Gauge and Mentionova both track whether AI answers name your brand and both turn the gaps into content. They split on volume, engines and price floor. Gauge Growth is $599 a month for 600 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot, plus 18 articles. Mentionova starts at $99 a month billed annually for 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, with briefs, CMS drafts and Reddit reply drafts. Every Gauge figure below was read on withgauge.com and docs.withgauge.com on 4 November 2026 and is linked in the sources. We make Mentionova, so we say plainly where Gauge is the better buy.
Gauge starts at $599. Test your own buying questions in a Mentionova free trial, no card.
What are the key takeaways?
- Gauge sells volume. Growth runs 600 prompts every day on 3 platforms, which Gauge counts as 54,000 answers a month for $599. Gauge's own FAQ calls that "about a penny per answer."
- Mentionova sells a lower floor and wider engines per dollar. Starter is $125 a month, or $99 billed annually, for 25 prompts on 3 engines. Scale is $400, or $320 annually, for 100 prompts on 6 engines, including Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Reddit.
- Gauge runs daily; Mentionova runs weekly by default. Mentionova offers two-weekly, monthly and on-demand runs, and daily runs through the API.
- Sentiment and exports are Enterprise-only on Gauge. Mentionova's tracker logs sentiment per answer and exports citations as CSV.
- Both write content. Gauge Growth includes 18 articles a month, published to Webflow, Framer, Sanity or a GitHub pull request. Mentionova scores each gap 0 to 100 with a brief and pushes drafts to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a webhook.
- Gauge has moved beyond AEO. It now calls itself "the Agent-Led Growth Platform" and sells a separate Gauge Agents product for coding-agent evaluations.
How do Mentionova and Gauge compare at a glance?
Gauge Chat, its AI visibility product, is a high-volume daily tracker with a content engine and ChatGPT ads data, sold as one $599 self-serve plan or custom Enterprise. Mentionova is a weekly-by-default tracker with six engines on Scale, scored opportunities, CMS drafts and Reddit reply drafts from $99 a month billed annually.
| Gauge | Mentionova | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Growth $599/mo; Enterprise custom | Starter $125/mo, $99/mo billed annually |
| Prompts at entry | 600 | 25 |
| Answers counted | 54,000 a month on Growth | Not sold as answers |
| Engines at entry | ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google |
| More engines | Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity on Enterprise; Claude and Grok on your own API key | Claude, Gemini, Reddit on Scale ($400/mo, $320 annual) |
| Cadence | Daily, every prompt on every model | Weekly by default; two-weekly, monthly, on demand; daily through the API |
| Sentiment | Enterprise | Logged per answer |
| Exports | Enterprise | CSV export of citations |
| Content included | 18 publish-ready articles a month | Opportunities with briefs; grids and workflows for bulk content |
| CMS targets | Webflow, Framer, Sanity, GitHub | WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity, webhook, Markdown or HTML |
| Not listed on the pricing page | Thread list and reply drafts on every plan; tracked engine on Scale | |
| Seats | 3 on Growth | 3 per brand plan |
| Trial | None listed for Growth | Free trial on every paid plan, no card |
How much does each one cost?
Gauge has one self-serve plan: Growth at $599 a month, with no sales call. Enterprise is custom and sold through a demo. Mentionova has three brand plans at $125, $400 and $999 a month, or $99, $320 and $799 billed annually, plus agency plans from $250 a month.
| Gauge plan (withgauge.com/pricing) | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $599/mo | 600 prompts daily, 54,000 answers a month, 3 platforms, 18 articles, 3 seats, unlimited domains and competitors, single location, MCP, email and Slack support |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom prompts, 6 core platforms, sentiment, exports, custom articles and seats, recurring strategy sessions |
| Agency Mode | $300/mo per active client, plus a flat Agency Base fee | Full Gauge instance per client; pitch workspaces that run 100 prompts for a prospect |
| Mentionova plan (pricing) | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $125/mo, $99 billed annually | 25 prompts, 3 engines, 100 agentic tasks |
| Scale | $400/mo, $320 billed annually | 100 prompts, 6 engines, 500 agentic tasks |
| Enterprise | $999/mo, $799 billed annually | 250 prompts, 6 engines, 2,500 agentic tasks |
| Agency Launch | $250/mo, $200 billed annually | 50 prompts, 3 engines, 3 client workspaces |
| Agency Growth | $999/mo, $799 billed annually | 200 prompts, 6 engines, 10 client workspaces |
Every Mentionova brand plan lists pages and AI traffic attribution, actionable opportunities with ready briefs, workflows and grids, Reddit engagement and integrations. Annual billing saves about 20%. Gauge's agency figures come from its Agency Mode page and agency docs.
