Promptwatch vs VisiScan 2026
Promptwatch is a multi-engine visibility platform. VisiScan is a four-engine local scan at $0 / $49 / $29. Live VisiScan prices from 29 August 2026. Do not mix the $29 SKUs.
Promptwatch and VisiScan both ask whether ChatGPT named you. That is where the overlap stops. Promptwatch is a hosted visibility platform: standing prompts, citations, crawler logs, AI-referred conversions, CMS publish. VisiScan is a scanner for local businesses: five or twelve buyer questions across four engines, then a score and files to paste. Mike Holp founded it. We fetched visiscan.app, /pricing, pricing.md (verified 24 August 2026), /about, and llms.txt on 29 August 2026.
The overlap is one question, and the answer to that question is where the products diverge. Both ask whether ChatGPT named you. Promptwatch then keeps asking, every day, across many engines, and ties the answer to citations, crawls, and conversions. VisiScan asks once, across four engines, and hands you a score and some files. They are not two tiers of the same product. They are two different jobs that happen to share a first question.
If you only have budget for one, buy the job. One local URL, one afternoon: VisiScan free or $49. Ongoing AI-answer operations: Promptwatch.
Side by side
| Layer | Promptwatch | VisiScan (this listing) |
|---|---|---|
| Job | AI-answer ops | Local named-rate scan |
| Engines | ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Overviews, AI Mode, more | Four: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini |
| Free | Explore: 10 ChatGPT prompts | 5 questions, 2 samples, up to 40 answers, 1 scan per URL |
| Cheap paid | Essential $95/mo | Full report $49 one-time; Monitor $29/mo |
| Cadence | Prompt checks on the platform | One-shot, or weekly on Monitor |
| Crawlers | Agent Analytics, CDN, crawl-to-citation | Crawler access as a readiness signal |
| Traffic | Conversions via script or GTM | Monitor beacon: count AI referrers |
| Publish | Webflow, Framer; WordPress coming | Generated schema and llms.txt to paste |
| $29 plan | None | Monitor only |
Read the table row by row and the two products separate cleanly. The job row is the headline: AI-answer ops on one side, a local named-rate scan on the other. The engine row shows Promptwatch's broad set against VisiScan's four. The free row shows two different free tiers, a standing 10-prompt Explore against a one-scan free report. The cheap-paid row is where the $29 confusion lives: Promptwatch has no $29 plan, VisiScan has a $29 Monitor plan. The crawler row is the clearest split: a CDN log pipeline against a readiness signal. The publish row sets a CMS publish loop against paste-ready schema files.
VisiScan annual Monitor is $290/yr on pricing.md. Full report has a 7-day refund if it does not teach you five new things. Homepage email copy fights the $49 SKU in one block. Demo plumber names are illustrative. 328 scans / 289 index / average 25 are vendor stats.
Promptwatch: Explore $0. Essential $95 (50 prompts, 6,000 responses, 200K visitor events, 5 AEO articles). Professional $245 (25M crawler logs, 15 articles). Agency from $199. G2 4.7/5. 1,840-plus customers. No $29 brand plan. Mixing VisiScan Monitor with a fictional Promptwatch $29 tile is a category error we have already had to clean up elsewhere.
The $29 warning is the one to hold. VisiScan Monitor at $29/mo is a real plan. A Promptwatch $29 plan is not real, and we have seen the two get crossed before. The two $29 figures belong to different products, and only one of them exists.
What VisiScan wins
Speed to a local named-rate. Public methodology. Question and sample math on pricing.md, including "up to" when a provider is down. Localization from the site. Agency sharing without seats. Paste-ready schema if that was the only deliverable. Four engines on the free tier, which is more than HubSpot's grader on our listing (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini).
The wins are real and they stay inside the scan job. The public methodology, including the "up to" caveat when a provider is down, is honest about what a one-shot scan can prove. The four-engine free tier is more than the HubSpot grader has. The paste-ready schema is a deliverable a local business can use without an engineer. These are good features for a scanner, and they do not turn the scanner into a platform.
Those wins stay inside a scan. They do not add daily prompt history or Reddit citation views.
What Promptwatch wins
A standing meter. More engines on the fact sheet. Crawler logs from a CDN, not a robots.txt checkbox. Visitor conversions. Content Agents. Explore without a 1-scan-per-URL cap. Essential already includes citation analytics and visitor events, not a weekly 12-question loop.
The standing meter is the difference that compounds. A scan tells you where you sat this afternoon. A standing meter tells you where you sat this afternoon, last week, and last month, and it tells you which page earned the citation and whether the bot fetched it. The scan is a snapshot. The meter is a series, and a series is what a program needs.
$49 VisiScan is closer to a consultant PDF than to Essential. $29/mo Monitor is closer to a scheduled re-grade than to Professional at $245.
Who should pick which
Pick VisiScan if the buyer is a plumber, dentist, or local lawyer who will not sit in a GEO cockpit, and you want a named-rate this hour. Run free. Pay $49 if you need the 144-answer pack. Pay $29 only if weekly is enough.
Pick Promptwatch if the buyer is a brand or agency running AI-search as a program. Explore, then Essential, then Professional when logs matter.
Pick both if you use VisiScan as a prospecting audit and still instrument Promptwatch on the account. Do not cancel Promptwatch because a scan printed "invisible in 70%" on an illustrative plumber.
For this comparison, Promptwatch is the visibility platform. VisiScan is the local scanner. Rank them that way.