Here’s the short version of this Ahrefs Brand Radar review. It’s one of the largest AI visibility research databases available, and a solid prompt tracker if you pay for the right package. It isn’t a full AEO platform. It won’t tell you what to fix, and its numbers show trends, not exact counts.
Most reviews ranking for this term describe an older Brand Radar that tracked three AI platforms with no prompt tracking. This review covers the 2026 version: how it works, what it costs, where it falls short, and how we’d use it on a real brand. It is also a useful starting point for any team working on generative engine optimization (GEO).
What Is Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Ahrefs Brand Radar is an AI visibility tool built into Ahrefs. It shows how often a brand is mentioned or cited in AI search answers from Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and Claude. It also tracks branded search demand, web mentions, and brand presence on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit.
It reports four core metrics, as defined in Ahrefs’ help docs:
AI responses that name your brand. A response counts once, even if it names you three times.
AI responses that link to your pages as a source.
Mentions weighted by the search volume behind each prompt.
Your share of impressions against the competitors you track, weighted across platforms.
Think of it as brand monitoring for the AI era. Ahrefs says more than 3,000 companies use Brand Radar, including Octopus Energy, whose SEO team replaced manual scripts with it.
How It Has Changed Since Launch
Brand Radar launched in beta in March 2025. Since then, according to Ahrefs’ changelog and independent tracking, it has added:
Any test run before 2026 describes a very different product.
How Brand Radar Collects Its Data
Brand Radar uses two data models. The AI Visibility Index is a pre-built database of AI answers you can search instantly for any brand. Custom Prompts tracks questions you choose, starting the day you add them. Knowing which one you’re looking at explains most accuracy debates online.
The AI Visibility Index
Ahrefs turns real queries from its keyword database into natural questions using People Also Ask data, then runs them through each AI platform. The index holds more than 449 million prompts in total with default, non-personalized settings. Question sets are re-tested monthly on a 90-day window, and history goes back to 2025.
Custom Prompts
This works like a rank tracker for AI. You add your buyers’ exact questions and choose daily, weekly, or monthly tracking per platform. It covers every index platform plus Claude. One check equals one prompt, on one platform, in one location, per update.
Coverage is uneven across platforms:
| Platform | Approximate Prompts in the Index |
|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | About 312 million |
| ChatGPT | About 31 million |
| Perplexity | About 31 million |
| Gemini | About 31 million |
| Copilot | About 31 million |
| AI Mode | About 14 million |
The index works best for established brands with real search demand. Ahrefs itself notes limited coverage for brands with little search volume, so smaller brands should rely on Custom Prompts.
Two metric details matter for reporting:
- Share of voice changes whenever you add or remove a competitor, so keep your competitor set fixed.
- Since September 30, 2026, impressions use AI-adjusted volume, based on each platform’s estimated usage. Expect a shift when comparing impressions across that date.
Key Features of Ahrefs Brand Radar
Brand Radar’s key features are instant competitor benchmarking, Entities, the Topics report, comparison filters, cited pages reports, prompt fanout data, and YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit tracking. Search Demand, Web Visibility, AI traffic, and bot analytics complete the picture, and the data exports to most reporting tools.
Competitor Benchmarking
Search any competitor and see their AI share of voice instantly. An AI suggested feature can fill in your top competitors.
Entities
Group brand variations and product names into one entity. This fixes miscounts for names that are also common words, a problem Profound’s review ran into with a brand called Grin.
Topics Report
Groups prompts into parent topics, showing which angles you own and which you’re missing.
Comparison Filters
Only brand, With others, and Others only. Others only is the most valuable, since it shows prompts where competitors appear and you don’t.
Cited Pages and Domains
Shows which URLs AI pulls from, with Found in, Cited in, and Avg. position columns. This is your outreach target list, where AI visibility meets link building.
Fanout Queries
Shows the query fan-out, meaning the sub-searches AI runs before answering a prompt, which works like a ready-made content brief.
Search Demand and Web Visibility
Track branded search volume and linked or unlinked brand mentions across the web. Writesonic’s test found both close to real-world trends.
YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit
Free while in beta. These user-generated content (UGC) sources matter, since a summary of Ahrefs’ research found YouTube mentions among the strongest links to AI visibility.
AI Traffic and Bot Analytics
Web Analytics shows AI referral traffic, and Bot Analytics shows which pages AI crawlers visit.
Reporting and Integrations
Data flows into Report Builder, Google Sheets, CSV, a Looker Studio connector, the Ahrefs API, and Ahrefs MCP for ChatGPT and Claude. The Letaido add-on adds bulk prompt management, automated reports, and an AI Brand Sentiment workflow.
