Airefs Review: an affordable AEO tool in 2026?

Full disclosure: this is a review of our own product. We built Airefs, we use it daily, and we’re not neutral. We’ll try to be honest anyway—including about where we fall short.

The AEO space is full of tools making vague promises. The people evaluating them deserve specifics.

If you want an independent take, check Reddit threads or G2 reviews. What we can offer is the most detailed account of what Airefs actually does. We’ll also be clear about where it genuinely isn’t the right choice.

What is Airefs?

Airefs is an AI search visibility platform for founders, small teams, and agencies. It helps you show up in ChatGPT and other LLM answers. The entry price is $24/mo—not $400.

It tracks your brand across AI search responses and shows which content is being cited. It surfaces Reddit discussions worth joining and monitors when AI crawlers visit your site. There’s also a done-for-you tier where our team handles content and community work directly.

The platform started as a tool to answer one question: “Is ChatGPT recommending me?” It’s grown since then. But that founding constraint still shapes it—focused, not feature-maxed.

Who’s behind Airefs?

Airefs is two human founders and a couple of AI employees. We’re not enterprise software. We don’t have Sequoia backing or a $58.5M war chest.

What we have is founders you can actually reach. Pricing doesn’t require a procurement process. We iterate directly based on customer feedback.

That’s both a strength and an honest limitation. We cover the core AEO workflow very well. We don’t have SOC 2, custom data contracts, or a dedicated enterprise sales team.

If those are requirements, we’re not the right fit.

What do users say about Airefs?

The feedback we hear most often is the same. Teams tell us Airefs is the first time they actually understood their AI search presence. Not in theory—but with specific data on prompts, competitors, and influencing URLs.

While every other AI search visibility tool showed me whether I was being cited, Airefs showed me all 571 URLs that were being cited across my targeted search questions.

— Lillian P, Fractional CMO

Airefs gives us clear visibility into how our brand shows up across LLMs. This is something we simply couldn’t easily track before.

— Anthony L, Head of Marketing, LegalVision

I really appreciate how simple Airefs is. It’s fast and easy to find the answers I need without all the extra features that some other tools have.

— Matt M, Co-founder, SEO Gets

Done-for-you customers tend to have stronger results—because the content and community work actually gets executed:

Thanks to Airefs, Techmap went from invisible in LLM answers to showing up every time as one of the best courses for tech recruiters—in just a few weeks.

— Ruben K, Co-founder, Techmap

We weren’t looking for prettier charts—we wanted to show up in AI answers. Airefs found the opportunities, built the content, and increased our visibility in weeks across LLMs, Google and Reddit.

— Kiyan F, Co-founder, Needle

Without Airefs we would have zero insight into how Ravenna shows up in searches across LLMs. Now we can take actionable steps to increase our visibility. In the era of AI this is a game changer.

— TJ, Owner, Ravenna

The Genlook case study

The clearest documented result is Genlook. Thibault, Genlook’s founder, used Airefs to identify prompts and content gaps in his category. He published content targeting those gaps and joined the right Reddit conversations.

Genlook became the #1 most-recommended brand in its category on ChatGPT. 30% of new signups now come directly from ChatGPT.

The results I achieved using Airefs are seriously impressive. I’m super happy with it and I’m already recommending it to everyone I know.

— Thibault M, Founder, Genlook

Read the full Genlook case study →

Airefs itself follows the same playbook: roughly 20% of all our signups come through ChatGPT. We’re a live case study of the approach we’re helping customers execute.

Airefs features

Prompt tracking and share of voice

The core of the platform is prompt tracking. You set up queries—the questions your customers ask AI models. Airefs runs them on a schedule and records which brands appear, at what position, with what citations.

The share of voice view shows how you compare to competitors across all tracked prompts. Each prompt has a full execution log: the AI’s response, competitors, and citation breakdown. Filter by country or tag to see whether your efforts are moving the needle.

This is where most teams start. The first surprise is realizing they’re invisible in queries where competitors appear regularly. Those competitors show up because specific articles and Reddit threads are influencing AI answers.

Drill into any prompt to see the full AI response with every mention and citation. You see which brand appeared at #1, which sources were cited, and how results shift over time. The example below shows 26 executions of the same prompt.

LLM crawler activity (Impressions)

When ChatGPT visits your site, it leaves a server-side footprint. The request comes from bots like ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot. Airefs captures these and shows which pages are crawled, by which AI systems, and how often.

The charts view shows total impressions over time, broken down by crawler. The logs view shows individual visits: timestamp, LLM name, bot name, and type. It also shows IP address and the specific page path visited.

No crawler activity means you’re not on the path to being cited. Heavy activity on specific pages shows what’s working. That’s where to double down.

LLM visitor tracking (Clicks)

Beyond crawls, Airefs tracks when real users arrive from an AI search. These are people who saw your brand in a ChatGPT or Perplexity response and clicked through. This connects AI visibility to real traffic—not just brand mentions.

Reddit alerts

Reddit is disproportionately influential in how AI models answer questions about product categories. A single well-upvoted thread on r/marketing or r/SEO can become a persistent citation in ChatGPT answers for months. Airefs monitors Reddit for keywords you specify and alerts you when new threads appear.

Each alert shows the thread title, subreddit, whether your brand was mentioned, and when it was found. Jump directly to the thread from the dashboard. Participate early—before the thread becomes an established AI citation that’s harder to influence.

