If you are comparing HubSpot AEO vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, I have tested both for you as a marketing and AEO practitioner myself and will share my detailed review with you.
To conduct the experiment, I used one of the niche websites in my portfolio (a golf website) that was not yet optimized for AI search. Below are screenshots and information from my personal experience testing HubSpot AEO and Semrush One (including Semrush’s AI Visibility features). I’ll then walk you through the pros and cons of both AEO tools and help you choose the best tool based on your team’s needs.
But first let me demystify AEO, GEO and everything related to AI visibility so that we are working with the same definitions.
Table of contents
What is AEO vs. AI visibility? (And why it matters)
AEO is important because as AI becomes more popular, people are turning to answer search engines in addition to Google for their buyer research. By 2026, nearly half of U.S. adults will use AI chatbots, up from a third in 2024, the study found Pew Research Center. Additionally, Pew found that 60% of American adults read the AI-generated summaries at the top of search results, while only 30% say they do not. Brands that learn and leverage AEO will gain a competitive advantage.
AI visibility is an umbrella term for the metrics that measure how your brand appears in AI search, including share of voice, sentiment, citations and mentions. This is important because this is how marketers and SEOs track their AEO progress.
Pro tip: To get a basic overview of your AI visibility, use the free version AI search grader Tool.
Prompts are to AEO what keywords are to SEO. Prompts are the phrases that users enter into response engines to get information about their query. Marketers use AEO tools like HubSpot AEO to track the prompts their brands should appear on.
Quotes are the websites that the AI consulted to generate its answer. They may or may not be linked to each other.
cover is short for “Answer Engine Coverage” and refers to which LLMs the AEO tool tracks. For example, HubSpot AEO covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility: Core Comparison
First, let me clarify the product names and tiers so that you understand which product you need to buy. HubSpot AEO can be purchased individually, without another HubSpot subscription. Additionally, AEO is the name of the CRM-related product included with Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit can be purchased individually or as a supplement to an existing SEMrush subscription. SEMrush SEO + AI Search is also known as SEMrush Oneand it is the bundled product with SEO and AEO features.
This article (and the short comparison table below) primarily compares HubSpot AEO and Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit (the products that can be purchased individually). But I will also add additional information about AEO in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise and SEMrush One (the integrated/bundled products).
How do these tools track prompts, quotes, and brand mentions?
How HubSpot AEO tracks prompts, citations, and brand mentions
Prompt follow-up
HubSpot AEO leverages the official ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity APIs to run your tracked prompts daily and show you the actual AI responses.
Users can manually add prompts to HubSpot AEO or receive suggestions based on the company information they provide during onboarding. Or when using AEO in Marketing Hub Pro+, users can receive AI-powered suggestions based on the context of the CRM data. The advantage of this is that the suggestions become smarter over time as the CRM learns more about your business.
Quotes
HubSpot AEO’s dashboard shows detailed citation analysis, including your citation rate compared to competitors, citations by content type, and citations by channel.
Brand mentions
HubSpot AEO users can get an idea of how their brand’s mentions are performing by viewing the Brand Visibility Score in the Dashboard tab to see how often their brand is mentioned for tracked prompts, and Brand Visibility over time to track progress. For more detailed data, they can go to the prompt tabs and click on each individual prompt to see whether their brand was mentioned in that answer and which of the three answer engines it was mentioned on.
How Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit tracks prompts, citations and brand mentions
Prompt follow-up
Semrush differs from HubSpot AEO in the way it retrieves responses. Instead of sending the prompts live to every response engine every time, it has a pre-existing proprietary database of over 289 million prompts that it pulls from. The prompt database is updated daily.
Users can add prompts manually or use the synthetic prompts that Semrush suggests based on the domain and location submitted by the user. When a user manually adds tracking prompts, Semrush runs them live to see what responses are retrieved.
Unlike AEO in HubSpot Marketing Hub Pro+, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit does not have a CRM and therefore cannot leverage your business context to personalize prompts like HubSpot can.
Quotes
I found it confusing to find my brand’s quotes in Semrush’s AI Visibility dashboard. Instead of a dedicated Citations tab, SEMrush has a few places where you can find information about how often AI cites your domain. Users can find it under AI Visibility > Visibility Overview > Quotes. This shows how many AI answers a domain is cited in. Scroll down to “Cited Pages” and you can see the exact URLs on your site that are cited by AI.
