My View on Free & Affordable Generative Engine Optimisation in 2025

How to Navigate the 2025 GEO Tools Market?

The Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) landscape has evolved significantly since the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT. Unlike traditional SEO tools that focus specifically on search engine rankings, GEO tools aim to optimize content for AI-powered answer engines like Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT, and others.

With that in mind, modern businesses face a fundamental shift: AI models have effectively become information gatekeepers, determining which sources get cited in AI-generated responses. This creates new challenges in regards to visibility that no traditional SEO metrics are capable of addressing.

What are the Primary Types of Generative Engine optimisation Tools?

There are four primary types of GEO tools that I would like to cover here: 

• Content optimisation Tools improve existing content for better AI retrievability. These platforms analyze content structure, semantic similarity, entity relationships, and other factors that improve the likelihood of a citation. Tools like iPullRank Relevance Doctor, MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer, and SERPrecon fall into this category.

• Monitoring and Analytics Tools track brand mentions and link citations across AI platforms. Otterly AI offers visibility into the way generative engines reference your brand or content in general, measuring what traditional analytics solutions typically miss at the moment. In addition, Qforia is used as a query fan-out simulation tool that provides better understanding of how AI models expand and interpret search queries.

• Technical Implementation Tools handle the structural elements that AI models prioritize. For instance, Indexly specializes in LLM indexing capabilities (llms.txt file management for controlling which AI crawlers have access to your content), as well as automated submissions to make sites discoverable by ChatGPT and Perplexity and schema markup.

• Competitive Intelligence Tools like RankBee.ai and Mangools AI Search Grader analyze how competitors perform in AI-generated responses across multiple AI platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini), providing benchmarking data that is unavailable to traditional tools. 

How I Choose the GEO Tools in 2025

As a digital marketing expert who has worked with dozens of small and medium businesses over the past several years, I understand that most companies don’t have enterprise-grade budgets for generative engine optimisation. As such, this article focuses exclusively on tools that are either free, or have a freemium model or priced affordably for smaller teams.

The GEO tools market has become increasingly expensive, with many platforms now charging $300+ per month for basic access. While these high-end solutions offer extensive features, they’re simply not realistic for most small and medium businesses that need to optimize their AI visibility within a reasonable budget.

My selection approach for this article prioritizes practical affordability over premium features. Every tool reviewed in this article either offers a meaningful free tier or costs under $150 per month (as of August 2025), making them much more accessible for businesses with limited marketing budgets. I’ve also specifically chosen platforms that deliver value without requiring massive upfront investments or long-term enterprise contracts.

The primary focus is on immediate, measurable improvements instead of comprehensive enterprise-level analytics. Small businesses need tools that work quickly and show clear results – not complex dashboards that demand dedicated specialists to interpret. It should be possible to set up and start using every single platform I recommend in the matter of days, not weeks.

List of Generative Engine optimisation Tools 

These tools are my picks for addressing specific GEO challenges. The following reviews are my personal assessment after research and, in some cases, client implementation exercise. Since pricing and feature lists evolve rapidly in the industry, I have also included direct links to the most up-to-date information where applicable.

Otterly AI – Ideal for Prompt Tracking & AI Visibility

Otterly AI tracks specific prompts that trigger your brand mentions and link citations, focusing on brand visibility optimisation using citations on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, and Copilot. 

Key functionalities include:

• AI Keyword Research Tool that helps you discover the search prompts your audience is asking on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google

• GEO Audit tool that analyzes multiple on-page factors to reveal what’s holding your site back from earning more AI citations

• Search Prompt Monitoring that automatically monitors all your search prompts daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and other AI platforms

• Brand Reports with dedicated brand-level dashboards tracking mentions, coverage, and domain citations

The platform helps you uncover fresh conversational prompts to guide your content, boost brand visibility and link citations. The GEO Audit feature helps you see your strengths, fix weaknesses, and position your brand to win more AI search visibility.

Otterly’s solution is well suited for small and medium businesses concerned about tracking and improving visibility in AI search engines.

This makes Otterly particularly accessible for smaller businesses — pricing starts at just $29/month for the Lite plan, which includes:

• 15 search prompts
• monitoring across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot
• daily tracking
• unlimited brand reports
• AI Keyword Research Tool
• Brand Visibility Index
• Domain Ranking
• Link Citations Analysis
• Generative Engine optimisation Audit

The plan also includes 1,000 GEO URL Audits per month, making it an affordable entry point even for companies with medium-sized websites. More information here.

My opinion: Otterly AI provides exceptional value for small businesses with its comprehensive feature set at an accessible price point. The combination of monitoring, keyword research, and auditing tools in the $29 plan makes it ideal for resource-conscious teams beginning their GEO journey.

RankBee.ai – Ideal for Competitive Benchmarking

RankBee.ai is a comprehensive AI content and product feed optimisation tool with advanced analytics. It also offers competitive analysis for generative AI performance, tracking how competitors appear in AI-generated responses compared to your brand. The platform benchmarks prompt visibility in various categories for certain brands across multiple AI models.

