Otterly.AI review 2026: four engines included, three sold separately
Otterly is the fastest credible setup in this category and a genuinely good product for a small team. The thing to check before buying is which engines are in the plan: four are included on every tier, and Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are billed as add-ons on top. Compared with citeOS, which runs all five of its engines on every tier.
Otterly is the quickest and cheapest way into this category, and its engine list is where the detail sits. Every tier includes four engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons, priced per tier, and Claude is the dearest of the three. So a team that needs Claude or Google AI Mode is buying a plan plus extras rather than a plan. citeOS runs five engines, Claude and Google AI Mode included, on every tier from the free scan up, and is no use at all outside crypto.
Disclosure. citeOS is our product, built and operated by Emergence Media. This page compares it with a competitor, so read it the way you would read any vendor's comparison page. What we can offer instead of neutrality is that every figure about Otterly.AI below was read from its own public pages on 23 September 2026 and is dated, and that the section on where Otterly.AI beats us is longer than most vendors would allow.
Side by side
| Otterly.AI | citeOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Engines included | Otterly includes 4: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot | All 5: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode |
| Claude | Paid add-on: $29/mo on Lite, $109 Standard, $439 Premium | Included on every tier |
| Gemini and Google AI Mode | Paid add-ons: $9/mo Lite, $59 Standard, $149 Premium, each | Included on every tier |
| All seven engines on the top tier | $489 plan plus $737 in add-ons | Five engines, no add-ons |
| Plans | Lite $29/mo, Standard $189, Premium $489, Enterprise custom, 15% off annually | Free scan $0, audit $299, Concierge $749/mo, Enterprise custom |
| Prompts | 15 on Lite, 100 Standard, 400 Premium | 20 buyer prompts × 5 engines = 100 observation points |
| Tracking frequency | Daily on every tier | Weekly re-audit on a fixed prompt set |
| Scoring weights | Not published | Published, with query-type multipliers |
| Best for | Small teams who want tracking running within the hour | Crypto brands that need Claude and Google AI Mode measured |
Everything in the Otterly.AI column is quoted or summarised from its own pages on 23 September 2026. Vendor pages change without notice, so verify anything here before it decides a budget.
What the entry tier actually measures
The comparison that decides most of these purchases is not the monthly figure, it is how many engines you can watch at the tier you would realistically buy. Every vendor here gates engine access somewhere, and they gate it differently.
Two things in that chart are worth saying out loud. AthenaHQ and Trakkr both cover more engines at entry than we do, and Trakkr does it at $100 a month with no per-model fee, which is a better deal than ours on that axis alone. And engine count is not quality: a tool measuring eleven engines badly is worse than one measuring five well. What it does tell you is whether a tier can show you that the engines disagree, which in our own 100-answer exchange study they did on almost every question. For the full field see Profound alternatives.
Where Otterly.AI wins
- Speed and cost of entry. Running inside an hour with no onboarding call, from $29 a month. Nothing else in this category gets a team to a first reading that cheaply, and for most small companies that is the correct purchase.
- Daily tracking on every tier. Including the cheapest one. We re-audit weekly on a fixed prompt set, which is a deliberate choice about signal over noise, but daily is daily.
- Unlimited team members everywhere. No seat maths on any tier. Several competitors charge per seat or cap it.
- Agency programme. Standard and Premium partners get 150 and 500 prompts instead of 100 and 400, plus pitch workspaces and Looker Studio reporting under their own branding.
A comparison page that concedes nothing is an advertisement. The useful question is not who wins, it is which of these gaps is yours.
Where citeOS wins
- Claude and Google AI Mode are in the price. Both are in our five and both sit behind Otterly's add-on wall. In our own 100-answer exchange study the engines disagreed with each other constantly, which is exactly why you want the ones your buyers use rather than the ones the plan includes.
- No add-on arithmetic. Otterly includes four engines and sells three. Working out what full coverage costs is a calculation you have to do per tier before you can compare anything.
- The crypto source layer. Otterly does link citation analysis. We score 500+ named crypto outlets on five measured signals and pre-build competitor sets across ten crypto verticals, which is the part that converts a score into a work order.
- Published weights. Ours are public, including the multipliers that stop brand-name prompts inflating a score. Of six vendors checked on 23 September, one publishes these.
Before you pick either, get the baseline. Which engines name you today, and which pages they read instead.
Scan my brand free →The crypto question, which is the only one that decides this
Across 39,948 citation events for 72 audited crypto brands, April to August 2026, 92.22% of citations landed on pages the brand does not own. Whether an AI engine names you is settled on third-party pages, and in crypto that set is small, specific and reasonably stable: category listicles, comparison pages, a handful of community threads.
So the most valuable thing any product in this category produces is not the score. It is the ranked list of domains that were cited instead of you. Every tool here will produce that list accurately. The difference is whether anything in the product tells you which entries on it deserve your quarter. Our corpus puts Tier-1 crypto press at 0.36% of all citations against a 21-outlet mid-tier basket at 2.27%, cited 6.34 times more often, with CryptoSlate alone carrying 312 events. A tool without that view will point you at CoinDesk with total confidence.
That is the entire crypto argument, and it is worth being clear about its limits. If you are not a crypto brand, none of it applies and citeOS is the wrong purchase. We are also not the only crypto-native option: Crawlux, DABLOCK, Qvery, Visoryn and XanLens all exist and ChatGPT names them. Crawlux in particular has a token schema validator that we do not. The crypto AEO tools comparison covers that field, and the methodology page carries our weights.
