AEO Platforms in 2026 — A Buyer's Guide for B2B SaaS

Platforms in scope (alphabetical)

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ sits between enterprise contracts and self-serve. The Self-Serve plan is $295/month for 3,600 credits (one credit = one AI response), with Enterprise pricing custom-quoted. Engine coverage is broad — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok. Annual billing brings the Self-Serve effective rate down meaningfully.

The credit-based model lets a marketing team scope spend by actual usage rather than commit to a flat tier. The platform layers structured recommendations on top of measurement, but recommendations are reader-friendly — not executed for you. The Athena Citation Engine (ACE), the platform's most differentiated capability, is Enterprise-tier only. AthenaHQ fits B2B SaaS teams that want more than measurement at mid-market scale but aren't yet at enterprise procurement.

Evertune

Evertune does not publish pricing on its website — the pricing page directs visitors to “Book a demo.” The platform is sales-led, enterprise-focused, with no public self-serve checkout and no free trial. Budget is determined by demo conversation; expectations should start in the enterprise tier rather than self-serve.

The scope is measurement-focused: brand-mention measurement across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, with clean dashboards and mature data pipelines. Evertune does not produce executable schema, llms.txt, or off-page citation strategy — teams that adopt it typically pair with another tool or an agency for the execution layer. The fit is enterprise teams with execution already covered, looking for a clean measurement system at scale.

Orion

Orion publishes three tiers on its public pricing page (verified at useorion.ai/pricing, June 2026): Launch at $59/month, Scale at $179/month, and a custom-priced Partner tier for agencies. All tiers include ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini coverage with no engine gates. Launch and Scale are self-serve sign-up; the Partner tier is scoped on a call to fit the organization.

Orion combines measurement and execution in a single platform. The measurement layer is a 7-factor Citation Readiness audit covering crawlability, extractability, schema, llms.txt, content structure, internal cluster cohesion, and entity graph completeness. The execution layer is the Citation Compass methodology, which operates the off-page surfaces — marketplace listings, review platforms, industry directories, editorial press — empirically shown in our own probes to drive AI mention rate. Score factors are open and auditable.

The platform is positioned for the self-serve segment — B2B SaaS teams under $5M ARR, and agencies managing multiple client domains. Current client engagements span B2C botanical wellness (Papiro Salud Botánica, Colombia), B2C luxury fashion (Mario Hernández, Colombia), B2B executive search (T-Mapp, LATAM), higher education (Algebra University, Croatia), and B2B SaaS (useorion.ai internal). The honest scope limitation: Orion is newer than enterprise incumbents in the space, the team is smaller, and the self-serve tiers don't include the white-glove account-management motion that mid-market and enterprise buyers typically expect.

Otterly AI

Otterly AI publishes three tiers transparently: Lite at $29/month (15 search prompts), Standard at $189/month (100 prompts), and Premium at $489/month (400 prompts) — all with unlimited team members, daily tracking, and coverage across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot. A free trial is available, and annual billing carries a 15% discount. The Lite tier is the lowest-priced entry point in this comparison.

Otterly is measurement-only — it surfaces when a brand starts appearing in AI answers, but does not produce executable schema, llms.txt, off-page citation strategy, or competitive intelligence at the depth other platforms offer. Methodology documentation is less developed than the more mature platforms. The fit is smaller teams that need monitoring at the lowest possible cost without an execution layer.

Profound

Profound publishes three tiers on its pricing page: Starter at $99/month (ChatGPT tracking only, 50 prompts tracked, email support — self-serve sign-up), Growth at $399/month (3 Answer Engines tracked, 100 prompts, 6 optimized articles per month, with a free trial available), and Enterprise (custom pricing) (up to 10 Answer Engines, multiple companies tracked, tailored prompt plans, dedicated Slack support, SSO/SAML and SOC2 compliance — demo required).

Where Profound earns its higher tiers: multi-engine coverage at Growth and above, optimization-content output bundled into Growth, and enterprise compliance at the top. Where it's narrow: Starter is intentionally limited to ChatGPT-only tracking — useful as a low-cost entry but not a multi-engine view from day one. Like other measurement-focused platforms, Profound reports recommendations but does not execute on-page or off-page interventions — that's the buyer's team work.

Segment-fit guidance by stage

The five platforms split into distinct segments determined by buyer stage, engine coverage breadth, and whether the team needs measurement only or measurement plus execution. The matchups below are descriptive rather than prescriptive — each segment has multiple platforms that can serve it, and the right choice depends on what the team will operationalize this quarter.

• Pre-revenue / monitoring at lowest cost → Otterly AI Lite at $29/month (4 engines tracked).
• Under $5M ARR with execution included → Orion Launch at $59/month (combined measurement + execution; all engines covered).
• ChatGPT-only monitoring at low cost → Profound Starter at $99/month (ChatGPT tracking only, 50 prompts).
• Mid-market with content production needs → Profound Growth at $399/month (3 engines + 6 optimized articles/month; free trial).
• Mid-market with recommendations layered on measurement → AthenaHQ Self-Serve at $295/month (credit-based; structured recommendations).
• Enterprise measurement-only, sales-led → Evertune (pricing demo-required; mature measurement focus; teams typically pair with separate execution).
• Enterprise with compliance and multi-company needs → Profound Enterprise (custom; up to 10 engines, SSO/SAML, SOC2, dedicated support).

A common buying mistake is committing tier-up for features the team won't operationalize. A $3,000/month measurement-only platform with no execution layer produces a dashboard nobody acts on; a $59/month combined platform that the team uses weekly typically moves more citation rate. Tier fit is determined by execution capacity, not by feature count.

Buyers sometimes evaluate AEO platforms against the SEO toolset (SEMrush, Ahrefs). The two categories solve different problems — SEO authority and AI citation respond to different signals. (Why traditional link building doesn't move AI citations covers the mechanism in detail.)

What none of these platforms do, yet

A buyer should know what's *not* on this list as much as what is:

• None of these platforms publish multi-year citation longitudinal data. AEO as a measurable discipline is two to three years old. Any platform claiming five years of trendline data is reconstructing it from SEO proxies — not real data.
• None offer a “guaranteed citation lift” SLA. Citation rate is multi-causal — competitor moves, model updates, query-distribution shifts, organic press, all contribute. A platform offering a guarantee is selling a proxy metric, not real citation movement.
• None replace a human strategist for high-stakes categories. The platforms produce data and recommendations; interpreting them against a specific buyer's context still requires a person who understands the category.

If a vendor in this space sells you any of the three above, treat it as a credibility flag.

For a fuller primer on AEO fundamentals before evaluating any platform, start with the 2026 GEO Starter Guide.

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