Ahrefs Brand Radar explained: measuring AI mentions

Ahrefs Brand Radar measures how often your brand appears in AI answers.

It’s a module within Ahrefs. It tracks how often and how prominently AI assistants name your brand, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews.

Instead of counting classic rankings, it shows whether those assistants name and cite you when people ask something in your field.

The verdict: Brand Radar is a credible measurement tool, especially if you already live in Ahrefs. But it measures visibility; it doesn’t create it. To find out what to fix first, run a full AI visibility audit.

Brand Radar is a measurement instrument within the broader field of generative engine optimization. If you want the full picture first, read our complete guide to GEO.

What is Ahrefs Brand Radar?

Brand Radar is the AI visibility module from Ahrefs that tracks how a brand shows up in AI search results.

Its big difference with many competitors? The prompts come from real searches. You don’t invent them.

Prompts built from real searches

According to the Brand Radar product page, the AI index runs on more than 492 million search-backed prompts (checked 20 October 2026). When we first wrote this, the page said 481 million.

Each prompt is modeled from real user searches in Ahrefs’ keyword database.

That’s the key point. The prompts reflect real demand.

They aren’t questions you merely hope to show up for.

Here’s how Ahrefs presents the product itself:

Ahrefs Brand Radar’s product page, October 2026. AI share of voice is the first metric it names; the figures are Ahrefs’ demo data.

The demo dashboard leads with share of voice. That’s telling. The tool is built for comparing brands.

How you start

You enter a domain or brand name. Ahrefs does the rest.

It automatically recognises the brand and its associated competitors.

You can then review, per AI platform, how often you’re mentioned and which sources feed those AI answers.

Brand Radar belongs to the same family as the AI mention monitoring on our page about AI visibility tools, but as part of the Ahrefs ecosystem.

Want to test first? Ahrefs’ own free AI visibility checker gives a one-off preview. We compare it in free AI visibility tools.

Which AI platforms does Brand Radar cover?

Brand Radar tracks your brand across the major AI assistants and search surfaces that matter today.

As of October 2026, the Brand Radar page lists these:

• Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode
• Assistants: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot
• Extra: Claude, available on the index plan

Grok isn’t on that list.

How big is the index per platform?

The prompt sets aren’t equal. Google’s AI Overviews get by far the largest share:

Source: Ahrefs Brand Radar page, checked 20 October 2026.

What that means: your AI Overviews numbers rest on about ten times more prompts than your ChatGPT numbers. Compare platforms with that in mind.

Our guide to Google AI Overviews explains why that surface is so large.

Beta features: YouTube, TikTok and Reddit

Ahrefs also tracks visibility on YouTube, TikTok trends and Reddit results in Google. Those features are still in beta and free for Ahrefs customers while they are.

Why does that matter? AI models lean heavily on those sources.

Which metrics does Brand Radar report?

Brand Radar works with four core metrics. They’re worth keeping clearly apart, because they measure different things:

• Mentions: the number of AI answers that name your brand at least once.
• Citations: the AI answers that cite your brand as a source, with a reference to your content.
• Impressions: mentions weighted by search volume, to estimate potential exposure.
• AI Share of Voice: your share of impressions relative to the tracked brands.

Mentions

Mentions are the broadest measure of visibility. Ahrefs defines them as “how often your brand name appears in AI answer text.”

It’s the widest net. A mention without a link still shapes what a buyer remembers.

Citations

A citation means the AI links to your pages or domain as a source. This carries more weight, because the AI actually uses you as an authority.

Our guide to citation rate shows how to turn that count into a ratio you can track.

Impressions and AI Share of Voice

Impressions weight each mention by the real search volume behind the prompt.

AI Share of Voice then gives your share against competitors. Ahrefs calls it the percentage of AI responses in your topic set “that mention or cite your brand versus competitors.”

For example, say you and three rivals share a topic. If you get 40 of 100 weighted impressions, your AI Share of Voice is 40%.

We go deeper on the metric in AI share of voice.

Mentioned versus cited

The difference between being mentioned and being cited is no small detail.

A citation is closely tied to your broader brand authority, a theme we dig into in brand mentions over backlinks.

Which of these figures really matter depends on your goal. In the 5 core indicators of AI visibility we explain how to tie these signals to leads and revenue, rather than a standalone vanity score.

How does Brand Radar work under the hood?

Brand Radar doesn’t run on questions you make up, but on a large database of real search prompts.

The process has four steps:

1. Prompts: modeled from real searches in Ahrefs’ keyword data.
2. Answers: Ahrefs runs them against each AI platform and records the output.
3. Extraction: it notes which brands and sources appear.
4. Weighting: raw mentions get weighted by search volume into impressions and Share of Voice.

Here’s that pipeline in one picture:

Why the cited sources matter most

By showing which sources feed AI answers, Brand Radar also shows which pages and domains get cited most in your topic.