You can see which third-party sites are boosting your competitors’ AI visibility under AI Visibility > Competitor Research > Sources > Missing. These are public relations opportunities to be featured on third party websites.
Brand mentions
SEMrush users can go to AI Visibility > Visibility Overview and see their AI visibility score alongside the evolution of mention counts over time. On the same page, brand mentions are broken down by LLM distribution, country, topic and prompt.
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility: Feasibility
Winner: HubSpot for content creation, SEMrush for technical optimization
In this section, you’ll learn how easy it is to act on AEO insights provided by HubSpot AEO vs. Semrush AI Visibility.
Both tools offer recommendations tailored to your brand based on what Answer machines are already saying about it. However, they differ in the level of detail. HubSpot AEO provides prescriptive recommendations on blog posts you should create, providing a short description with a suggested title, audience, summary, and primary and secondary keywords.
SEMrush offers further directional instructions, e.g. B. customizing your brand voice or adding specific content design elements. There are no detailed instructions for creating actual blog posts – at least not within the AI Visibility Toolkit. You may need to purchase the Content Toolkit add-on for this.
Unlike HubSpot, Semrush doesn’t have a CMS or CRM, so it lacks the unified path from insights to action that HubSpot offers. The transition from proposal to implementation will be more difficult because you need a separate tool for publishing. To go from insights to content creation with HubSpot, you need Marketing Hub Pro/Enterprise (including AEO features and a CRM) or HubSpot for Marketers (including AEO features, a CRM). And a CMS). To create content with SEMrush, you need the Content Toolkit add-on.
When it comes to technical optimization, both tools will alert you to AI-specific technical issues, such as when a robots.txt file is blocking an AI crawler. However, Semrush offers a dedicated AI Search Health Score in its more in-depth, traditional site audit tool, making it better for general technical SEO.
What’s the quickest way to convert visibility gaps into content updates?
The fastest way to turn visibility gaps into content updates is to use HubSpot for marketerswhich combines Marketing Hub, Content Hub and AEO to help you quickly create response engine-friendly content based on your actual CRM data. HubSpot for Marketers or Marketing Hub Professional/Enterprise subscribers can use Content Agent to generate research-backed blog posts based on AEO recommendations.
When should you use AI to accelerate AEO tasks?
As a writer, I will always strive to keep people informed, especially when writing AEO content. If you want to use AI, use AI that has the right context for your brand. Otherwise your outputs will be generic. For example, Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise subscribers get access to the AEO feature, which relies on CRM data to make more contextual suggestions based on your actual business.
Here are some of the best places where AI can speed up AEO tasks:
- Fast research and follow-up. HubSpot accelerates quick research by connecting to your CRM (via Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise). Semrush leverages its extensive database of AI queries to suggest prompts based on your domain and location. Both tools track your prompts daily and give you insight into whether and how often your brand is mentioned or cited for these target prompts.
- Writing support. HubSpot offers Content Agent that can conduct research based on your CRM data and create content drafts with a single click. Semrush offers Content toolkit ($60/month for the add-on).
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility: Integrations
Winner: HubSpot. The advantage of HubSpot is its native integration with Smart CRM as well as its marketing and content tools. By using AEO as part of a Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise subscription, you have the ability to control the AEO process end-to-end, from AEO insights to published content. There is also closed-loop reporting as everything happens within the HubSpot platform.
This CRM connection means you can receive personalized prompt suggestions based on your business context in HubSpot. HubSpot also has integrations with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, as well as over 1,000 other integrations available in HubSpot HubSpot Marketplace.
The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit integrates natively with Semrush’s SEO platform, which is useful if you already use it for SEO. It also offers integrations with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Semrush offers more comprehensive search engine optimization features than HubSpot. However, Semrush lacks the CRM prompt grounding and personalization that HubSpot offers. Semrush’s third-party integrations include WordPress, Trello, Google Docs, and Facebook.
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility for Ease of Use
Winner: HubSpot. Of the two, I found HubSpot AEO the easiest to use. Onboarding was significantly better, with more guidance and personalization. SEMrush took me straight to my dashboard after I entered my domain.
HubSpot’s interface is intuitive and simple, making it easy to navigate. However, this is not a knock against Semrush. If SEMrush feels complicated, it’s simply because it has so many features and therefore takes more getting used to. If simplicity and ease of use are your main goals, then HubSpot AEO is for you. But if robustness of features is more important, try SEMrush.
