Compared with hosted tools
Saylent next to Profound, Peec, Otterly, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Semrush AI Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar, and HubSpot AEO Grader - facts and sources, no adjectives.
Looking for how to compare your own brand against a rival inside the app? That is a different feature: see Compare against a rival. This page is about Saylent next to other products.
Saylent is one shape of tool in a category that also has well-funded hosted products. This page states what is structurally different, and separately what has been reported about those products' pricing, with a source and a date for every number, plus the vendor's own pricing page linked where one exists publicly. It does not rate any product's quality - see the methodology for what Saylent itself does and does not claim.
What is structurally different
| Saylent | Hosted tools (Profound, Peec, Otterly, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Semrush AI Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar, HubSpot AEO Grader) | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Yes - Apache-2.0, this repository | No - proprietary, closed-source products |
| Runs on your own provider keys | Yes - every dollar goes to OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/Perplexity directly, never through us (What it costs) | No - usage runs on the vendor's own infrastructure and account, priced into their subscription |
| Self-hostable | Yes - CLI on your machine, or the full app on your own server, Docker, or your own Vercel/Supabase project (Deploy the app) | No - hosted SaaS only |
| Every score has receipts | Yes - every claim traces to the answer that produced it and the citation it names (How it works) | Not published - each vendor's methodology page (linked below) is the source, not independently verified here |
| Cross-family judge (self-preference control) | Yes when two provider keys are set - one family's answer is judged by the other; the report states judge_mode either way (Methodology) | Not published |
Site AI-bot-access probe (gate-check) | Yes - checks the three AI-bot classes, JSON-LD, and meta directives, $0, no LLM call (How it works) | Not published |
| Drafted fixes from evidence | Yes - a fix cites the specific finding or citation it is based on | Not published |
| Entry price | $0 - open source, self-hosted | See the table below - each vendor's reported starting price, sourced |
What the hosted tools do that Saylent does not (yet)
This is the honest gap, not a hedge:
- Continuous historical tracking at scale. Saylent's
verifycommand re-runs the frozen question set and diffs against one baseline run - a before/after, not a running multi-week or multi-month trend line across many brands. - Alerts. Saylent has two optional, off-by-default scheduled jobs
(
FLAG_SCHEDULED_RUNS: a weekly verify, a monthly audit) on a self-hosted deployment - not real-time or threshold-based alerting. - A shared workspace. One deployment supports as many user accounts as you like, each isolated from the others by row-level security, with one operator who owns the keys and the bill. What it does not have is a workspace those users share: no common brand list, and no switching between client accounts from one login.
- Seats, roles and billing. Everyone who signs up is a user; there is no per-seat role model, no seat billing, and no plan tier.
- Vendor support. A hosted subscription buys a support relationship; an open-source project's support is public GitHub issues and (where enabled) Discussions.
Entry price, by vendor
| Vendor | Entry price | As reported by | As of | Vendor's own pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saylent | $0 (open source, self-hosted; provider API cost only - What it costs) | this repository | 2026-09 | - |
| Profound | $99/mo (Starter: ChatGPT tracking, 50 prompts) | tryprofound.com, the vendor's own page | 2026-09 | tryprofound.com/pricing |
| Peec AI | €85-89/mo (Starter, 50 prompts) | geoptie.com review | 2026-09 | peec.ai/pricing |
| Otterly.ai | $29/mo (Lite: 15 prompts, monthly billing) | otterly.ai, the vendor's own page | 2026-09 | otterly.ai/pricing |
| Scrunch AI | $300/mo monthly, $250/mo billed annually | PR Newswire | 2026-09 | scrunch.com/pricing |
| AthenaHQ | Free "Essential" tier ($25 of credits); $295/mo Starter | trakkr.ai pricing page | 2026-09 | athenahq.ai/pricing |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | $99/mo (25 prompts) | explodingtopics.com | 2026-09 | semrush.com/pricing/ai |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/mo per AI platform; $828/mo minimum for all platforms | tryanalyze.ai comparison | 2026-09 | ahrefs.com/brand-radar |
| HubSpot AEO Grader | Free one-shot 0-100 grade; $50/mo for the paid tier | rankability.com review | 2026-09 | hubspot.com/aeo-grader |
Numbers marked "the vendor's own page" were read directly off that vendor's pricing page; every other number is as reported by the linked third party and has not been independently re-confirmed against the vendor's own page for this table - the "Vendor's own pricing page" column links to it either way, so that is the place to check current pricing yourself. All of it is subject to change and none of these vendors were contacted for this comparison.
Why this page exists
Every paid entry tier above is roughly $29-300/mo, and several already offer a free one-shot check as their own lead-generation (Ahrefs' free AI visibility checker is a "no signup" example). An "open-source alternative to an expensive incumbent" story does not describe this category the way it describes, say, Plausible vs Google Analytics - Saylent's reason to exist is different: your own keys, your own data, self-hostable, and the receipts behind every score, not a lower price for the same closed product.