The Lite plan includes 3 Reddit keywords. Pro includes 10, Expert up to 30. Ten keywords covers your brand, main category, and a few competitor names.

Source insights

The Sources panel shows which URLs ChatGPT is citing across all your tracked prompts—ranked by frequency. This is the intelligence layer that tells you what content is actually influencing AI answers in your category.

Filter by type, owner, prompt tag, or time range. The Domains tab shows which publishers are most influential—useful for prioritizing outreach. The Prompts tab shows which prompts each source is cited for.

This is what Lillian P meant when she mentioned 571 specific URLs. That’s the difference between monitoring and strategy. Getting into those cited sources—or displacing them—is the AEO playbook.

Discussion opportunities

Airefs surfaces relevant discussions across Reddit and LinkedIn tied to your tracked prompts. These are conversations where you could contribute—or where a competitor appears and you don’t. The platform also flags threads likely to become AI citation sources.

Filter by source, prompt tag, or citation count to prioritize the highest-impact threads. Smart filters surface discussions where competitors are mentioned but you’re not. That’s where to focus first.

Article opportunities

Airefs also identifies article-format opportunities. These are content gaps where AI models rely on a thin set of sources. A well-optimized article could displace them as a top citation.

Your team—or ours on the done-for-you tier—can act on these directly. If a top-cited article is three years old and outdated, that’s an opening. A fresher, more comprehensive piece can take its place.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Starts at $24/mo—the most affordable entry point in the AEO category
• 7-day free trial on Pro
• Prompt tracking with full execution logs, position history, and competitor mentions
• Source insights showing the specific URLs influencing AI answers in your category
• Reddit alerts for real-time monitoring of discussions that could become AI citations
• AI crawler activity tracking (Impressions) and visitor attribution (Clicks)
• Discussion and article opportunity identification built into the interface
• Agency / done-for-you tier: human-written content and community engagement from $299/mo
• Direct founder access—you’re not talking to a support ticketing system
• Simple, focused UI—no enterprise dashboard complexity

Cons:

• ChatGPT by default; other LLMs available on request, not natively toggled
• No prompt volume data—Profound is the only tool that has this
• No automated content generation—creation is self-serve or done-for-you by our team
• Not SOC 2 compliant; no enterprise security certifications
• No API access or on-premises deployment
• Smaller prompt limit than enterprise tools (max 150 on Expert)
• Small team—we move fast, but we’re not a 50-person org

How much does Airefs cost?

All prices are annual. Monthly billing is available at a slightly higher rate. The done-for-you tier includes an Airefs Pro subscription.

The agency / done-for-you option

Most AEO tools are just that—tools. They track visibility, sometimes generate content, and leave the rest to you. No humans involved at any point.

That works if you have someone who knows what to do with the output. Most teams don’t. The data shows you’re missing from a prompt. The tool flags a content gap. Then what?

Content without context misses the point. A piece that’s technically optimized but lacks a real perspective won’t earn citations. A comment dropped into the wrong thread, or published at the wrong moment, does nothing—or hurts your credibility.

These are the gaps a tool can’t close. They require judgment: which angles will actually resonate, which threads are worth joining, when to publish and when to wait. The agency tier puts an expert eye on the work before it goes live—not just automation running in the background.

We weren’t looking for prettier charts—we wanted to show up in AI answers. Airefs found the opportunities, built the content, and increased our visibility in weeks across LLMs, Google and Reddit.

— Kiyan F, Co-founder, Needle

Thanks to Airefs, Techmap went from invisible in LLM answers to showing up every time as one of the best courses for tech recruiters—in just a few weeks.

— Ruben K, Co-founder, Techmap

How does Airefs pricing compare?

All the tools below cost more than Airefs. Most stop at visibility tracking—no Reddit monitoring, no human execution layer.

Profound is the clear category leader for enterprise teams. It has deeper data, more AI platforms, and prompt volume analytics that nobody else offers. If you need enterprise-grade compliance, Profound is the default choice.

Peec AI and Promptwatch offer broader LLM coverage at mid-market prices. Otterly AI is the closest competitor on price and has strong G2 reviews.

Airefs is the right choice when you want to build AI visibility—not just measure it. Reddit monitoring, source insights, and the done-for-you tier aren’t available together anywhere else at this price.

Who is Airefs for?

Good fit:

• Founders and small teams who want AI search visibility without a $400/month commitment
• Teams that want to act on AEO data, not just look at dashboards
• Companies where Reddit is a meaningful channel in their category
• Teams that want content and community execution done for them
• Agencies managing AEO for multiple clients (Expert plan)

Not a great fit:

• Enterprise teams that require SOC 2, SSO, or custom data handling
• Teams that need to track 10+ AI platforms natively
• Organizations where prompt volume data is a core requirement
• Teams that need automated content generation at scale

Conclusion

Airefs is a focused, affordable AEO platform for teams that want to build AI visibility. Prompt tracking, source insights, Reddit alerts, and LLM crawler monitoring give you a complete picture. The done-for-you tier turns that data into executed results from $299/mo.

Where Airefs is honest about its limits: it’s not the enterprise platform. It doesn’t have prompt volume data, 10+ LLM coverage, or SOC 2. If your team has procurement requirements and an enterprise budget, look at Profound.

If you’re still building your AEO motion, Airefs is the fastest and most affordable way to start. Figure out where you stand, which content gaps to fill, which Reddit threads to engage.

Want to see it yourself? Try Airefs free for 7 days — Pro plan. Or explore the done-for-you option if you want the execution handled.