AI visibility tools, head to head
Gumshoe vs BrandLight
Pricing, features and differences, researched August 2026.
Gumshoe and Brandlight both help teams track how AI search tools describe their brands, competitors, and sources. Buyers often compare them when they need to understand visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and similar tools, then turn those findings into SEO, content, and brand actions. The main differences come down to target customer, research approach, workflow depth, and commercial scope. Gumshoe focuses on marketing teams, SEO agencies, and brands that want persona-based buyer conversations across 11 AI models. It connects visibility data with competitor, citation, content, and technical findings that teams can act on. Brandlight targets enterprise teams, including Fortune 500 brands, CMOs, and agencies. Its platform pairs AI visibility tracking with query and source analysis, attribution, AI advertising, and agentic commerce tools. The choice often depends on whether a team needs practical AI search research and optimization support, or a broader enterprise system for managing AI-driven discovery and commerce.
At a glance
Gumshoe
Pick it if persona-generated prompts suit how you work, keeping in mind the entry plan is 80 prompts a month and there is no trial.
- Entry price
- $99/mo
- Tracked prompts
- 80/mo - 8 personas × 10 prompts
- Free trial
- No trial - 1 free sample audit
BrandLight
Pick it if a demo-led purchase suits you, since the price, the prompt volume and the full engine list are all unpublished.
- Entry price
- Not published - demo only
- Tracked prompts
- Not published - custom
- Free trial
- None - paid pilot reported
Hi, MooseOur AEO tool
Pick it if you want the fix shipped rather than scored: an agent that publishes the change, audio repurposing no other tool here offers at any price, and a built-in model so the AI can cost you nothing.
- Entry price
- $39/mo BYOK; $79/mo AI included
- Tracked prompts
- No hard limit on any plan
- Free trial
- n/a - free plan, no expiry
The row SEOs read first
Founders have SEO backgrounds?
A tool built by people who have done the work makes different choices.
Full comparison
202 rows across 20 categories. Values are quoted as published; where a vendor does not publish a number, the cell says so.
| Feature | Gumshoe | BrandLight | Hi, Moose Our AEO tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing & cost model | |||
| Free plan available | No - one free sample audit | No | Yes - free forever, no card |
| Free daily visibility runs, no cap | No | No | Yes - local runs unlimited on every plan |
| Engines free to run daily | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Entry paid price | $99/mo | Not published - demo only | $39/mo BYOK; $79/mo AI included |
| Annual billing discount | Not published - monthly only | Not published | Yes - BYOK 2 months free; managed plans ~10% |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly, billed per project | Custom contract, per module | Flat plan with monthly AI credit balance, or BYOK |
| Bring your own API key | No | No | Yes - OpenRouter |
| Can run with $0 AI cost to vendor | No | No | Yes |
| Usage metered in one transparent unit | No - separate audit, URL and content caps | No | Yes - AI credits, published rate card |
| In-app usage dashboard | Yes - usage tab per workspace | Not published | Yes - % used, reset date, pace warning |
| Agency / reseller tier | Partial - partner discount, no separate plan | Partner program, not a tier | Yes - $149 BYOK Agency; $449+ AI included |
| Affiliate program | Not published | No | Yes |
| Annual contract required | No | Not published - enterprise terms | No |
| Free trial length | No trial - 1 free sample audit | None - paid pilot reported | n/a - free plan, no expiry |
| Paid plans pricing range | $99–$299/mo + custom | Not published | $39–$1,999/mo |
| Deployment, privacy & data ownership | |||
| Native desktop app | No | No | Yes - Windows and macOS |
| Browser-based app | Yes | Yes | No |
| Local-first data storage | No - cloud SaaS | No - cloud SaaS | Yes - local database on the device |
| Works offline | No | No | Partial - local models and stored data; engine checks need the web |
| On-device AI Inference | No | No | Yes |