Which tool gives more for the money?
On raw tracking volume, Gauge wins clearly. Growth collects 54,000 answers a month for $599, about $11 per 1,000 answers. On entry price and engine choice, Mentionova wins: $99 a month billed annually gets you started, and $320 a month billed annually covers six engines, which Gauge reserves for Enterprise.
Worked examples on list prices. The arithmetic is ours.
| Need | Gauge | Mentionova |
|---|---|---|
| Start small, 25 buying questions | Growth, $599 | Starter, $125 ($99 annual) |
| Track Perplexity | Enterprise, custom | Starter, $125 ($99 annual) |
| Track Claude | Your own Anthropic key on any plan; Anthropic bills you | Scale, $400 ($320 annual) |
| Track Gemini or AI Overviews | Enterprise, custom | Gemini on Scale; Google on Starter |
| Hundreds of prompts, every day | Growth, $599 for 600 | Enterprise caps at 250 prompts, weekly by default |
Gauge's pricing FAQ makes the volume case directly: most tools "quote a lower sticker price for fewer prompts, fewer models, or less frequent runs." That is true of Mentionova. If daily sampling of hundreds of prompts is the job, Gauge is the cheaper way to do it.
Which AI engines does each tool track?
Gauge Growth tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise adds Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity, and Claude and Grok run on any plan with your own API key. Mentionova Starter covers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google; Scale and Enterprise add Claude, Gemini and Reddit.
| Engine | Gauge Growth | Gauge Enterprise | Mentionova Starter | Mentionova Scale and Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google AI Mode | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Microsoft Copilot | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Google AI Overviews | No | Yes | Yes (Google) | Yes |
| Gemini | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Perplexity | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Claude | Your own key | Your own key | No | Yes |
| Grok | Your own key | Your own key | No | No |
| No | No | No | Yes |
Gauge's docs say Claude runs through independent API requests with web search enabled, and Copilot answers draw on Bing. Only Gauge tracks Google AI Mode, Copilot and Grok. Only Mentionova tracks Reddit as an engine. If your buyers use Perplexity, Mentionova covers it from Starter; on Gauge it needs Enterprise.
How fresh is the data in each tool?
Gauge runs each prompt once per AI model per day and shows a rolling 30-day window by default, so each prompt has up to 30 recent answers per model. Mentionova scans refresh weekly by default, with two-weekly, monthly and on-demand runs, and daily runs through the API.
What that means in practice:
- Gauge catches day-to-day swings. Its docs note that one answer is not enough to show a pattern and that daily runs build a more reliable sample.
- Mentionova matches a publishing cycle. A weekly run shows whether last week's page moved an answer. Running a prompt by hand does not draw from the task pool.
- Mentionova shows change run to run. Prompt detail has a Latest, Previous and Diff view covering mention status, position, sentiment and citation count per engine, plus a twelve-week run calendar.
- Gauge measures its own actions. Content actions are evaluated automatically no earlier than 14 days after completion, using the daily data.
How does each tool turn gaps into content?
