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When a competitor appears in an AI answer and your brand doesn’t, the obvious reaction is to publish more content. But that skips the useful questions like:
Which answer?
What was the person asking?
And did the assistant reference your competitor’s website, an independent review, or neither?
Those questions shaped this review. To test the platform, I compared Saily eSIM with two of its close competitors, Airalo and Holafly. The aim was to find something worth investigating and see whether the Brand Radar data holds up to the hype.
My hands-on work focused on its existing AI Visibility Index, moving from combined-platform reports to ChatGPT-specific checks using recent data. Here’s how it went.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: Plans and pricing
First, separate the two purchases. The AI Visibility Index lets you search data Ahrefs has already collected, and the Custom Prompts run the questions you choose from the point you set up tracking. Now, Brand Radar is sold separately, so you don’t need to buy the wider Ahrefs SEO suite first.
Ahrefs pricing breaks the options down as follows. These are monthly US-dollar prices, accurate as of October 15, 2026.
|
Purchase |
Monthly price |
What it covers |
|
One AI index |
$199 |
Existing data for one AI platform |
|
All AI indexes |
$699 |
All available AI indexes and 2,500 custom checks |
|
Custom Prompts: Basic |
$50 |
2,500 additional monthly checks |
|
Custom Prompts: Growth |
$100 |
7,000 additional monthly checks |
|
Custom Prompts: Scale |
$250 |
25,000 additional monthly checks |
Lite, Standard, and Advanced subscribers already receive 150, 300, and 600 custom checks per month, respectively. That gives existing customers a small starting allowance without buying index access.
The catch is that checks aren’t interchangeable with prompts. Each platform, location, and scheduled run consumes allowance. At the standard one-check rate, 20 prompts checked daily across three platforms and two countries use 3,600 checks over 30 days. By the way, Claude consumes eight checks per execution, so its allowance disappears faster.
For an agency researching different brands every week, the index has a clear purpose. But for a small, growing business following ten buying questions, paying for the entire archive before using those smaller allowances feels premature to me.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: Features and specs
AI Visibility Index
I entered Saily, an eSIM provider, along with its competitors (Airalo and Holafly), and opened the overview.
Mentions, citations, estimated impressions, and AI Share of Voice sit together, with platform comparisons underneath. The index already includes historical data to explore, which is what makes it attractive. That means you can investigate a competitor before deciding which questions deserve ongoing tracking.
Saily’s smaller mention footprint gave the investigation a direction. Scrolling down brought its own performance history and associated topics into view, making it easier to move from a broad comparison to a specific question.
You still need to understand the sample here. Ahrefs’ methodology combines search-informed questions, including Google‘s People Also Ask, with semantic expansion. These aren’t private conversations gathered from ChatGPT users. Its newer AI-adjusted volume applies platform-specific usage estimates to a parent keyword’s Google search volume.
I prefer that qualification to treating Google demand as AI demand, but it remains a model. A rising line isn’t proof that more customers saw your brand, and dataset changes can affect comparisons. AI Share of Voice also depends on the brands and filters you selected.
Competitor gap analysis
The comparison became more useful when I isolated ChatGPT answers mentioning competitors but excluding Saily. This turns an intimidating report into a reading list. You can investigate the questions behind the gap instead of guessing what another brand is doing right.
Opening “What’s the best eSIM in the UK?” revealed a stored response dated October 9. Brand Radar’s tracked-brand panel listed Airalo and Holafly, with no Saily. The question also mixed domestic mobile service with travel data, a useful reminder that apparently relevant prompts can cover different needs.
That response exposed some friction too. Parts of the answer displayed raw markup, which made it harder to read. The sidebar reported no citations while listing pages under “Found but not cited.” Keeping those categories separate was helpful, even if the presentation needed tidying.
This is where your judgment matters. A missing brand is worth investigating when the question fits its product. It isn’t automatically an instruction to write an article, and a brand mention doesn’t necessarily amount to a recommendation.
AI citation analysis
The Cited pages report was the natural next stop. Its page-type view groups results into formats such as articles, landing pages, and reviews. That gives you a starting hypothesis about the material appearing around your category before you inspect individual URLs.
Switching to individual pages made the distinction between discovery and citation much clearer. “Found in” includes pages retrieved while producing an answer. “Cited in” records answers that actually cite the page. A source can appear frequently in the first column without receiving much visible credit in the second.
TechRadar’s own best eSIMs guide appeared alongside review website listings and provider-owned pages. More interestingly, the guide’s “Mentions on page” indicators included Saily even though this investigation had excluded Saily from the AI answers. A roundup can mention your product without an assistant carrying that mention into its response.
That is a better research lead than a score alone. You can inspect the source’s coverage and ask what information an answer used or omitted. However, “Other” wasn’t a ready-made outreach list because Holafly-owned URLs were present too. So, always check actual domains and your brand setup before treating a result as independent coverage. Not to forget, getting included on a cited page also doesn’t guarantee a future AI recommendation.