Primary features of the solution include:

• Competitor citation tracking

• AI content writing and optimisation tools

• Product feed optimisation for AI models

• AI performance benchmarking dashboards

Rankbee identifies which competitor content gets cited most often, analyzing the structural elements that drive its success. The tool also reveals untapped topic opportunities where competitors dominate AI responses.

RankBee.ai is well suited for competitive industries where AI visibility has a direct impact on lead generation: e-commerce, professional services, B2B and SaaS. Marketing teams with dedicated competitive intelligence roles see immediate value from implementing this solution.

Pricing information is not available to the public, with the only option from the official website being to “Book a demo.” However, once your trial ends, you’re being offered a Standard plan for $129 per month as of September 2025. 

My opinion: RankBee.ai delivers actionable competitive insights that inform content strategy decisions. The competitive analysis feature consistently finds opportunities that manual search is most likely to miss. 

SERPrecon – Ideal for Semantic Content Analysis

SERPRecon is an advanced SEO tool that uses vectors, machine learning and natural language processing to compare your site against competitors using the same methods search engines use. The platform focuses on semantic analysis to understand context and meaning, moving beyond traditional keyword density and other vanity SEO metrics.

Core features of the solution are:

• SEO & AI keyword / prompt tracking

• SERP feature correlation analysis

• Content outlines creation

• Keyword and gap analysis

The tool excels at identifying content optimisation opportunities that improve both traditional and generative search visibility. It allows you to analyse how the content changes you’re only planning will affect its relevance and results.

SERPRecon is perfect for SEO teams that transition to GEO strategies and agencies managing clients across both traditional and AI search optimisation. Companies with strong existing SERP presence would be able to acquire significant AI visibility gains with this tool.

Pricing starts at $10/month for 15 content reports and 5 share of voice report runs, scaling with keyword volume. More information here

My opinion: SERPRecon provides crucial bridge insights between SEO and GEO. The AI Overviews simulation analysis is excellent at optimizing existing high-performing content for AI citation improvements.

Indexly – Ideal for LLM Indexing & Crawling Control

Indexly is a comprehensive indexing tracking platform that helps websites stay visible, compliant, and optimized in the age of AI and large language models. The platform focuses on making your content discoverable, understandable, and usable by large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others that power AI chatbots and assistants.

Primary functionalities include:

• llms.txt file management – a new standard similar to robots.txt that allows you to help LLM crawlers access your site and efficiently process its content

• LLM crawler detection that scans your site to detect if major AI crawlers like OpenAI or Anthropic can access your content

• Automated indexing submissions to Bing Indexes that are used by LLMs

• Traffic monitoring and performance insights for GEO optimisation

Indexly provides clear, enforceable recommendations over your content’s usage by AI bots and helps ensure your website content is discoverable by LLMs that are becoming key research tools. The platform addresses the challenge that LLMs generate responses based on indexed web content, so proper indexing helps your site appear in AI-generated answers.

Indexly is most valuable for businesses wanting to control and optimize their indexing process across both traditional search engines and AI platforms. Companies with large knowledge bases, documentation sites, and those serious about AI discoverability see the best results.

Pricing starts at $14/month for basic analytics, with advanced features available at higher tiers. More information here.

My opinion: Indexly offers essential infrastructure for the AI era, providing both the tools to get discovered by AI models and the controls to manage how your content is indexed. The llms.txt management alone makes it valuable for businesses serious about AI visibility.

MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer – Ideal for AI Retrieval Simulation & Testing

MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer simulates how Google’s AI Mode evaluates your content using semantic similarity, helping you understand which parts of your webpage align with various search intents. The platform provides a rare chance to see behind the curtain of how AI search actually works.

Key features include:

• Cosine similarity analysis that generates scores reflecting how well 700-character content embeddings align with each prompt’s embedding
• Master prompt fan-out that automatically generates deep research prompts simulating
• Embedding heatmap visualization showing how well each content chunk aligns with different prompts using cosine similarity

MarketBrew breaks content into passages (chunks), embeds those passages into multi-dimensional vector space, and compares them directly to fan-out prompts using cosine similarity, determining relevance geometrically instead of doing so lexically. The tool shows how AI Mode breaks content into 700-character passages and turns each into a vector using Sentence-BERT-style embeddings.

MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer is perfect for SEO professionals and content teams who need to understand and optimize for AI search algorithms. Teams focused on GEO and semantic optimisation see immediate value from the simulation capabilities.

The AI Mode Visualizer is available as a free tool, with advanced features available through MarketBrew’s enterprise platform. MarketBrew offers this as part of their suite of free SEO & AIO tools that demonstrate their search engine modeling technology.

My opinion: MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer offers unparalleled insights into how AI search actually evaluates content. The ability to simulate and visualize AI search behavior before optimisation makes it invaluable for GEO optimisation teams.

iPullRank Relevance Doctor – Ideal for Content Relevance Testing

Embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv6QKUGqG8o 

iPullRank Relevance Doctor is a free tool that tests and improves your content’s mathematical relevance, ensuring it ranks for your targeted keywords. While iPullRank offers comprehensive relevance engineering services, the Relevance Doctor tool provides accessible content analysis for teams of any size.

