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You likely know that SEO matters, but you might not be clear on how traditional and generative visibility differ, or why both are important for reaching your ideal client when they search for answers.
The truth is, you need both, and your choice of tools should reflect that.
This guide covers 22 best AI SEO tools for SaaS, breaking down what each one does, its strengths and weaknesses, who it is best for, and what it costs.
The information comes from research on forums, social sites, reviews on G2 and Capterra, and insights from industry experts. You get straightforward details, not hype or filler.
This guide categorizes SEO tools into five different types based on function:
These platforms are the foundation of your stack. They cover keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and site audits. Most now include AI features.
Most SaaS teams prefer Semrush, and for good reason. Semrush is a comprehensive SEO platform. For SaaS, its competitive intelligence shows competitor rankings, traffic, and content gaps you can target.
In 2025, Semrush added the AI Visibility Toolkit to track visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. This is a $99/month add-on per domain. Semrush also includes ContentShake AI for content creation, so you may not need extra tools.
It is a powerful research engine with strong backlink data. Ahrefs is known for reliable, high-quality data and a user-friendly interface.
Many SEO pros recommend it for its huge database of over 22 billion keywords. The new AI Content Helper supports on-page SEO and helps you write to rank without over-optimizing.
Ahrefs now includes Brand Radar, which finds user-generated content mentioning your company in ChatGPT and other AI tools. Users on Reddit praise Ahrefs, but some note that pageview estimates for small or new sites can be too high.
SE Ranking is a mid-range SaaS SEO tool that gives you a simple, easy-to-use platform at a lower price. It sits between the big names like Semrush and Ahrefs and the cheaper or free options.
It stands out for its AI Overviews Tracker, showcasing how visible your site is in Google's AI-generated answers. Unlike most platforms, SE Ranking includes this feature in its basic plan at no extra cost.
SE Ranking has a 4.8 out of 5 rating on G2, based on more than 1,400 reviews. On Reddit, it often comes up as a more affordable alternative to Semrush, especially for SaaS teams that don’t need the deep data and analysis you get with Semrush or Ahrefs.
Search Atlas launched in December 2022, aiming to compete directly with Ahrefs and Semrush. Its OTTO SEO Engine has driven fast growth and won the 2025 Global Search Award for Best AI Search Software Solution.
Many agency owners on LinkedIn are now considering it as a lower-cost, automated alternative to older tools.
The OTTO SEO Engine uses AI to find technical errors, suggest fixes, and make approved changes to your site without needing a developer.
It also tracks visibility in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
This feature is included in all plans, while Semrush charges $99 per month for similar tracking. All OTTO changes use JavaScript. If you cancel your subscription, your site reverts to its original state.
Moz Pro is one of the original enterprise-level SEO tools. It focuses on core areas like rank tracking, site audits, link analysis, and keyword research.
In these areas, Moz Pro delivers reliable results, often outperforming competitors like Semrush and Ahrefs due to its established foundations. However, it is less advanced in artificial intelligence features.
Moz Pro has a cleaner user interface than most alternatives, making it easier for teams to learn and use. However, Moz has been slow to add new AI features compared to competitors. As a result, it is less frequently recommended in recent SaaS discussions online.
Content optimization software handles just one part of your SEO process.
Its main job is to make sure your content covers the topic well and uses the right words that match what Google's NLP systems look for.
This helps your content perform better in search results. You will usually use this kind of software along with a research tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Surfer is the most widely used content optimization tool for SaaS content teams. Its main feature is simple: you enter a keyword or topic, and Surfer scans the top-ranking pages for that term.
It then gives your content a real-time score that updates as you make changes. Studies have found that Surfer's use of Google's NLP APIs closely matches how Google ranks content, more so than other platforms.
Feedback about Surfer on Reddit is mixed, but most review sites agree that it works well. Some in the SEO community worry that focusing on Surfer's score can make content feel mechanical or over-optimized. The best way to use Surfer is as a guide, not just a number to chase.
Clearscope uses IBM Watson NLP to check what content ranks well and suggests keywords and terms.
It focuses on quality over quantity. Clearscope doesn’t push you to stuff in keywords or use tricks that don’t feel natural. Instead, it gives your content a grade from A to F, based on how much info you include, how easy it is to read, and your word count.
Clearscope is used by companies like Deloitte, Shopify, and IBM. It has high ratings on G2 and Capterra. Users like its accuracy and clean interface, but many say it is expensive. It does not include AI writing; it is only for optimization.
Frase is known for helping you go from keyword to first draft fast.
