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Comparison · updated September 2026

Which AI visibility tool should you use?

It depends which question you need answered. Ahrefs, Semrush and Profound measure demand — whether AI mentions your brand. Free agent readiness scanners measure part of the supply side — whether your site can be read. Most teams need one of each, and we would rather say that than claim we replace both.

Demand-side tools: is AI mentioning you?

ToolWhat it does wellWhere it stops
Ahrefs Brand RadarAI visibility across a very large prompt corpus, plus bot and referral analytics from data you already trustNo technical readiness audit, no site score, no remediation
Semrush AI VisibilityVisibility, sentiment and a content analyser, integrated with an existing SEO workflowSimulated prompts, demand side only, no agent readiness, no fixes
ProfoundPurpose-built AI search visibility and answer trackingMonitoring rather than engineering; nothing about whether your site can be read

If you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, use what you have before buying a third tool. The marginal value of a second demand-side tracker is low.

Supply-side tools: can AI read you?

ToolWhat it does wellWhere it stops
Lighthouse Agentic BrowsingFree, already in your browser, from Google4 experimental checks, pass/fail only, no tracking, no fixes
AgentGradeBroad signal coverage with a 0–100 score, free scanNo longitudinal tracking, no remediation, no MCP delivery
Agent-Ready.devCareful checking against the Vercel spec and llmstxt.orgNo remediation, no versioned comparison, no client product
Agent CheckerDrives a real agent through live tasks and scores the resultTesting rather than repair; no generated fixes
Code4X55 checks, versioned scoring, generated remediation code, MCP deliveryNo client case studies yet. New practice.

Run a free scanner first. Several are good, they cost nothing, and if one comes back clean you have learned something useful for free.

So what is actually different about Code4X?

Two things, and check-count is not one of them.

Generated remediation. Every tool above tells you what is broken. We build the file — the populated llms.txt from your own page inventory, the middleware for your framework, the corrected markup with a diff. Your developer reviews a change rather than starting a project.

Versioned proof. The re-audit runs on the rubric version your first audit used, so the before and after are measured with the same instrument. Most tools cannot tell you whether you improved, only what your score is today.

We would rather state that plainly than claim nobody else can count checks. Several of these tools are good and some cover things we do not.

Where this is contested

This page is written by an interested party and you should read it that way. We have tried to name what each competitor does better, and where the category has moved past claims in our own earlier material — live agent task testing, for instance, is no longer something only we do.

The check that matters: ask any vendor here what happens to their product if Google ships a full agentic score in Lighthouse. If the answer is nothing, they were only ever selling a number.

Questions

Frequently asked

What is the difference between Ahrefs Brand Radar and an agent readiness audit?

Brand Radar measures demand: whether AI mentions your brand across a large prompt corpus. An agent readiness audit measures supply: whether an AI arriving at your site can discover, read and act on it. They answer different questions and most teams need both.

Are free agent readiness scanners any good?

Several are genuinely useful and cost nothing, so run one first. They identify problems but none of them generate the fix or track change on a fixed rubric over time.

Do I still need Ahrefs or Semrush?

If you already pay for one, keep it. A second demand-side tracker adds little, and neither one checks whether your site can be read by an AI crawler.

What does Code4X do that others do not?

Generated remediation code rather than recommendations, and versioned before-and-after scoring on the same rubric so improvement is measurable rather than asserted.

Related

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Agency vs in-house

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Run a free scanner. Ideally ours.

Eight checks, fifteen seconds, no email. If it comes back clean we will tell you.