AI visibility platforms for small businesses: Ghostart, Semrush, HubSpot, Profou

AI visibility platforms for small businesses: Ghostart, Semrush, HubSpot, Profound and Scrunch compared

For a small business, the right AI visibility platform depends on who’ll do the work once the tracking’s done.

HubSpot AEO has the lowest entry price of the five, at $50 a month. Semrush fits a team that already runs its SEO there. Scrunch and Profound suit larger marketing teams with bigger budgets.

Ghostart starts at $99 a month, and it’s for the business that wants the plan and the content as well as the report.

All five answer the same first question: when someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI for a business like yours, does your name come up? They differ on how many AI tools they check, what they cost and how much of the work they leave with you.

The five at a glance

Competitor prices and features come from each company’s own pages, linked and dated in the sections below.

Ghostart: for small businesses that want the content written as well as the gaps found

Ghostart shows where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers recommend your business, and where they don’t. It then builds you a plan and creates the content to plug the gaps.

We publish that content to LinkedIn, WordPress, Ghost and your own site blog, so a business that doesn’t have a marketing team can still get the work out of the door.

We sample six AI answer engines because being named in one tells you little about the rest. In “The Consensus Gap” (Growth Memo, 11 May 2026), Kevin Indig found that only 2.37% of cited URLs showed up across all three engines he compared for the same prompt.

Starter costs $99 a month (£75, €87), Basic costs $249 and Growth costs $499.

Starter re-checks monthly, which suits a business that plans to spend the month publishing. Basic and Growth re-check core questions weekly, with the wider set, a site crawl and a digest each month.

When an AI tool starts citing you for a question, Ghostart proposes three to five neighbouring questions to track next. Nothing’s added until a person approves it.

Semrush: for teams that already do their SEO in Semrush

Semrush sells its AI Visibility Toolkit for $99 a month, according to its knowledge base (read 10 November 2026). That covers one domain and 25 tracked prompts, updated daily.

Another 50 prompts cost $60 a month and each extra domain costs $99 a month. There’s no free trial for the toolkit.

The same page says Semrush built the toolkit with small and medium businesses, agencies and mid-market companies in mind. Its Semrush One plans bundle the SEO and AI visibility toolkits together.

Semrush suits a team that already pays for it and wants AI tracking next to its keyword and site audit data.

HubSpot: for the lowest-cost start

HubSpot AEO costs $50 a month, or $45 a month billed annually, according to HubSpot’s AEO software page (last updated October 2026). There’s a free 28-day trial and you don’t need a credit card.

It tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. You get a brand visibility score, prompt tracking, competitor citation comparison and prioritised recommendations.

On the same page HubSpot lists the product as still in beta and says it’s best value for existing HubSpot customers. AEO also comes with Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise, where it connects AI visibility to your CRM records.

HubSpot suits a business that puts price first, or one whose customer data already lives in HubSpot.

Profound: for enterprise marketing teams

Profound’s pricing page (read 10 November 2026) shows two options for brands.

The free trial runs 50 prompts daily for seven days across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Enterprise comes with a tailored prompt plan, up to nine answer engines, dedicated support, single sign-on and SOC 2 compliance, and you’ll have to ask for the price.

Profound doesn’t publish a monthly price for brands, so a small business can’t find out the cost without a sales conversation.

Profound suits a company with a marketing team, security requirements and the budget to negotiate a contract.

Scrunch: for larger teams tracking hundreds of prompts

Scrunch’s pricing page (read 10 November 2026) lists Starter at $250 a month billed annually, or $300 month to month. Growth costs $417 a month billed annually, and you’ll have to ask for Enterprise pricing.

Starter includes three user licences, 350 custom prompts and five page audits, and there’s a seven-day free trial with no credit card.

Scrunch covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta. It also offers AXP, which Scrunch says generates an AI-friendly version of your site.

Scrunch suits a team with someone whose job it is to act on 350 prompts and a set of page audits each month.

How to choose

Start with who’ll do the work. They’ll all tell you where you’re missing from AI answers. HubSpot’s page lists prioritised recommendations and Scrunch’s lists page audits with fixes, and somebody in your business still has to act on them.

Then look at coverage. Your customers don’t all use the same AI tool, so check how many each platform samples at the price you’d pay.

If nobody in your business has time to act on a list of recommendations, Ghostart finds the gaps, builds the plan and creates the content for you. Starter’s $99 a month. Start at https://ghostart.io.

Ghostart: Ready to use · Authenticity 80 · Voice fit 70

Citability came in at 68, and there are nine optional polish suggestions; say the word if you’d like me to make them. To publish, copy the draft and paste it into the waiting piece for GST-14 in Ghostart, which checks it again before it goes out.

Things to know before you paste it in:

• Single-sourced stat: the Kevin Indig 2.37% figure comes from the brief’s approved evidence, and I haven’t found a second independent source for it. Cut that paragraph if you want to hold the page to your two-source rule.
• Semrush engine list: Semrush’s knowledge base only names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode as examples, so the table says that instead of giving a count. Third-party pages report four or five engines, but I couldn’t read Semrush’s own pricing page to confirm.
• Semrush trial: the knowledge base says there’s no free trial for the toolkit, while the same page’s footer advertises a seven-day Semrush trial. I went with the toolkit-specific statement.
• Scrunch pricing: Scrunch’s FAQ pages still describe a “Core” plan at $250 with 125 prompts. Its pricing page shows Starter and Growth, which is what I used.
• Profound pricing: many review sites still quote $99 and $399 brand plans. Profound’s pricing page today shows only the free trial and Enterprise for brands.
• “Better choice” wording: the brief asks for a plain statement of who each competitor is the better choice for, while the voice brief says never to recommend a competitor. I kept “better choice” in the table and headings and used “suits” in the body.
• Left out: Adobe’s ownership of Semrush and Sitecore’s of Scrunch appear only in third-party sources, so neither is mentioned. Peec AI isn’t on the confirmed competitor list, so it isn’t named either.

Sources:

• Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit knowledge base
• HubSpot: 10 Best AEO Software Tools for 2026
• Profound pricing
• Scrunch pricing
• Kevin Indig, “The Consensus Gap”, Growth Memo