Key features include:

• Content relevance scoring that measures how mathematically relevant your content is to target queries

• Relevance analysis to identify gaps in content optimisation

• Feedback on content alignment with search intent

The tool helps content creators understand whether their content aligns with search engine expectations before publication, offering insights into semantic relevance that traditional SEO tools often miss. It analyzes your content by breaking it into semantic chunks and calculating mathematical relevance scores against target queries using natural language processing algorithms. That information is then used to provide specific feedback on how well your content aligns with search intent and identifies optimisation opportunities.

Relevance Doctor is perfect for content creators, small businesses, and SEO professionals who need quick, accessible content relevance testing without enterprise-level investment. Teams looking to validate content optimisation before publication see immediate value.

Relevance Doctor is completely free to use, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes. The tool provides instant feedback without requiring account setup or lengthy implementation.

My opinion: Relevance Doctor offers valuable content relevance insights at no cost, making advanced content optimisation concepts accessible to smaller teams. It’s an excellent entry point into understanding semantic content optimisation.

iPullRank Qforia – Ideal for Query Fan-Out Simulation & Prompt Analysis

Qforia specializes in query fan-out simulation, helping users understand how AI models expand and interpret search queries across different contexts. The tool analyzes how exactly single prompts generate multiple related queries, offering insights into the full spectrum of user intent that AI engines consider when generating responses.

Key tool deliverables include:

• Query expansion simulation that shows how AI models interpret and expand your target prompts into related searches

• Content gap identification based on query fan-out patterns

The platform helps you understand the complete query landscape around your target topics, ensuring your content addresses not just primary keywords but the full spectrum of related queries that AI models consider. This comprehensive approach to query analysis helps optimize content for better AI citation rates across multiple related prompts.

Qforia is best suited for content strategists and SEO professionals who need deep insights into query relationships and AI search behavior. Teams focused on comprehensive content coverage and semantic optimisation see significant value from the query fan-out analysis.

Qforia is available for free on the iPullRank website, providing extensive accessibility for a convenient query fan-out simulation tool.

My opinion: Qforia provides unique insights into how AI models think about query relationships, helping content creators gain a better understanding of the full scope of topics they need to address for all-encompassing AI visibility.

Key Takeaways

• Generative engine optimisation requires fundamentally different tools and metrics than traditional SEO. For example, while traditional SEO focuses on keyword rankings and backlinks, GEO prioritizes semantic relevance, chunk optimisation, and AI citation frequency.
• Monitoring AI model mentions across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot provides insights unavailable through most of traditional SEO tools. For example, tools like Otterly AI and RankBee.ai reveal how often your brand and its competitors appear in AI-generated responses – data that Google Analytics cannot capture.
• Content optimisation for AI retrievability focuses on semantic clarity, passage structure, and topical authority rather than traditional search rankings. Tools like iPullRank Relevance Doctor, SERPRecon’s semantic analysis, and MarketBrew’s AI Mode Visualizer, and Qforia help optimize content for AI understanding and retrieval.
• Free and affordable GEO tools make AI optimisation accessible to small businesses, with options like Otterly AI starting at $29/month, MarketBrew’s AI Mode Visualizer available at no cost, and iPullRank’s Relevance Doctor offering free content testing for teams of any size.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Choose the Right Generative Engine Optimisation Tool for My Specific Goals?

Start by identifying your primary need – whether it’s content relevance testing (iPullRank Relevance Doctor), AI search simulation (MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer), or comprehensive brand monitoring (Otterly AI or RankBee.ai). Focus on free tools first to understand GEO basics before investing in paid platforms. 

Are There Any Free or Affordable GEO Tools for Small Teams or Solo Marketers?

Yes, several excellent options exist for budget-conscious teams. iPullRank Relevance Doctor offers completely free content relevance testing, while MarketBrew AI Mode Visualizer provides free AI search simulation. For comprehensive monitoring, Otterly AI starts at just $29/month with full AI keyword research and GEO audit capabilities, while SERPRecon begins at $10/month for semantic content analysis. As for businesses wanting to optimize their discoverability by AI platforms – Indexly offers LLM indexing and crawling control starting at $14/month. These tools provide professional-grade GEO insights without enterprise-level investment.

Is There Any Training or Support Available for Implementing These GEO Tools Effectively?

Most GEO tools require a learning curve to maximize their potential, especially for beginners. While each platform offers basic documentation, comprehensive training on GEO strategy, tool implementation, and AI optimisation best practices can accelerate your results significantly. Professional guidance helps avoid common mistakes and ensures you’re leveraging these tools’ full capabilities. For specialized training on GEO implementation, content optimisation for AI search, and strategic consulting on tool selection and workflow integration – I’m offering expert consulting and workshops to help your team master these emerging optimisation techniques. Contact me if you would like to discuss any cooperation.