The AI search keyword research tool market in mid-2026 is in roughly the same shape that traditional SEO tools were in around 2012. Several products exist. None covers the full workflow. Most cover one slice well and the rest of the slices badly. The teams winning at AEO/GEO have built bespoke stacks combining 3-5 tools, not bought one off the shelf.
Here are nine tools, honestly compared. The killer feature each one nails. The thing each one does not yet do. The price. And the answer to the question every team eventually asks: which tool, in 2026, gives me the most coverage for the least money?
The 9 tools, ranked by coverage of the full workflow
1. ai-search-keyword-research.com — sorry, the tool at gautamkhorana.com/tools/ai-search-keyword-research/
Free, unlimited cached searches, 10 fresh searches per IP per day. Covers all 5 outputs the workflow needs (questions, AI Overview presence, AI engine answers, citation gap, content briefs) in 30 seconds end-to-end. Built on top of DataForSEO + Reddit + Perplexity + Claude APIs combined into one workflow.
Killer feature: the citation gap matrix. No other free tool produces it. Shows you exactly which competitor domains are being cited in AI answers for each of your top question clusters, and where your domain has the gap to close.
What it does not do: track citation frequency over time (one-shot snapshot, not longitudinal monitoring). For ongoing tracking you still need Profound or Otterly.
Price: free. Yes, the listicle is biased; it is also true.
2. Profound
AI search visibility tracking platform. Tracks brand mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude over time. Excellent for "is my brand getting cited more or less than last month".
Killer feature: the longitudinal tracking. The only tool with mature time-series data on AI citations.
What it does not do: question discovery. You bring the topic; Profound tells you how often you are mentioned for it. Does not surface "what should I write about" — that is a different problem.
Price: $499-1499/month. Enterprise-priced.
3. Otterly.ai
AI Overview-specific tracking. Monitors which keywords have AI Overviews in your account, and what those Overviews say.
Killer feature: AI Overview-specific depth. Tracks AI Overview text, citations, and changes over time better than any general-purpose tool.
What it does not do: ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude tracking. Single-engine focus.
Price: $199-499/month. Mid-market.
4. Athena Intelligence
AI brand mention tracker, similar to Profound. Cross-LLM monitoring.
Killer feature: deeper enterprise reporting. Multi-brand, multi-region dashboards for agencies.
What it does not do: question discovery, content brief generation. Pure tracking, not research.
Price: enterprise — undisclosed, "contact sales".
5. AlsoAsked
Visualises Google PAA trees. The cleanest tool for "show me every question Google considers related to X".
Killer feature: the deep PAA tree visualisation. Three to five levels deep, far richer than what shows up in the live SERP.
What it does not do: AI engine queries, citation tracking, content briefs. PAA-only.
Price: free tier (3/day), paid from $19/month.
6. AnswerThePublic
Question discovery via Google autosuggest. The grandfather of question-research tools, around since 2015.
Killer feature: the visualisation — the iconic "wheel of questions" that designers love and exec stakeholders find easy to understand.
What it does not do: AI engine queries, AI Overview tracking, citation analysis. Old-school question harvesting only.
Price: $99-199/month. Mid-market.
7. Perplexity (the API)
Direct access to the Perplexity AI engine via API. Best primary source for "what is Perplexity actually saying".
Killer feature: the cleanest source citations of any AI engine. Returns answer plus URL list.
What it does not do: anything other than answer queries. Not a research tool — a query API. You build the workflow on top.
Price: ~$0.005 per query. Pay-as-you-go.
8. Ahrefs / Semrush (with their AI search modules)
Both are adding AI search modules in 2026. Ahrefs has a "Brand Radar" feature. Semrush has an "AI Toolkit". Both tools are still primarily traditional SEO tools.
Killer feature: integration with the traditional SEO research the team is already doing. One subscription covers both worlds.
What it does not do: AI engine querying at depth, citation gap analysis at the cluster level. The AI modules feel bolted on, not native.
Price: $179-449/month for Ahrefs Lite or Semrush. The AI modules are included or modest add-ons.
9. Tavily
LLM-friendly web search API. Returns clean snippets and extractable page content for retrieval-augmented generation.
