Gauge sells one self-serve plan: Growth at $599 a month for 600 prompts run daily on three AI platforms, plus 18 publish-ready articles. That is a lot of tracking for the money, but it is also a $599 floor, three engines and no sentiment or exports below Enterprise. Below are nine alternatives, with prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 30 October 2026. We make Mentionova, one of the nine, so we say where it loses.
What are the key takeaways?
- Gauge Growth is $599 a month and is the only self-serve plan. It runs 600 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot, which Gauge counts as 54,000 answers a month, and includes 18 articles and 3 seats.
- Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity are Enterprise only on Gauge. Claude and Grok need your own provider API key. Sentiment analysis and exports are Enterprise only.
- Per answer, Gauge is hard to beat. At $11.09 per 1,000 answers, it is the cheapest in our calculated table. The alternatives win on entry price, engine choice or features, not on volume.
- The cheapest way in is Otterly at $29 a month for 15 prompts on four engines. Promptwatch and Peec AI both start at $95 for 50 daily prompts.
- Mentionova starts at $125 a month ($99 annual) and runs weekly, not daily. It fits teams that want Perplexity, Claude and Gemini included on Scale ($400) and every gap scored, briefed and drafted into their CMS.
What are the best Gauge alternatives for AI visibility?
The strongest alternatives are Promptwatch for every model plus content agents from $95, Peec AI for clean daily tracking at $95, Writesonic for bundled articles at a lower price, AthenaHQ for 11 models, Scrunch for site audits, SE Visible and Otterly for budget tracking, Profound for enterprise, and Mentionova for scored briefs and CMS drafts.
| Tool | Entry price (as listed) | Prompts on entry plan | Engines on entry plan | Cadence | Content included | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gauge (baseline) | $599/mo | 600 | ChatGPT, AI Mode, Copilot | Daily | 18 articles a month | High daily volume plus articles |
| Promptwatch | $95/mo | 50 (6,000 responses) | All models | Daily | Content writing from $245 | Every model on the entry plan |
| Peec AI | $95/mo | 50 | 3 chosen from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Naver AI | Daily | Agent actions, no article quota | Clean daily tracking, unlimited users |
| Writesonic | $79/mo billed annually | 50 | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews | Daily | 15 AI articles a month | SEO, content and GEO in one tool |
| AthenaHQ | Free tier; Starter $295/mo | Unlimited prompts, 3,600 responses | 11 models | Not stated | Content optimization agent | Many engines plus actions |
| Scrunch | $250/mo | 125 | ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot | Not stated | 1 page optimization a month | Site audits and bot traffic |
| SE Visible | $89/mo, $71 annual | 75 | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode | Daily | No articles listed | Most prompts under $100 |
| Otterly | $29/mo, $25 annual | 15 | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Daily | Recommendations, no articles listed | Lowest monthly price |
| Profound | Free 7-day trial, then custom | 50 (trial) | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews (trial) | Daily | AI Marketer agents | Enterprise programs |
| Mentionova | $125/mo, $99 annual | 25 | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google | Weekly, fortnightly or monthly | Scored briefs and CMS drafts | Gaps turned into briefs and drafts |
"Engines on entry plan" means what the cheapest paid plan includes, not everything the vendor can track. Several tools add engines on higher plans or as paid add-ons.
Why do teams look for a Gauge alternative?
Teams leave or skip Gauge for four reasons: the $599 floor, because there is no smaller self-serve plan; engine coverage, because AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity are Enterprise only; missing basics on Growth, because sentiment and exports are Enterprise; and fit, because teams that already have a writing workflow pay for an article engine they may not use.
- Price floor. Gauge's pricing page lists Growth at $599 a month and Enterprise at a custom price. There is nothing below Growth for a team that wants to start with 25 or 50 prompts.
- Engines. Growth tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. Gauge's own comparison table marks Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity "No" on Growth. Claude and Grok are optional on your own Anthropic or xAI API key, and the provider bills you directly for those runs.
