You want to know if AI recommends your brand. Not next quarter, not after buying software. Right now, for free.
Good news: you can check this in under ten minutes. There are two ways to do it, one manual and one automated, and both cost nothing.
Why checking your AI visibility matters
When someone asks ChatGPT "What's the best CRM for small teams?" or asks Perplexity "Which accounting software should I use?", the AI gives a short list of recommendations. If your brand is on that list, you get attention from a buyer who's ready to act. If you're not on that list, you don't exist in that conversation.
This is already happening at scale. Millions of people use AI chatbots to research products, find service providers, and compare options. The brands that show up in those answers capture demand that never touches Google. The brands that don't show up lose it silently, without ever knowing it happened.
A free AI visibility check tells you where you stand. It takes the guesswork out of the equation and gives you a concrete starting point.
How to check your AI visibility manually
You don't need any tool to start. Here's the process, step by step.
Step 1: List the questions your customers ask. Think about what someone would type into an AI chatbot when looking for a product or service like yours. Be specific. "Best project management tool for agencies" is more useful than "project management." Write down 5 to 10 of these queries.
Step 2: Ask each question across 5 platforms. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overview. Type each question into each platform. That's up to 50 individual queries if you test 10 questions across 5 platforms.
Step 3: Record the results. For each query on each platform, note whether your brand appears, how it's described, and which competitors show up alongside you. A simple spreadsheet works.
Step 4: Look for patterns. Are you mentioned on some platforms but not others? Are competitors consistently recommended while you're absent? Is your description accurate when you do appear?
This manual approach works. It's thorough, it's free, and it gives you real data. The downside is time. Testing 10 prompts across 5 platforms, reading each response carefully, and recording results takes an hour or more. And it only gives you a snapshot of one moment in time.
Mentionable's free AI visibility scan
If you want results faster, Mentionable offers a free AI visibility scan that automates the process. Enter your brand name and website URL, and the scan checks your visibility across all 7 major LLMs: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overview.
The free scan shows you whether AI mentions your brand, how you're described, and which competitors appear in the same responses. You get results in minutes instead of spending an hour on manual checks.
The free scan is a one-time check. It gives you a baseline, a clear picture of where you stand right now. For ongoing monitoring that tracks changes over time, Mentionable's paid plans start at 79 euros/month (Growth) and scan your visibility daily across the 7 platforms.
What to do with your results
Once you have your visibility data, the next step depends on what you found. We cover this in detail in our guide on what to do after an AI visibility check, but here's the short version.
If you're invisible: Don't panic. Most brands are not visible in AI answers yet. Start with a GEO audit to check whether AI crawlers can access your site. Then focus on content that directly answers the questions your customers ask AI.
If you're partially visible: You have a foundation to build on. Identify which platforms mention you and which don't. Look at the prompts where you're missing and create content that fills those gaps.
If you're visible: Great. Now defend that position. AI recommendations change as models update and competitors improve their content. Set up regular monitoring so you catch shifts early.
Whatever your result, the single most useful next step is tracking your visibility over time. A one-time check tells you where you are today. Repeated checks tell you whether your efforts are working and whether the landscape is shifting around you.
Other free and low-cost ways to check AI visibility
Beyond manual testing and Mentionable's free scan, a few other options exist:
Ahrefs Brand Radar. Ahrefs added an AI visibility feature called Brand Radar to their SEO platform. It tracks brand mentions across several AI platforms. The catch: you need an Ahrefs subscription (starting at $29/month with annual billing), so it's not truly free. But if you already use Ahrefs for SEO, Brand Radar adds AI visibility data to your existing workflow.
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance. Microsoft launched an AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools in February 2026. It shows how Copilot cites your content. This is free and gives you real citation data, but only for Copilot. It doesn't cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Mode.
Google Search Console. Google is beginning to surface AI Overviews data in Search Console. If you see impressions from AI Overviews, that's a signal of Gemini/Google AI Mode visibility. Still limited in scope, but free and worth checking.
Perplexity directly. Since Perplexity shows citation sources in every response, you can search for your brand name on Perplexity and see if any answers cite your domain. Not systematic, but it's a quick free check.
What metrics matter for AI visibility
If you're going to track AI visibility seriously, you need to know what to measure. Traditional SEO has rankings and traffic. AI visibility has its own set of KPIs:
Mention rate. The percentage of relevant prompts where your brand appears. This is your core visibility metric. If you track 20 prompts and appear in 8 responses, your mention rate is 40%.
Platform breakdown. Your mention rate on ChatGPT might be 60% while Gemini shows 10%. Breaking down visibility by platform tells you where to focus.
Share of voice. When AI recommends someone in your category, what percentage of mentions go to you versus competitors? This is your competitive position in AI-driven discovery.
Sentiment. Are you recommended positively, neutrally, or with caveats? "I'd recommend X" is very different from "X is an option, but it has limitations."
Citation sources. Which pages does the AI cite when it mentions (or doesn't mention) you? This reveals exactly which content to improve.
These metrics help you move from "am I visible?" to "how visible am I, and what should I do about it?" Most dedicated AI visibility tools like Mentionable track these natively. General SEO tools with AI features may not give you this granularity.
The right tool for ongoing tracking
A free check gives you a starting point. But AI visibility is not static. Models update, competitors publish new content, and recommendations shift. If AI-driven discovery matters to your business, you need a way to track changes consistently.
For a comparison of the tools available, see our guide to the best AI visibility tools. Whether you stick with manual checks or move to automated tracking, the first step is the same: find out where you stand today.
You can do that right now, for free.