Its brief generator pulls from search results, competitor content, and real questions from People Also Ask, Quora, and Reddit. You can get a structured brief in under five minutes. The AI writer is improving and now gives a solid starting point for your draft.
Frase is not as deep as Clearscope or as full-featured as Surfer, but it is faster and cheaper than both.
At $45 per month, it is the best value of the three. Many users on Reddit and G2 like the brief generation workflow, especially if they work with outside writers and want to keep briefs consistent.
MarketMuse costs more than tools like Surfer and Clearscope, which work one page at a time. The big advantage is that MarketMuse looks at your whole site.
It reviews everything you’ve published, rates each page for quality and relevance, and finds gaps or opportunities across your content library.
Its SERP X-ray and Heatmap features are helpful for conducting competitor audits across multiple sites. The downside to MarketMuse is the high price and steep learning curve. You’ll want at least 100 published pages to get your money’s worth.
NeuronWriter is a budget-friendly option for companies that need NLP to improve their content.
It’s getting a lot of attention in SEO circles, especially on Reddit, as a solid, low-cost alternative to Surfer SEO. It uses NLP to help you optimize your content and get useful recommendations, but you won’t get the nice-looking interface that Surfer offers.
NeuronWriter doesn’t try to do everything. The design is built for speed, not looks. If you’re a solo SEO, freelancer, or early-stage SaaS on a tight budget, it’s a great deal.
Content Harmony is a strong choice for agencies and content teams that need high-quality content briefs. It’s not as well-known as Surfer or Clearscope, but users who rely on it give it top marks.
The main benefit is the quality of its structured, intent-based briefs, which help writers create content that matches what Google looks for. Content Harmony also includes a collaboration hub, making it easier for agencies with multiple writers to work together.
Technical SEO is essential. If your site has crawl issues, broken redirects, or missing structured data, content optimization alone will not fix it. Tools like Screaming Frog help you find and solve these technical problems so your site stays healthy.
Every SEO professional needs a technical SEO spider. Most agree that Screaming Frog is the best tool for this. It crawls your site like Googlebot and finds broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, missing tags, and JavaScript issues.
If your SaaS site uses React or Vue, Screaming Frog’s JavaScript rendering mode will catch issues that other cloud-based tools might miss.
Screaming Frog now connects with OpenAI, Google Apollo, and Anthropic Claude. This lets you automate tasks like updating alt text, finding meta descriptions, and spotting similar content across pages using natural language prompts.
Alli AI addresses the challenge of making large-scale on-page SEO changes without developer involvement or CMS restrictions.
By adding a single code snippet to your site, Alli can apply recommended changes such as meta tag updates, internal linking, schema markup, and performance improvements across many pages at once.
For enterprise companies or agencies that manage 20+ clients across multiple websites with massive amounts of content, the time saved may be staggering.
However, if you cancel your subscription, all changes made by Alli AI will revert to their original state. This reliance on a subscription model may be a significant risk for some users.
This section covers tools that speed up content creation, including AI writing tools and platforms for managing and automating team workflows.
Jasper was an early AI platform for content creation. It remains a strong option for teams that need to keep a consistent brand voice across different types of content.
It gained early popularity with marketing teams by offering over 50 templates, supporting brand voice, and integrating with tools like Surfer SEO for real-time optimization.
Recent Reddit discussions show the market is shifting. Many users now use ChatGPT or Claude as comparable to Jasper, with similar features available for free.
Jasper is still a good fit for teams that need to maintain a consistent brand voice across multiple writers. For basic content, other options may be enough, but for managing a team and brand standards, Jasper remains a strong choice.
Writesonic now combines AI content creation with GEO features. It started as an AI writing tool but has changed a lot. Now, it tracks how your brand ranks on ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, and still helps with regular content creation.
Some Reddit users warn that Writesonic’s content quality is not always reliable and may include plagiarism if not checked. Its GEO features gets good feedback because it offers similar tools as expensive enterprise platforms but at a lower cost.
AirOps is more than a typical AI writer. It's a customizable platform that connects language models like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini with your SEO data sources such as Semrush and Perplexity, using no-code templates and workflows.
It works like a custom AI assistant built for your content and SEO tasks.
Generative Engine Optimization and AI visibility mapping platforms are a fast-growing product category.
These tools let you track your brand's search position in AI chatbots like ChatGPT and in AI-powered search engines such as Google, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. They also give you data on how to improve your company's visibility in AI search results.
This type of product is important for companies because AI-driven referrals convert at more than four times the rate of organic search.
It is essential to know whether potential customers are finding your brand through AI search or through traditional organic search.
Profound is the most widely recognized enterprise-level tool for AI visibility mapping. Its main advantage is the amount of data it collects.