Killer feature: developer-grade integration with LLM workflows. Easy to plug into custom AEO/GEO research stacks.
What it does not do: anything user-facing. Not a tool you buy and use directly — a tool you build with.
Price: free tier (1000 searches/month), paid from $20/month.
How to choose, by team shape
Solo SEO consultant or small marketing team (≤3 people)
Best stack: the free tool at /tools/ai-search-keyword-research/ for question discovery + briefs + citation gap. Add AlsoAsked free tier for deep PAA. Total cost: $0/month if you stay under 10 fresh searches per day. Add a Perplexity Pro subscription ($20/mo) for unlimited manual research queries.
Mid-size SEO team or agency (4-15 people)
Best stack: the free tool above + Otterly ($199/mo) for AI Overview tracking + AlsoAsked Pro ($19/mo) for PAA depth. Total: ~$220/mo. Skip Profound until you have 5+ active client brands to monitor.
Enterprise SEO team or large agency (16+ people)
Best stack: Profound ($1499/mo) for cross-LLM tracking + Ahrefs Enterprise ($999+/mo) for traditional SEO + the free workflow tool for content brief generation. Total: ~$2500-3000/mo. Build out a custom dashboard layer combining all three.
What is missing from the 2026 tool market
Three things, all major.
No tool currently combines question discovery, citation tracking, and content brief generation in one place at enterprise grade. Profound does tracking. Otterly does AI Overview. AlsoAsked does discovery. None does the synthesis.
No tool yet provides accurate AI engine query volume. We have Google search volume; we estimate ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude volume; nobody publishes the actual numbers because the platforms do not share them yet. Expect this to be the next big tool category.
No tool yet integrates well with content management systems. The brief gets exported to a Google Doc or Notion; the writing happens elsewhere; the citations get tracked separately. The end-to-end "research → write → publish → track" loop has gaps.
What the next 18 months probably look like
Three predictions, each with moderate confidence.
Profound or Otterly buys an AlsoAsked-style discovery tool in 2026-2027 to close the discovery gap. Or vice versa.
Ahrefs or Semrush builds out their AI module to feature parity with the standalone tools. The traditional SEO incumbents have the distribution; closing the feature gap is mostly engineering.
A new entrant — possibly built on top of the OpenAI Responses API or Anthropic search — ships an end-to-end "ask in natural language, get a content roadmap" tool that captures the small-team market. The tool I have built is one such attempt; expect 5-10 more in the next 12 months.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest way to do AI search keyword research professionally?
Free tool at /tools/ai-search-keyword-research/ + AlsoAsked free tier + Perplexity Pro ($20/mo) + Reddit/Stack Exchange APIs (free). About $20/mo total. Covers 80% of what enterprise stacks do.
Do I need Profound or Otterly to do this seriously?
No, not for one-shot research. Yes, for ongoing brand citation tracking over time. The tools serve different jobs — research vs monitoring — and most teams need both eventually.
Will Ahrefs or Semrush replace these specialised tools?
Eventually, probably. The pattern of incumbents catching up to specialised tools (Ahrefs eating Moz Pro, Semrush eating BuzzSumo) usually plays out over 18-36 months. Specialised tools live in the gap until the incumbent has feature parity.
How accurate is the free tool you built?
Coverage-wise it matches what you would build by combining DataForSEO + Reddit + Perplexity + Claude in a custom workflow — same data sources. Accuracy-wise it is bounded by the underlying APIs; if Perplexity changes its retrieval, the tool changes with it. The killer feature (citation gap matrix) is no more or less accurate than running the same engine queries by hand.
What is the biggest mistake teams make picking AI search tools?
Buying a tracking tool before doing the research work. Tracking citation frequency is a maintenance task; you only need it after you have built content that is competing for citations. Teams that buy Profound or Otterly first and then realise they have no AEO/GEO content to track waste $1000+/month for 3-6 months.
What to do next
Read the pillar piece on AI search keyword research in 2026.
Read the 7-step methodology if you want to do the research yourself.
Read the AEO vs GEO vs SEO comparison if the terminology is still confusing.
Or just try the free tool at /tools/ai-search-keyword-research/ on your own topic and see whether the output is useful before committing to a paid stack.