| Local model sizes offered | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Data export on cancellation | CSV, JSON and API anytime | Not published | CSV, PDF, DOCX exports plus full local backup |
| SOC 2 certification | None published | SOC 2 Type II | Pending |
| ISO certification | None published | Not published - GDPR stated | No |
| Local backup and restore | No | No | Yes - export and import a backup file |
| Visibility & prompt tracking | |||
| Engines tracked | 11 claimed; ~8 families, 6 per audit | 6 named; full list not published | 10; 5 of them also collected locally |
| Real consumer-surface capture | No - official APIs, interface spot-checks | Not published | Yes - 5 engines read from the device, no API |
| ChatGPT | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Claude | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gemini | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google AI Mode | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Google AI Overviews | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grok | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bing Copilot | Unclear - listed on one page only | Yes | Yes |
| DeepSeek | Yes | No | Yes |
| Meta AI | No | No | Yes |
| Tracked prompts included | 80/mo - 8 personas × 10 prompts | Not published - custom | No hard limit on any plan |
| Samples per prompt configurable | No - each prompt asked once per model | Not published | Yes |
| Run cadence options | Monthly audit; weekly or daily snapshots | Not published | Multiple times a day, weekly, monthly, and on-demand |
| On-demand run now | Partial - within plan audit limits | Not published | Yes |
| Instant one-off check | No - free tools not launched | No | Yes |
| Prompt manager | Partial - generated from personas and topics | Yes - vendor-assisted setup | Yes |
| Branded vs non-branded classification | Not published | Yes | Yes |
| Prompt categories and topics | Yes - topics per prompt | Yes - topics, personas, regions | Yes |
| Per-prompt model selection | No - set per audit | Not published | Yes |
| Brand name variant support | Not published | Yes - brands and sub-brands | Yes - secondary brand terms |
| Brand multi-domain support | Not published | Yes - uncapped | Yes - secondary owned domains |
| Suggested prompts from Google Search Console | No | No | Yes - real GSC questions |
| Suggested prompts from competitor gaps | Partial - persona and topic gaps | Partial - topic suggestions | Yes |
| Perplexity | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scoring & analysis | |||
| Mention detection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Citation detection | Yes - URL and domain | Yes - domain and page level | Yes - domain and page level |
| Sentiment scoring | Yes - $299 plan | Yes | Yes |
| Average position / rank | Yes - rank per answer | Yes | Yes |
| Share of Voice | Yes - visibility percentage | Yes | Yes |
| Share of Mentions | Yes - leaderboard mention counts | Yes - 0–100 visibility score | Yes |
| Share of Citations | Partial - source counts, no share metric | Partial - source influence share | Yes |
| Narrative drift detection | Partial - theme and sentiment over runs | Partial - sentiment and bias score | Yes - scored against a brand truth profile |
| Feature-parity / accuracy scoring | No | No - no ground-truth check | Yes |
| Untracked brand extraction | Yes - every brand in the answers | Partial - competitor ranking tables | Yes - with sentiment and average rank |
| Cited source categorization | Yes - $299 plan | Yes - media, social, review, partner | Yes - 8 source types |
| Topic-level breakdown | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Engine-level breakdown | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes - or promote any brand seen in results |
| Competitors included | Up to 30 | Not published | 15 |
| Visibility gap analysis | Yes - persona, topic and competitor | Yes - category coverage map | Yes |
| ChatGPT fan-out capture | No | Not published | Yes |
| AI Mode grounding queries capture | No | No | Yes - the live grounding searches |
| Bing Index probe | No | No | Yes |
| AI crawler access check | Yes - per URL | Yes - robots plus server logs | Yes - retrieval, live fetch and training |
| Reporting & exports | |||
| Executive dashboard | Yes | Yes - cross-brand and region | Yes |
| AI-written narrative summary | Not published | Partial - priority insight cards | Yes |
