Key takeways
If you want to measure your prompts at the best price, Ahrefs is ahead, on frequency and on cost. If you want to be told what to fix, in what order, with a document to hand over, that is where Cockpyt AI stands apart.
I co-founded Cockpyt AI. You are reading a comparison written by an interested party, and this one is uncomfortable for me: on raw measurement, Ahrefs does better and costs less. I am going to show it with numbers, then tell you what remains on my side.
Ahrefs Brand Radar is presented as an AI visibility tool. It is really two products under one name, with two measurement logics and two pricing grids. Understanding that distinction avoids most buying mistakes.
Does ChatGPT recommend your brand?
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Ahrefs Brand Radar or Cockpyt AI: which should you choose in 2026?
Choose Ahrefs if you want to measure your prompts at the best frequency-to-price ratio, track Claude, Copilot or Google’s surfaces, or explore any brand’s visibility without configuring anything. If you are already an Ahrefs customer, part of the tracking is even included in your subscription.
Choose Cockpyt AI if measurement is not enough and you need, every month, a technical audit, a prioritised action plan and a document in French to hand to a client or a management team.
| Criterion | Ahrefs Brand Radar | Cockpyt AI |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking your own prompts | From $50/month, billed per check | From 29 EUR excl. VAT/month annual |
| Tracking frequency | Your choice: daily, weekly or monthly | Weekly, plus on-demand scans |
| Market index | More than 450 million prompts, from $199/month | No |
| Index freshness | Re-tested monthly, 90-day window | Not applicable |
| Engines | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Claude in custom tracking | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Included for Ahrefs customers | 5 to 20 daily prompts depending on plan | Not applicable |
| Audit with action plan | No, a measurement tool | Monthly GEO audit, 33-point checklist |
| Hallucination detection | Not documented | Yes |
| Traffic from AI engines | Ahrefs Web Analytics, free | Via Google Analytics 4 and Search Console |
| Free trial | No, no discounts and generally no refunds | 14 days, no credit card |
| Deliverable and support language | English | French |
Two products under one name
Ahrefs documents this clearly in the Brand Radar FAQ, and it is the thing to understand first.
The AI Visibility Index does not track your questions. Ahrefs starts from real queries in its keyword database, turns them into natural questions through People Also Ask and semantic expansion, runs those prompts through each platform and stores the answers. You then query that base for any brand, with no setup, and history going back to 2025.
Custom Prompts are your own questions, tracked at the cadence you choose per platform, from daily to monthly. This is the component that compares directly with Cockpyt AI.
An index re-tested once a month
According to the Ahrefs FAQ, the index question sets are re-tested monthly, on a 90-day reporting window. The largest market dataset in the category is therefore also one of the least frequently refreshed. That makes sense for an overview, much less for catching a recent drop.
An index built on search demand
Ahrefs specifies that the index works best for established brands and topics with meaningful search demand, and that coverage may be limited for brands with little or no volume. For a small business rarely searched by name, the index may show very little. Ahrefs then points to Custom Prompts, which is honest and worth knowing before paying $199.
In my view, this is the most important warning in all of Ahrefs’ documentation, and it goes unnoticed. A small business buying the index to see its visibility may pay to discover it does not appear, not because AI engines ignore it, but because the index never asked about it.
What Brand Radar does better than Cockpyt AI
On measurement the gap is clear, and it is best seen in numbers.
The cost of measuring your own questions
Ahrefs bills Custom Prompts per check: one prompt, on one platform, in one location, per update. The Basic pack at $50 a month includes 2,500 checks, the Growth pack at $100 includes 7,000, the Scale pack at $250 includes 25,000, with overage billed at $0.01 to $0.02 per check.
| Scope | Checks per month, daily | Ahrefs, daily | Cockpyt AI, weekly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 questions, 3 engines | 1,350 | $50 (Basic) | 29 EUR excl. VAT (Solo) |
| 45 questions, 3 engines | 4,050 | $100 (Growth) | 79 EUR excl. VAT (Consultant) |
| 75 questions, 3 engines | 6,750 | $100 (Growth) | 139 EUR excl. VAT (Agency) |
Read the last row carefully: at 75 questions, Ahrefs measures every day for $100, where I measure every week for 139 EUR. At equal volume, the cost per reading is heavily in their favour. And if you are already on Ahrefs Standard, ten daily prompts are included in your subscription at no extra cost.
At equal weekly cadence the gap widens further: 75 questions across three engines every week consume about 975 checks a month, which fit in the $50 pack. This table therefore compares daily measurement at Ahrefs with weekly measurement on my side, which is already the reading most favourable to Cockpyt AI.
Engine coverage
Custom Prompts cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Claude. I stop at three. Note that Claude consumes 8 checks per update according to Ahrefs, which makes it far more expensive than the other engines in their model.
The market view with no setup
Querying the visibility of any brand or category, with its history, without creating a project: no targeted tracking tool does that. For a sales proposal or competitive analysis, it is a real advantage.
The ecosystem
Brand Radar integrates with Ahrefs SEO data, ties each prompt to real search demand, tracks YouTube, TikTok and Reddit in free beta, and offers free AI bot visit analytics. Ahrefs claims more than 3,000 companies use it.
The fine print to read before subscribing
Four points appear on Ahrefs’ official pages and are worth knowing.
