Searches for “free AI SEO audit,” “AI SEO audit tool,” and “AI search audit” now describe several different products. Some inspect your website. Some query AI systems and track whether your brand appears. Some do both. Comparing them as if they measure the same thing creates bad buying decisions.
Disclosure: Reffed is our product and appears in this list. We separate website-readiness tools from live prompt-monitoring tools below and link to the providers' own pages so you can verify their current offers.
Want the fastest starting point?
Run Reffed's free website-readiness audit first. No credit card. The six engine-oriented views are heuristics based on website signals, not six live AI queries.
First: decide which type of AI audit you need
Website-readiness audit: checks the site itself — crawler access, entity clarity, structured data, content depth, page structure, and other signals that can make content easier or harder for AI search systems to interpret.
Live prompt / brand monitoring: sends prompts to one or more AI products and measures things such as mentions, citations, share of voice, competitors, sentiment, or position.
Neither replaces the other. If the website has obvious technical or content gaps, a readiness audit gives you a practical starting point. If you already have a mature site and need market-level visibility data, prompt monitoring is usually the more useful category.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Free starting point | Primary job | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reffed | Free website audit | Website readiness + prioritized fixes | Businesses that want to know what to fix first |
| Scrunch | Free AI visibility audit | AI visibility / agent experience | Teams evaluating how their site performs for AI agents |
| AthenaHQ | Free Essential plan | AI visibility tracking + recommendations | Teams wanting a broader AI-search platform |
| Profound | Free trial | Answer-engine tracking + marketing workflows | Marketing teams needing live prompt data |
| Peec AI | Free trial | AI search analytics | SEO/content teams monitoring prompts and models |
| OtterlyAI | No permanent free plan shown; Lite is $29/mo | Daily AI search monitoring | Small teams wanting low-cost prompt tracking |
1. Reffed — free website-readiness audit
What the free audit does: Reffed inspects a public website for crawler rules, entity/page clarity, structured data, content signals, citation-friendly structure, and related readiness factors. It returns an overall readiness report plus prioritized actions.
What it does not do: the six engine-oriented views are heuristic readiness scores. The free audit does not send six live prompts to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI, and Copilot and should not be interpreted as a live ranking.
Best for: owners, marketers, and small teams asking, “What on my website should I fix first?”
2. Scrunch — free AI visibility audit
Scrunch currently leads its public site with a URL-based AI visibility audit and says results are available in about 30 seconds with no credit card required. Its broader platform focuses on making websites easier for AI agents to discover and use.
Best for: teams that want an audit as the entry point into a larger AI customer-experience / agent-experience platform.
3. AthenaHQ — free Essential plan
AthenaHQ's current public plans page includes a free Essential tier with credits, multiple AI platforms, prompt/response analysis, source and competitor insights, and content recommendations. Paid tiers expand usage.
Best for: marketers who want to start free but expect to move into a broader prompt-tracking and optimization platform.
4. Profound — free trial, then paid monitoring
Profound's public pricing currently includes a free trial with a limited one-time prompt set. Its paid products expand into ongoing answer-engine tracking, competitive intelligence, content/agent workflows, and enterprise reporting.
Best for: marketing teams that want live answer-engine data and a larger AEO operating platform rather than only a website audit.
5. Peec AI — free trial for AI search analytics
Peec AI focuses on tracking brand visibility across AI search platforms. Its public pricing describes prompt-based plans with daily tracking, model selection, projects, and team access, with a free-trial entry point.
Best for: SEO and content teams that already know the prompts they want to monitor and want recurring brand/competitor analytics.
6. OtterlyAI — inexpensive paid entry point
OtterlyAI is not a permanent free option on its current pricing page, but its Lite tier is $29/month and includes 15 search prompts with daily tracking across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Additional engines are sold as add-ons.
Best for: small marketing teams that want a relatively low-cost live prompt-monitoring product rather than a one-time site audit.
Which free AI SEO audit tool should you start with?
Use this simple rule:
- You want to know what is wrong with the website itself: start with a website-readiness audit such as Reffed.
- You want to know whether AI answers mention your brand for specific prompts: start with a live monitoring product or trial such as AthenaHQ, Profound, or Peec.
- You want inexpensive ongoing prompt tracking: OtterlyAI is a straightforward paid entry point.
- You are evaluating a broader AI-agent website platform: Scrunch is worth comparing.
What a useful free AI audit should show
Whatever tool you use, look for four things:
- Measurement type. The report should tell you whether a number is a website heuristic, an estimate, or an observed live-provider result.
- Evidence. You should be able to see which URL, crawler rule, page signal, prompt, or provider response supports the finding.
- Prioritization. A list of 70 issues is less useful than a clear first three.
- Limitations. Failed fetches and unavailable data should remain unknown rather than silently becoming a zero score.
Frequently asked questions
Is an AI SEO audit the same as a traditional SEO audit?
No. They overlap on crawlability, technical structure, content and structured data, but an AI-search audit may also focus on entity clarity, citation-friendly formatting, AI crawler rules, and—when live monitoring is used—brand mentions inside AI answers.
Can a free AI audit prove that ChatGPT recommends my business?
Only if the product actually sends and records a live ChatGPT query relevant to that claim. A website-readiness score alone cannot prove a live recommendation.
What does Reffed Watch add to the free audit?
Watch re-runs Reffed's website-readiness audit weekly, keeps report history, and emails what changed. It costs $59/month or $590/year.
Run your free AI search readiness audit
See the website gaps Reffed can establish, the evidence behind them, and the first three fixes to prioritize.
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