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Compare SEO and AI visibility tools

Ahrefs, Semrush, Profound and Sondavo are not four versions of the same product. Work out which problem you actually have, and this page will tell you which of them solves it, including when that is not us.

See the comparisonsTry the free tools first

Different tools solve different problems

Searchable and Profound both sell AI search visibility in depth, Searchable with content tooling and an agent alongside the measurement, Profound aimed further up the enterprise. Ahrefs sells access to an index of the web, which is why link builders and researchers buy it. Semrush sells a marketing suite in which search is one toolkit among advertising, content, social and local. Sondavo reads one site you own, using that site’s own Google data, and explains what to fix.

Those are five different purchases. Choosing between them on a feature count is how people end up paying for a research platform to check their own rankings once a fortnight, or trying to run a link building campaign on a tool that has no index. Every comparison below says plainly where the other product is the better buy, because a comparison that never does is an advertisement.

What you actually get

This is a Sondavo report, not a mock-up

Put any web address into the free check and this is what comes back: the searches that address already turns up for on Google, the page ranking for each one, the monthly search volume behind it, and the searches shoaling just outside page one where the fastest gains usually are. No account, no card, and it works on a site you do not own.

Sondavo's free check report for everyhost.co.uk: 46 discovered search queries, a table of ten searches with the position held in Google, the page that ranks, the monthly search volume and estimated visits, and one search at position 18 marked as shoaling just outside page one.
A real check on everyhost.co.uk, one of our own sites, run from the free check on the Sondavo home page. Discovered ranking data from licensed third-party sources, labelled as such in the product. No customer data appears here, and nothing in the report has been edited.
Try Sondavo on your own siteThe eight free tools

Runs on the address you type in and returns the report above. Nothing to install, no account, and the eight free tools need no sign-up either.

All comparisons

Search by product name, or by the thing you are trying to do.

Or narrow by what you need

Showing all 4 comparisons.

  • Comparison

    Sondavo vs Searchable

    A purpose-built answer engine optimisation platform: prompt tracking, AI analytics, content tooling and an agent, in one product.

    Searchable is best for
    Teams for whom AI search visibility is the job, tracking a wide prompt set across several assistants, with a budget from $125 a month.
    The main difference
    Searchable goes deep on AI answers alone. Sondavo covers Google search first and AI answers as one part of it.
    • AI visibility
    • Technical SEO
    • Free tools
    • Agency
    • Enterprise
    Read the full comparison of Sondavo and Searchable

  • Comparison

    Sondavo vs Profound

    A specialist answer engine optimisation platform for larger brands, measuring how AI assistants describe them.

    Profound is best for
    Enterprise and mid market marketing teams running AI visibility as a programme of its own, with a budget to match.
    The main difference
    Profound goes deep on AI answers alone. Sondavo covers Google search, technical health and AI answers on one plan.
    • AI visibility
    • Enterprise
    • Agency
    Read the full comparison of Sondavo and Profound

  • Comparison

    Sondavo vs Ahrefs

    A research platform built on one of the two largest link and keyword indexes in the industry.

    Ahrefs is best for
    SEO specialists and agencies who research sites they have no access to, and who need link data at scale.
    The main difference
    Ahrefs sells you a database of the web. Sondavo sells you a reading of your own site.
    • Traditional SEO
    • Technical SEO
    • AI visibility
    • Free tools
    • Agency
    • Enterprise
    Read the full comparison of Sondavo and Ahrefs

  • Comparison

    Sondavo vs Semrush

    A broad marketing suite covering SEO, advertising, content, social and local, priced per seat in US dollars.

    Semrush is best for
    Marketing teams who want one subscription to cover search, paid media, content and social, and who have somebody to drive it.
    The main difference
    Semrush is a suite you grow into. Sondavo is one instrument that answers one question.
    • Traditional SEO
    • Technical SEO
    • AI visibility
    • Free tools
    • Agency
    • Enterprise
    • Small business
    Read the full comparison of Sondavo and Semrush

A tool you were weighing up is not here? Tell us which one and we will compare it properly, with sources. In the meantime the free tools will run on any address without an account.

Everything side by side

Thirteen rows rather than forty, and only the ones every vendor publishes an answer to. Where a product does something but noticeably less well than the best in the row, it reads “limited” rather than taking a tick it has not earned. That rule costs Sondavo two rows on this table.

On a narrow screen, compare Sondavo with

All four are compared on a wider screen. Nothing is removed from the page.

