What they advertise, against what the entry price actually buys

Every vendor in this category gates something, and gating is what tiers are for. The question worth asking is whether you can see the limit at the moment you pay.

Every row quotes the claim rather than paraphrasing it, names where the quote came from, and dates when it was read. Where a fact came from a review roundup instead of the vendor, the row says so and its confidence drops. Where we could not confirm something, it reads as unverified rather than being guessed in our favour.

We are in this ledger, and our row is not flattering. Our marketing names four engines and our cheapest paid plan measures one. That is the same shape as a row below, written in the same words. A comparison page that exempts its author is a competitor grading competitors, which is what this category is already full of.

SEOAIOThat is us

Stated where you buy

What the marketing says: 4 engines named across the marketing site: Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Claude.; seoaio.ai homepage and /how-we-measure, read 2026-07-31
What the entry price buys: The $99 Starter plan measures citations on 2 engines: Perplexity and Google AI Mode. The rest unlock at Pro. Our pricing page prints that on the Starter card, in those words, before you pay.; seoaio.ai/pricing, Starter card, and CITATION_ENGINES_BY_PLAN in our own source, read 2026-09-06 (re-audited; the previous hand-typed sentence had gone stale)

Source: This ledger includes its author on purpose. The gap is real; the disclosure is the difference. Audited against our own code 2026-07-31: the Starter engine limit is on the Starter card, and two Agency lines that were NOT disclosing properly were corrected the same day (a sampling-depth superlative that was true of one engine out of four, and a cohort-benchmarking line that did not name its five-site floor).

Scrunch AI

True, but not on the purchase path

What the marketing says: Five AI engines named in the marketing.; scrunchai.com marketing pages, read 2026-07-27
What the entry price buys: The Core plan, reported at $250/mo, tracks four: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok and AI Mode require Enterprise. Hallucination detection is Enterprise too.; Third-party review roundups, 2026-07-27. Scrunch does not publish pricing on its own site, which is why this row cannot be first-party.

Third-party evidence. This vendor does not publish pricing on its own site, so the purchasable half comes from review roundups rather than from them. Treat it as weaker than a first-party quote. Source: teardown-scrunch-dfs-leadhero-2026-07-27

Perplexity Computer (AI SEO page)

True, but not on the purchase path

What the marketing says: “Track your AI visibility in minutes”: checks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot and builds a playbook automatically.; perplexity.ai/gen/computer/ai-seo, read 2026-09-06 (a noindex landing page for their general agent)
What the entry price buys: Not a product and not priced on the page: it is Perplexity Computer, bundled into Pro ($20/mo) and Max ($200/mo), metered in credits the page never mentions. The roster it checks does not include Perplexity itself, nor Google AI Mode, nor Claude. The visibility score has no stated sample count or method.; Third-party pricing explainers, 2026-09-06; the page itself carries no pricing, no methodology and no sample output. Roster read from the page.

Opinly

Not what the entry price buys

What the marketing says: “Where your brand gets mentioned by AI”, in their advertising.; Opinly ad creative, read 2026-07-28
What the entry price buys: Their /platform page enumerates six toolkits and names ZERO AI engines anywhere on it. The only engine list on the entire site sits inside a blog post: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. There is a real LLM module underneath, seven MCP tools deep, and the product pages do not sell it.; opinly.ai/platform and /blog/llm-content-optimization, read 2026-07-28

Source: teardown-opinly-2026-07-28

Ahrefs Brand Radar

True, but not on the purchase path

What the marketing says: AI-platform tracking presented as part of the Ahrefs product line, on a product page with no price on it.; ahrefs.com/brand-radar, read 2026-07-30
What the entry price buys: $199/mo per platform, or $699/mo for all platforms, charged ON TOP of the base plan. A customer on a $249/mo base plan sees that only in the in-app upgrade modal, after subscribing.; Ahrefs in-app upgrade modal, seen 2026-07-30 by a customer on a $249/mo base plan

Source: teardown-ahrefs-brand-radar-2026-07-30

Ahrefs custom prompts

Stated where you buy

What the marketing says: 2,500 custom prompt checks included at the top tier.; ahrefs.com/custom-prompts, read 2026-07-30
What the entry price buys: The unit is compound: one check per prompt, per platform, per location, per day. Ten prompts across six platforms in three locations, checked daily, consumes 180 checks a day, so the included allowance is about a fortnight of that configuration.; ahrefs.com/custom-prompts metering description, read 2026-07-30

Source: teardown-ahrefs-brand-radar-2026-07-30. The metering rule is stated plainly on their page; the arithmetic is ours.

How to read the verdicts

Stated where you buy: The limit is printed on the page where you hand over money.
True, but not on the purchase path: Accurate somewhere: a blog post, the docs, a third-party roundup, or an upgrade modal you only see after subscribing. Not where a buyer would look first.
Not what the entry price buys: The marketing names a capability the entry price does not include, and the limit is not stated at the point of sale.
Could not verify: We looked and could not confirm it. Said out loud rather than assumed.

Every vendor gates something, and gating is what tiers are for. Nothing here says a limit is wrong. The only thing being measured is whether you can see it before you pay. Read as of 2026-07-31. If a vendor changes a page and this row goes stale, tell us and we will re-read it and update the date.

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