What you can learn for free before paying
Free checkers, free credits and free trials each answer a different question. Used in the right order, they can tell you whether you need a paid tool at all, and which kind.
You don’t need a subscription to find out whether AI assistants mention your brand. Several providers offer free checks, and a few give small free allowances. They are genuinely useful, as long as you know which question each one answers.
Kinds of free
The free checks in the directory
- Free snapshotAhrefs Brand Radar: Ahrefs AI Visibility CheckerExplore a brand across six AI platforms without opening an account.Limit: A snapshot, not the full Brand Radar history or monitoring service.
- Limited free creditsAuthoritas: Authoritas free allowanceExplore credit-based AI answer research before paying for a larger offer.Limit: Model choices consume different credits. Live-search models require Enterprise. The page does not establish whether the free credits renew.
- Free snapshotGeoptie: Geoptie AI Visibility CheckerSee whether a brand appears in answers before choosing a monitoring product.Limit: A point-in-time result. Ongoing tracking belongs to the paid dashboard.
- Free website toolGeoptie: Geoptie GEO AuditStart with the website changes that may help AI systems understand a page.Limit: Website readiness does not establish whether a brand appears in live AI answers.
- Free snapshotHubSpot AEO: HubSpot AI Search GraderGet a first look at how AI describes a brand, without creating an account.Limit: Based on model training data. It is separate from the paid HubSpot AEO tracker and is not live-search monitoring.
- Free planMangools AI Search Watcher: Mangools AI Search Watcher FreeTrack one brand on five prompts at no cost.Limit: Refreshes weekly; more prompts or monitors need a paid plan.
- Limited free creditsWaikay: Waikay free planTry a brand overview and topic analysis without starting a subscription.Limit: Credits do not renew. Reports and tracking consume the same allowance.
Read the limits column carefully. A snapshot is a single moment, so it can’t show change. A website audit checks whether your pages are readable, which is a different question from whether AI answers mention you. And at least one free grader works from what a model learned in training rather than a live search, so it describes what the model “remembers”, not today’s search-backed answers. Our piece on why answers change explains why that matters.
Use them in this order
- SnapshotDo you appear at all for your main category question?
- Website checkCan AI crawlers read the pages you want cited?
- Free allowanceTrack a handful of real prompts while the credits last.
- TrialOnly now, test a paid product on your real workload.
The order matters because each step changes what you need next. If the snapshot shows you everywhere already, light weekly monitoring may be plenty. If the website check finds crawlers blocked, fix that before paying to measure the result.
Trials: make the clock count
Several paid products offer time-limited trials. They end or convert to paid under each provider’s terms, so plan the trial before you start it:
- Write your prompts and rival list first, so day one is tracking, not setup.
- Pick the platforms your customers use; don’t accept the default set blindly.
- Book a reminder two days before the end to decide, export, or cancel.
- Prepare one real report during the trial. That is the best test of fit.
Our free tools page keeps the current list of free checks, allowances and trials with their limits, and links each to its source.
Sources
- Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker viewed 11 Nov 2026
- Geoptie AI Visibility Checker viewed 11 Nov 2026
- Geoptie free GEO audit viewed 11 Nov 2026
- Waikay free plan viewed 11 Nov 2026
- Authoritas AI search platform pricing viewed 11 Nov 2026
- HubSpot AI Search Grader viewed 11 Nov 2026
Directory figures come from Hyperfind’s profiles of 34 tools, not the whole market. Prices follow each provider’s published offer on the date shown in its profile.
