A shopper never asks ChatGPT about your whole store; they ask about one product category at a time. "Best running shoes for flat feet" and "where to buy a standing desk online" can get completely different answers, even from the same site's catalog, so the AI visibility tool that fits an online store is the one that can run enough of those category-level buyer questions without pricing you out of it.
They ask by category and need, not by brand. A buyer question for a store looks like "best noise-cancelling headphones under $200," "where to buy organic dog food online" or "running shoes for flat feet, which brand do people recommend." Each engine answers with the names it judges best for that exact combination, and the answer can look completely different for a different category on the same site.
Why it matters: a single "AI visibility score" for your whole store hides this. You can be named for one category and invisible for another, and a store needs to know which is which before it can fix anything.
Because the engines reason about the question, not your store as a whole. A store selling both running shoes and standing desks can be the first name in one category and absent from the other, depending on which comparison pages, reviews and product pages the engine can read for each. A tool that reports one score per domain averages the two results together and tells you neither.
That is also why the unit a store should track is the buyer question, not the brand, the same approach our 10 best AI visibility tools ranking explains in full: treat "mentioned," "recommended" and "cited" as three separate counts per question, the only way to see a category-by-category picture instead of one blended number.
The tools a store compares most often price access to the engines differently, and that matters more here than for a single-SKU business. A catalog with ten categories needs roughly ten times the buyer questions of a catalog with one, so a per-prompt price model compounds quickly:
| Tool | Engines measured | How answers are shown | Free tier | Starting price | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflexa | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity | Raw AI answer + sources attached to every finding | Yes, first check free, no card, ~3 min | $49/mo | Catalogs with several product categories, priced per domain not per prompt |
| Profound | ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on the trial; Claude and others on higher tiers | Composite scores; agent-run credits | No ongoing free plan (one-time trial) | see vendor pricing page | Larger retailers wanting agent-level analytics |
| Peec AI | 3 of 6 models per plan, from a pool of ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot and Gemini; Claude not listed | Visibility % + cited sources per prompt | Free trial only | see vendor pricing page | Stores that want to hand-build a large custom prompt set |
| Otterly.AI | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot on Lite; Claude/Gemini paid add-ons | Mentions + cited sources | Free trial only | see vendor pricing page | Small shops tracking one or two hero categories |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity, no Claude | Share of voice + sentiment | No standalone free tier | see vendor pricing page | Stores already paying for Semrush's SEO suite |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Sold per engine index, up to 6 | Mentions / share of voice | No (comes with free Ahrefs account) | see vendor pricing page | Stores that want AI share of voice next to Ahrefs SEO data |
Proof: engine and evidence details above reflect each vendor's own published tier information as surveyed in our wider 10 best AI visibility tools ranking, September 2026. Several vendors' current prices could not be confirmed in this run, so those cells point to the vendor's own pricing page rather than a guessed or copied figure. Reflexa's price is published on our own pricing page.
Bottom line: check how each tool counts a "tracked prompt" and whether adding a tenth product category means a tenth of the price, before committing to a plan sized for a single-category business.
We asked ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity 100 real buyer questions about AI visibility tools in September 2026 and counted the names across all 300 answers. It is the same kind of measurement these tools sell, run on their own category:
| Tool | Answers naming it (of 300) |
|---|---|
| Profound | 94 |
| Semrush | 67 |
| Otterly.AI | 49 |
| Peec AI | 49 |
| Ahrefs | 39 |
| SE Ranking | 21 |
| Scrunch AI | 19 |
Proof: Reflexa AI Visibility Index, September 2026 (100 buyer questions about AI visibility tools, 3 engines, 300 observed answers, counted by name).
Read it as rank, not market share: no single tool is named in even a third of all answers; an engine names several options, so being one of them, with evidence you can read, matters more than chasing a single top score.
You can see your own category-level picture without buying anything yet:
Reflexa, Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI and Semrush AI Toolkit are the tools stores compare most often. For a catalog with several product categories, the two things that matter most are whether the tool can run enough buyer questions to cover each category and whether it shows the actual AI answer, not only a single aggregate score.
Because a shopper never asks AI about your whole store. They ask about one product category at a time, "best running shoes for flat feet" or "where to buy a standing desk online," and ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can name a different winner for each question. A single score averages that away.
Reflexa's plans are priced by domain rather than by prompt, starting at $49/month, and the first check (up to several buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity) is free. Confirm how Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI and Semrush AI Toolkit price additional prompts or categories on their own current pricing pages, since several of them charge per tracked prompt.
By category. A shopper's question names the product type and a need ("for flat feet," "under $200," "that ships to Canada"), and the engine answers with the stores or brands it judges best for that specific combination, which can change from one category to the next even on the same site.
Reflexa's free check at dashboard.reflexatechnologies.com/audit takes a couple of minutes, needs no card, and returns the 23 checks with the exact finding behind each one.
The free check reads your pages the way ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity read them — 23 structural checks, evidence attached, no card needed.