AI SEO Tools Benchmark 2026
We ran Lighthouse against the marketing sites of nine leading AI-visibility platforms and audited every public pricing page. Here is the raw data — including the CSV.
Next best: Goodie 62. Slowest: Profound 26.
Only tool tracking Claude, Copilot, and Grok on Starter.
Median Starter price across the panel: $89/mo.
Lighthouse Performance (mobile & desktop)
Higher is better. Mobile profile runs on 4× CPU throttle + Slow-4G to simulate a mid-range Android on a coffee-shop network — the environment where most B2B buyers actually open pricing pages.
| Tool | Perf (mobile) | Perf (desktop) | LCP mobile (s) | LCP desktop (s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optymia | 76 | 100 | 2.58 | 0.73 |
| Goodie | 62 | 88 | 4.10 | 1.40 |
| Otterly | 55 | 82 | 5.40 | 1.90 |
| Scrunch | 47 | 73 | 7.20 | 2.40 |
| Writesonic GEO | 44 | 70 | 8.60 | 2.90 |
| Peec AI | 41 | 68 | 9.12 | 3.11 |
| AthenaHQ | 38 | 61 | 10.80 | 3.60 |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | 33 | 58 | 12.40 | 4.20 |
| Profound | 26 | 43 | 26.04 | 6.66 |
Feature parity matrix
Sorted by engines tracked. A ✓ means the vendor publicly documents the capability on their pricing or docs page as of July 5, 2026. Missing means undocumented, not "impossible."
| Tool | $/mo | ChatGPT | Perplexity | AIO | Gemini | Claude | Copilot | Grok | Custom agents | White-label | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optymia | $39.99 | ||||||||||
| Peec AI | $89 | ||||||||||
| AthenaHQ | $149 | ||||||||||
| Profound | $99 | ||||||||||
| Otterly | $69 | ||||||||||
| Scrunch | $79 | ||||||||||
| Writesonic GEO | $79 | ||||||||||
| Semrush AI Toolkit | $139 | ||||||||||
| Goodie | $49 |
Methodology
Lighthouse figures were captured on 2026-07-05 using Lighthouse 12 in headless Chromium. Mobile runs used the standard mobile emulation profile (Moto G Power viewport, 4× CPU throttle, Slow-4G network). Desktop runs used the standard desktop profile at 10 Mbps with no CPU throttle. Each URL was measured twice and the median score reported. All tests hit the vendor's public marketing homepage from a clean profile with no cache or extensions.
Feature-parity columns reflect what each vendor publicly documents on its pricing page or docs the same week. If a capability is only referenced in a sales deck or private demo, we did not credit it — the goal is what a self-serve buyer can verify. A missing check therefore means "undocumented," not "known to be missing"; where we could confirm the absence in vendor pricing pages, we noted it in the corresponding /vs comparison page.
Data is released under CC-BY 4.0. Cite as: Optymia AI SEO Tools Benchmark 2026, July 5 2026, https://optymia.xyz/benchmarks/ai-seo-tools-2026.
Reproduce the numbers
Download the CSV, re-run Lighthouse against any tool listed, and file a PR or email if you get materially different numbers. We update the report quarterly.
ai-seo-tools-benchmark-2026.csvSources & references
- Lighthouse Performance scoring — Chrome for Developers
- web.dev — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Core Web Vitals thresholds — web.dev
- Vendor pricing pages (Profound, Peec AI, Otterly, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Goodie, Writesonic, Semrush) — per-vendor snapshots archived in each /vs/* page
- CC-BY 4.0 license terms