- Sentiment, exports and locations. Growth has no sentiment analysis, no exports and a single location. All three are on Enterprise.
- Seats. Growth includes 3 users. Peec AI, Otterly and SE Visible include unlimited users on their entry plans.
Gauge's own FAQ answers the price question directly: it says Growth works out to "about a penny per answer" and that cheaper-looking tools often cost more per answer. Our table below checks that claim.
What does Gauge include on its Growth plan?
Gauge Growth is $599 a month with no sales call. It covers 600 prompts run daily on three platforms, 54,000 answers a month, 18 publish-ready articles, unlimited Ask Gauge chats, Action Center recommendations, MCP access, 3 seats and email and Slack support. These figures were read from withgauge.com/pricing on 30 October 2026.
| Feature | Growth ($599/mo) | Enterprise (custom) |
|---|---|---|
| Prompts | 600 | Custom |
| Answers tracked | 54,000 a month | Custom |
| Refresh rate | Daily | Daily |
| Core platforms | ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot | Adds Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Claude and Grok | Your own API key | Your own API key |
| Domains and competitors | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Locations | Single | Custom |
| Sentiment analysis | No | Yes |
| Articles | 18 a month | Custom |
| CMS publishing | Webflow, Framer, Sanity, GitHub | Webflow, Framer, Sanity, GitHub |
| Seats | 3 | Custom |
| Exports | No | Yes |
The content engine is Gauge's strongest feature. Its docs describe a pipeline from brief to research, outline, draft, review and publishing, with human checkpoints at the brief and the outline. Publishing to GitHub opens a pull request instead of pushing a page live. Gauge also connects GA4, Search Console and DataForSEO, and runs a separate agency mode with a parent account, a flat Agency Base fee and a per-client charge.
Which Gauge alternatives fit which use case?
Match the alternative to the reason you are leaving. For a lower entry price with every model, Promptwatch. For like-for-like daily tracking with unlimited users, Peec AI. For bundled articles at a lower price, Writesonic. For more engines, AthenaHQ. For audits, Scrunch. For budget tracking, SE Visible or Otterly. For enterprise, Profound. For scored briefs and drafts, Mentionova.
Is Promptwatch the best Gauge alternative for every engine?
Promptwatch Essential is $95 a month for 1 project, 50 prompts and 6,000 responses, and its pricing page says every plan tracks all models, including ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. API and MCP are on every plan. Content writing and refresh start on Professional ($245). Business ($579, sold through a demo) has 350 prompts, 42,000 responses and up to hourly tracking. Essential and Professional have a 7-day free trial.
Is Peec AI the better pick for daily tracking on a budget?
Peec AI Starter is $95 a month for 50 prompts tracked daily on 3 models you choose, 4,500 answers a month by Peec's count, with unlimited users and competitors. Advanced is $495 for 350 prompts and 31,500 answers. Gap analysis, recommended actions and agent actions are on every plan; the API starts on Pro ($245). Our full list is in Peec AI alternatives.
Is Writesonic a cheaper way to get tracking and articles together?
Writesonic Starter is $79 a month billed annually for 50 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with 15 AI articles and 10 site audits. Growth is $399 a month billed annually for 200 prompts, 600 answers tracked daily and 50 articles. Perplexity and Claude are Enterprise only. See Writesonic alternatives for its limits.
Is AthenaHQ worth $295 for more engines?
AthenaHQ Starter is $295 a month for 3,600 credits, where 1 credit is 1 AI response, across 11 models including ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Grok. It includes unlimited prompts, on-page and off-page actions and a content optimization agent. There is a free Essential tier with 300 credits. API access is a paid add-on. More in Athena alternatives.
Is Scrunch a fit for site audits and bot traffic?
Scrunch Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts, 5,000 responses, 5 site audits and 5 user licenses across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. It includes AI agent and bot traffic, sentiment and one page optimization a month. Nine models and API access are on Enterprise.
