Feature by Feature
Brand Radar runs 250M+ Google People Also Ask questions through LLMs once a month. PAA questions reflect how people search Google, not how they query ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Tracks the exact prompts your buyers type into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI — updated daily, not monthly snapshots of Google search data repurposed as AI prompts.
Brand Radar's global dataset is dominated by Google properties — over 70% is AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini. ChatGPT and Perplexity are a small fraction of what you're paying for.
Choose which AI engines matter to your business and get balanced data across all of them — not a Google-weighted dataset that obscures what ChatGPT and Perplexity are actually saying.
Custom prompt tracking — the only way to track queries specific to your business — requires the all-indexes Brand Radar plan at $699/month plus a base Ahrefs subscription. Real AI tracking starts at $828/month minimum.
Full custom prompt tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI from $499/month — no add-on, no stacked subscription.
No prompt tagging, no sentiment analysis, exports capped at 1,000 rows, and most table columns cannot be sorted — making analysis slow and mostly manual.
Prompt tagging, sentiment scoring, gap analysis, and full exports — built in from day one, not missing from a beta feature.
AI visibility is an add-on to a platform built for Google rankings. Buying Brand Radar doesn't change what the core product is designed to optimize for.
Purpose-built for AI search visibility — monitoring, content recommendations, and a weekly action plan in one place.
The Data Problem: People Also Ask Isn't the Same as AI Prompts
Ahrefs Brand Radar is built on 250 million Google People Also Ask questions. The idea is that PAA questions represent real user intent — but PAA questions are designed for traditional search, not AI conversation. Someone Googling 'what is the best CRM software' phrases it very differently from how they'd ask ChatGPT, and Google's algorithm selects PAA questions for search result pages, not for AI assistant accuracy. When those questions are run through LLMs monthly and compared against your brand, the dataset tells you something — but it's a proxy for AI visibility, not a direct measure of it. ChatRank tracks the actual prompts your buyers are using in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI, with daily updates.
The Cost Reality: $828/Month Before You Get Meaningful Data
Accessing custom prompt tracking in Brand Radar — the feature that lets you track queries specific to your business — requires the all-indexes plan at $699/month plus a base Ahrefs subscription at a minimum of $129/month. That's $828/month minimum, and the all-indexes plan gives you 2,500 custom checks per month. Spread across 4 AI models, 1 location, and daily tracking, that's roughly 20 prompts per model per day. There's no mid-tier between the $199 single-index plan (no custom tracking) and the $699 all-indexes plan. ChatRank's full platform — multi-platform tracking, content recommendations, weekly action plan — starts at $499/month.
What You Lose Without Prompt Tagging, Sentiment, and Proper Exports
Brand Radar has no prompt tagging, which means you can't group prompts by buyer stage, intent, or topic and filter the data later. There's no sentiment analysis — you know whether you're mentioned, but not how. Exports are capped at 1,000 rows, and most columns in the UI can't be sorted ascending or descending. These aren't minor UX complaints. Without tagging and filtering, you can't distinguish how your brand appears when someone is comparison shopping versus when they're ready to buy. Without sentiment, a mention that paints you negatively looks identical to a positive one. Without full exports, any analysis at scale requires manual workarounds.
Pricing
Ahrefs Brand Radar
$828+/mo
All-indexes plan ($699) + base subscription ($129+)
- 250M+ Google PAA questions, updated monthly
- ~25 custom prompts/model/day on all-indexes plan
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot
- 80+ regions with model-specific limitations
- No prompt tagging, no sentiment analysis
- 1,000-row export cap
ChatRank
$499/mo
Full platform. No stacked subscriptions.
- Daily tracking of actual AI prompts (not PAA questions)
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews
- Prompt tagging and sentiment scoring
- Competitive gap analysis with specific source targets
- Weekly prioritized action plan
- Content recommendations based on citation patterns
Which One Is Right for You?
Choose Ahrefs if…
- You're already invested in the Ahrefs ecosystem for traditional SEO and want a single vendor
- You need macro-level research across a massive prompt dataset, not daily custom tracking
- Backlink analysis, keyword research, and site auditing are your primary use cases
- You have in-house data expertise to work around export limits and manual filtering
Choose ChatRank if…
- AI search visibility is a primary concern, not a secondary dashboard on an SEO tool
- You want daily tracking of actual AI prompts with tagging, sentiment, and gap analysis
- You want to know what to do about your AI rankings — not just where you currently stand
- You need multi-platform coverage without paying $828/month before you get useful data