Cognizo vs Otterly AI: Price, Engines, Metrics and Fit in 2026

For anyone weighing Cognizo vs Otterly AI, the main split is a managed program versus a self-serve monitor. Cognizo starts at $499 a month through a sales demo, tracks 150 prompts on five engines you choose, and includes a content agent and a customer success partner. OtterlyAI starts at $29 a month with a seven-day free trial, includes four engines with three more as paid add-ons, and pairs daily tracking with audits and recommendations.

This comparison uses each company's pricing, documentation, help and blog pages, with prices and features as published in October 2026. Prime AI Visibility publishes this site, competes with both, and appears later with its own limitations.

Cognizo vs Otterly AI: the short answer

• Choose Cognizo if you want more prompts and engines from the first plan, a content agent that writes and publishes, AI crawler and referral data on every plan, and a customer success partner with scheduled strategy reviews.
• Choose OtterlyAI if you want published prices from $29, a trial without a card, and monitoring with audits and recommendations, adding engines one at a time and writing content yourself.
• On Claude and Google AI Mode: Cognizo lists both only on Enterprise. Otterly sells both as paid add-ons from its entry plan.
• On data collection: Otterly says it reads answers from each platform's public website, except Claude, which it reads through an API. Cognizo's documentation describes scheduled runs without saying which interface it uses.
• On metrics: both publish formulas. Visibility and share of voice line up; sentiment and position are measured on different scales and cannot be compared directly.

Who the two companies are

Cognizo. Cognizo is a New York company founded by Deniz Özcan, its CEO, and Alp Aysan. Dealroom reported in March 2026 that it raised $1.8 million led by Galata Business Angels and that it was commercialised in spring 2025. It describes itself as an answer engine optimization (AEO) platform: visibility tracking, prompt volumes, AI traffic analytics, an ad library, and a content agent that writes and publishes. It also runs an agency partner program.

OtterlyAI. OtterlyAI, also written Otterly.AI, is based in Vienna, Austria, and was founded by Thomas Peham, its CEO, Josef Trauner and Klaus-M. Schremser. Its About page says 40,000 marketing professionals were using the product by August 2026, which is the company's own figure, and that Gartner named it a 2025 Cool Vendor in AI in Marketing. In December 2024, TechCrunch reported that Otterly was leaving stealth after passing 1,000 users and quoted Peham saying the company would not seek external funding.

If the category is new to you, start with our explainer on what these tools measure.

Cognizo vs Otterly AI on the same checks

Each row applies the same check to both vendors, using each vendor's pricing page. Where a cell has two or three figures, they are the paid plans in order.

Check	Cognizo	Otterly
Entry price	$499/mo	$29/mo
Other plans	$999/mo	$189, $489
Free option	Demo only	7-day trial
Prompts	150 / 350	15 to 400
Engines	5 of 6	4 plus 3
Claude	Enterprise	Add-on
AI Mode	Enterprise	Add-on
Cadence	Daily	Daily
Seats	No cap	No cap
Articles	8 / 20	None
Crawler data	All plans	From $189
API and MCP	All plans	From $189
Named helper	Every plan	Enterprise
SOC 2	In progress	Roadmap

Notes:

• Cognizo's engines. Growth and Pro each let you choose five platforms from ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Grok. Enterprise lists ten: those six plus Google AI Mode, Meta AI, Claude and DeepSeek.
• Cognizo's capacity. Growth lists 22,500 responses analyzed a month and Pro 52,500. Both equal one response per prompt, per platform, per day over a 30-day month (150 × 5 × 30 and 350 × 5 × 30), so ask whether any prompt runs more than once a day.
• Cognizo's other inclusions. Every plan lists unlimited regions, languages and competitors, prompt volumes, crawler analytics and AI referral traffic for one domain, exports, reports, and MCP and API access. Strategy reviews are quarterly on Growth and monthly on Pro. ChatGPT Shopping, the ad library, managed services and SSO carry a different mark in the Growth and Pro columns than in Enterprise, so confirm which plan includes them.
• OtterlyAI's plans. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts, Standard $189 for 100 and Premium $489 for 400, or $25, $160 and $422 a month billed annually. Enterprise is custom from 1,000 prompts and adds SSO and a dedicated customer success manager. Every plan includes ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Google AI Mode and Gemini cost $9, $59 or $149 a month each on Lite, Standard and Premium, Claude costs $29, $109 or $439, and extra prompts cost $99 per 100.
• OtterlyAI by plan. Lite includes three recommendations a week; Standard adds unlimited recommendations and workspaces, API and MCP access, and Agent Analytics. The trial lasts seven days without a card and includes 50 prompts, according to Otterly's help centre.