| Data export | Yes - CSV, JSON, API, share links | Not published | Yes - CSV |
| Branded PDF report | No | No | Yes |
| Scheduled email reports | Partial - run-complete emails | Not published | Yes - paid, per-user opt-in |
| Action log with export | No | No | Yes - CSV on paid managed plans |
| Historical data retention | Not published | Not published | No cap - stored on device,. Paid plans offer 400 day backup on-cloud; audio analytics 180–365 days |
| Taking action (the AEO loop) | |||
| Covers full loop: track → fix → verify → deploy | Partial - no deploy step | No - no fix or deploy step | Yes |
| Page-level AEO audit | Yes - 10–50 URLs/mo by plan | No - site-level health score | Yes |
| Scored categories | 6 named categories | 0 per page; 4 site-level issue types | 9 |
| Retrieval-readiness scoring | Partial - topics grouped by retrieval issue | No | Yes - deterministic dense retrieval |
| Evidence tiers on recommendations | No - priority ranking only | No - priority ranking only | Yes - proven, directional, best-practice |
| Element-level rewrite suggestions | Partial - page-level content plans | No - structure and tone scoring | Yes - element, character budget, before and after |
| Second-model QA pass | No | No | Yes - pass, revised or needs human review |
| Static crawler-view snapshot | Not published | No | Yes - full-page screenshot, JavaScript off |
| Audit input sources | Entered URLs + site crawl | Site crawl and server logs | Live URL, pasted text, file, WordPress, Webflow, Grav |
| Baseline vs verification re-runs | Yes - score history per page | Partial - issues-over-time chart | Yes - compares against the baseline |
| Recommendation status tracking | Not published | Not published | Yes - planned, staged, completed |
| Visibility data sets page priority | Yes - audit gaps drive recommendations | Yes | Yes - defend, recover, convert, earn |
| Search Console sets page priority | No | No | Yes - protect, balanced or expand |
| Branded audit PDF | No | n/a - no AI page audit | Yes |
| CMS integration & publishing | |||
| WordPress | No | No | Yes - official plugin, production and staging |
| Webflow | No | No | Yes - OAuth MCP, pages and collection items |
| Framer | No | No | On roadmap |
| Grav | No | No | Yes - official plugin |
| Shopify | No | No - retailer listings read only | On roadmap |
| Surgical element-level edits to live page | No | No | Yes |
| Preview before applying | No | No | Yes |
| Staging environment support | No | No | Yes - WordPress, with promote to production |
| One-click rollback | No | No | Yes - WordPress |
| Patch history per site | No | No | Yes - WordPress |
| Visual placement picker | No | No | Yes - pick the spot on the rendered page |
| Push Schema JSON-LD into page | No - flags gaps only | No | Yes - FAQPage schema |
| Publish approval gate | n/a - never publishes | n/a - never publishes | Yes - always, including scheduled runs |
| Agentic capability | |||
| Truly agentic (agent chooses its own steps) | No | No | Yes - plans and executes against the live web |
| Fixed-workflow automation only | Yes - scheduled audits only | No workflow builder either | No - workflows exist alongside the agent |
| Agents can run on local model at zero cost | No | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent panel | No | No | Yes - two extra agents, paid plans |
| Live browser view | No | No | Yes |
| Take control mid-run | No | No | Yes |
| Steer agent while running | No | No | Yes - talk to any agent mid-job |
| Background execution | Partial - audits run server-side | No | Yes - with notify on completion |
| Approval gate before real-world actions | n/a - no real-world actions | n/a - takes no actions | Yes |
| Long-running deep work jobs | No | No | Yes |
| Scheduled agent jobs | No - scheduled audits, not agents | No | Yes - daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly |
| Agent produces saved artifacts | No | No | Yes - briefs, drafts, FAQs, audits |
| Evidence capture | Partial - full audit transcripts kept | Partial - stored AI answers | Yes - screenshots and captured proof |
| Searchable job history | Partial - audit run history | No | Yes |
| Chat & assistant | |||
| Agentic chat with mid-answer tool calls | No | No | Yes |
| Model picker per conversation | No | No | Yes |