- No trial, no discounts. The pricing FAQ states Ahrefs never runs discounts and, as a general rule, does not refund. You pay before seeing your data.
- Claude costs eight times more. Each update of a prompt on Claude consumes 8 checks, against 1 on the other platforms.
- Overage is billed automatically. Checks beyond your pack are charged at month end. Daily Claude tracking on many prompts can overflow quickly.
- Two published index sizes. The Brand Radar page announces more than 454 million prompts, the pricing page more than 475 million. The gap is minor, but it shows these volumes move fast and should be checked at purchase.
What Cockpyt AI offers in return
If you only want measurement, the previous section answered. What follows is for those who need more.
A GEO audit delivered every month. Once a month per project, on all three plans: technical site audit from the AI crawlers’ point of view, analysis of 10 questions tested under several phrasings, AI traffic analysis, prioritised action plan and a 33-point checklist, exportable. Ahrefs measures, I diagnose and prioritise.
Hallucination detection. A wrong price, a discontinued service, a mix-up with a namesake in an AI answer. It is often the most urgent problem for a small business, and it does not surface from a mention frequency table.
The origin of each answer. My calls go through the official APIs with web search enabled. Models do not always use it and sometimes fall back on memory, so I flag on every recorded answer which of the two applied.
A deliverable and support in French, and a free trial. Fourteen days with no credit card, then a subscription you can cancel monthly. For a consultant handing an audit to a French client, the language of the document counts as much as the data.
In my view, the right question against Ahrefs is not “which measures best”. It is “who will turn the measurement into actions”. If that is you, with time and expertise, Ahrefs gives you better raw material for less. If it is someone who needs a prioritised list, that is where I stand apart.
What neither of them fixes
A study published by SparkToro in January 2026 ran 12 identical prompts almost 3,000 times through 600 volunteers: the odds of getting the same brand list twice came out below 1 in 100. A daily single-pass measurement at Ahrefs and a weekly single-pass measurement at Cockpyt AI remain two readings of an unstable phenomenon. Frequency makes the trend easier to read, it does not make an isolated reading reliable.
A study from the Association for Computational Linguistics published in December 2025 confirms this from another angle: even with locked settings, five models tested over ten runs show performance gaps of up to 15 %.
Which tool for which profile?
Already an Ahrefs customer. Ahrefs. Your included prompts cover a first round of tracking at no extra cost, and a $50 pack extends it widely.
You want the most frequent measurement at the best price. Ahrefs Custom Prompts. At equal volume, I am not competitive on cost per reading.
You need Claude, Copilot or Google’s surfaces. Ahrefs. I do not cover them.
Market analysis or prospecting. Ahrefs, for the index searchable on any brand.
Consultant who must deliver a diagnosis and action plan. Cockpyt AI, for the monthly audit in French.
Small business without in-house GEO expertise. Cockpyt AI. A list of mention frequencies does not say what to do on Monday morning, a prioritised action plan does.
Neither guarantees a citation in an AI answer. No vendor can.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need an Ahrefs subscription to use Brand Radar?
No, according to Ahrefs’ pricing FAQ: Brand Radar is available on its own, with an associated Ahrefs Free account. Paid plan customers also get 5 to 20 included daily prompts depending on their plan. Check the terms when subscribing, they change.
What is a check at Ahrefs?
Tracking one prompt on one platform, in one location, for one update. Five prompts tracked daily on one platform consume about 150 checks a month. Claude counts as 8 checks per update.
How often is the Brand Radar index updated?
According to Ahrefs, AI Visibility Index question sets are re-tested monthly, on a 90-day reporting window. Custom Prompts update at the cadence you choose, up to daily.
Does the Ahrefs index cover small brands?
Partly. Ahrefs states the index works best for established brands and that coverage may be limited for brands with low search volume. For those cases, Custom Prompts or a targeted tracking tool are better suited.
Does Ahrefs offer a free trial of Brand Radar?
No. Its FAQ states Ahrefs does not run discounts and, as a general rule, does not refund. A free AI visibility checker does allow a first look. Cockpyt AI offers 14 days with no credit card.
Can you use Ahrefs and Cockpyt AI together?
Yes, and the combination holds up: Ahrefs for frequent measurement and the market view, Cockpyt AI for the monthly audit and action plan. Running both only makes sense if you genuinely use both, otherwise it doubles a cost for the same information.
How long before an AI visibility score moves?
Allow 3 to 8 weeks after your fixes, whichever tool you use. Models take time to absorb new content or citations earned elsewhere. A gap observed within a few days reflects answer variability, not a result.
Sources
- Ahrefs, Brand Radar product page and methodology FAQ, accessed 31 August 2026 — ahrefs.com/brand-radar
- Ahrefs, pricing page, plans, Custom Prompts packs and FAQ, accessed 31 August 2026 — ahrefs.com/pricing
- Rand Fishkin and Patrick O’Donnell, New Research: AIs are Highly Inconsistent When Recommending Brands or Products, SparkToro, January 2026 — sparktoro.com
- Berk Atıl et al., Non-Determinism of “Deterministic” LLM System Settings in Hosted Environments, Association for Computational Linguistics, December 2025 — aclanthology.org/2025.eval4nlp-1.12
- Cockpyt AI, pricing and features pages, accessed 31 August 2026 — cockpyt.ai/en/pricing