Ahrefs Brand Radar Pricing (2026)
Ahrefs Brand Radar pricing has two parts. Custom Prompt starts at $50 per month, and the AI Visibility Index costs $199 per month. Tracking all AI models through Custom Prompts is listed at $699 per month. Every paid Ahrefs plan also includes a small free Custom Prompts quota.
| Option | Price | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Prompts | From $50/mo | Track your own prompts |
| Custom Prompts, all models | $699/mo | Tracking across every supported model |
| AI Visibility Index | $199/mo | Search the full prompt database for any brand |
The two are separate purchases, and the $50 package doesn’t require the $199 index. The index package lists 2,500 extra checks per month, with overage at $0.02 per check.
Paid Ahrefs plans include free daily prompts:
| Ahrefs Plan | Free Daily Prompts | Checks per Month |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | 5 | 150 |
| Standard | 10 | 300 |
| Advanced | 20 | 600 |
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools users can add Brand Radar without a paid plan, and a free AI Visibility Checker offers a quick preview.
Checks multiply fast, because each prompt counts once per platform, location, and refresh:
| Scenario | Monthly Checks |
|---|---|
| 5 prompts, 1 platform, daily | 150 |
| 50 prompts, 3 platforms, weekly | About 600 |
| 100 prompts, 2 platforms, daily | About 6000 |
Claude costs 8 checks per update. Track most prompts weekly and save daily checks for your highest-value questions. Older reviews quoting $129 per month or $828 to $1,148 per month reflect earlier pricing, so always check the live page before you budget.
How Accurate Is Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Accuracy is the biggest question in any Ahrefs Brand Radar. Brand Radar is accurate enough for trends and competitor comparisons, but weaker for exact mention counts on chatbots. The index is built from search-backed prompts, so it misses long conversational questions with no search volume. Custom Prompts and the 2026 prompt-based Google indexes close much of this gap.
The most cited test comes from Writesonic. Brand Radar showed three ChatGPT mentions, while Writesonic’s own tracker showed 123. AI Overview’s figures were far closer. Keep in mind that Writesonic sells a competing tool, and the test ran on an early version, before Custom Prompts existed.
Ahrefs is open about the limits in its methodology notes:
Long-Tail Gaps
Niche and long-tail prompts may not be included.
Hallucinated Links Stay In
Some “citations” may point to pages that don’t exist.
Potential, Not Actual, Reach
Impressions and share of voice estimate visibility, not real traffic.
Monthly Chatbot Refresh
As Profound points out, chatbot data in the index updates once a month.
One advantage gets overlooked: history. Many dedicated tools only collect data from the day you sign up, while Brand Radar shows how any brand’s visibility moved in the past. Our take: use the index for patterns and benchmarks, track 20 to 50 revenue-driving questions in Custom Prompts, and check key answers by hand.
Mentions vs. Citations vs. Recommendations
These are three different wins.
The answer names you.
The answer links to you.
The answer suggests you as the answer.
Ahrefs found AI assistants linked to Ahrefs only 28% of the time when mentioning it. And one analysis found brands’ own listicles were cited 69% of the time without the brand being recommended. Use the Cited in column, then read the actual answers for your top prompts.
Ahrefs Brand Radar Pros and Cons
Brand Radar’s biggest strengths are its database size, instant competitor data, historical records, and tight link to Ahrefs’ SEO data. Its main weaknesses are chatbot accuracy, costs that climb quickly with checks, no built-in recommendations, and limited white-label reporting for agencies.
- Largest AI answer database available, with instant research on any brand and no waiting for data.
- Historical data back to 2025, so you see trends from before you started tracking.
- Connects AI visibility to SEO, since every prompt maps to real search demand.
- Cited pages report that turns AI data into an outreach list.
- Wide coverage: seven index platforms, plus Claude in Custom Prompts.
- Good value at scale, with the price per prompt dropping as volume grows.
- Chatbot counts are directional and can run below reality.
- Costs add up fast across platforms, locations, and refresh rates.
- Data, not recommendations. It shows where you stand, not what to fix.
- Weak for small brands with little search volume.
- No white-label client reporting, as an agency-focused review notes.
- Sentiment needs the Letaido add-on.
Who Should Use Ahrefs Brand Radar?
Brand Radar fits SEO teams and marketers who already use Ahrefs and want AI data next to search data. It suits established brands with real search demand and agencies doing competitor research. It’s a weaker fit for new brands, teams needing exact counts, or agencies needing branded client dashboards.
SaaS Companies
A strong fit. “Best [software]” and “[competitor] alternatives” prompts carry real search demand. Pair it with SaaS link building to earn spots on the lists AI cites.
