What is the cheapest way to see if ChatGPT recommends my practice?

Ask it yourself. Type the question a patient would ask, such as "best dentist in [your town]", into ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, twice each, and write down who is named. For ongoing tracking, Local Falcon starts at $24.99 a month and BrightLocal's Local AI Visibility tracker from $31 a month, as of November 2026.

What is the difference between local AI tracking and brand AI tracking?

Local tracking runs each question as if the patient were standing at a specific spot in your area, so it shows if you're named near your office. Brand tracking asks broad questions at country level and measures how often your brand appears. Most GEO tools do brand tracking, which suits national companies more than a practice with one address.

Is HubSpot's AI Search Grader useful for a dental or medical practice?

It's free and quick, so it's worth a look, but it's a one-time brand check. HubSpot says it reflects what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about you based on their training data, which isn't the same as a live local answer to "best chiropractor near me". Use it as a curiosity, not as your measure.

Why do I get different results every time I check?

AI answers vary from run to run. BrightLocal found that re-asking the same prompt brings back the same business only about half the time, and Dr. Bicuspid found 38% of recommended practices changed when the question was re-asked. Good tools repeat each question and report a rate, not a single yes or no.

Do I need a tool if I already pay a marketing agency?

Not necessarily, but you should see the same kind of data. Ask your agency which questions it tracks, which AI tools, from which locations and how often. If it can't show you that, a $25 to $40 a month local tool gives you an independent view.

The best AI visibility tools for local practices in 2026

AI visibility tools tell you whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI and Perplexity mention your business when someone asks a question. There are dozens now, and most were built for national brands tracking hundreds of prompts. That’s not what an independent dental office, chiropractic clinic, PT practice, optometrist or med spa needs.

You need to know one thing first: when a patient in your town asks for a recommendation, are you named? This list compares nine tools you can run yourself, as of November 2026, with that question in mind.

The tools at a glance

Two of these tools check answers from specific places in your area; the rest measure your brand at country level. Prices are as of November 2026 and change often.

Tool	Local tracking	AI engines covered	Prompts	Starting price	Free tier or trial
BrightLocal Local AI Visibility	Yes, each query anchored to your location	ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode	Up to 20 per location	From $31/month (Track plan)	14-day free trial
Local Falcon	Yes, geo-grid scans from GPS points	ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Grok and more	Pay per scan (credits)	$24.99/month	100 free credits
Otterly.AI	Country and language only	ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot (Gemini, AI Mode, Claude as add-ons)	15	$29/month	Free trial
Peec AI	Country only (1 on Starter)	Pick 3: ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and others	50	$95/month	Free trial
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	Not described	ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity	25	$99/month per domain, billed annually	Not stated on pricing page
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Not described	ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode	Index of 500M+ prompts; custom prompts extra	$199/month per AI index, on a paid Ahrefs plan	No
Profound	No	Up to 9 engines on Enterprise	Custom	Custom (enterprise)	7-day trial, 50 prompts
AthenaHQ	Country level	ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot (more on paid)	300 credits free; 3,600 on Starter	$295/month	Free plan
HubSpot AI Search Grader	No	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini	Fixed, one-time	Free	Free

Local tracking vs brand tracking: what’s the difference for a practice?

Local tracking asks the AI your patient’s question from a real spot in your area; brand tracking asks broad questions and counts how often your name comes up nationally. For a practice, local tracking is the one that matches how patients search.

Here’s why it matters. A patient in the north end of town asking “best physical therapist near me” can get a different answer from one five miles south. Google’s AI leans on Maps data: Gemini grounds answers in Google Maps, and in AI Mode about 80% of local-intent citations go to Maps and Business Profile URLs, 88% for dentists (Steady Demand, via Driven Metrics; a second-hand figure). Location changes the answer.

Brand trackers such as Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Semrush and Ahrefs were designed for companies that want to know how often “Acme CRM” appears across hundreds of questions. They let you set a country and language, not a street corner. You can still type “best dentist in Springfield, IL” as a prompt, and that tells you something. It won’t tell you whether a patient searching from their phone on the other side of town sees you.

	Local (location-anchored) tracking	Brand-level prompt tracking
Question it answers	Am I named when someone near my office asks?	How often is my brand named across many topics?
Where the question is asked from	Specific points or your business location	A country, sometimes a language
Typical prompts	5 to 20 “best [service] near me” questions	15 to hundreds of topic questions
Built for	Local businesses and the agencies that serve them	National brands, SaaS, ecommerce
Examples here	BrightLocal, Local Falcon	Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Profound, AthenaHQ

Why the way a tool measures matters

How a tool collects answers changes what it reports, so the method matters as much as the dashboard. Three things from published studies and Cleareo’s tests (November 2026) are worth knowing before you trust any number.

