Ahrefs Brand Radar Review: Is It Worth Using to Track AI Visibility?
Ahrefs Brand Radar is worth it mainly for teams that already use Ahrefs and want AI visibility beside their SEO and backlink data. It has two parts. The AI Visibility Index is built from hundreds of millions of prompts in Ahrefs' database and starts at $199 a month. Custom prompt tracking of your own questions starts at $50 a month for 80 prompts on one platform, and paid Ahrefs plans already include 5 to 20 tracked prompts. Its strength is linking AI mentions and cited pages to Ahrefs' SEO data. Its weaknesses are the cost once you add platforms, and billing by checks, where Claude uses eight checks per update. Database prompts may also not match what your buyers ask.
What does Brand Radar include?
- AI Visibility Index. Your brand's mentions, share of voice and cited pages across a large database of prompts. Ahrefs' pricing page says more than 475 million prompts. Its Brand Radar page breaks the monthly index down by platform: about 313 million AI Overviews prompts, and about 30 million each for Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot. AI Mode has about 13 million. It needs no setup, and works best once your brand already appears in AI answers.
- Custom prompts. The questions you choose, checked daily on the platforms you select. Ahrefs can suggest prompts from competitor comparisons, pricing data and other signals it collects, and you can tag prompts by topic, funnel stage or campaign.
- Reports: AI responses, cited pages, citation competitors and the search queries AI systems run behind the scenes.
- Links to SEO data. Site Explorer has an AI citations module, and its history view can show AI Overview performance over time.
- API access for exporting citation data.
Ahrefs Brand Radar pricing: what does it cost, and is it worth it?
As listed on Ahrefs' pricing and Brand Radar pages:
| Option | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Included in Lite / Standard / Advanced plans | $129 / $249 / $449 a month for the base plan | 5 / 10 / 20 tracked AI prompts (150 / 300 / 600 checks a month) |
| Custom prompts, starter package | $50/mo | For example 80 prompts daily on 1 platform; 2,500 checks a month; overage $0.020 per check |
| Custom prompts, growth package | $100/mo | For example 100 prompts daily on 2 platforms; 7,000 checks a month; overage $0.015 per check |
| Custom prompts, scale package | $250/mo | 25,000 checks a month; overage $0.010 per check |
| Brand Radar AI (AI Visibility Index) | From $199/mo | Database research across AI platforms, plus your own prompts |
| Enterprise | From $1,499/mo, annual | From 83 prompts and 2,500 checks, custom limits |
Brand Radar is also available on its own, without an Ahrefs SEO plan. Ahrefs' euro pricing shows the AI Visibility Index at €179 a month and €654 a month for all models, so full coverage costs several times the entry price.
Whether it is worth it depends on use. At $50 for 80 prompts on one platform, custom prompts are cheap for a single engine. Across several engines, costs climb quickly. The index is valuable for category research and competitor discovery, but less so for a small brand that barely appears in the database.
Ahrefs prompt tracking pricing and limits by plan
Ahrefs counts usage in checks: one prompt, on one platform, on one day. Its own example is 5 prompts on 1 platform, which is 150 checks a month. Two details matter:
- Checks multiply by platforms. 50 prompts on 3 platforms daily is 50 × 3 × 30 = 4,500 checks a month. That fits within the growth package's 7,000 checks, and so would a fourth platform at 6,000. A fifth, at 7,500, would not.
- Claude costs more. Ahrefs says Claude consumes 8 checks per update. Tracking 50 prompts daily on Claude alone uses 50 × 8 × 30 = 12,000 checks a month.
Before buying, work out prompts × platforms × days, then add the Claude weighting if you need Claude.
Can Ahrefs Rank Tracker track AI visibility over time?
Partly, through Ahrefs' SEO tools, and fully through Brand Radar. For Google's AI Overviews, Ahrefs' own guide points to Site Explorer. Its AI citations module lists where your site is cited, and its history can show AI Overview performance over time. For ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Mode and Claude, the tracking tool is Brand Radar's custom prompts, checked daily, with the history building from the day you start. So use Rank Tracker for keyword rankings, Site Explorer for AI Overview citations, and Brand Radar for prompts in assistants.
Ahrefs review: Does it measure AI citations as well as SEO?
It measures both, and the connection between them is its strongest feature. You can see which of your pages are cited in AI answers, which competitors' pages are cited instead, and then check those pages' backlinks, traffic and rankings in the same tool. Ahrefs' own research shows why the connection matters. An update of its study of 863,000 search results pages found that only 38% of AI Overview citations came from top-10 pages, down from 76% in its earlier analysis. So ranking data alone no longer tells you who gets cited. The limits are those of any tracker. Answers vary between runs, database prompts are generic, and a daily check per prompt shows a trend rather than a precise share.
Is the Ahrefs Guru plan with AI Visibility Toolkit worth nearly $6,000 a year?
First, a naming point: Guru and the AI Visibility Toolkit are Semrush products, not Ahrefs ones. Ahrefs' plans are Starter ($29 a month), Lite, Standard, Advanced and Enterprise, plus Ahrefs Free; tracked AI prompts start on Lite. Both suites reach about $6,000 a year once AI add-ons are included:
- Semrush: a legacy Guru plan at $208.33 a month billed annually is about $2,500 a year. The AI Visibility Toolkit at $99 a month adds $1,188. Two extra Brand Performance domains at $99 each add $2,376, for about $6,064.
- Ahrefs: Standard at $249 a month is $2,988 a year. Brand Radar AI from $199 a month adds $2,388, for about $5,376, before any extra platforms.
At that price, the question is whether you use the SEO data every week. If you do, adding AI visibility to the same suite is efficient. If you mainly want AI tracking, dedicated trackers cost less, as compared in Otterly.AI vs Ahrefs Brand Radar and Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Peec AI.
Who should use Brand Radar?
- Good fit: Ahrefs users who want AI citations linked to backlink and ranking data, and teams researching categories and competitors with the index.
- Reasonable fit: brands tracking custom prompts on one or two platforms, where the check packages are inexpensive.
- Poor fit: small brands absent from the database, and teams needing many prompts on Claude and several other platforms on a tight budget.
How brand-level and source-level visibility differ across tools is covered in source visibility vs AI visibility. A reporting comparison is in Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Semrush.
What do people ask about Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Is there a free version?
Ahrefs offers a free AI Visibility Checker, and paid Ahrefs plans include a few tracked prompts. Brand Radar's paid packages are separate.
Which platforms does it cover?
ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, with Claude available at a higher check cost.
Can I use my own prompts?
Yes. Custom prompts track the questions you define, refreshed daily.
Why are my database results empty?
The index covers prompts in Ahrefs' database. If few of them mention your brand or category, use custom prompts instead.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources