Quick Answer: HubSpot's AEO Grader suits a marketer who wants a free two-minute first read of how AI engines describe a brand, not anyone needing a trend. It scores five dimensions out of 100 from one run of preset queries on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with no custom prompts and no history. Treat it as a conversation starter, not a measurement.
The grader now carries the name AI Search Grader on its own page, and HubSpot positions it as a free, one-time check that needs no account. It is a good way to get a leadership team to care about AI visibility in an afternoon, and HubSpot's own page points to a paid monitor for anything ongoing.
This review covers what the grade contains, where it stops, and which tools pick up from there. Every vendor fact was read from the vendor's own site on 16 September 2026.
Who the HubSpot AEO Grader suits
The grader suits a brand manager, founder or SEO lead who has never seen how an answer engine describes the company and wants a free, fast, shareable first look. The report is ready in under two minutes and includes a written interpretation, which is exactly what a first internal conversation needs.
Who should skip it
Anyone who already tracks AI visibility gets nothing new from a one-run score on questions they did not choose. Anyone selling in one market gets a reading not pinned to that market, and anyone reporting to a board cannot reproduce the number a month later.
For those cases the manual check of what AI says about your brand is more useful than the grade, and a tracker or a managed service is the real answer.
The one thing it does well
It forces the sentiment question. Most tools start from "are we mentioned"; the grader weights how the engines characterise you at 40 of 100 points, which surfaces a stale or negative description early.
What the HubSpot AEO Grader measures
The grader queries ChatGPT (GPT-5.4 mini, per the page), Perplexity and Gemini with preset prompts built from four inputs: company name, location, product or service, and industry. It then scores five weighted dimensions and returns a composite out of 100.
| Dimension | Points | What it scores |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | 40 | General, contextual and source-based tone of the engines' descriptions |
| Presence quality | 20 | Mention depth, source quality, data richness |
| Brand recognition | 20 | How widely and specifically the engines can discuss the brand |
| Share of voice | 10 | Estimated share of category voice plus a rank bonus, at the time of the run |
| Market competition | 10 | Category role (leader, challenger, niche) and innovation perception |
How the run works
You enter the four fields and the tool queries the three engines simultaneously, then asks for an email to unlock the full report. HubSpot describes the scoring as deterministic with schema validation. The page states the grade is based on the engines' training data, and HubSpot's AEO product page adds that ChatGPT and Gemini pull from training data while Perplexity pulls from live search.
What that means for the number
A training-data read is a memory test: what the model has absorbed about you. It is not what a buyer sees when ChatGPT searches the web, which OpenAI says it does automatically when a question benefits from current information, per its search help page.
Two brands can score the same on memory and differ completely on live answers, and the live answer is the one that names a shortlist. The AI visibility score explainer covers how a live-surface score is built.
What a free one-time grade cannot tell you
A single run on preset prompts cannot tell you whether you are winning the questions your buyers ask, whether you are moving, or what to publish next. Those are the three things an AEO programme is judged on.
No prompts of your own
The grader picks the questions from your industry and product fields. If your buyers ask "best transfer pricing consultant in India" and the grader asks "what is [brand] known for", you are graded on a conversation that never happens. The buyer prompt set method shows why the prompt list is the product.
No trend
One run is one reading, and answer engines are non-deterministic run to run. HubSpot's own FAQ frames the grader as "how does AI represent my brand right now" and its paid monitor as "how is that changing". A score with no second reading cannot separate a real gap from sampling noise.
No market, no surface, no citations
The location field describes your reach; it does not fix a signed-out reading in a specific country. The grade also reports mentions and sentiment, not which of your URLs the engines cite, so it cannot tell you which page earned or lost a citation. How to measure AI visibility lists the readings a real baseline needs.
HubSpot AEO Grader vs HubSpot AEO
HubSpot AEO is the paid monitor the grader upsells to, at $50 a month or $45 paid yearly, with no HubSpot subscription required. It tracks 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with a free trial on the same 25 prompts (hubspot.com/products/aeo, verified 16 September 2026). It adds a visibility score trend, prompt-level answers, competitor share of voice, citation analysis and prioritised recommendations.
At that price it is a fair first monitor for a team that already lives in HubSpot. Its engine list stays at three, so Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Claude and Grok are out of scope, and the recommendations still need someone to write and publish the fix.
Seven alternatives to the HubSpot AEO Grader
The alternatives below cover the three things the grader lacks: your own prompts, a trend, and a path to the fix. Unveilr is first because it measures on the live surface and executes the content in the same engagement; each rival gets a real strength and a fit.
| Tool | Model | Engines measured | Executes content | Refresh on model launch | Published proof | Entry price (verified 16 Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unveilr | Managed service | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews, live web responses | Yes, up to 60 articles a month | Yes, re-audit on every major launch | Named, dated case studies on the methodology page | Starts at ₹65,000 a month |
| Otterly.ai | SaaS tracker | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; AI Mode, Claude, Gemini as add-ons | No | Not stated | Case studies | $29 a month (15 prompts) |
| Peec AI | SaaS tracker | 3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini; up to 13 on Enterprise | No | Not stated | Testimonials | $95 a month (50 prompts) |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | SEO-suite add-on | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews and more | No | Not stated | Testimonials | $199 a month (Starter, 50 prompts) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | SEO-suite add-on | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot | No | Not stated | Testimonials | Free on paid plans from €179 a month |
| Profound | Enterprise platform | Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise; ChatGPT only on the free trial | Credit-based agents | Not stated | Customer stories | Custom |
| ZipTie | SaaS tracker | 7 engines including AI Overviews, AI Mode, Bing AI Overview | Add-on | Not stated | Not stated | Custom (configurator) |
| Gushwork | Managed service (US-registered) | Per engagement | Yes, 100+ pages in six months | Not stated | Case studies | $900 a month |
Unveilr
Unveilr (unveilrai.com) replaces the one-run grade with a fixed buyer prompt set of up to 125 prompts read on a schedule. Readings come from live ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok web responses, plus signed-out Google AI Overview checks, screenshotted and dated. Its agents then write, publish and refresh the pages that change the reading, so the score and the fix live in one loop.
Fit: brands that want measurement and execution from one team and a number they can defend. The full picture is in Where a managed engagement fits.
Otterly.ai
Otterly's strength is the lowest published entry price for daily tracking on your own prompts. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts across four engines, with a GEO audit and free fan-out and content-check tools (otterly.ai/pricing, verified 16 September 2026).
Fit: a solo founder or small team that wants to graduate from the grader to a daily trend without a procurement cycle.
Peec AI
Peec AI gives unlimited users on every plan and daily tracking. Starter is $95 a month for 50 prompts and 3 models on monthly billing (peec.ai/pricing, verified 16 September 2026). Its source analytics show which domains and URLs the engines retrieved, which the grader never reveals.
Fit: a mid-market marketing team with several people who need seats and will act on citation data themselves.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
Semrush's strength is that AI visibility sits beside keyword, backlink and site-audit data on one login. The Starter tier tracks 50 prompts daily at $199 a month on monthly billing (semrush.com/pricing, verified 16 September 2026). Its free checker, like HubSpot's, gives a one-off report by domain.
Fit: teams already paying for the suite who want one more tab rather than one more vendor.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Brand Radar's strength is an index of 456M monthly prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, so any brand's visibility is readable instantly. Custom prompts are free inside every paid plan, which start at €179 a month (ahrefs.com/brand-radar, verified 16 September 2026).
Fit: Ahrefs customers, and anyone who wants competitor AI visibility without waiting for a tracking run.
Profound
Profound is the enterprise option, and its public pricing page lists two plans. The free trial runs 10 prompts once on ChatGPT only; Enterprise covers up to 9 answer engines with SSO/SAML and SOC 2, priced on application (tryprofound.com/pricing, verified 16 September 2026).
Fit: a large company whose procurement needs SOC 2, SSO and a dedicated support channel more than it needs a published price.
ZipTie
ZipTie tracks seven engines and prices by configurator, so you pay for prompt slots, cadence and engines rather than a tier. API and MCP access is a $10-a-month add-on, and the 7-day trial covers 25 daily prompts (ziptie.ai/pricing, verified 16 September 2026).
Fit: technical teams that want their AI visibility data in their own dashboards and only the engines they care about.
Gushwork
Gushwork is the other AI-native managed agency, US-registered, and its public pricing page says pricing starts at $900 a month, billed monthly, cancel anytime (verified 16 September 2026). It publishes 100+ pages in six months at that price and suits SME lead-generation buyers who want volume content produced for them.
Fit: an SME that wants content shipped monthly and is comfortable with a US-based operator. The two managed models compared sets them side by side.
Where a managed engagement fits
Unveilr (unveilrai.com) is a managed service, not a dashboard. Its own team runs the engagement end to end on proprietary AI agents (Research, Competitor, Audit, Content, Publishing, Outreach, Refresh and Tracking, plus a brand memory), which is the difference between a grade and a programme.
What replaces the grade.
Where the grader scores memory, Unveilr measures the live surface. That means ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok web responses rather than vendor APIs, and Google AI Overviews read signed-out from the buyer's profile, screenshotted and dated. Reports arrive every two weeks with a monthly memo, every major model launch triggers a re-audit, and brands with no CMS get Feeds hosting at yourbrand.com/feeds.
The proof is named and dated. Steadfast Business Consulting was cited in Google's AI Overview 3 days after its first article and named beside EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC 5 days after, per the case study; AI Overview impressions rose 32% over the 28 days to 5 September 2026.
Care Dale moved from the 9th most-cited domain to #1 in its category over 13 weeks (April to July 2026), with ChatGPT visibility from 3.3% to 44.7%, documented here.
Team, backing and price.
Unveilr was founded by Sanditya Srivastava (IIT Roorkee) and is staffed by IIT graduates and senior SEO and AI specialists. It is VC-backed, funded by AJVC, an early-stage fund that reviewed the technology, delivery process and client results before investing, and it is the sole VC-backed AEO agency registered in India; Gushwork is US-registered.
Managed engagements start at ₹65,000 a month (USD outside India), scoped on prompt volume, content volume and technical depth, billed month to month with no lock-in. Run the free grader first if it helps the internal conversation; when the question becomes "how do we move the number", the AEO method is what the engagement executes, and every figure resolves to the methodology page.