Otterly's own pages vary on engine count: its features page says it tracks "all 7 major AI search engines", while its pricing page includes four and sells three as add-ons. Cognizo's blog posts describe its coverage as up to nine or up to ten engines, and its Enterprise column lists ten. Ask each vendor which engines your contract covers.

Methodology note: this is a comparison of public specifications, not measured product performance. It draws on each company's pricing, documentation, help and blog pages plus independent press coverage, and where a vendor's own pages disagree, both figures are reported. Affiliation: Prime AI Visibility competes with both vendors, and it has a commercial relationship with Percepture and Pyra, which appear near the end.

How each tool collects AI answers

The collection method decides what a score can tell you, so settle it before comparing numbers.

OtterlyAI's help centre says it posts prompts through each AI platform's public website, such as chatgpt.com, rather than through APIs, as a neutral, non-personalized user. It monitors every prompt daily and queries each prompt from the country you assign to it. It adds one exception: "we only use API for Claude tracking."

Cognizo's metrics guide says "every tracked prompt is run against AI providers on a schedule", each answer is parsed for brand mentions, and every metric is an aggregation over those runs. Its pricing FAQ adds that it runs prompts on each platform "continuously to collect millions of responses daily". The guide does not say whether answers come from the consumer apps or from the providers' APIs.

In our judgement, this is the first question for a Cognizo demo. An answer captured from a live app includes the web search, citations and regional differences a buyer sees; an API answer can name different brands and sources. Ask Cognizo to show one raw answer with its cited links for a prompt you supply. If Claude matters to you, ask Otterly how its API-based Claude answers differ from the Claude app.

What the numbers mean: a metric formula crosswalk

This table and the claim check further down are the original analysis in this comparison. Both vendors publish formulas for their headline metrics: Cognizo in its API metrics guide, and Otterly in a help-centre page of KPI definitions dated October 5, 2026. Similar names do not always mean the same measure.

Metric	Cognizo	Otterly
Visibility	% of runs naming you	% of prompts naming you
Share of voice	% of brand mentions	% of brand mentions
Sentiment	Average, 1 to 100	Net score, −100 to 100
Position	First, middle, last	Average position
Citations	Citation share	Count and coverage
Demand	Prompt volume	Intent score

Notes:

• Visibility. Cognizo's visibility is the share of a brand's runs in which it appeared. Otterly calls the same idea Brand Coverage: prompts that mention you divided by all prompts, counted per prompt, engine and day. Otterly leaves out Google AI Overviews runs where no overview appeared; Cognizo's guide does not say how it treats them, so ask.
• Share of voice. Both divide your brand mentions by all brand mentions. Otterly counts a brand once per answer even when it is named twice; Cognizo's guide does not say how repeat mentions in one answer are counted.
• Sentiment. The scales differ. Cognizo reports an average score from 1 to 100 and leaves the value empty when nothing was scored, which it says is not the same as neutral. Otterly reports a Net Sentiment Score: positive mentions minus negative mentions, divided by all mentions, times 100. If 10 mentions are 7 positive, 1 negative and 2 neutral, Otterly's score is +60. A 60 from Cognizo is a different statement.
• Position. Cognizo reports the percentage of runs in which a brand appears first, in the middle or last. Otterly reports the average position across answers that name the brand. The two cannot be converted into each other.
• Otterly's Brand Visibility Index. Cognizo's May 2026 roundup calls it a single score that combines coverage and position. Otterly's KPI page defines it as a chart of the top ten brands, with Brand Coverage on one axis and a "Likelihood to Buy" value on the other, calculated as 10 + ((5 − average position) ÷ 4) × 90, with a 10% floor. A brand in first place scores 100% and one in second place 77.5%. In our judgement, despite its label, that axis is a rescaled average position, not a measure of purchase intent.
• Citations. Cognizo reports your share of the citations in scope, plus mention share and the most-cited domains and pages. Otterly reports domain citation counts, Domain Coverage (the percentage of prompts that cite your domain) and a domain ranking, with daily changes in link position.
• Demand. Cognizo attaches an estimated search volume to each prompt, with a bucketed range, and leaves it empty where no estimate exists. Otterly's Prompt Research attaches an Estimated Intent Score, which Otterly says it built because "OpenAI doesn't disclose Prompt Volume data directly". Both are estimates, not counts of questions asked.

In our judgement, a 40% visibility score from one tool equals 40% from the other only when the prompts, engines, markets and run counts are the same. Prime AI uses its own four measures, each defined on the metrics page, and they are not interchangeable with either vendor's scores.