What the marks mean

Yes
Available to a normal customer on a published plan.
Plan dependent
Included on some plans and not others. The note says which.
Limited
Present, but narrower than the fullest implementation in this table.
No
The vendor's own product or pricing pages say it is not included.
Not published
The vendor does not publish this, so we will not mark it either way.
Not directly comparable
The products measure different things here, so a tick would mislead.
Sondavo, Ahrefs, Semrush and Profound compared across access and pricing, Google search visibility, technical SEO and AI visibility
ComparedSondavoSearchable
Getting in, and what it costs
Usable tools without an accountCan you get a real answer about a website before handing over an email address?YesLimited
Ongoing free plan for your own siteSomething you can keep using indefinitely on one site you own, without paying.YesNo
Cheapest paid planThe lowest published price to get past the free tier. Currencies and billing terms differ, so they are printed as the vendor prints them.£19/month (Yes)$125/month (Yes)
People included at the entry paid tierHow many colleagues can log in before you pay more. Relevant to agencies and to anyone who is not working alone.1 (Yes)Not published
Google search visibility
Google Search Console integrationReading your own Google data, which is exact, rather than estimating your traffic from an index.YesPlan dependent
Keyword and ranking databaseA large licensed or proprietary index you can research with, including for sites you have no access to.LimitedNo
Backlink dataFinding who links to a site, and to its rivals.LimitedNo
Researching a site you do not ownPointing the tool at a competitor's address and getting data back.Plan dependentNot directly comparable
Technical SEO
Crawls your site and reports faultsReading your pages the way a search engine does and listing what is broken.YesYes
One off technical checks with no sign inChecking a robots.txt, a redirect chain, a canonical tag or an hreflang set without an account.YesLimited
AI visibility
Monitors what AI assistants answerAsking assistants the questions your customers ask and recording who gets named.Plan dependentYes
AI assistants coveredWhich assistants are actually asked. More is better, and Sondavo is not the leader here.4 (Limited)3 to 9 (Yes)
Full answer text kept, with its sourcesWhether you can read the exact words the assistant said, on the day it said them, and see which pages it read.YesNot published

Pricing and features checked 30 August 2026. Product features and pricing can change. Sources are listed on each comparison page.

The six stages of the work, and who covers which

Comparison tables answer feature by feature. This answers a more useful question: if this is the job, which parts of it does each product do?

Which of the six stages of search visibility work each product covers
StageSondavoSearchableProfoundAhrefsSemrush
01See where you stand in GoogleWhich searches show your site, at what position, and what is moving.CoveredPartlyNot coveredCoveredCovered
02Find the opportunitiesWhich pages and searches are worth work, ranked, with the evidence attached.CoveredPartlyNot coveredCoveredCovered
03Crawl the siteRead every page the way a search engine does and list what is broken.CoveredCoveredNot coveredCoveredCovered
04Fix what is brokenTurn the findings into work somebody can actually carry out.CoveredCoveredNot coveredPartlyPartly
05Watch the competitionWho sits above you for your searches, and what links they hold that you do not.PartlyPartlyPartlyCoveredCovered
06Monitor AI answersWhat assistants say when asked your customers' questions, and who they name.CoveredCoveredCoveredCoveredCovered
Coverage is taken from the same vendor pages as the comparison table, checked 30 August 2026. "Partly" means the product addresses the stage but noticeably less than the fullest implementation on this row: Sondavo's competitor coverage starts on a £49 plan and holds no research index, while Ahrefs and Semrush report faults without turning them into a plain-English job list.

Search breadth against AI reach

The two axes that separate these products, both counted from published facts rather than judged. Sondavo and Semrush land on exactly the same point, which is the useful part: on raw capability they are close, and what separates them is price, currency and everything one of them does outside search.

Scatter plot of four products by search coverage and number of AI assistantsSondavo: 5.5 of 6 search stages, 4 AI assistants. Searchable: 4.5 of 6 search stages, 9 AI assistants. Profound: 1.5 of 6 search stages, 3 AI assistants. Ahrefs: 5.5 of 6 search stages, 6 AI assistants. Semrush: 5.5 of 6 search stages, 4 AI assistants246369SEARCH STAGES COVEREDAI ASSISTANTSSondavoSemrushSearchableProfoundAhrefs

  • Sondavo

    5.5 of 6 search stages, 4 AI assistants.

    ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on every monitoring plan

  • Searchable

    4.5 of 6 search stages, 9 AI assistants.

    Nine named and selected at onboarding, though their FAQ calls three of them custom add-ons

  • Profound

    1.5 of 6 search stages, 3 AI assistants.

    Three on Growth. Up to nine on a custom Enterprise contract

  • Ahrefs

    5.5 of 6 search stages, 6 AI assistants.

    AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot

  • Semrush

    5.5 of 6 search stages, 4 AI assistants.

    ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity on the published toolkit

Search breadth counts the six stages above, a full stage scoring one and a partial a half. AI reach counts assistants on the best plan carrying a published price, so Profound is plotted at the three on Growth rather than the up-to-nine on a custom Enterprise contract. Price is deliberately not an axis: two of these publish in dollars and two in sterling, and an axis mixing them would be a guess about an exchange rate dressed up as a position.

