Tools
The free way to check your AI visibility
By Arnav Mukherjee, founder of TofuBofu · July 7, 2026
You do not need to buy anything to find out whether AI recommends you. I say this as someone who sells a tool that does it: the first check should be free, and you can do it yourself in about ten minutes. If that check comes back fine, wonderful, you have saved yourself money. If it comes back the way it came back for us the first time we ran it on our own site, near zero with a competitor named instead, at least you found out for free.
There are two free ways to do it. One is manual and completely honest. One is a free tool that packages it up. Here is how to do each properly, because the way most people do the free check is subtly wrong and gives false comfort.
Method one: ask the engines yourself
This is the most honest check there is, because you read the raw answers with your own eyes. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude in four tabs. Then, and this is the part that matters, ask the questions a buyer asks before they know you exist. Not "tell me about Acme IT." That hands the engine the answer and proves nothing. Ask "best managed IT provider for a law firm in Chicago," or "alternatives to [a competitor you know]," or "how do I stop my accounting firm's email from getting phished." Then note: are you named? Named first, or buried? Who shows up instead?
Do that for ten to fifteen buyer questions across the four engines and you will have a genuinely useful picture, for free. Two honest cautions. Ask each question a couple of times, because AI answers vary between runs and one try can mislead. And keep the engines separate, because being named in one tells you little about the others.
The free ten-minute check
Method two: a free grader
If you would rather have it packaged, free graders exist. HubSpot's AEO Grader is the best-known: no account, no credit card, unlimited runs, and it scores how AI perceives your brand across dimensions like sentiment, presence, brand recognition, share of voice, and market position. It is a clean, fast starting point, and you can run it on competitors too.
One honest nuance worth knowing: some free graders check how the model describes your brand from its training data, which is related to, but not the same as, whether you get recommended for a live buyer question. Both are worth knowing. Just do not read a decent brand-perception score as proof that you win the "best provider for X" query, because those are different tests.
Where free stops being enough
Free is perfect for one question: does AI know I exist, and does this matter for me? It runs out in two places. First, a free check is a snapshot, and because answers are non-deterministic, a reliable read means running each question several times across six AI engines and repeating monthly, which is genuinely tedious by hand. Second, and more important, a check tells you the score, not the fix. The moment your question changes from "am I invisible" to "what do I actually change to fix it," you have outgrown the free snapshot. That is the honest line, and it is usually the fix, not the data, that makes people pay.
What to do
1. Do the manual check first
Ten minutes, four engines, ten to fifteen buyer questions. It is free and it is the most honest look you can get.
2. Ask buyer questions, never your brand name
Category, comparison, and problem questions. Your brand name proves nothing. Unprompted is the only test that counts.
3. Run a free grader for a second view
HubSpot's AEO Grader or a free scan gives you a packaged snapshot and lets you check competitors too.
4. Notice when free runs out
When you need to track a trend over time, or when your question becomes what do I fix, that is the signal to move beyond the free snapshot.
A free check built for services firms
Run a free scan across six AI engines with your buyer questions, and get a ranked list of what to fix next.
Get your free auditFrequently asked questions
How can I check my AI visibility for free?
Two ways. First, ask the engines yourself: open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude and type the buyer questions a prospect would ask, then note whether you are named. Second, use a free grader like HubSpot's AEO Grader, which checks how AI perceives your brand across several dimensions with no account needed. Both are free and genuinely useful as a starting snapshot. The manual method is the most honest, because you see the raw answers yourself.
What questions should I ask to check my AI visibility?
Ask the questions a buyer asks before they know you, not your own company name. Use category questions like best managed IT provider for law firms, comparison questions like alternatives to a named competitor, and problem questions like how do I stop my firm's email getting phished. Typing your brand name only shows what AI says when it already knows to look for you, which is not the test that matters. The test is whether you come up unprompted.
Is checking my own brand name a good test?
No, and it is the most common mistake. Asking ChatGPT tell me about my company hands the engine the answer, so of course it responds. That measures nothing about whether you get recommended to a buyer who has never heard of you. Always test the unprompted buyer questions instead, because that is the moment where being visible actually wins you a deal.
Are free AI visibility checkers accurate?
They are accurate enough for a snapshot, with two caveats. First, AI answers vary run to run, so any single free check is one sample, not a stable reading. Second, some free graders test how AI describes your brand from its training data, which is related to but not the same as whether you get recommended for live buyer queries. Use free checks to get the lay of the land, and understand you are seeing a snapshot, not a tracked trend.
What is the limit of checking AI visibility for free?
Free checks give you a one-time snapshot. What they do not give you is the repeated, sampled, per-engine measurement over time that tells you whether your work is moving the needle, and they do not tell you what to fix. Because answers are non-deterministic, a reliable read means running each question several times across six AI engines and repeating monthly, which is tedious by hand. That repetition, and the fix list after it, is where free stops being enough.
How often should I do a free AI visibility check?
A free manual check is worth doing once to see reality, and then occasionally to spot-check. It is not something to do daily, because AI answers wobble and you will just see noise. If you find yourself wanting to track your position properly month over month, that is the signal you have outgrown manual free checks and want a repeatable process that samples and records for you.
Should I pay for an AI visibility tool or keep it free?
Keep it free until free stops answering your question. A free check is perfect for finding out whether AI knows you exist and whether this matters for your business. You outgrow it when you need to track a trend over time, measure consistently across engines, or, most often, when you know you are invisible and need help fixing it rather than just confirming it again. The trigger to pay is usually the fix, not the measurement.
Sources and further reading
- HubSpot AEO Grader: a free, unlimited, no-account brand check across AI engines.
- Non-determinism of "deterministic" LLM settings (arXiv): why a single free check is one sample, not a stable reading.