HubSpot AEO Grader: what it checks and alternatives
·6 min read
HubSpot's AEO Grader, now called AI Search Grader, is a no-cost, one-time check of what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about a brand. You enter a company name, location, products and industry, and in under two minutes it returns a score out of 100 with a breakdown and a written interpretation. Sentiment makes up 40 points of that score. HubSpot's page describes no check of your website itself, and says the answers come from the models' training data. To see whether AI answers name and cite you today, use a tool that searches the web and shows each answer, such as HubSpot's paid AEO at $50 a month or a per-run check.
HubSpot's old /aeo-grader address now redirects to the AI Search Grader page, and its AEO product page still uses the old name. They are the same tool. Facts and prices here come from HubSpot's own pages as of October 2026.
What the HubSpot AEO Grader checks
The grader asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini about the brand you describe, then scores their answers. It needs four inputs, all required: company name, location, products or services, and industry. It accepts any brand, so you can grade a competitor too.
HubSpot's FAQ names GPT-5.4 mini as the OpenAI model, which may not be the model your buyers get in ChatGPT. The page says there is no cost to run it and no account is required, but the full report sits behind a short contact form.
How the AI Search Grader score is calculated
The score is out of 100 and splits into five parts, per HubSpot's page.
| Part | Points | What HubSpot says it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | 40 | General, contextual and source-based sentiment |
| Presence quality | 20 | Mention depth, source quality and data richness |
| Brand recognition | 20 | Whether the models know the brand |
| Share of voice | 10 | Estimated share of the category, plus a rank bonus |
| Market competition | 10 | Leader, challenger or niche player, and similar labels |
Sentiment is the largest part, and it is one model grading another model's text. A well-known brand with friendly coverage scores high even if no answer would recommend it for the question a buyer asks. Our guide to measuring AI visibility explains why mention rate and citations say more.
What the grader doesn't tell you
The grader page says all three engines answer from their training data, while HubSpot's AEO page says Perplexity uses live search. Either way, answers from training data show what a model learned before its cutoff. They don't show which pages it would cite today, because citations come from a live web search. How ChatGPT search works covers the difference.
HubSpot's page doesn't say the report lists the URLs the answers cite, and it describes no crawl, robots.txt test or structured data check of your site. The page does promise "a full AEO and SEO report", but the only method it describes is asking the three models. And it is a one-time check, so you can't see whether the score moves after you change your pages.
HubSpot AEO, the paid version
HubSpot's paid Answer Engine Optimization software, marked beta, is the grader's tracking version. It costs $50 a month, or $45 a month billed annually, and HubSpot says no other HubSpot subscription is needed. Each brand needs its own $50 instance. There is a 28-day trial with no credit card, per HubSpot's knowledge base.
| Plan | Prompts a day | Answers a month | Engines |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AEO, and its trial | 25 | 2,500 | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Marketing Hub Professional | 25 | 2,500 | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Marketing Hub Enterprise | 50 | 5,000 | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
It reports brand visibility updated daily, sentiment from -100 to +100, share of voice against competitors, the exact answer from each engine, and citation analysis that includes which of your own pages get cited. You can buy more prompts, though the pages we read don't give the price. Blog post drafts and prompt suggestions from your CRM come only with Marketing Hub. It doesn't cover Google AI Overviews, Claude or Copilot.
$50 a month is a low entry price for daily tracking, though 25 prompts is a small set, and SE Ranking's SE Visible tracks 200 for $99. Our roundup of LLM visibility tools covers what to ask any tracker before you pay, and our AI visibility tools roundup compares their prices.
HubSpot AEO Grader alternatives
These alternatives check different things, so pick by the question you want answered. Prices are as of October 2026.
| Tool | Price | What it checks | Engines |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | No charge, one time | A brand score from model answers | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini |
| Mangools AI Search Grader | No charge, limited uses | How often a brand appears across prompts it writes, and its average rank | ChatGPT, Mistral and Llama; DeepSeek, Claude and Gemini when signed in |
| Semrush AI Visibility Checker | No charge, 3 a day | A visibility score, mentions, citations and top cited pages for a domain | ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews |
| Ahrefs AI Visibility Checker | No charge, no signup | Mentions, top 5 topics, cited domains and cited pages | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews |
| HubSpot AEO | $50 a month | 25 prompts run daily, with answers and citations | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity |
| seogeoaeo.ai Brand Narrative Check | 150 credits a run | What each engine says the brand is, checked against your home page | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, with web search |
| seogeoaeo.ai website check | Home page preview at no credit cost | Whether your site is ready for AI crawlers and answers | Your own site |
Mangools comes closest to HubSpot's grader in spirit. You give it a brand and a short description of your niche, it writes the prompts, and it returns a 0 to 100 AI Search Score in under a minute. Semrush and Ahrefs start from a domain or brand and draw on prompts they collect, so they show citations and cited pages that a grader can't.
When the HubSpot grader is enough
The grader is enough for a first look. If you want to know whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini recognize your brand at all, and whether their tone is friendly, two minutes and a contact form will tell you. Run it for one competitor too, so the number has something to compare against.
It isn't enough once you start changing pages. You'll need to see which questions name you, which pages get cited and whether that changes after you publish, and a one-time score from training data can't show any of it.
Check your brand and your site with live answers
Our Brand Narrative Check does the job HubSpot's grader describes, with web search on. It asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini what your brand is and reports recognition, descriptions, tone, strengths, weaknesses, the alternatives each engine names and the sources it cites. Anything that conflicts with your home page is quoted as evidence for you to review. A run costs 150 credits.
To see whether a buyer's question names you, AI Answer Visibility asks the same three engines one question with web search on. For each engine it reports whether the answer names your brand and in what place, whether it cites your site and which URLs, plus the full answer. A run costs 120 credits.
For the site itself, our website check runs crawling and indexing, on-page SEO, structured data and content checks. You get one fix list sorted by priority and 0 to 100 scores for SEO readiness, AEO readiness and AI access. It costs 67 credits for one page and 47 for each extra page, and a quick preview of your home page costs no credits and takes about 20 seconds.
Plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits. None of these tools track answers over time, so for daily tracking HubSpot's paid AEO is the cheaper fit.