A startup needs two things: a low-cost tracker, and changes shipped to its own site. A tracker shows whether ChatGPT names you, and how often. It does not earn the citation for you. Pages ChatGPT can read, with a direct answer near the top, do that. So pick the tracker on price and engines, then put your time into the pages.
Mentions and citations are not the same
A mention is your brand name in the answer, and a citation is a source link. Tools differ on which one they count, so check before you pay. ChatGPT may search the web on its own when a question would benefit from current information, and those answers may include citations that open their source. Those links are the ones that can send you visitors.
What a startup can pay for
- A free first look: HubSpot, Ahrefs, Amplitude and CiteCycle all offer free one-off checks.
- Low-cost tracking: Rankscale costs from $17/month billed yearly. Otterly.AI costs $29/month for 15 prompts and tracks ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot on that plan. CiteCycle has a free plan and a Pro plan at $49.90/month for 20 questions.
- More prompts: Peec AI costs €85/month for 50 prompts, and its self-serve plans let you pick three models. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99/month per domain billed annually and tracks 25 prompts.
- Enterprise: Profound has no public self-serve paid plan.
Check which engines the plan includes. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are often paid add-ons or enterprise-only.
The part that gets you cited
The changes happen on your site. Let ChatGPT's search crawler in (see how to get indexed by PerplexityBot and GPTBot), serve each page as HTML, and answer the buyer's question in the first two sentences. Then track whether you start showing up.
If you build with Claude Code or Codex, Shipfound does both inside your coding agent. It ships site fixes and pages as pull requests that you merge yourself, and checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI and Claude name you, asking each question 4 times. If you do not use either agent, a tracker from the list above and your own edits fit better. For other tools that run inside your agent, see the best growth tool for Claude Code or Codex developers.
Frequently asked questions
Is a ChatGPT mention the same as a citation?
No. A mention is your name in the answer. A citation is a link to your page as the source. Some tools count one, some the other.
Does ChatGPT always search the web before it answers?
No. It may search automatically when a question would benefit from current information. Web search is available on the Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans.
Which AI visibility tool scored highest in an independent benchmark?
In Benchline's 2026 benchmark, Profound scored 90, Peec AI 86 and Otterly.AI 81. A high score measures features, not whether a startup gets cited.
How do I see how often ChatGPT names me today?
Run your buyers' questions several times each and count the answers that name you. How to track if ChatGPT mentions your product covers it step by step.