Are SE Visible and Otterly enough if you only need monitoring?
SE Visible Basic is $89 a month ($71 annual) for 75 prompts, 5 projects and unlimited seats, with daily tracking of ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode, API and MCP, and a 10-day free trial. Otterly Lite is $29 a month ($25 annual) for 15 prompts on ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, tracked daily. Neither lists article writing on its pricing page.
Is Profound an option without a sales call?
Only as a trial. Profound's pricing page lists a free 7-day trial with 50 recommended prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; trial users cannot customize their prompts. Ongoing tracking and up to 9 answer engines are on Enterprise at a custom price. See Profound alternatives.
Where does Mentionova fit as a Gauge alternative?
Mentionova Starter is $125 a month ($99 annual) for 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google. Scale ($400, or $320 annual) covers 100 prompts on six engines, adding Claude, Gemini and Reddit with no API key of your own. Opportunities are rescored nightly on a 0 to 100 scale, each with a brief, and drafts go to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a webhook.
Is Gauge cheaper per answer than the alternatives?
Yes, on list prices. Gauge Growth works out to $11.09 per 1,000 answers, the lowest in our table. Promptwatch Business is $13.79 and Peec AI Advanced is $15.71. Entry plans cost more per answer but far less per month. These figures divide each plan's monthly price by the answer or response count the vendor publishes.
| Plan | Monthly price | Answers or responses a month (vendor figure) | Price per 1,000 answers (calculated) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gauge Growth | $599 | 54,000 | $11.09 |
| Promptwatch Business | $579 | 42,000 | $13.79 |
| Peec AI Advanced | $495 | 31,500 | $15.71 |
| Promptwatch Essential | $95 | 6,000 | $15.83 |
| Peec AI Starter | $95 | 4,500 | $21.11 |
| Scrunch Core | $250 | 5,000 | $50.00 |
| AthenaHQ Starter | $295 | 3,600 | $81.94 |
Answer volume is not the whole bill. Gauge's 54,000 answers come from three engines; Promptwatch's responses span every model. Mentionova's pricing page lists prompts and engines rather than an answer count, and it runs weekly, so it is left out of this table. For every platform's entry price in one place, see AI visibility tool pricing.
Should you choose a tracker or an all-in-one platform?
Choose a tracker if the output is a report someone else acts on: Otterly, SE Visible and Peec AI do this well for $29 to $95. Choose a platform if you want gaps turned into work: Gauge, Promptwatch Professional, Writesonic, AthenaHQ and Mentionova all brief or draft content. Then check which engines your buyers actually use.
A quick decision path:
- You only need numbers for a monthly report. Otterly ($29) or SE Visible ($89).
- You want daily tracking of every model without a $599 floor. Promptwatch ($95).
- You want articles bundled with tracking for less. Writesonic ($79 billed annually, 15 articles).
- You need Perplexity and Claude included, not on Enterprise or your own key. Promptwatch, AthenaHQ ($295) or Mentionova Scale ($400).
- You want the most daily answers and your site lives in Git. Stay on Gauge.
- You want each gap scored, briefed and drafted into your CMS. Mentionova.
Test it on your own prompts: 14 days, no card, all six engines. Run it next to Gauge and compare.
Where does Mentionova lose to Gauge?
Mentionova loses on volume, cadence and Google AI surfaces. Gauge runs 600 prompts daily; Mentionova's largest brand plan has 250 prompts and scans refresh weekly. Gauge tracks Google AI Mode and Copilot, which Mentionova does not. Gauge also publishes to GitHub as a pull request. Know these before you trial it.
- Cadence. Mentionova runs weekly, fortnightly or monthly, not daily. Opportunities are rescored nightly, but prompts are not rerun nightly.
- Volume. Gauge Growth has 600 prompts for $599. Mentionova Enterprise has 250 prompts for $999 a month ($799 annual).
- Google AI surfaces. Mentionova's Google engine records the organic top ten. AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot and Grok are not tracked.
