The short version: Semrush packages AI search tracking into bundled "SEO + AI Search" plans starting at $199/mo ($165.17/mo billed annually) for just 50 prompts, while its entry $139/mo SEO plan completely excludes AI search. Visiby starts at $49/mo standalone, delivers 50 prompts for $99/mo across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, isolates citations to exact passages, and delivers finished content briefs.
The debate between an all-in-one SEO suite add-on and a dedicated AI visibility platform comes down to workflow objectives. If your team wants a high-level presence column inside your existing rank tracker, Semrush's add-on provides convenient consolidation. If your goal is understanding why language models recommend your competitors and taking specific editorial action to earn those citations, a dedicated platform is required.
A visibility score is not an execution plan. Knowing that your brand has a 22% visibility score across a keyword cluster does not tell an editor which sentence to update or which schema entity to declare. Visiby bridges that gap by connecting multi-engine prompt tracking directly to ranked content deliverables.
What Visiby does: measure, then fix
Traditional rank trackers were engineered for a world where search results were static and deterministic: one query yielded ten blue links. If your URL ranked position 4 on desktop, it was position 4 for virtually every user in that locale.
Generative search operates on an entirely different architecture. When a prospective customer prompts an engine with "Which CRM handles multi-currency recurring billing best for European SaaS?", the engine does not present a list of links. It reads across retrieved source passages, weighs factual entities, and synthesizes a direct narrative recommendation.
Visiby is built from the ground up to track, diagnose, and win those synthesized recommendations:
- Multi-Engine Independence: Visiby tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews on all standard tiers. Agency plans add Google AI Mode and Claude for comprehensive five-engine coverage. Visiby never blends engine numbers into a single aggregate metric because empirical testing proves that engines cite different sources on identical prompts.
- Passage-Level Citation Extraction: Visiby isolates the exact source URL and extracts the specific paragraph the engine used to justify its answer. When a competitor wins an answer slot, you see the exact factual structure they used.
- Closed-Loop Action Plans: In Visiby, tracking leads directly to execution. The Action Plan tab ranks citation opportunities by commercial intent and hands your editorial team finished content briefs. Each brief specifies the exact entity attributes, comparison tables, and FAQ schemas needed to win the citation.
- AI Bot Crawler Telemetry: Tracking front-end completions is only half the battle. Visiby monitors server-side visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended, ensuring your technical infrastructure allows AI retrieval.
Where Semrush fits
Semrush is an established global software platform for digital marketing and traditional organic search. Founded in 2008, it provides one of the industry's most trusted databases for traditional keyword volume, competitive organic traffic estimation, and backlink auditing.
A fair evaluation highlights Semrush's genuine capabilities:
- Unrivaled Keyword Intelligence: Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool holds tens of billions of search terms, providing historical search volumes, seasonal trends, and pay-per-click cost metrics that traditional search marketers rely on daily.
- Backlink Profiling & Audits: With an index of over 43 trillion backlinks, Semrush allows teams to audit toxic links, evaluate referring domains, and identify competitor link acquisition strategies.
- PPC & Advertising Data: Semrush provides deep visibility into competitor Google Ads copy, bidding budgets, display ad creatives, and shopping campaigns.
- All-in-One Procurement: For organizations already paying for Semrush across dozens of seats, purchasing the AI Visibility Toolkit add-on simplifies corporate billing under an existing vendor agreement.
If your core marketing strategy revolves around traditional Google blue-link ranking, backlink acquisition, and paid Google Ads management, Semrush remains an indispensable workhorse.
However, treating conversational AI visibility as an add-on column within a traditional rank tracker introduces clear workflow constraints.
Pricing and total cost of ownership
Semrush packages AI search into bundled "SEO + AI Search" plans. Its entry-level SEO plan costs $139/mo ($117.33/mo billed annually), but it explicitly excludes all AI search capabilities (no AI tracking, no sentiment monitoring, and no AI visibility reports).
To access AI visibility inside Semrush, buyers must upgrade to its "SEO + AI Search" tiers:
- Starter (SEO + AI Search): $199/mo ($165.17/mo billed annually) for 50 prompts to track daily and 1 domain.
- Pro+ (SEO + AI Search): $299/mo ($248.17/mo billed annually) for 100 prompts to track daily.
- Advanced (SEO + AI Search): $549/mo ($455.67/mo billed annually) for 200 prompts to track daily.