That’s practical. It points you to the places where you should be present, for example a trade portal or a comparison site.

Our experience: we reverse-engineer it. Ask the question, see which sites contribute to the answer, then partner with those sites or publish where the model already looks.

Our guide on which sources ChatGPT cites shows the patterns we see.

Why one source gets quoted and another doesn’t

The process by which AI decides what’s true and which sources it trusts is described in grounding: how AI determines what is true.

That helps you understand why one source gets quoted and another doesn’t.

What does the data look like for a real domain?

Ahrefs also shows AI responses next to backlinks and organic data in Site Explorer. Here’s our own domain:

Ahrefs Site Explorer for our own domain, October 2026. The AI responses block sits next to backlinks and organic search.

Split per platform, those 463 responses look like this:

Half of our AI responses sit in AI Overviews. ChatGPT shows only 2.

Is that bad? Not necessarily.

That doesn’t mean ChatGPT ignores us. Its prompt set in the index is about ten times smaller than the AI Overviews set.

Watch out: read platform numbers relative to the prompt pool behind them, never as raw totals.

Why Search Console can’t show this

Search Console doesn’t report AI mentions at all.

Google counts clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the regular “Web” search type (Google’s AI features guide). There’s no separate AI filter.

That gap is exactly what tools like Brand Radar fill.

What does Ahrefs Brand Radar cost?

Brand Radar’s AI indexes aren’t a free part of Ahrefs, but a paid add-on.

The European prices

On the Ahrefs pricing page (European prices, checked 20 October 2026), the Lite plan costs €119 per month billed monthly.

Brand Radar AI starts from €179 per month on top of that.

The Brand Radar page priced the AI Visibility Index at €179 per month and listed €654 per month for all models (European view, October 2026).

Price check: viewed from the US on 20 October 2026, the same page showed $199 per month for the index and $699 for all models.

So a full setup adds up fast. Think several hundred euros per month.

What’s included with a paid plan

Ahrefs does include free custom AI prompts in paid plans from Lite upwards. The number grows per plan:

Source: Ahrefs Brand Radar page, checked 20 October 2026.

Custom prompts are the questions your buyers ask. Ahrefs notes they work “even if no one searches your brand name yet.”

Our guide on which prompts to track helps you spend those five Lite prompts well.

Is it worth the money?

Prices and packages change regularly, so check the current rates before you decide.

The core message stays the same. This is a serious investment, not an impulse purchase.

For a small B2B brand, define your goal sharply before you commit that budget.

Who is Brand Radar suitable for, and who not?

Brand Radar fits best with brands that already work with Ahrefs and want to track AI visibility seriously against competitors.

When it fits

If you already work in Ahrefs for your SEO, the barrier is low and your data sits in one environment.

The link to real search prompts also makes the figures more credible than tools that run on self-invented questions.

Our experience: we already use Ahrefs to monitor backlinks more tightly than Search Console allows. Having AI data in the same place saves a lot of switching.

When it doesn’t

Even so, it isn’t for everyone. We’ll be honest about that.

Independent reviews point out that the all-in costs are considerably higher than those of many dedicated AI visibility tools.

They also note that the depth for specific AEO analyses is sometimes more limited than with specialised players.

Here’s a quick decision table:

For a small B2B company that mainly wants to know whether it shows up in ChatGPT, a simpler setup may be enough.

The real work isn’t in the measuring. It’s in what you do next.

How we look at it

At Customer Impact we look at your goal first. A tool like Brand Radar is a measurement instrument, not a strategy.

We’d rather steer on mentions and citations that deliver leads and revenue than on a high Share of Voice that leads nowhere.

Whichever setup you choose, it should give you direction, not just fill a dashboard.

That’s how our generative engine optimization works too: measuring to improve, not to impress.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ahrefs Brand Radar free?

No. The AI indexes are a paid add-on on top of an Ahrefs plan, from €179 per month on the European pricing page in October 2026. Ahrefs does offer a free AI visibility checker that gives a one-off preview with the top 5 results per section.

Which platforms does Brand Radar track?

Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, with Claude available on the index plan. Grok isn’t listed. YouTube, TikTok and Reddit visibility are in beta.

What is the difference between mentions and citations in Brand Radar?

A mention means your brand name appears in the AI answer text. A citation means the AI links to your pages or domain as a source. Citations weigh more, because the AI uses you as an authority.

The short summary

Ahrefs Brand Radar is a credible module for measuring how your brand shows up in AI answers.

It has four useful metrics (mentions, citations, impressions and Share of Voice) and a strong grounding in real search prompts.

The price is a serious barrier, though. It mainly makes sense inside the Ahrefs ecosystem.

What matters most remains what you do with the figures. A measurement instrument doesn’t improve your visibility; your actions do.

Want AI visibility that turns into real enquiries, without tools you never act on? Contact us. We’ll map the measurement setup that fits your goals.