What each one costs to start, and to use properly

Two figures per product, because the cheapest plan and the plan most people end up on are rarely the same. Prices are printed in the currency and billing period each vendor publishes.

  • Sondavo

    Cheapest paid£19/monthFirst full plan£49/month

    Sterling, billed monthly, no annual commitment

    Starter is one site. Professional adds AI monitoring, competitors and three seats.

  • Ahrefs

    Cheapest paid£23/monthFirst full plan£99/month

    Sterling, monthly; Enterprise is an annual commitment

    Starter is a restricted entry tier. Lite is the first full plan and carries five tracked AI prompts.

  • Semrush

    Cheapest paid$139/monthFirst full plan$139/month

    US dollars; $117.33 a month on annual billing

    The SEO plan is the entry point. AI visibility is also sold separately at $99 a month billed annually.

  • Searchable

    Cheapest paid$125/monthFirst full plan$400/month

    US dollars, billed monthly; 20% off annual

    Pro tracks 100 prompts per model. Scale adds white-label reports, Looker Studio and API access.

  • Profound

    Cheapest paid$99/monthFirst full plan$399/month

    US dollars, billed yearly

    Starter covers ChatGPT alone. Growth adds two more engines and three seats.

The same money, per AI prompt watched

Divide the cheapest plan that includes AI monitoring by the prompts it watches. Compared only within a currency, never across one. Sondavo comes out worst of the five on this measure, and printing it anyway is the point: it is the number somebody buying AI monitoring alone should be looking at.

  • Sondavo Professional£49 a month, 5 questions on one site£9.80
  • Ahrefs Lite£99 a month, 5 tracked prompts£19.80
  • Searchable Pro$125 a month, 100 prompts per model$1.25
  • Profound Starter$99 a month billed yearly, 50 prompts$1.98
  • Semrush AI Visibility$99 a month billed annually, 25 prompts$3.96

A caution that matters: these plans are not the same purchase. Sondavo Professional and the Semrush and Ahrefs plans all include a full search product alongside the prompts, so their figure is buying more than prompts. Searchable Pro and Profound Starter sell prompts and little else, which is exactly why they are the cheapest per prompt.

Deliberately not drawn as a chart. Two of these are in sterling and two in US dollars, one bills yearly and three monthly, and what a plan includes varies enough that plotting the numbers on one axis would imply a comparison the numbers cannot support.

Sondavo data

The same question, four assistants, four different answers

Two thirds of the businesses named were named by only one of the four assistants. Six mentions out of 154 were shared by all four.

Bar chart of how many of four AI assistants named the same business for the same question1 of 4 assistants: 103 mentions, 66.9 per cent. 2 of 4 assistants: 30 mentions, 19.5 per cent. 3 of 4 assistants: 15 mentions, 9.7 per cent. 4 of 4 assistants: 6 mentions, 3.9 per cent. Total 154 mentions.1 of 466.9%103 of 154 mentions2 of 419.5%30 of 154 mentions3 of 49.7%15 of 154 mentions4 of 43.9%6 of 154 mentions

Read the top bar first. Of the 154 business mentions recorded across those questions, covering 36 distinct businesses, 103 came from a single assistant that none of the other three agreed with. Only 6 were named by all four.

Sample
53 questions where all four assistants answered, 212 answers, 154 business mentions across 8 monitored sites
Period
20 to 29 August 2026
Measured
For each business named in an answer, how many of the four assistants named it for the same question on the same day
Source
Sondavo aggregate data

Eight sites is a small sample and they are Sondavo customers rather than a cross section of the web. The spread is wide enough to be worth showing; treat the exact percentages as indicative.

Which one should you choose?

Start from what you need rather than from the product. Three of these six point away from us, which is the honest answer for the people they describe.

  1. 01You need a large backlink database, or you research sites you have no access toAhrefs is the stronger buy, and Sondavo is not a substitute for an index.
  2. 02You run paid media, social or content programmes alongside searchSemrush. One subscription across all of it beats a cheaper tool covering a quarter of it.
  3. 03AI visibility is somebody's full time job and you track dozens of promptsSearchable or Profound. Prompt volume and engine coverage are what you are buying, and neither is what we sell.
  4. 04You want AI content written and audited for citation, not just measuredSearchable. Content tooling and an agent over your own data, from $125 a month.
  5. 05You want to check something on any website right now without an accountSondavo's free tools. Eight of them, no sign in, any address.
  6. 06You have one site, you own it, and you want to know what to fixSondavo. Your own Search Console data, a crawl and a ranked list, from £19 a month.
  7. 07You want Google visibility and AI visibility from one budget lineSondavo Professional at £49 a month covers both on one site.
Where two lines describe you, the first one usually wins: an index and a marketing suite are harder to substitute than a reading of your own site.

Before you choose anything

You can answer several of these questions about your own site right now without paying anyone, including us.