Brand sentiment analysis
Ahrefs initially described sentiment analysis as a work in progress, but a native Sentiment report was available in my review account. In simple terms, this report adds a useful second question to the comparison, i.e., when AI mentions a brand, how does it describe it?
Saily’s lower mention volume sat alongside a higher positive-response share than the two competitors. I found that contrast useful because, in my opinion, being discussed less often and being described less favorably are different problems. The former might prompt discovery research, while the latter calls for examining what the answers say.
I didn’t independently audit the classifications, so this isn’t a verdict on sentiment accuracy or customer satisfaction. So, use the report to identify answers worth reading, then check their wording.
Custom prompt tracking
The existing index is convenient until the question you care about isn’t there. Custom Prompts let you add it, choose platforms and locations, organize questions with tags, and schedule daily, weekly, or monthly checks. Its history starts with collection, not arriving pre-populated.
For ChatGPT and Perplexity, Brand Radar also exposes Fan-out queries (extra searches an assistant generates while working through a prompt). They suggest useful supporting topics, although Ahrefs only shows the queries returned with the response, not necessarily every search the model ran.
The public indexes cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode. However, platform coverage needs a closer look than a row of logos. Plus, Claude is available for Custom Prompts rather than in the public index. Grok collection is paused, with historical data retained. Such distinctions are pretty vital in case either platform is central to your audience.
AI research tools
Brand Radar also offers search-demand and web-visibility reports. YouTube research covers titles, descriptions, and transcripts, while Reddit visibility focuses on threads appearing in Google results. TikTok has its own beta report.
These surrounding reports have separate Ahrefs-plan and beta conditions, so don’t assume an index purchase includes every sidebar item. I see these as ways to investigate surrounding coverage, not proof that every mention influences an AI answer.
There is more assistance than the old “research only” description suggests. “Ask Ahrefs” is built into the interface, and the agent previously called Agent A now lives under Letaido, which offers additional analysis and automation.
Is Ahrefs Brand Radar worth it?
The strongest reason to buy Brand Radar is the ability to move between a competitive overview, an individual answer, and its source material. My eSIM investigation showed why that matters. Having lower visibility, positive sentiment, source-page mentions, and actual AI recommendations can tell different stories.
For agencies and in-house teams investigating several competitors, that depth can justify paying for research access. Entity matching, which distinguishes a company from unrelated uses of its name, is another useful safeguard when your brand isn’t as distinctive as Saily.
For a small business with a short list of questions, the smaller Custom Prompts allowance or a limited manual check is a more proportionate start. The expensive part shouldn’t arrive before you have a plan for using the findings.
I came away with useful leads and a clearer understanding of their limits. Brand Radar makes the evidence easier to inspect. Whether that evidence becomes better content, corrected information, or relevant coverage still depends on what you do next.
FAQs
What does Ahrefs Brand Radar do?
Ahrefs Brand Radar researches brand mentions, citations, and estimated visibility across supported AI platforms. You can compare competitors, inspect stored answers and source pages, or set up tracking for questions you choose.
Is Brand Radar included in an Ahrefs subscription?
Brand Radar is included in Ahrefs Lite and higher plans with a limited Custom Prompts allowance. If you want full AI Visibility Index access, then that’s a separate purchase. Keep in mind, an included tracking allowance doesn’t give you unrestricted access to the existing index.
What is the difference between the index and Custom Prompts?
The index is an existing research database that you can search immediately. Custom Prompts collects answers to your selected questions on a schedule, with tracking history building from setup onward.
Does Brand Radar track Claude and Grok?
Claude is available for Custom Prompts and uses eight checks per execution. However, it isn’t part of the public AI Visibility Index. The new Grok collection is currently paused, although historical results remain available.
Does AI Share of Voice measure traffic?
No. It compares a brand’s share of modeled impressions with the other tracked brands. It isn’t a count of visits, clicks, or conversions. Keep referral and conversion reporting separate when evaluating commercial results.
Can a brand be mentioned without its website being cited?
Yes. An answer can name a brand without linking to its website. It can also cite a third-party page that discusses several brands. Check the answer’s wording rather than assuming every source-page mention reached the reader.
How often does Brand Radar update its data?
Ahrefs describes monthly chatbot question-set refreshes using a 90-day reporting window. Google’s AI search indexes follow different refresh cycles. Custom Prompts has its own daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, so a daily chart doesn’t mean every archived answer was refreshed that day.
Which prompts should an SEO team track first?
Start with buying decisions like comparisons, pricing, suitability, alternatives, and specific customer requirements. Include unbranded questions as well as questions naming your business. Keep the set small enough that someone can review and act on it.
Will Brand Radar improve my AI citations automatically?
The reports identify evidence and opportunities, not guaranteed improvements. You still need to decide what to correct, publish, or pursue. Connected automation can assist with work, but this review didn’t test a resulting citation uplift.
Is Brand Radar worth it for a small business?
Potentially, but start with the workload. A few recurring questions rarely justify the full index on their own. Broader access becomes more persuasive when you regularly investigate new topics, competitors, and cited sources.