How can non-SEOs add value quickly?
Non-SEOs (especially marketers) get the most value at the fastest price by using HubSpot AEO and completing the guided onboarding process. It is extremely user-friendly and designed for marketers. For example, HubSpot AEO allows you to customize your prompts based on different ICPs.
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility – Pricing + Getting Started Guide
Step 1: Use free options to get an overview of your AEO readiness.
Free plans
Best for: Get a comprehensive overview of your AI visibility before diving deeper into advanced AEO tools
HubSpot AEO doesn’t offer a free plan, but HubSpot offers a free tool to help marketers get an overview of their AI readiness. AI search grader offers marketers a free point-in-time report on their brand’s AI visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity – perfect for getting a baseline. The report is based on the LLMs’ training data and is therefore useful for knowing where you stand when you first start AEO. However, to track your brand’s goals and actual progress, you’ll need to upgrade to HubSpot AEO.
Start by determining your baseline for free AI search grader. Simply enter your domain and AI Search Grader will give you a unique snapshot of your AI visibility based on existing training data for ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It evaluates your brand based on sentiment, quality of presence, brand awareness, share of voice and market competition.
There is no free plan for the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, but the Semrush free plan provides access to the Domain Overview to get an overview of your domain’s mentions, citations, and AI visibility score. It also grants access to Site Audit, allowing you to review up to 100 pages for technical issues affecting your AI visibility.
Free trials
Best for: Evaluate advanced AEO tools before committing to a paid subscription
For advanced AI visibility and continuous tracking, HubSpot AEO offers a 28-day free trial. The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit ($99/month/domain) works not Offer a free trial. However, SEMrush SEO + AI Search (starting at $199/month, billed monthly) does Offer one seven-day free trial.
Setting up both is incredibly easy – all you need to do is enter your domain. Then HubSpot AEO walks you through onboarding and asks you for more details about your business so it can make personalized, timely suggestions.
Step 2: Upgrade to paid tiers to accelerate and track AEO progress.
Marketers who are serious about AEO have quickly moved beyond free plans and trials. Once you have used the free trials for evaluation purposes, you can opt for a paid subscription for long-term tracking and accelerated AEO progress.
HubSpot AEO can be purchased individually for just $50/month and gives you 25 prompts tracked daily. The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit can be purchased separately for $99/month/domain and also allows you to track 25 prompts.
HubSpot AEO vs. SEMrush AI Visibility: Which Should You Choose?
Choose HubSpot AEO if:
- Your customers mainly use ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. HubSpot AEO covers all three of these response engines.
- You want personalized, timely recommendations based on your specific business context. (Note: To achieve this, you must upgrade to Marketing Hub Professional/Enterprise or HubSpot for Marketers, which includes AEO and connects to HubSpot’s Smart CRM.)
- They value simplicity and ease of use.
- Your team is mostly made up of marketers.
- $50/month is within your budget.
Choose SEMrush AI Visibility Toolkit if:
- Your customers mainly use Google AI Overviews or Google AI Mode. Semrush covers these two response engines as well as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
- You are ok with automatically generated synthetic prompts. Note: SEMrush also allows you to manually add your own prompts.
- They prioritize the complexity and quantity of features.
- Their team consists primarily of SEOs. Note: For SEO functionality, you must purchase the Basic SEO subscription ($139.95/month) in addition to the AI Visibility Toolkit add-on for $99/month/domain.
- $99/month is within your budget. Note: $99/month is for one domain only and does not include SEO functionality.
What is the best way to test and prove the effect?
Personally, I prefer to test software I’m considering in parallel. Therefore, I would recommend signing up for the HubSpot AEO 28-day free trial at the same time as signing up for the SEMrush One 7-day free trial. Then spend the next week looking at them side by side and comparing their strengths and weaknesses.
Use the same domain to get a side-by-side comparison of how each tool approaches the AEO process.
From there, I would create some content based on HubSpot AEO and Semrush recommendations. Think of this as split testing. Create a table with the content based on HubSpot and a separate tab for the content based on SEMrush.