E-commerce Brands
Good for product-category prompts. Watch Reddit and YouTube closely, since AI pulls product opinions from both.
Local Businesses
A weaker fit for the index due to low search volume. Use Custom Prompts, keeping in mind each location adds checks.
Agencies
Great for instant prospect audits. One cost analysis found the $699 bundle drops below about $0.40 per prompt at 250 or more prompts. Client reports need to go through Looker Studio or Sheets.
Content, PR, and Product Teams
Use Topics and fanout data for content plans, cited pages for PR targets, and category prompts to see how AI frames your product.
How to Use Brand Radar: A Practical Workflow
The most useful way to run Brand Radar is to benchmark first, then track, then act. Start with the index to see where you stand. Set up Entities, move key buyer questions into Custom Prompts, and use the cited pages report to decide where to earn mentions.
Pair It With Google Search Console
Search Console doesn’t show which keywords trigger AI Overviews, but Brand Radar does. Ahrefs exported its AI Overview keywords and cited URLs from Brand Radar, filtered GSC with them, and found a 44% relative drop in click-through rate on those terms. Repeat this on your site to measure the impact of zero-click searches and turn AI visibility into a traffic conversation leadership understands.
How to Improve Your AI Visibility With Brand Radar Data
Brand Radar shows where you’re invisible, but it won’t make you visible. That takes clear answers on your own pages, pages AI crawlers can reach, and mentions on the third-party sites AI already trusts. Ahrefs’ own research shows the off-site part carries the most weight.
On your site, answer the fanout questions directly, keep content fresh, and use Bot Analytics to confirm AI crawlers reach your key URLs. Solid internal linking for AI and SEO helps.
Off-site, the research is clear:
“Best” Lists Dominate
An Ahrefs study of 750 prompts and 26,283 source URLs found recently updated “best X” lists were the page type ChatGPT cited most, at 43.8% of cited pages by one summary.
List Position Matters
Brands ranked higher on third-party lists appeared more often in answers.
Web Mentions Correlate With Visibility
Branded web mentions show a 0.664 correlation with AI Overview visibility.
Self-Promo Lists Can Backfire
Scaled self-promotional lists have been linked to 30% to 50% visibility losses in affected blog folders.
The safer route is earning placements on credible third-party lists. Use the cited pages report as your target list, then pursue inclusion through guest posting and brand mentions on the sites AI cites in your category.
Found the pages AI trusts? Now get your brand on them.
Brimcove builds the independent mentions AI search actually pulls from.
Ahrefs Brand Radar vs. Alternatives
Compared with other AI visibility tools, Brand Radar wins on database size, history, and SEO integration. Semrush’s toolkit is cheaper for small setups, Peec AI and Otterly are easier entry points, and Profound offers the most depth for enterprises. The right pick depends on prompt volume and your SEO stack.
| Tool | Starting Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $50/mo (prompts), $199/mo (index) | Research, benchmarking, Ahrefs users |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/mo (25 prompts, 1 domain) | Semrush users |
| Peec AI | About €90/mo (25 prompts) | Mid-market teams |
| Otterly.ai | From $29/mo | Small budgets |
| Profound | $99/mo, ChatGPT only | Enterprise AEO teams |
At volume, Brand Radar holds up well. One comparison found Ahrefs was the cheapest option for 200 prompts checked daily across four models. For suite-level comparisons, see our Ahrefs vs. SEMrush vs. Ubersuggest guide and our list of AI SEO tools.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The most common Brand Radar mistakes are treating index counts as exact, tracking too many prompts daily, skipping Entities, confusing citations with recommendations, and collecting data without acting on it. Each one wastes the budget or leads to the wrong decisions.
| Mistake |
|---|
| Reading index numbers as exact instead of as trends. |
| Tracking everything daily and burning checks. |
| Skipping Entities or changing your competitor set, which distorts share of voice. |
| Treating every citation as a win without reading the answer. |
| Relying on reviews written before 2026. |
| Collecting data and never acting on content and off-site mentions. |
Ahrefs Brand Radar Review: Final Verdict
Ahrefs Brand Radar is worth it if you already use Ahrefs and want to understand how AI platforms see your market. Its index is unmatched for research and history, and Custom Prompts covers your key buyer questions. It’s not enough on its own if you need exact counts or built-in optimization.
Start with the free Custom Prompts quota in your Ahrefs plan. If the data proves useful, add the index for competitor research. Then act on it: better content on your site and more mentions on the pages AI already trusts.
Want help acting on your AI visibility data?
Talk to our team about turning Brand Radar findings into real placements.