Visiby is an independent platform focused exclusively on Answer Engine Optimization and citation intelligence, delivering deeper prompt telemetry at a fraction of the cost with no mandatory annual contracts:
| Plan Tier |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Base Entry (No AI) | $139/mo ($117.33/mo annual) — ❌ No AI search performance, sentiment, or reports | Free first report on live category prompts; no card required |
| 50 Prompts Tier | $199/mo ($165.17/mo annual) — Starter tier, 50 prompts, 1 domain | $99/mo Starter — 50 prompts, 3 engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO) |
| 100–150 Prompts Tier | $299/mo ($248.17/mo annual) — Pro+ tier, 100 prompts | $249/mo Pro — 150 prompts, Brand Entity, Competitor Intelligence, Sentiment |
| High Volume / Agency | $549/mo ($455.67/mo annual) — Advanced tier, 200 prompts | $499/mo Agency — 500 prompts (2.5x more prompts), 5 engines, API, SSO |
| Setup & Trial | Credit card required; annual lock-in needed for lowest rate | Free instant report inside live product; monthly self-serve flexibility |
| Engine Footprint | Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude | Independent, unblended tracking across all major conversational engines |
| Deliverables | Aggregated presence flags and visibility percentages | Ranked Action Plan with structured, production-ready content briefs |
For a growth team needing 50 prompts, Semrush charges $199 per month ($2,388/year). Visiby Starter delivers those same 50 prompts for $99 per month ($1,188/year) — saving 50% while providing actionable weekly fix briefs that tell your writers exactly what content to publish.
The scored capability matrix
Comparing Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit with Visiby illustrates the fundamental difference between an SEO suite add-on and a dedicated AI visibility platform:
| Capability | | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Architecture | Google SERP scraper recording AI Overview feature presence | Non-deterministic prompt completion engine tracking multi-engine synthesis |
| Engine Footprint | Google AI Overviews focus; conversational prompt sampling | Native independent tracking: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews (Claude + AI Mode on Agency) |
| Passage Attribution | Domain presence flag | Exact cited URL, anchor text, and extracted passage text |
| Execution Workflow | Manual interpretation of visibility percentages | Ranked Action Plan delivering ready-to-publish content briefs |
| Brand Entity Intelligence | Traditional brand keyword tracking | Entity perception mapping across language models and competitor associations |
| AI Bot Crawler Logs | Requires external server log parser integration | Native server monitoring for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended |
| First Report Access | Gated behind platform subscription | Free report in 60 seconds inside live application; no card required |
Why a visibility score is not an execution plan
In traditional SEO, seeing that your site dropped from position 2 to position 5 provided a clear roadmap: evaluate the three URLs above you, identify backlink gaps, and update internal links.
In generative search, a visibility score provides almost no operational clarity.
Consider a practical scenario: your brand tracks the prompt "What are the best automated accounting tools for mid-market manufacturing?"
A traditional suite add-on records that an AI Overview appeared, notes that your domain was not cited, and calculates a drop in your aggregate visibility score.
What does your content team do with that information?
Without passage-level extraction, they cannot see:
- That the engine cited a competitor's pricing breakdown published three weeks ago.
- That the engine highlighted a specific ERP integration your software supports, but your landing page failed to structure in a parseable table.
- That Perplexity answered the question using a technical user review from a community forum, while Google AI Overviews cited a comparison guide.
Visiby delivers the execution plan that makes visibility data useful. It pinpoints the prompt, isolates the winning competitor's source passage, and produces a structured brief showing your team what facts, schema markup, and content to publish to win that recommendation back.
Which platform should you choose?
Both platforms provide value, but they serve distinct operational mandates.
Choose Semrush if:
- Your primary marketing channel is traditional Google organic search, and your workflow relies heavily on keyword search volume, keyword difficulty, and backlink prospecting.
- You run active Google Ads pay-per-click campaigns and need competitive ad copy and bidding analysis.
- Your marketing team already works inside Semrush daily, and executive leadership only requires a high-level monthly indicator of whether AI Overviews trigger for target keywords.
- You prefer managing all traditional digital marketing metrics under a single corporate vendor agreement.
Choose Visiby if:
- You want dedicated, multi-engine AI search intelligence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews without paying for a mandatory SEO suite base subscription.
- You believe tracking numbers are useless unless they tell your team exactly how to fix missing recommendations.
- You require granular passage-level citation extraction to understand why language models select specific competitor URLs.
- You want transparent pricing starting from $49/mo (Lite) or $99/mo (Starter) with zero contract lock-ins.
- You need native monitoring of AI crawler bot traffic (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) alongside robots.txt validation.