Engines disagree. In our log-monitoring study (October 31 to November 1, 2026) we asked 25 buyer questions by hand in the consumer apps of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. 90% of the pages cited were used by only one engine, and the engines disagreed on mid-tier names by 20 to 33 points. A tool that checks only ChatGPT is telling you about ChatGPT, not about AI in general. Dr. Bicuspid saw the same with dentists: ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude named 560 different “best dentists” across 50 cities, and only 30 were named by all three.

Answers change between runs. BrightLocal’s 200,000-answer study found that re-asking the same prompt brings back the same business only about half the time. Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches, against 32 to 38% for AI surfaces. One check on one day is a coin toss. Look for tools that repeat each question and report a rate.

APIs differ from the apps. When we compared the same questions through the AI companies’ APIs with the consumer apps, the APIs kept the app’s top pick 84 to 95% of the time but changed about 40% of the shortlist and most of the sources. Some tracking tools query engines programmatically rather than through the app a patient uses. Peec AI, for example, labels several of its Enterprise models as “API,” which shows vendors treat the difference as real. Ask any vendor how it collects answers, and treat the result as an estimate of what patients see, not a recording of it.

How we chose

We picked tools that practice owners are likely to come across, then checked features and prices on each vendor’s own site in November 2026. Each one had to:

Track whether a business is mentioned or cited in AI answers, in at least two of ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI features and Perplexity.
Publish a price or a free tier (Profound is the exception, included as the enterprise reference point).
Be something you can sign up for and use yourself, without hiring the vendor.

We ranked them by usefulness for a single-location practice: local tracking first, then price, then engine coverage. We didn’t test accuracy head to head, so treat the order as fit, not a lab result.

The tools, one by one

1. BrightLocal Local AI Visibility

BrightLocal’s Local AI Visibility tracker anchors every query to a specific location and shows how often your practice is mentioned or cited in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. You get a 0 to 100 visibility score, comparisons with local competitors (mention rate, share of voice, average position), a leaderboard of the sources AI is reading, and prompt-level results with sentiment.

Best for: a practice that wants one dashboard for local SEO and AI answers. It sits inside BrightLocal’s usual citation and review tools.
Price (as of November 2026): included in the Track, Manage and Grow plans, from $31/month. Up to 20 prompts per location, with suggested prompts for your business category.
Free tier: 14-day free trial, no card needed.
Watch out: three engines only, so no Perplexity or Gemini app. BrightLocal also publishes much of the research in this field, which is useful, but it’s a vendor.

2. Local Falcon

Local Falcon is known for geo-grid scans: it checks rankings from a grid of GPS points across your area and shows a heat map. It now runs the same grid for AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and Grok, with brand mention attribution, source tracking and competitor gaps.

Best for: seeing where in your town you’re named and where you disappear, which no brand tracker shows.
Price (as of November 2026): Starter $24.99/month (7,500 credits), Basic $49.99, Pro $99.99, Premium $199.99. Scans spend credits, so bigger grids and more engines use more.
Free tier: 100 free credits when you create an account.
Watch out: credit-based pricing takes a little planning. A big grid run weekly on several engines can burn through the Starter allowance.

3. Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI is a brand-level AI search monitor. It tracks your mentions and citations across a set of prompts and engines, with unlimited countries and languages.

Best for: a practice owner who wants a cheap, simple prompt tracker and is happy to write town-specific prompts by hand.
Price (as of November 2026): Lite $29/month for 15 prompts, Standard $189/month for 100, Premium $489/month for 400. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot are included; Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude cost extra.
Free tier: free trial.
Watch out: no location-level tracking, and AI Mode, which matters a lot for local Google searches, is an add-on.

4. Peec AI

Peec AI is a polished brand-visibility platform used by marketing teams and agencies. It tracks prompts across the models you choose, shows sources and competitors, and includes unlimited users.

Best for: a group practice or a marketing manager who wants clean reporting and plans to grow into it.
Price (as of November 2026): Starter $95/month for 50 prompts and 3 active models, 1 country. Pro $245/month (150 prompts), Advanced $495/month (350 prompts). Extra models cost $30/month on Starter.
Free tier: free trial.
Watch out: country-level only. For one location, you’re paying for depth you may not use.

5. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit adds AI visibility reports for any domain and daily tracking of your own prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity.

Best for: practices or agencies already using Semrush for SEO who want AI data in the same place.
Price (as of November 2026): $99/month per domain, billed annually, with 25 custom prompts tracked daily.
Free tier: not stated on the pricing page.
Watch out: the pricing page doesn’t describe location-level tracking. Its domain reports are strongest for brands with national search volume, which most practices don’t have.

6. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs Brand Radar maps brand visibility across an index of more than 500 million real prompts on six AI platforms, and lets you add your own prompts refreshed daily.

Best for: larger groups or agencies doing competitive research on brands, not a single office.
Price (as of November 2026): the AI visibility index starts at $199/month, or $699/month for all models, as an add-on to a paid Ahrefs plan. Paid plans include a few custom prompts (5 on Lite, up to 20 on Advanced), and extra custom prompts start at $50/month.
Free tier: no.
Watch out: the big prompt index rarely contains town-level practice questions, and the total cost stacks on top of an Ahrefs subscription.

7. Profound

Profound is an enterprise AI search platform covering up to nine answer engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Claude and AI Overviews, plus content tools.

Best for: large healthcare brands and health systems. We include it as the enterprise reference point.
Price (as of November 2026): Enterprise is custom-priced.
Free tier: a 7-day trial tracking 50 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
Watch out: far more than a practice needs. The trial is a handy one-week snapshot, though.

8. AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ is a GEO platform that tracks AI responses on a credit system (one credit per AI response) and adds content and action recommendations.

Best for: someone who wants to try a full GEO platform for free before deciding.
Price (as of November 2026): Essential is free with 300 credits across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter is $295/month with 3,600 credits and adds AI Mode, Claude, Grok and others.
Free tier: yes, the Essential plan.
Watch out: country-level only, and the paid plan costs about ten times a local tracker.

9. HubSpot AI Search Grader

HubSpot’s AI Search Grader is a free, one-time check that scores how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini represent your brand.

Best for: a five-minute curiosity check.
Price (as of November 2026): free. HubSpot’s ongoing AEO monitoring product is $50/month.
Free tier: it is the free tier.
Watch out: HubSpot says it reflects what the engines say “based on their training data,” so it isn’t a live, local answer to “best optometrist near me.” Don’t use it as your measure.

Which tool fits which practice?

The right tool depends on how many locations you have and who will look at the reports.

Your situation	Start with	Why
One location, owner checks it monthly	BrightLocal or Local Falcon Starter	Local answers, under $40/month
Want to see weak spots across town	Local Falcon	Geo-grid heat maps for AI and Maps
Already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs	Their AI add-on, plus one local scan	Keeps reporting in one place; covers the local gap
Group practice or marketing manager on staff	Peec AI or Otterly.AI alongside a local tool	Better reporting across many prompts
Health system or national brand	Profound or AthenaHQ	Built for scale
Just curious, no budget	HubSpot AI Search Grader, AthenaHQ free, or asking the AI yourself	Free

When is a tool enough, and when should you hire help?

A tool is enough when you have someone who will read the report and fix what it shows. The fixes are well understood. The strongest levers are your Google Business Profile (completeness and primary category), review count and rating, a claimed Yelp profile, service and practitioner pages on your site, and health directory profiles such as Healthgrades, Zocdoc, WebMD and Vitals.

Some evidence on how much those matter: practice websites made up 53.8% of ChatGPT’s citations for dental queries in a Dental Economics study (via whito), and only 3.7% of 9,400 AI Mode answers named a business rated under 4.0 stars, per Cheers. Yelp also licensed its data to OpenAI in July 2026.

Hire help when:

Nobody in the practice has two or three hours a month to act on the report.
The tool shows you’re missing, and you don’t know why after checking your profile, reviews and listings.
You need new service or practitioner pages written, or a website that AI tools can read properly.
You want review requests handled in a way that stays inside the FTC review rule and HIPAA.

If you do hire, ask the agency what it measures with. Our list of AEO and GEO agencies for healthcare practices covers the options and the questions to ask.

A note on Cleareo

Cleareo is a service, not a tool, so it isn’t in the list above. We do the measuring and the fixing for independent health practices: our audit runs 20 questions in 4 AI tools, 3 times each, from 3 spots in your area, and compares your share of recommendations with your top five competitors. Plans are on our pricing page and the service is described on the AI visibility page.

If you want a quick look before buying any tool, the free AI check runs 5 patient questions for your town in ChatGPT, Google’s AI, Claude and Perplexity, twice each, and emails you the results within 2 business days. We’re new and have no case studies yet, so judge us on that.

Where to start

This week, spend 20 minutes on it:

Ask ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity “best [your specialty] near [your town]” twice each. Note who’s named and whether you are.
Run the free HubSpot grader or AthenaHQ’s free plan if you’re curious about the brand-level view.
If you’re missing or patchy, start a BrightLocal trial or use Local Falcon’s free credits to see the local picture, then fix your Google Business Profile and reviews before anything else.

Cleareo sells AI visibility work and website rebuilds for independent practices. Where we mention ourselves, weigh that accordingly. Prices and features of other companies were checked on their own sites on the date above and can change.