| LLM models available | n/a | n/a | 27 hosted + 3 local; any model on BYOK |
| Chat memory across conversations | No | No | Yes - semantic search over past chats |
| Live web search | No | No | Yes |
| Fetch and read URLs | Partial - audits URLs you enter | Partial - crawls your own domains | Yes |
| Semantic search over your own site | No - crawl feeds content audit only | No | Yes - on-device index |
| Topic coverage check | Yes - $299 plan | Partial - category coverage map | Yes - covered, partial or not covered |
| File attachments | No | No | Yes - txt, md, doc, docx, pdf, images |
| In-app screenshot capture | No | No | Yes - screen or window, with crop |
| Custom specialists with own tool access | No | No | Yes - plus 6 presets |
| Image generation | No | No | Yes |
| Content generation | |||
| Research-backed briefs | Yes - content plans from audit gaps | Partial - topic and structure guidance | Yes |
| Live SERP / PAA research | No | No | Yes - plus related searches and AI search snapshots |
| Full draft generation | Yes | Not published - direction, not drafts | Yes |
| Brand voice grounding | Partial - brand voice style toggle | No | Yes |
| Brand truth profile | Not published | Partial - brand facts and bias score | Yes |
| Internal linking placement | Not published | No | Yes |
| Featured image generation | No | No | Yes |
| FAQ generation with schema export | Partial - FAQ format, no schema export | No | Yes - HTML and JSON-LD |
| Key points extraction | No - key points are a manual input | No | Yes - pushable into the live pag |
| AI-tell removal pass | No | No | Yes - paid, toggleable |
| Artifact library | Partial - generated pieces stored per project | No | Yes |
| Export formats | Not published | Not published | Markdown, HTML, DOCX, PDF, TXT |
| Revise artifacts in place | Not published | No | Yes |
| Deploy directly to CMS | No - manual publish | No | Yes |
| Content repurposing / audio | |||
| Turn any page into audio | No | No | Yes - URL, pasted text or file |
| Two-voice conversation format | No | No | Yes |
| Voices | 0 | 0 | 30 |
| Languages | 0 | 0 | 24 |
| Length options | n/a | n/a | Short, standard, deep dive |
| Embeddable audio player | No | No | Yes |
| Player theming and layout | No | No | Yes - theme, layout, accent, title, transcript |
| White-label audio attribution | No | No | Yes - agency plans |
| Attribution backlink to agency | No | No | Yes - real link in page HTML |
| Listening analytics | No | No | Yes - plays, completion, listen time |
| BYOK audio generation | No | No | Yes |
| Site crawl & monitoring | |||
| Automatic site discovery | Yes - crawls the site for content gaps | Yes - multi-domain | Yes |
| Scheduled full-site crawl | Partial - monthly, $299 plan | Yes - plus AI bot logs | Yes - weekly or on demand |
| Monitored page management | Yes - audited page list with scores | Partial - domain level | Yes |
| Batched change digests | No | No | Yes |
| On-device semantic index | No | No | Yes |
| Page freshness tracking | Partial - audit score history per page | Partial - crawl frequency | Yes |
| Entity & knowledge graph | |||
| Site-wide entity graph | No | No | Yes |
| Inferred relationships | Partial - brand and attribute co-mentions | No | Yes |
| Salience scoring | Partial - theme frequency counts | No | Yes |
| Graph readable by AI agent | No | No | Yes |
| Graph export | No | No | Yes - CSV and PDF |
| Automation & workflows | |||
| Visibility-threshold triggers | No | Not published | Yes - mentions or citations, all or one topic |
| Pre-built recovery recipe | No | No | Yes - detect, locate, audit, stage a fix |
| Conditional branching | No | No | Partial - branches on whether a matching page exists |
| Scheduled content cadence | No | No | Yes - daily to monthly |
| Workflow reports | No | No | Yes - posted to the inbox |
| Alerts & inbox | |||
| Unified project inbox | No | Partial - recommendations panel | Yes |
| Native OS notifications | No | No | Yes - Windows and macOS |
| Customized notifications with severity thresholds | No | Partial - priority labels only | Yes - per project |
| Email digest | Partial - audit-complete emails | Not published | Yes |
| Teams & workspaces | |||
| Seats included | Unlimited - no per-seat fee | Not published | Unlimited on paid managed; 10 BYOK Premium, 25 BYOK Agency |
