AEO needs its own platform, not a tab inside a legacy SEO suite.
Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is a $99 a month add-on to one of the largest SEO suites, sold per user, reading five AI platforms. If SEO is your primary discipline and AEO is a curiosity, that packaging works. If AI visibility is a core KPI, SKYA gives you more AI platforms, more prompts and the agents and fixes built for answer engines, for less per month.
Keep Semrush for classic SEO. Run SKYA as the dedicated AEO platform where AI visibility actually lives.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit's position: AI Visibility Toolkit from Semrush, the SEO suite. $99 a month, standalone or inside Semrush One, one subscription per user, 25 tracked prompts. Brand Performance reads Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
| Capability | SKYA | Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Dedicated AEO platform | Toolkit inside an SEO suite |
| Starting price for AI features | $59 a month (Starter: 4 AI platforms, 50 tracked prompts) | $99 per month per user (AI Visibility Toolkit, 25 prompts) |
| AI platforms tracked | Up to 9 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot). 4 on Starter, 7 on Agency, all 9 on Brand Pro at $199 and Agency Pro at $649 | Semrush Brand Performance: Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini |
| Hallucination audit | Included on every paid plan: 3 to 7 chat assistants by plan, each claim checked against your facts | Not listed on the toolkit pages |
| Classic SEO (backlinks, KW research, site audit) | Focused on AEO | Category leader |
| Publish drafts and fixes to your site | One-click install on WordPress, head fixes through the SKYA apps for Shopify and Webflow, drafts into all three and eight headless stacks, seven of them in beta | Not listed on the AI Visibility Toolkit pages |
| Prompt volume in your market, ICP and intent filters | Search demand scored 1 to 5 per tracked prompt, in the country you track, with persona and intent filters | Classic search volume; AI prompt data in the AI Visibility Toolkit |
| Citation freshness and hidden sub-queries | Cited pages dated; the searches behind each answer recorded | Not listed on their feature page |
| Topic clusters and prompt tags | Topic clusters with suggested topics, and intent, buyer stage, persona and branded or comparison tags on every prompt | Prompt Research suggests related topics and prompts; intent, a buyer stage and personas not listed (checked 15 October 2026) |
| AI crawler visits and AI referrals | AI crawler visits by page, on every plan, from your Cloudflare, the SKYA Helper for WordPress, a webhook with snippets for Vercel, Akamai and your own server, or a log upload (CloudFront and Google Cloud CDN included), plus an AI referral snippet; for any other host, SKYA Edge at $15 a project a month | Site Audit shows which AI crawlers your site blocks, and an AI Traffic dashboard estimates AI referral visits; crawler visits not listed (checked 15 October 2026) |
| Ads in AI answers | Ads in ChatGPT answers: the prompts that carry them, the share of answers with ads, and which advertisers appear, you and tracked rivals marked | Not listed on the AI Visibility Toolkit pages (checked 15 October 2026) |
| Honesty rules | Refund when nothing measured; scores withheld below the evidence floor | Not listed on their feature page |
| Meta Ads Hub | Included: creative lab, fatigue read, fixes with copy and image briefs | Not part of the AI Visibility Toolkit |
| Google Reviews | Free on every plan: request links, QR codes, private feedback, what AI platforms say about your reputation | Semrush Local, a separate paid toolkit priced per location |
| Reddit Visibility | Included from Agency and on Brand Pro: cited threads, who is named, the gaps | Not listed on their feature page |
| AI Shopping (AI shopping shelf) | Add-on from $29: product visibility, position and win rate against rival products on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot, with price, stock and dead link alerts | Not listed on their feature page |
| Seats | Unlimited on every plan | One $99 toolkit subscription per user |
A tick marks the side that leads on that row. No tick means the two are even, or not directly comparable. Semrush facts checked on 25 September 2026 against semrush.com/kb/1493-ai-toolkit, semrush.com/kb/1626-ai-visibility-features and semrush.com/kb/1611-pricing-and-plans. A cell that carries its own date was read again on that date.
An honest, feature-level breakdown of both platforms across the pillars that actually move the needle for answer engine optimization.
SKYA is built AEO-first: every agent, report and fix is about how AI answers name you. Semrush's toolkit is one part of a suite whose centre is classic SEO. Which fits depends on which job is primary for you.
SKYA tracks up to 9 AI platforms: 4 on Starter, 7 on Agency, all 9 on Brand Pro and Agency Pro. Semrush's Brand Performance reads five. Of the two, only SKYA reads Claude, DeepSeek, Grok and Copilot.
A one-click WordPress installer ships the recommended fix, and drafts land in eight headless CMSs, seven of them in beta. Publishing fixes to a CMS is not listed on Semrush's toolkit pages.
Semrush is the category leader for backlinks, keyword research and site audit at scale. SKYA does not aim to replace this side of the workflow.
Every SKYA finding ends in something you can ship. The nine readiness checks each generate their fix; schema, meta tags, sitemap, robots and llms.txt install on WordPress in one click; Shopify takes schema, meta description, Open Graph and llms.txt through the SKYA app, and Webflow takes page titles, meta descriptions and Open Graph after you approve them; and any draft the Content Engine or the action plan writes carries a Publish to site button that creates an unpublished post or page in your own editor, on WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and Framer, and in beta on Ghost, Strapi, Directus, Payload, Sanity, Drupal and Adobe Experience Manager. Semrush: not listed on the ai visibility toolkit pages.
A SKYA audit that measured nothing is marked failed and refunds its credit; a reputation dimension without enough independent sources says Not scored instead of printing a number; every hallucination finding is checked against your own facts before it is called false; and the Reddit and citation counts are stored answers, never a rank. That is the difference between a dashboard you can put in front of a client and one you have to explain.
The Meta Ads Hub is included on every SKYA plan, Reddit Visibility (the threads AI cites and where a rival is named instead of you) is included from the Agency plan onwards and in Brand Pro, AI Shopping (your products inside AI shopping answers) is an add-on beside any plan, and Google Reviews (request links, QR codes, private feedback from unhappy customers, what AI platforms say about your reputation) is free on every plan. Semrush: partial coverage, see the table above.
50 prompts on 4 platforms for $59; all 9 platforms for $199.
Every agent and every audit from $59/mo, and all 9 platforms on Brand Pro at $199 and Agency Pro at $649.
Your whole team shares one SKYA plan, with unlimited team seats. Semrush sells the toolkit as one $99 subscription per user.
Nothing SKYA generates stays trapped in the tool. Copy it, or send it to your site as a draft and finish it in the editor you already use.
Visibility, fixes, content, ads, reviews and Reddit for every client, with seats and roles, a project switcher on every page, dated client-ready reports, and add-on products you can resell.
Starter $59/mo, Brand Pro $199/mo for all 9 platforms, up to Agency Pro at $649/mo.
AI Visibility Toolkit $99 a month, standalone or inside Semrush One, one subscription per user; 25 tracked prompts, 50 more for $60 a month.
SKYA Starter is $40 a month less than one toolkit seat and tracks 50 prompts to its 25.
Keep Semrush for classic SEO if you already use it.
Start a SKYA 7-day trial for the AEO layer.
Add your domain. The first answers land within minutes of setup.
Enable Fix Now installers on your CMS.
Share the live SKYA dashboard alongside your Semrush reports.
Free 7-day trial. No credit card required. Up to 9 AI platforms, competitor intelligence, 4 agents, hallucination defense and fixes that reach your site once you approve them. The first answers land within minutes of setup, and every tracked prompt has its first reading within 24 hours on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overview.