This includes the total number of AI search results for your company, the number of real user prompts and search queries (over 400 million, anonymized).
It's AI crawler analytics from server logs, interactions between bots like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot, and your site.
Profound has some access restrictions. There is no free trial, and only the account purchaser can use it. Pricing starts at $399 per month for the Growth Plan. Some competitors exist, but they do not currently offer Copilot or similar competitor tracking.
Peec AI is a tool for tracking AI visibility. It is used by many SaaS organizations as an all-in-one GEO tracking tool. It covers ChatGPT, AI Overview, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Mode, all in one platform at a lower cost than Profound.
The platform provides suggested prompts and onboarding sessions for new employees. Brand sentiment tracking is available with the €199 per month plan, which is not included in Writesonic's €499/month plan.
A unique audit tool for GEO monitoring with over 10,000 users since December of 2024. Otterly has grown quickly, reaching more than 10,000 users since coming out of stealth in late 2024.
The platform tracks brand mentions and website citations from sources like Google AI Overview, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Copilot.
What stands out is the GEO Audit Tool, which looks at over 25 factors such as content optimization, structured data, technical improvements, and authority signals to give you practical recommendations.
Not many tools in this space offer any kind of actionable advice. If you're looking for a GEO tool that actually tells you what to fix, rather than just pointing out what's missing, Otterly is worth considering.
Scrunch AI is more about making sure your content is legible and cited by AI systems, not just tracking what AI is doing. It launched in November 2024 and already has over 500 client companies, including Lenovo and Penn State University. Scrunch has raised $19 million so far.
It works with a wide range of brands and has partnerships with ChatGPT (including Shopping experiences), Perplexity, Claude, Meta AI, Google AI's Gemini, Google AI Overview, and more.
Scrunch is a solid choice for businesses that want a clear, repeatable way to manage how they're represented in AI search and experiences, not just track information.
AthenaHQ offers prompt tracking, brand monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and an Action Centre that highlights the areas of your business that need attention, rather than just pointing out gaps.
Built with engineers in mind, AthenaHQ's technical depth is clear in its design. These features make it a great fit for mid-market SaaS companies that want structured optimization solutions without needing the full enterprise capabilities of Profound.
If you're not sure where your brand stands in AI search and aren't ready to invest in a paid platform, the HubSpot AEO Grader is a good place to start.
It checks your brand's visibility in searches like "best CRM software for small businesses" on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and gives you a performance score based on brand recognition frequency, competitive position, brand sentiment, and source authority.
If you already use HubSpot, the tool integrates with your Marketing Hub and Content Hub. However, keep in mind that it's a diagnostic tool, not a full monitoring platform. If GEO is a top priority for you, you'll likely outgrow it quickly.
You probably won't need every tool listed here. Instead, here are the ones we recommend for each stage of growth:
If you're in the early stage (pre-Series A)
You're likely running a lean startup. We recommend
- SE Ranking or Ahrefs Lite for research,
- Frase for creating content,
- Screaming Frog for technical SEO audits, and
- HubSpot AI Search Grader to see how your business is doing in the AI arena.
Expect to spend about $250 to $350 per month for these.
If you're a growth stage SaaS (Series A-B, $2M to $20M ARR)
We suggest using an all-in-one platform like Semrush or Ahrefs.
Pair that with Surfer SEO or Clearscope for content optimization, Screaming Frog for technical audits, and Peec AI or Otterly to track how you're doing in different locations.
Plan for a budget of $500 to $800 per month.
If you're at the scaling stage (Series C+ and over $20M ARR)
You're working at the enterprise level. We recommend
- Ahrefs for research,
- Clearscope to check content quality,
- MarketMuse for your overall site strategy,
- Screaming Frog for technical audits,
- Profound to monitor AI performance, and
- AirOps to help automate your content operations.
Expect to spend between $1,500 and $2,500 per month for this stack.
No tool can replace your judgement about what content to create, what your buyers are searching for, or how to position your product in search results you do not control. This is why strategy matters more than software.
The right tools will give you data, but what you do with it depends on your goals for your category. Focus on making content that AI can understand, choose where to build topical authority, and earn citations from different sources.
If you are ready to move past picking tools and start building strategy, that is what we do at Ethical SEO. We help SaaS companies succeed in both traditional and AI-driven search by using sustainable methods that protect your long-term results as algorithms evolve.
→ Learn more about our approach to AI search visibility →
Be thoughtful when choosing your stack. Try every tool before you buy. Review your subscriptions at least every six months, since technology changes fast and what worked before may not work now.