| Cost per additional seat | $0 | Not published | $0 on paid managed plans, +$7 per seat for BYOK plans |
| Shared allowance across team | Yes - allowance sits on the project | n/a - no metered allowance | Yes |
| Per-member usage visibility | Partial - usage tab, not per member | Not published | Yes |
| Multi-project workspaces | Yes | Yes - brands and regions | Yes |
| Projects included | Unlimited; each billed its own plan | Custom | 1 free, 3–10 managed, 25–unlimited agency; +$10 each |
| Archive and restore projects | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Per-project API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes - rotatable |
| SSO / SAML | Not published | Not published | Roadmap |
| Agency & white-label | |||
| White-label PDF reports | No - stated as roadmap | No | Yes - visibility report and audit |
| Custom logo, color and link | No | No | Yes |
| White-label audio player | No | No | Yes - custom attribution text and link |
| Client-facing backlink | No | No | Yes |
| Dedicated agency tier | No - partner discount on same plans | No - co-sell partner program | Yes - four tiers |
| Client sub-accounts | Yes - client workspaces, viewer role | Partial - multi-brand workspaces | No - clients are projects, no client logins |
| Integrations | |||
| Google Search Console | No | Not published | Yes - OAuth, credentials stay on device |
| Google Analytics | No | Not published | Roadmap |
| MCP connector support | Not published | No | Partial - Webflow connects over MCP |
| Public API | Yes - read-only | Not published | No - project keys for own plugins only |
| Slack | No | No | No |
| Zapier | No | No | No |
| Custom connection support | API and exports only | Partial - server log ingestion | Yes - request a connection, paid plans |
| Platform & support | |||
| UI languages | 1 (English) | 1 (English); tracks many | 6 |
| Troubleshooting and recovery tools | Not published | No | Yes |
| In-app help agent | Yes - AI chat with human handoff | No | Yes |
| Done-for-you service available | No - agency partner network | Yes - assigned AI strategist | Yes |
| Team | |||
| Founders have SEO backgrounds | No. Founded in 2025 by Todd Sawicki, previously CEO of ad platform Zemanta, and Patrick O'Donnell, previously a co-founder of Urbanspoon. | No. Founder Imri Marcus, is a serial entrepreneur with prior exits in media and AI. | Yes. Founder Sam Morris has 15+ years in SEO and software engineering. |
Which one to pick
Gumshoe suits teams that want a browser-based visibility tool with unlimited seats and up to 30 tracked competitors. BrandLight may suit Fortune 500 teams that need SOC 2 Type II certification, enterprise support, or multi-brand and regional workspaces. Neither tool publishes pricing for every use case, and BrandLight requires a demo-led sales process.
Hi, Moose fits small businesses and agencies that need to track, improve, verify, and publish work from one product. Its free-forever plan has no card requirement, and paid plans start at $39 per month with BYOK or $79 per month with AI included. Every plan supports unlimited local daily visibility runs across five engines, while users can also run models through OpenRouter or local models at no AI cost to Hi, Moose.
The product also goes beyond tracking. Hi, Moose captures AI Mode grounding queries, runs page-level AEO audits across nine scored categories, and provides evidence tiers for recommendations. Teams can review element-level edits, run a second-model QA pass, and publish approved changes to WordPress, Webflow, or Grav. WordPress users can preview edits, work in staging, promote changes to production, and roll back a patch.
Its desktop, local-first design will not fit buyers who need a browser-only SaaS product or client logins. For teams that value local storage, on-device AI, full local backups, transparent AI-credit usage, and an approval gate before publishing, Hi, Moose provides a broader working loop than either Gumshoe or BrandLight at a published entry price.
Sources and research date
Researched August 2026
Every value comes from vendor pricing pages, public docs or a live account. Where a vendor does not publish a number, the cell says not published instead of an estimate. Plans change often. If a row is wrong, tell us and we will date the correction.
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