Gauge's content engine moves from gap to research, outline, draft and review, with human checkpoints at the brief and outline, and Growth includes 18 articles a month. Mentionova scores each weak prompt 0 to 100, attaches a brief, and sends it to grids, workflows or articles, then pushes drafts to your CMS for a person to publish.
| Gauge | Mentionova | |
|---|---|---|
| Where gaps come from | Prompts where competitors are featured and you are not | Prompts with a mention rate below half, or any engine losing; plus Search Console queries in the top 30 with no prompt |
| Prioritisation | Action Center recommendations | Score 0 to 100: visibility gap 40, reach 25, effort 20, competitive heat 15 |
| Brief | Built from citation data and top-cited pages | Angle, H2s to answer, entities to name, your closest existing page |
| Volume | 18 articles a month on Growth | Grids and workflows for bulk content, drawn from the task pool |
| Quality check | Content grader scores drafts against a rubric | Human review step available in grids and workflows |
| Publishing | Webflow, Framer, Sanity; GitHub opens a pull request | Every target receives a draft; no publish-live switch |
| After publishing | Citation tracking at domain and URL level; actions evaluated after 14 days | Rows auto-resolve when the mention rate recovers |
Mentionova adds work Gauge's pricing page does not list. The Reddit tab collects threads your engines cite and drafts a two-to-four-sentence reply for you to post yourself; enriching a thread costs 5 tasks, and Mentionova never posts on your behalf. Recommendations come in eight kinds, from Create content and Add schema to Authority mentions.
What does Gauge do that Mentionova does not?
Gauge wins on volume, daily cadence, AI Mode and Copilot coverage, an included article quota, and features beyond AEO. It tracks ChatGPT ads, connects to your OpenAI Ads account, offers an MCP for coding agents, and sells a separate product that measures which tools coding agents choose.
From Gauge's own pages, read 4 November 2026:
- 600 prompts daily on the self-serve plan. Mentionova's largest brand plan has 250 prompts.
- 18 articles a month included, graded against a rubric before publishing.
- ChatGPT Ads. Connect an OpenAI Ads account to review spend, impressions, clicks, CTR and CPC, and see competitor ad placements on tracked prompts.
- Gauge MCP. Gives a coding agent such as Claude Code access to prompt data, your CMS, keyword data, Search Console, Google Ads and Google Analytics.
- GitHub publishing. Content can open a pull request, which suits teams whose site lives in a repo.
- Gauge Agents. A separate product for agent preference and agent experience evaluations, with a free plan of 1,000 credits and paid plans from $100 a month.
- Unlimited domains and competitors on Growth.
What does Mentionova do that Gauge does not?
Mentionova wins on entry price, Perplexity and Claude coverage without your own API keys, Reddit, CMS breadth and a free trial. It costs $99 a month billed annually to start, and every gap arrives scored, briefed and ready to send to a draft.
- A $99 floor. Mentionova Starter on annual billing is $500 a month less than Gauge Growth (calculated).
- Six engines on a self-serve plan. Scale covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Reddit for $320 a month billed annually.
- Reddit engagement on every plan. Threads engines cite, enriched and drafted for a person to post.
- Sentiment and CSV exports in the tracker, where Gauge reserves both for Enterprise. The tracker keeps 1,000+ citations per prompt.
- WordPress and Ghost publishing targets, which Gauge's pricing page does not list.
- AI traffic from GA4. Sessions split into ten AI referrer buckets, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and AI Overviews.
- White-label reports on Scale and agency Growth and up.
- A free trial with no card. Gauge's pricing page lists no trial for Growth; its free plan is for Gauge Agents.
Which tool fits which team?
Gauge fits SaaS and developer-tool teams that want hundreds of prompts sampled daily, an article quota, GitHub-based publishing and coding-agent data. Mentionova fits lean marketing teams and agencies that want to start under $100, track Perplexity, Claude and Reddit, and turn each gap into a brief or CMS draft for approval.
Choose Gauge if:
- You need 300 or more prompts tracked daily.
- Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot are your priority engines.
- Your site deploys from GitHub and you want content as pull requests.
- You run ChatGPT ads or care which tools coding agents pick.
Choose Mentionova if:
- Your budget is under $599 a month, or you want to test on 25 prompts first.
- Your buyers use Perplexity or Claude, or Reddit threads shape answers in your category.
- You publish on WordPress or Ghost.
- You want sentiment per answer and CSV citation exports without a custom contract.
Why isn't my brand in ChatGPT, and which tool tells you why?