AEO efforts, similar to SEO work, take time to have an impact. Stay tuned for both content over the next three months. Track these metrics: citations, mentions, prompts. Note: Since the free trial for HubSpot AEO ends after 28 days and for Semrush One after seven days, you will need to upgrade to the paid version of HubSpot AEO ($50/month) and then to the paid version of the standalone Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit ($99/month/domain).
At the end of your three-month pilot, see which tool ultimately gave you content recommendations that made the difference in your AI visibility. Also, note which tool was actually the most helpful and user-friendly for your team.
Alternatives to HubSpot AEO and SEMrush AI Visibility
Profound
Best for: Enterprise teams looking to automate the AEO content creation process (while maintaining human-in-the-loop approval)
Key Features
- Largest engine cover (10): ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok, DeepSeek, Claude
- Pre-built content agents: Choose from a library of agent templates, including one that lets you create AEO-friendly articles based on a topic prompt. Important note from the Profound website: “Every agent run includes an approval step before publishing, so you remain in control of what goes live.”
- Fast volumes: An outstanding feature that estimates volume at the keyword or phrase level based on real ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude user data
Prices: Starting at $99/month for ChatGPT tracking only
Crunch
Best for: Teams from medium to large companies requiring technical optimization and AI traffic attribution
Key Features
- Engine cover (9): ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Grok
- Agent Experience Platform (AXP): A standout feature that essentially creates a second version of any web page, delivered only to AI crawlers (not search engine crawlers or humans) to help you with your AEO
- AI recommendations: When you connect to GA4, you’ll see who visited via AI, as well as purchase sales and conversion rates associated with AI recommendations.
Prices: Starting at $250/month for four response engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot)
Ahrefs brand radar
Best for: Teams already using Ahrefs for SEO or those focused on AI visibility on social media
Key Features
- AI coverage for LLMs And social media (6+3): Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini + YouTube, TikTok, Reddit
- Largest Command Prompt Database: Over 406 million monthly prompts
- Unified SEO/AEO dashboard: For existing Ahrefs SEO users, AEO data will be displayed in the same dashboard as their SEO data.
Prices: Starts at $199/month for one platform
If you already use Profound, Scrunch, or Ahrefs, you can still add HubSpot AEO by purchasing it individually. This gives you access to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity data, as well as HubSpot’s prompt suggestions and content recommendations. To get CRM-powered suggestions tailored to your business context, upgrade to Marketing Hub Pro+ or HubSpot for Marketers.
HubSpot for Marketers subscribers (Marketing Hub Pro+ and Content Hub Pro+ bundled) can end-to-end control of the AEO content creation process by receiving the AEO recommendation, clicking a button to create content with Content Agent, and then tracking the URL of that content to see its impact on AEO – all in one place. This avoids stack proliferation and governance gaps and enables a centralized dashboard for AEO insights and actions.
HubSpot AEO vs SEMrush AI Visibility FAQs
Can I use HubSpot AEO and SEMrush together?
Yes, actually using SEMrush for SEO and HubSpot for AEO is the recommended approach. SEMrush has extensive expertise and features for keyword research, backlink tracking, and competitor research, while HubSpot provides unique CRM-connected prompt suggestions to help your business stand out from the crowd. The CRM-based prompt suggestions are only available to Marketing Hub Professional/Enterprise or HubSpot for Marketers subscribers.
Alternatively, if you use SEMrush for SEO and don’t want to pay the additional $99 to add the AI Visibility Toolkit, you can purchase HubSpot AEO separately for just $50, lowering your total cost of ownership.
How do I measure success beyond visibility scores?
AEO success ultimately depends on whether your AEO efforts help build your pipeline. So, beyond viewability metrics, you need to link your AEO content to business impact. For that I recommend HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise because then you get AEO functions And Multi-touch attribution that can give you insight into how your AEO efforts are linked to actual deals in your pipeline.
What is the best way to get cited in AI answers?
The best way to get cited in AI answers is to learn Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). These include tactics like creating “reply first” content, improving your external reputation, ensuring your website doesn’t have technical issues, and using a dedicated AEO tool. For more details see HubSpot’s AEO Guide.
When should you prioritize AEO over traditional SEO work?
First, a caveat: good AEO is built on a solid SEO foundation. So once you have a solid SEO foundation, you should prioritize AEO over traditional SEO if you haven’t yet optimized your site for answer search engines. I recommend this because AI search behavior is increasing quickly and it takes time for AEO content to condense. So starting with AEO now will pay off in the future.