 100 prompts. Premium is $289 for 250 prompts and all engines. Annual billing takes roughly 15% off, and there is a 7-day free trial.

One honest limitation: the lower tiers cap prompts tightly, and rate limits are not publicly documented, so confirm them when you provision your key.

5. AirOps

Best for: content operations teams already living inside AirOps who want AI-visibility telemetry sitting right next to their content workflows.

AirOps is less a standalone tracker and more a broad content-ops suite with AI visibility as one product inside it. If your team already builds workflows there, the api keeps everything in one place. It authenticates with a bearer token, and its documented surfaces cover brand-presence data, brand kits, citations, sentiment-theme answers, topics, and prompts. You can list brand presences, list citations, and pull sentiment themes for custom reports and scheduled BI pulls.

Pricing: Insights is free with 1,000 tasks a month (10,000 for the first month). Starter is $200 a month for 10,000 tasks. Pro is $2,000 for 75,000 tasks. Enterprise is custom. Pricing runs on tasks, so each tracked prompt costs one or more tasks depending on engine and frequency.

One honest limitation: the jump from Starter to Pro is steep, $200 to $2,000, which can squeeze a mid-sized team, and the API docs are thinner than Profound's.

6. Scrunch

Best for: enterprises and agencies that want MCP-based agent integration or Looker Studio dashboards on top of straightforward REST access.

Scrunch rounds out the list with the widest downstream tooling. The api authenticates with an API key per workspace, and its endpoints cover visibility, personas, prompts, sources, and citations, plus a get-agent-traffic endpoint that aggregates AI-agent traffic by date, path, source, and bot type. That agent-traffic view is a genuinely different angle from the rest of the field.

Two integrations stand out. A native Looker Studio connector ships alongside the api, so you can build dashboards without moving data by hand. And a Model Context Protocol server exposes the same data for agent workflows, making this a strong aeo tool developer api for teams building automation.

Engines: the Core tier tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise adds Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode, and Grok, for nine total.

Pricing: Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts, five seats, and four LLMs. Agency Core is $500 with a multi-workspace design. Enterprise is custom with full nine-engine coverage. There is a 7-day free trial.

One honest limitation: the entry price sits above Otterly and Peec's Starter tier, and some API documentation is gated behind an access code, so you may need to request it.

What the APIs actually share

Once you look past the branding, the field has a lot in common, and knowing the pattern saves you a week of trial and error.

Every api-bearing tool here authenticates with a bearer token and returns JSON, so the wiring feels familiar from one to the next. Three of them expose an agent path on top of the REST layer: Profound through Cookbook recipes, Peec and Scrunch through a dedicated MCP server. Two ship a Looker or Looker Studio connector for warehouse and dashboard work: Peec on its higher tiers and Scrunch natively. If a warehouse push is your endgame, those two shorten the build.

The shared constraint is freshness. Every ai visibility api on this list publishes on a delay, so a live, real-time feed is not on the table anywhere yet. Build your reporting cadence around a daily or twice-daily refresh, not a streaming one, and you will avoid a lot of false alarms. Treat each aeo tool developer api as a scheduled data source, not a live wire.

How to choose

You do not need the tool with the most endpoints. You need the one that fits the job in front of you. Here is a quick way to sort it.

Choose DeepSmith if you want tracking and content production in one workspace and you do not need a raw data api today. You get the closed loop from a losing prompt to a published fix. You give up programmatic data extraction, so be clear-eyed about that trade.

Choose Profound if you need the deepest, broadest data feed and an engineering-grade api, and you have the Enterprise budget to unlock it.

Choose Peec if you want MCP-native agent workflows or a Looker push, and you are fine paying for Enterprise to open the API.

Choose Otterly if budget matters most and you want a real api on a cheap plan. Just accept that Claude and Gemini only come on Premium.

Choose AirOps if you already run content workflows there and want visibility data beside them. Budget for the jump to Pro if you scale.

Choose Scrunch if you want MCP, Looker Studio dashboards, or you are an agency running many brands and need the multi-workspace tier.

Not sure yet? Start with the free trial on whichever one matches your must-have. You will learn more from one real data pull than from another week of comparing spec sheets.

Bring tracking and production together

Here is the part most teams miss. An api gets your numbers out. It does not close the gap those numbers reveal.

You still have to write the article. Brief it, draft it, review it for SEO, add the internal links, make a cover image, and publish it. That production loop is where most marketing leads actually get stuck, not at the export step.

DeepSmith is built for that whole loop. It shows you where AI answers leave you out, then produces the on-brand, publish-ready article that earns the citation back, all from one shared context. If your goal is not just to measure the gap but to close it, that is the difference that matters.

Want to see it on your own brand? Start a free DeepSmith trial and get real data and real drafts before you pay.