Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit vs Peec AI for Competitor Recommendations

How do they compare?

From Semrush's knowledge base and Peec's documentation and pricing:

What does Semrush's Competitor Research show?

Enter your domain and up to four competitors, and the report compares:

• AI Visibility, a 0–100 benchmark of how often each brand appears in AI answers.
• Audience, an estimate of the total query audience across topics where each brand appears.
• Mentions, the number of prompts whose answers name each brand.

The Topics and Prompts table can be filtered to strong, weak or missing, where missing means competitors are cited and you are not. You can send any of these prompts straight into daily Prompt Tracking. The Sources view lists every domain AI cites when these brands are mentioned, and a missing filter shows the external sites cited for competitors but not for you, which Semrush suggests treating as outreach or content opportunities.

The strength is breadth. Because the data comes from a large prompt database, you can find competitive gaps you would never have thought to track. More on the toolkit is in the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit review.

What does Peec show?

Peec tracks your chosen prompts daily and reports four clearly defined measures against competitors: visibility (the share of answers that mention you), share of voice, sentiment and average position. Its gap analysis shows which sources, domains and URLs drive competitors' visibility and not yours. Actions then turns those gaps into a ranked list:

• Site audit fixes that help AI crawlers reach and understand your site.
• Owned content to create or improve, inspired by what works for competitors.
• Earned placements on third-party sources AI already relies on.

The strength is depth and follow-through on the questions you chose. More detail is in AthenaHQ vs Peec AI.

Which is better for acting on competitor recommendations?

• To discover where you lose: Semrush, because the prompt database surfaces topics outside your tracked list.
• To see why you lose on specific questions: Peec, because daily answers and source-level gap analysis show what AI relies on for each prompt.
• To decide what to do next: Peec's Actions are more specific and ranked; Semrush's source gaps and brand reports point to outreach and content, but leave more prioritisation to you.
• To keep SEO context: Semrush, where rankings and backlinks sit next to AI data.

A common workflow: use Semrush's missing prompts to choose what to track, then track those prompts in Peec and work through its actions. How to find competitor-winning topics is covered in how to find topics where competitors outperform you in ChatGPT.

How should you choose which competitors to track?

The competitors that matter in AI answers are not always the ones your sales team names. Start with the brands AI actually recommends for your buyers' questions: Semrush suggests competitors for its report, and a week of Peec tracking shows every brand that appears in answers to your prompts. Then pick a mix of three kinds: your direct commercial rivals, the brands AI names most often in your category, and one or two newer entrants that appear more each month. Review the list each quarter, and keep a note of why each competitor is on it. In fast-moving categories, the brand AI recommends first can change within weeks after a major review, funding round or product launch, and tracking the wrong rivals hides the real threat.

Where does each fall short?

• Semrush: only four competitors per comparison; the database covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and ChatGPT, not Perplexity or Claude; daily tracking limited to 25 prompts at entry.
• Peec: competitor insight is limited to the prompts you track; three engines active on self-serve plans; Actions do not write content.
• Both: answers vary between runs, so treat single-day competitor wins as noise.

We have not tested these tools side by side ourselves; this comparison is based on their published documentation.

What should you do when AI recommends a competitor?

1. Read the answers where the competitor wins, and note the reasons given.
2. Check the cited sources for those answers.
3. Compare your page that should answer the question with the competitor's cited page.
4. Fix facts and gaps on your own site first.
5. Pursue the third-party sources that recommend the competitor but not you.

A fuller checklist is in what to check first when AI recommends a competitor over your brand.

What might this look like in practice?

Consider an illustrative email marketing platform, Postbright. Semrush's Competitor Research showed 40 missing prompts about email automation for ecommerce, where two rivals were cited, and a Sources view dominated by three review sites and an agency blog. Postbright added the ten most relevant prompts to Peec, which showed a rival first in most answers, with the agency blog as the main source. Peec's top earned action suggested getting included in that blog's comparison. Postbright also rewrote its ecommerce automation page. Two months later, it appeared in half the tracked answers, usually second.

What do people ask about Semrush and Peec for competitor analysis?

How many competitors can Semrush compare?

Up to four in the Competitor Research report, with suggestions from Semrush.

Does Peec find competitors automatically?

Peec suggests a brand as a competitor once it has been mentioned at least twice alongside yours in tracked answers; you accept suggestions or add competitors by hand, and it shows how they appear in answers to your prompts.

Which shows the sources behind competitor wins?

Both. Semrush's Sources view has a missing filter; Peec's gap analysis works by source, domain and URL.

Can I use both?

Yes. Semrush suits discovery across a category; Peec suits daily tracking and action on chosen prompts.