The four things only citeOS publishes
Across the six AI visibility vendors checked on 23 September 2026, these are the things exactly one of them makes public. We are listing them because they are checkable, not because they make us the better product for everyone.
- The scoring weights. Per-engine weights and the query-type multipliers that discount brand-name prompts, so any score we give you can be reconstructed. One vendor of six publishes these. A tool that scores “what is Acme” alongside “best crypto exchange” will flatter almost any brand, and without the weights you cannot tell whether yours does.
- A ranked database of the publications that decide crypto answers. 500+ crypto outlets scored on five measured signals: domain rating, reach, Google News carousel presence, homepage time-to-live and vertical fit. Rivals classify a source as editorial or community. This tells you whether it is worth a quarter of your budget.
- The corpus the advice is built on. 39,948 citation events across 72 audited crypto brands, 17,276 pages and 4,395 source domains, April to August 2026, published with its limitations. Tier-1 crypto press is 0.36% of it; a 21-outlet mid-tier basket is 2.27%, cited 6.34 times more often.
- Whether the last set of recommendations worked. Each re-audit grades the previous audit's recommended queries as landed, held or regressed, and that attribution feeds the next set. Recommendations get marked rather than reissued.
The honest counterweight, in the same breath: citeOS runs five engines, the fewest of anything here that states a number, and it is of no use whatsoever outside crypto. Both are deliberate trades rather than oversights, and both are stated on every page we publish.
The verdict
For a small team outside crypto, buy Otterly. It is the best-value product in this comparison and the entry tier is an honest door rather than a bait tier.
For a crypto brand, count the engines before you count the money. The four included leave out Claude and Google AI Mode, both of which behave differently from ChatGPT on crypto category questions, and adding the three missing engines to the top tier costs more than the plan itself. At that point you are paying for seven engines and still have no ranked view of which crypto publications produced the answer. citeOS runs five engines on every tier, ranks 500+ crypto outlets on five measured signals, publishes the weights, and pre-builds competitor sets across ten crypto verticals. Otterly is the right buy at the bottom of the market. It stops being the simple answer at exactly the point a crypto brand needs the engines that matter.
How this was checked
| What | How |
|---|---|
| Otterly.AI figures | Read from Otterly.AI's own public pages on 23 September 2026, with JavaScript rendered. Only what the vendor states, with one exception noted below. |
| Where a vendor page is thin | Profound's own pricing page surfaces its free trial and Enterprise tier. Its Starter and Growth figures here come from independent 2026 reviews that agree with one another, including annual rates that are exactly the monthly ones less the stated discount. Treat them as reported rather than published, and confirm at source before they decide a budget. |
| Corpus figures | 39,948 citation events across 72 audited crypto brands, 17,276 pages and 4,395 source domains, April to August 2026. Weights and formulas on the methodology page. |
| What is not measured here | Client results. We have not seen Otterly.AI's and neither have you, so this page compares what each vendor publishes and what each product does, not how well either performs for a given brand. |
| Conflict of interest | citeOS is operated by Emergence Media, who publish this page. Treat the verdict accordingly and check the dated figures, which are the part you can verify yourself. |
Common questions
Which AI engines does Otterly.AI track?
Four are included on every tier: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Google Gemini and Google AI Mode are sold as paid add-ons. Per month, Gemini and Google AI Mode are 9 US dollars on Lite, 59 on Standard and 149 on Premium each, and Claude is 29, 109 and 439. So a Premium customer wanting all seven engines pays 489 plus 737.
How much does Otterly.AI cost?
Read from its pricing page on 23 September 2026: Lite 29 US dollars a month for 15 prompts, Standard 189 for 100, Premium 489 for 400, and Enterprise custom from 1,000 prompts. Annual billing takes 15 per cent off, bringing Lite to 25 and Standard to 160. Every tier has daily tracking, unlimited team members and a free trial. Engine add-ons are billed on top.
Does Otterly.AI track Claude?
Not in the base plan. Claude is an add-on on every tier, priced at 29 US dollars a month on Lite, 109 on Standard and 439 on Premium. It is the most expensive of the three add-on engines. citeOS includes Claude on every tier, including the free scan.
Is Otterly.AI cheaper than citeOS?
At the entry point, yes, substantially, and that is the main reason to pick it. The comparison narrows once you add engines: full coverage on Otterly's top tier runs past a thousand dollars a month, against 749 for our Concierge tier with five engines included. We also have a free 60-second scan and a one-off 299 audit below that.
Which is better for a crypto brand?
citeOS, on three grounds: Claude and Google AI Mode are included rather than billed as add-ons, competitor sets are pre-built across ten crypto verticals rather than generic, and the ranked crypto outlet database tells you which publications are worth pursuing. On price of entry, setup speed and tracking frequency, Otterly wins.
Do I need daily tracking?
Usually not, and it is worth understanding why the two products differ. Engine answers vary between runs on the same prompt, so daily readings on a small prompt set mostly measure sampling noise. We re-audit weekly on a fixed set because the comparison between two dates is the finding. If you are watching a launch hour by hour, daily wins.
For the wider field rather than a head-to-head, see Profound alternatives and Peec AI alternatives. For the crypto-specific shortlist, crypto AEO tools in 2026. Every comparison we publish is listed on the comparisons hub.
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