What are the alternatives to HubSpot AEO Grader for auditing AI visibility?

HubSpot’s AI Search Grader, often called the AEO Grader, is free, returns a score out of 100 within minutes and queries ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. The detailed report requires an email address. It is an excellent starting point, and HubSpot itself presents it as a one-off diagnostic that does not replace a monitoring platform.

The problem is not that it is free. It is that many people use it to answer questions it never claimed to answer. Before looking for a replacement, you need to know what it actually measures, because the answer is surprising.

What does the AI Search Grader actually measure?

Three structural characteristics explain why people look for an alternative, and none of them is a flaw: they are design choices HubSpot openly stands behind.

Sentiment is worth 40 points out of 100

The overall score adds up five dimensions: sentiment analysis up to 40 points, presence quality up to 20, brand recognition up to 20, brand exposure or share of voice up to 10, and market competition up to 10.

HubSpot owns this weighting and explains it: sentiment reflects the quality of how AI talks about your brand, not merely whether it knows you exist.

The practical consequence goes unnoticed. A rarely cited brand described in flattering terms will score higher than a widely present brand with mixed reviews. If your question is “am I visible”, you are reading an indicator that answers 40 % of the way to “am I liked”. Both matter, they are not the same thing.

The form never asks for your URL

The four required fields are company name, geography, products or services, and industry. Your website never enters the equation.

The tool therefore cannot tell you anything about pages blocked to AI crawlers, JavaScript-invisible content, your headings, your internal linking or your structured data. It analyses what models know about your brand, not what your site gives them to read. With a low score, you will know you have a problem without knowing where it sits.

The models queried are not the ones your customers use

HubSpot documents the versions precisely: GPT-5.2 for OpenAI, the Sonar model for Perplexity, and Gemini 2.0 Flash for Google. That last one is a lightweight version, built for speed and cost, and different from the model served by default in the Gemini app.

The choice makes sense for a free tool queried thousands of times a day. It simply means your Gemini score does not exactly describe what an app user experiences.

In my view, this transparency about model versions is to HubSpot’s credit. Most vendors, free and paid alike, do not publish that information.

Free alternatives for a one-off diagnostic

If you want to stay free and uncommitted, several tools return a verdict within minutes, with different scopes.

• Free GEO audits from vendors: Hikoo, Rankscale and several platforms offer an entry-level audit with no account, usually combined with a look at the site’s technical health. That is the useful difference from the Grader, which ignores your site.
• Mention checking tools such as AreYouMention, cited in French comparisons, for a quick check on a handful of queries.
• Structured manual testing: ten buyer questions, a fresh session each time, a spreadsheet. Free, time-consuming, and more instructive than any score if you read the answers in full.
• Free GEO tools available from several European vendors, including the Cockpyt AI toolbox, to test one specific point without subscribing.

The common trap in this category: every vendor computes its score with its own weighting. Two free audits on the same brand will return two different scores, and neither compares to the other. Use them to spot gaps, not to establish a reference figure.

The free data you already own

Before adding a tool, look at what your own accounts already contain.

Google Search Console added AI-related reports in 2026. You can see traffic arriving from Google’s generative surfaces.

Bing Webmaster Tools exposes indicators on crawler activity and how your content is used by engines relying on its index, including Copilot.

Google Analytics 4 lets you isolate sessions coming from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini with the right configuration.

All three share one significant limit: they only show people who clicked. Most citations in AI answers produce no click at all. You are measuring the visible tip, never the presence itself. They complement a tracking tool, they do not replace one.

Continuous tracking tools, if what you need is duration

The Grader answers “where do I stand today”. If your real question is “is this improving”, you need a dated history, and that costs money.

These prices come from comparisons published between May and August 2026 and from official pages where they were readable. They move fast and scopes change: check the vendor’s pricing page on the day you decide.

One warning that runs across the whole category: advertised coverage is not always included coverage. Several vendors announce six or seven engines but include only three per plan, the rest billed as extras. Read the “included” line before the “available” line.

One limit every alternative shares

Whatever the tool, the number on screen rests on an unstable phenomenon. A study published by SparkToro in January 2026 ran 12 identical prompts almost 3,000 times through ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI, using 600 volunteers. The odds of getting the same brand list twice came out below 1 in 100.

Rand Fishkin draws a conclusion that applies to the whole market: any tool reporting a ranking position in AI is talking nonsense. What stays measurable is an appearance frequency aggregated across many runs.

Applied to the Grader, that means a score obtained today and one obtained tomorrow on the same brand can differ without anything having changed on your side. HubSpot itself recommends monthly tracking and a quarterly deep audit rather than reading an isolated snapshot.

Which alternative to pick, based on what you are missing

You are missing an analysis of your site. Take a technical GEO audit, free or paid. The Grader does not look at your pages, and a low score without a technical diagnosis does not tell you what to fix.

You are missing history. Take a continuous tracking tool, whichever it is. That is the one gap the Grader will never close, by design.

You are missing the link to business results. Set up Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Analytics before buying anything. That data is yours and it is free.

You just want a second opinion. Run two or three free audits from different vendors and compare the gaps, not the scores. The points where they agree are the only reliable ones.

You are already on HubSpot. Stay there. Moving to HubSpot AEO at 49 EUR a month keeps the loop between measurement and content production inside one tool, which no external alternative reproduces.

In my view, the most common mistake is not picking the wrong tool, it is switching too early. A low Grader score usually signals a content and third-party citation problem, not a measurement problem. In that case no subscription fixes anything: editorial work moves the needle, over 3 to 8 weeks.

Frequently asked questions

Are the AEO Grader and the AI Search Grader the same tool?

Yes. The aeo-grader address redirects to the ai-search-grader page, which is the canonical name HubSpot uses. Both labels circulate in comparisons, they refer to the same free diagnostic.

Do you have to give your email to get the result?

The score appears at the end of the analysis, but the detailed report on positioning, brand archetype, narrative themes and growth opportunities requires filling in a form. It is a lead generation tool, which is normal and takes nothing away from its usefulness.

Can you analyse a competitor with the Grader?

Yes, HubSpot confirms it explicitly: the tool accepts any brand. Analysing two or three competitors gives a far more meaningful point of comparison than your score in isolation.

Is the Grader score comparable to another tool’s score?

No. Every vendor defines its own dimensions and weighting. A 62 at HubSpot and a 62 elsewhere do not describe the same thing. Only compare scores from the same tool, measured on different dates.

Does the Grader track Google AI Overviews?

No. It queries GPT-5.2, Perplexity Sonar and Gemini 2.0 Flash. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are separate surfaces, covered by some paid tools only.

Can a free tool be enough over time?

For a single brand in a narrow market, with a quarterly check, yes. As soon as you have to report to a client or a management team, the lack of dated history becomes blocking, because an isolated reading compares to nothing.

Do these tools guarantee AI citations?

None do. HubSpot writes it on its own page: recommendations are AI-generated, not human-verified, and results are not guaranteed. The same caution applies to every vendor on the market.

Sources

• HubSpot, AI Search Grader page, score dimensions, models queried and FAQ, accessed 23 August 2026 — hubspot.fr/ai-search-grader
• HubSpot, AEO product page, pricing and scope, accessed 23 August 2026 — hubspot.fr/products/aeo
• Rand Fishkin and Patrick O’Donnell, New Research: AIs are Highly Inconsistent When Recommending Brands or Products, SparkToro, January 2026 — sparktoro.com
• Koino, Top 12 des outils GEO de suivi de visibilité IA, August 2026 — koino.fr
• Pythie, Outils de visibilité IA : 6 options comparées, prix inclus, July 2026 — pythie.ai