- Bundled articles. Gauge includes 18 publish-ready articles a month. Mentionova drafts from a pool of agentic tasks (100 a month on Starter) rather than a fixed article quota.
- Git workflows. Gauge opens a GitHub pull request for sites built from a repository. Mentionova pushes drafts to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a webhook.
Where Mentionova wins: a $99 to $125 entry point, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini included on Scale without your own API keys, Reddit tracked as an engine with drafted replies, and a 14-day no-card trial.
How do you test a Gauge alternative before you commit?
Run the same prompts in Gauge and the alternative for at least two weeks. AI answers vary from run to run, so a single week tells you little. Compare mention rate per engine and the sources cited, only on engines both tools track, and time how long each tool takes to turn your biggest gap into a page.
- Export what you can. Exports are Enterprise only on Gauge, so copy your prompt list and note current scores by hand before you switch.
- Keep the prompts identical. Paste the same list into the new tool. Mentionova's trial covers 5 prompts; pick the five that matter most for revenue.
- Compare like with like. ChatGPT is the engine Gauge Growth and every alternative here track in common.
- Judge the output. Compare Gauge's article against the brief and draft the other tool produces for the same gap.
For building the prompt list, use the method in How to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand.
Where does each number come from?
All vendor pages were read on 30 October 2026.
- Gauge: withgauge.com/pricing (plan, price, prompts, answers, platforms, BYOK, articles, seats, exports, sentiment, integrations, FAQ); docs.withgauge.com/navigating/content (content pipeline, GitHub pull requests); docs.withgauge.com/navigating/agencies (agency billing); docs.withgauge.com/navigating/ai-engines.
- Promptwatch: promptwatch.com/pricing. Peec AI: peec.ai/pricing. Writesonic: writesonic.com/pricing. AthenaHQ: athenahq.ai/pricing. Scrunch: scrunch.com/pricing. SE Visible: visible.seranking.com/pricing. Otterly: otterly.ai/pricing. Profound: tryprofound.com/pricing.
- Mentionova: mentionova.com/pricing, mentionova.com/docs/billing/plans-overview and mentionova.com/compare/gauge (trial terms, cadence, engines, briefs and CMS drafts).
- Price per 1,000 answers is our arithmetic from monthly list prices and vendor-published answer counts.
What do people ask about Gauge alternatives?
How much does Gauge cost?
Gauge Growth is $599 a month and is the only self-serve plan. Enterprise is custom. Prices were read from withgauge.com/pricing on 30 October 2026.
Does Gauge have a free trial?
The pricing page lists no free trial for Growth. The free offer on that page, 1,000 credits with no card, is for Gauge Agents, a separate product that evaluates coding agents, not AI visibility tracking.
Which AI engines does Gauge track on Growth?
ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity are added on Enterprise. Claude and Grok are optional on any plan with your own Anthropic or xAI API key.
What is the cheapest Gauge alternative?
Otterly Lite at $29 a month, or $25 billed annually, for 15 prompts on four engines is the cheapest monthly plan we found. AthenaHQ has a free tier with 300 credits.
Is Gauge good for agencies?
Gauge runs an agency mode: one parent account with client organizations beneath it, billed as a flat Agency Base fee plus a per-client charge. Its docs do not publish those amounts.
Is Promptwatch better than Gauge?
It depends on volume. Promptwatch starts at $95 and tracks every model on every plan. Gauge costs less per answer at scale and bundles 18 articles. A team that needs 150 prompts or fewer pays $245 a month or less on Promptwatch Professional, against Gauge's $599.
Is Mentionova better than Gauge?
It depends on the job. Gauge wins on daily volume, AI Mode and Copilot tracking and Git-based publishing. Mentionova wins on entry price, Perplexity and Claude included on Scale, Reddit tracking and every gap scored with a brief and a CMS draft.
Run the same prompts side by side. Start the 14-day Mentionova trial, no card.