ChatGPT names the brands that appear in the pages it retrieves. If competitors own the listicles, review sites and forum threads it reads, they get the mention. Both tools show the cited sources per prompt. Gauge pairs them with daily mention and citation rates; Mentionova pairs them with a scored opportunity and a brief.
How each tool answers "why not us?":
- Gauge records the mention, the citation and the sources behind every daily answer, and the Ask Gauge agent analyses that data alongside GA4, Search Console and DataForSEO.
- Mentionova shows, per prompt and engine, who was named instead of you, your position, sentiment and every cited source, then opens the gap as an opportunity with one of eight recommendations.
Before buying either, run the free manual check in how to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand. For the wider field, see Gauge alternatives and AI visibility tool pricing. Our short Mentionova vs Gauge comparison sits on the compare hub.
How do you test both before you commit?
Gauge's pricing page lists no free trial for Growth, so testing Gauge means a $599 month or a demo. Mentionova offers a free trial on every paid plan, no card. Run your top buying questions in Mentionova first, then decide whether you need Gauge's daily volume.
A two-week plan:
- Day 1. Pick 10 unbranded buying questions, such as "best [category] for [use case]". Load them into a Mentionova trial with your three closest competitors.
- Days 2 to 7. Note which engines name you, who is named instead, and which sources each engine cites. Re-run on demand after any page change.
- Day 8. Open the top opportunity and its brief. Ship one page or one Reddit reply.
- Day 14. Re-run and compare with the Diff view. If you need hundreds of prompts sampled daily, or AI Mode and Copilot data, book Gauge's demo with your list ready.
Where does each number come from?
All pages read on 4 November 2026.
- Gauge: pricing (Growth and Enterprise plans, platforms, own-key Claude and Grok, sentiment, exports, articles, CMS, seats, FAQ); agents pricing (Gauge Agents plans, free plan, Gauge Chat billed separately); homepage (Agent-Led Growth positioning); prompt runs (daily runs, 30-day window, action evaluation); AI engines (how Claude and Copilot are collected); content docs (checkpoints, GitHub pull requests); content engine (grader, citation tracking); Agency Mode and agency docs; ChatGPT Ads; Gauge MCP.
- Mentionova: pricing (plans, engines, trial, Reddit, annual saving); plans overview (agency plans, seats, engine sets, weekly scans); AI visibility tracker (schedules, citations kept, CSV); opportunities; prompts; publishing targets; Reddit engagement; Google Analytics 4; white-label reports.
- Cost per 1,000 answers and price differences are our arithmetic from list prices.
What else do people ask about Mentionova and Gauge?
How much does Gauge cost?
Gauge Growth is $599 a month for 600 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot, 54,000 answers a month, 18 articles and 3 seats. Enterprise is custom. Agency Mode charges $300 a month per active client plus a flat Agency Base fee.
Does Gauge have a free trial?
Gauge's pricing page lists no free trial for the Growth plan. The free plan it describes, 1,000 credits then 300 a week, belongs to Gauge Agents, a separate product for coding-agent evaluations.
Does Gauge track Perplexity and Gemini?
On Enterprise. Growth covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot; Enterprise adds Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity. Claude and Grok are optional on any plan with your own Anthropic or xAI API key, and the provider bills you directly.
Is Mentionova cheaper than Gauge?
Yes on entry price: Mentionova Starter is $99 a month billed annually against $599 for Gauge Growth. Per answer collected, Gauge is cheaper, because Growth samples 600 prompts daily on three platforms.
How often does Mentionova run tracked prompts?
Scans refresh weekly by default, with two-weekly, monthly and on-demand runs, and daily runs through the API. Running a prompt by hand does not draw from your task pool.
Can Mentionova publish to my CMS like Gauge?
Yes, as drafts. Mentionova pushes to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a custom webhook, or exports Markdown or HTML. Every target receives a draft for a person to publish. Gauge publishes to Webflow, Framer, Sanity or a GitHub pull request.
See which engines name you, and get the brief to fix it. Start a Mentionova free trial, no card.