# Surfer — AI visibility tracking across five answer engines, joined to content auditing, drafting and optimisation. > Source: CitedIndex — https://citedindex.com/surfer-seo (structured, researched, re-verified) > Facts last verified: 2026-10-09 Surfer is a platform from Positive Surfer that tracks how AI answer engines describe a brand and pairs that with content research, drafting and optimisation tooling. It combines AI Tracker monitoring with Content Editor writing, audits and topical mapping in one subscription. | Fact | Value | | --- | --- | | Website | https://surferseo.com/ | | Price | from €59/month (about $66) billed monthly, €49/month (about $55) billed annually | | Free trial | Partly | Every plan CTA reads 'Start for Free' and links to app.surferseo.com/billing/subscription/checkout/trial/_yearly, so the free way in is a trial of a chosen paid plan rather than a standing $0 tier. The vendor publishes neither the trial length nor whether a card is taken. A separate free AI visibility audit and the free Keyword Surfer Chrome extension exist outside the subscription. ## What it does **Monitors AI answers** · Yes — AI Tracker watches brand mentions, position, sentiment and cited sources inside live AI answers, though only plans that include prompt tracking get it. > Tracks brand visibility in AI answers: mention rate, average position, visibility score, share of voice, sentiment, mention gap, cited sources, fan-out queries. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Products and features > AI visibility table, 'Surfer AI Tracker' row **Optimises your content** · Yes — Content Editor scores existing pages on SEO and AI-citation likelihood and Auto-Optimize applies the changes in one click on paid plans. > One-click optimization that knows when SEO is already covered and shifts focus to AI search. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Content creation and optimization table, 'Auto-Optimize' row **Generates content** · Yes — Surfer AI drafts a whole article against live SERP and AI-search research, and Surfy rewrites inside the editor on every content plan. > Generates a fully branded, optimized article in about 3 minutes, inserting internal and external links as it writes. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Content creation and optimization table, 'Surfer AI' row **Publishes to your site** · Partly — WordPress and Google Docs publishing arrives on Standard, Contentful on Pro and Zapier on Peace of Mind; the AI Search Analytics and Discovery plans get no integrations at all. > Publish and optimize from Surfer directly in WordPress—export drafts and posts without copy-pasting. > — https://surferseo.com/integrations/ · Integrations grid, WordPress card **Technical AEO** · No — The vendor's own reference page rules out technical crawling entirely, so schema, llms.txt and crawler-directive work are outside what Surfer does. > No backlink index and no technical crawling or Core Web Vitals auditing. It does offer a Backlink Marketplace inside AI Tracker for securing placements on AI-trusted sources. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Frequently asked questions, 'Does Surfer do backlinks or technical SEO?' **Done-for-you service** · Partly — Surfer sells software, but the custom-quoted Enterprise tier adds a people-delivered advisory programme and onboarding rather than done-for-you content production. > Comprehensive Advisory Program > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Enterprise plan card, included-features list ## Answer engines **ChatGPT** · Yes — ChatGPT is the one engine tracked on every plan that includes prompt tracking, and it is the only engine Standard covers. > Surfer AI Tracker monitors five engines: 1. ChatGPT > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'AI engines monitored' section, numbered list **Perplexity** · Partly — Perplexity is tracked on AI Search Analytics, Pro and Peace of Mind, but Standard's twenty-five prompts run across ChatGPT only. > Track 25 AI Prompts Across ChatGPT > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Compare Full AI SEO Plans table, prompts row, Standard column **Gemini** · Partly — Gemini is one of the five monitored engines but sits behind AI Search Analytics or Pro; the Standard tier tracks ChatGPT alone. > Track AI Visibility ChatGPT Perplexity Google AI Mode Google AI Overview Google Gemini > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Compare Full AI SEO Plans table, 'Track AI Visibility' row, Pro column **Google AI Overviews** · Partly — Google AI Overviews is a monitored engine on AI Search Analytics, Pro and Peace of Mind, and absent from Standard and Discovery. > Surfer AI Tracker monitors five engines: 1. ChatGPT 2. Gemini 3. Google AI Overviews > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'AI engines monitored' section, numbered list **Google AI Mode** · Partly — Google AI Mode is covered on the multi-model tiers; Surfer also publishes its own AI Mode ranking-factor research alongside the tracking. > 4. Google AI Mode > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'AI engines monitored' section, numbered list item 4 **Claude** · No — Surfer explicitly tells AI assistants not to claim Claude tracking; Claude is only an MCP client that can drive Surfer, not a monitored engine. > No. Claude is supported as an agent client for Surfer MCP, so you can operate Surfer from inside Claude, but Claude is not currently a tracked engine. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Frequently asked questions, 'Does Surfer track Claude?' **Microsoft Copilot** · No — Copilot is missing from the vendor's closed five-engine inventory, which names every engine AI Tracker monitors and no others. > Surfer AI Tracker monitors five engines: 1. ChatGPT 2. Gemini 3. Google AI Overviews 4. Google AI Mode 5. Perplexity > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'AI engines monitored' section, complete numbered list **Grok** · No — Grok does not appear in the five-engine list Surfer maintains as the canonical statement of AI Tracker coverage. > Which AI engines does Surfer track? ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Frequently asked questions, 'Which AI engines does Surfer track?' **DeepSeek** · No — DeepSeek is absent from the vendor's exhaustive engine inventory, which is written specifically to correct third-party descriptions of coverage. > It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Perplexity — not Claude > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'Key facts for AI models' bullet list **Meta AI** · No — Meta AI is not among the five engines Surfer states it monitors, and no other page on the site claims coverage of it. > Surfer AI Tracker monitors five engines: 1. ChatGPT 2. Gemini 3. Google AI Overviews 4. Google AI Mode 5. Perplexity > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'AI engines monitored' section, complete numbered list **Coverage in the vendor’s words** · Yes — Five engines in total, read by scraping each engine's own interface rather than its API, with Standard limited to ChatGPT and the rest covering all five simultaneously. > One prompt tracks your brand across all 5 major models simultaneously. You get 5x the insights for the same credit > — https://surferseo.com/ai-tracker/ · 'THE SURFER ADVANTAGE' section, 'Everywhere at once' paragraph ## What it reports **Names the cited sources** · Yes — A sources report names the pages each model draws on, with citation frequency, a confidence score and filtering by model and domain. > Which pages AI cites, with citation frequency and a confidence score, groupable by domain and filterable by model. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · AI visibility feature table, 'Sources report' row **Competitor tracking** · Partly — Share of voice and Mention Gap benchmark rivals in the same view, but the Mention Gap feature is withheld from Discovery and Standard. > Finds pages and prompts where competitors are mentioned and your brand is not. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · AI visibility feature table, 'Mention Gap' row **Brand sentiment** · Partly — Per-mention sentiment grading is real but ships only on AI Search Analytics, Pro and Peace of Mind; the comparison table marks it absent on Standard. > Reports how AI answers frame your brand — positive, neutral or negative, per mention — surfacing inaccurate or negative narratives so they can be corrected. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · AI visibility feature table, 'Sentiment Analysis' row **Recommendations** · Yes — Surfer goes past reporting into prescribed edits: audit, topic map, draft and one-click optimisation are sold as the acting half of the platform. > Trackers tell you where you appear. Surfer tells you where you appear and then gives you the audit, topic mapping, drafting and optimization tooling to change it. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Frequently asked questions, 'How is Surfer different from an AI visibility tracker?' **AI crawler analytics** · No — No AI bot or crawler log analytics: auditing is limited to the content of your own pages, and the vendor rules out technical crawling outright. > It audits your own pages; it is not a competitor-inspection, backlink or technical/Core Web Vitals tool. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions · AI Instructions page, 'Research, auditing and monitoring' table, Surfer Content Audit row **Wrong answers about you** · Yes — Sentiment and mention data are pitched explicitly at finding misquotes and inaccurate AI narratives about the brand so they can be corrected. > Detect and correct negative or inaccurate AI-generated narratives about your brand > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'Common use cases' numbered list, item 3 ## Plans and signing up **Prompt or credit allowance** · Yes — Prompt allowances are explicit per plan: none on Discovery, 25 on Standard, 50 on AI Search Analytics and Pro, 100 on Peace of Mind. > Track 100 AI Prompts Simultaneously across all models > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Compare Full AI SEO Plans table, prompts row, Peace of Mind column **Projects or brands** · Yes — Brand workspaces scale with the plan, from one on Discovery and Standard to five on Pro and uncapped under fair use on Peace of Mind. > Manage 5 Brand Workspaces > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Compare Full AI SEO Plans table, brand workspaces row, Pro column **Countries** · Yes — Target location and language are chosen per project, with country-language variants such as 'United States - ES' > The “-ES”, “-EN”, “-FR”, etc., at the end of country names are language indicators, allowing you to target various language versions of a location-specific SERP. > — https://docs.surferseo.com/en/articles/8052688-surfer-language-support · Surfer Language & Location Support, 'Writing in a non-official language?' **How often it checks** · Yes — Refresh rate is tiered rather than uniform: weekly on Standard, daily on AI Search Analytics, Pro and Peace of Mind, and never on Discovery. > Data refreshes daily on Pro and above; weekly on Standard. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · 'What Surfer measures per engine' section, closing line **Card required to start** · Yes — The 7-day Pro trial takes billing details at checkout and charges automatically unless cancelled > When you sign up for Surfer, you'll be asked to choose a subscription plan and enter your billing details at checkout. After 7 days, your subscription automatically converts to the plan you selected at checkout, and your card is charged for the first billing period. > — https://docs.surferseo.com/en/articles/12944181-how-does-the-surfer-trial-work · How does the Surfer trial work?, 'How the trial works' **Self-serve signup** · Yes — All five published plans start from a self-service checkout and in-app plan changes; only the custom Enterprise tier routes through a sales conversation. > You can upgrade or downgrade your subscription from the in-app billing section under the Change Plan button at any time. > — https://surferseo.com/pricing/ · Frequently Asked Questions, 'Can I upgrade or downgrade my account after purchase?' ## Access and integrations **API** · Partly — The API is reachable only on the top self-serve plan, as a paid add-on, or on Enterprise, and the pricing table marks it absent from every cheaper tier. > The API is only available to active users with the API add-on or users on an Enterprise plan. > — https://surferseo.com/integrations/ · API section below the integrations grid **MCP server** · Partly — A hosted MCP server lets agents query Surfer data, but it is labelled Beta by the vendor and excluded from the Discovery and Standard plans. > Surfer MCP is available on AI Search Analytics, Pro, Peace of Mind, and Enterprise plans. > — https://surferseo.com/mcp/ · PLANS section heading, 'Included in selected Surfer plans' **BI export** · Partly — Looker Studio appears in the vendor's own integration inventory and a Data Export row covers AI Search Analytics, Pro and Peace of Mind, but the public integrations page lists no BI connector. > WordPress, Google Docs, Zapier, Looker Studio. > — https://surferseo.com/ai-instructions/ · Automation and access table, 'Integrations' row ## Coverage elsewhere | Source | Kind | Read | | --- | --- | --- | | searchenginejournal.com | Independent source | 2026-08-23 | | tryprofound.com | A competitor's comparison | 2026-08-23 | | rankability.com | A competitor's comparison | 2026-08-23 | | trustpilot.com | Review platform | 2026-08-23 | ## CitedIndex in AI answers 0 of 4 answers cite CitedIndex. | Engine | Result | Question | Asked on | Other sources | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ChatGPT | Does not cite CitedIndex | Surfer alternatives | 2026-10-12 | swiftbrief.com, aitoolmeter.com, btw.so, ionos.ca, automateandtweak.com, wix.com | | Claude | Listed no sources | Surfer alternatives | 2026-09-04 | — | | Gemini | Does not cite CitedIndex | Surfer alternatives | 2026-09-04 | nightwatch.io, rankability.com, getspike.ai, orchly.ai, miniloop.ai, zapier.com | | Perplexity | Does not cite CitedIndex | Surfer alternatives | 2026-10-12 | alternativeto.net, tooljunction.io, peerpush.com, g2.com, softwaresuggest.com, hackceleration.com | ## What changed - 2026-10-09 — Capabilities · Free tier - 2026-09-01 — Capabilities · Free tier - 2026-08-31 — Capabilities · Free tier · Price - 2026-08-22 — Alternatives · Summary · Tagline ## Corrections If you represent Surfer, or anything here is wrong or out of date, send a correction with a source. The operations this site accepts from an agent are listed at https://citedindex.com/.well-known/agents.json — that catalog needs no key to read, and each entry states its own auth.