The five AI visibility signals

Each signal moves on its own, so check which product reports which:

1. Mention (the answer names the brand): both, through visibility or Brand Coverage and share of voice.
2. Citation (the answer links your site or a source about you): both, through citation share at Cognizo and domain citations and Domain Coverage at Otterly.
3. Recommendation (the answer suggests your brand over others): both report position and sentiment, and Otterly's sentiment feature asks whether a brand is "recommended enthusiastically, mentioned with caveats, or dismissed outright". Neither published formula records an explicit recommendation, so read the answer text.
4. Referral (someone clicks through to your site): Cognizo lists AI referral traffic and crawler analytics for one domain on every plan. Otterly's Agent Analytics, from the Standard plan, lists AI referral tracking alongside crawler data.
5. Conversion (the visit becomes a lead or sale): Cognizo's free audit returns a revenue-opportunity forecast, which is a model rather than measured conversions. Otterly's Agent Analytics launch post lists connecting AI referral traffic "all the way to signups and revenue" as a next step. Confirm what reaches your CRM with either tool.

Content, agents and ads

This is where the two products differ most.

Cognizo. Every plan includes a content agent with auto-publishing, at eight AI-optimized articles a month on Growth and 20 on Pro. The plan table also marks on-page and off-page actions, outreach targets, content refreshes, social media and PR suggestions and technical site audits on every plan. Enterprise adds custom agents, managed services and a dedicated AI search strategist. Cognizo also sells AI Ads features, including an ad library, and its API returns the advertisers and creatives that appear on your prompts.

OtterlyAI. Otterly diagnoses and recommends rather than writing inside the product. Every plan includes crawlability checks, content audits, GEO URL audits (1,000 a month on Lite, 5,000 on Standard and 10,000 on Premium) and recommendations, and the features page lists content briefs. In June 2026 it launched a public API, a Claude Skill and a Marketplace of more than 100 workflows, and it now lists an MCP server. A separate free tools site includes a content creator. Otterly also tracks ads and shopping cards in ChatGPT and Google ads inside AI Overviews.

In our judgement, the split is about who writes and who advises. Cognizo bundles content production and a person to review strategy with you. Otterly tells your team what to fix and leaves the writing to people or to workflows you run elsewhere. With Cognizo, decide who checks facts before anything auto-publishes. Our Cognizo vs Orchly comparison sets Cognizo's content agent beside another tool that writes.

Claim check: what Cognizo's blog says about Otterly

Neither vendor publishes a dedicated page about the other: Otterly's alternatives hub lists nine head-to-head pages, none about Cognizo. But four Cognizo blog roundups, written by its CEO between April and May 2026, describe Otterly. The table checks those claims against Otterly's own pricing, help and features pages.

Cognizo's claim	Post	Otterly's page says
$29, $189, $489 plans	Apr 2	Matches
14-day free trial	Apr 2	7 days
Up to 4 engines	Apr 2	4 plus 3
AI Mode on Enterprise only	Apr 16	Add-on from $9
No source citations	Apr 16	Listed
Six engines	May 7	4 plus 3
ChatGPT on every plan	May 7	Matches
No fix advice	May 7	Listed
No prompt volumes	May 7	Intent score
Citation analysis	May 20	Matches

Notes, row by row:

• 14-day free trial. Otterly's help centre, updated August 4, 2026, describes a seven-day trial without a card. Cognizo's figure may describe an earlier offer.
• Up to 4 engines and Six engines. Cognizo's posts disagree with each other. Otterly includes four engines on every plan and sells Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude as add-ons, so the count depends on what you buy.
• AI Mode on Enterprise only. Otterly's pricing page sells Google AI Mode as an add-on at $9 a month on Lite, $59 on Standard and $149 on Premium.
• No source citations. Cognizo's April 16 post says Otterly has no citation analysis at the source level. Otterly's pricing and features pages list citation source tracking, and its KPI page defines domain citation metrics. Cognizo's own May 20 post credits Otterly with citation analysis.
• No fix advice. Cognizo's May 7 post says Otterly has "no content studio or recommendation engine". Otterly's pricing page lists recommendations on every plan: three a week on Lite and unlimited from Standard. Cognizo's narrower point holds: Otterly does not write or publish content in its core product.
• No prompt volumes. Otterly offers an Estimated Intent Score instead of volumes, so the claim holds in substance.

Most of Cognizo's pricing claims hold; its feature claims lag Otterly's current pages. Plans change quickly, so treat this check, and any vendor's comparison including this one, as a list of points to confirm in a demo or trial.

A side-by-side evaluation plan

Otterly's trial makes a parallel test practical; Cognizo needs a demo first. A fair Cognizo vs Otterly AI test keeps the inputs identical:

1. Write your prompts first. List 20 to 50 buyer questions, so the set fits Otterly's 50-prompt trial, and keep the exact text outside both tools.
2. Fix the engines. Use ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, which every Otterly plan includes and which fall within Cognizo's choice of five.
3. Fix the market. Set the same country and language in both.
4. Ask for raw answers. Request five full answers with cited URLs from each tool for the same prompts and save them.
5. Compare like with like. Set Cognizo's visibility beside Otterly's Brand Coverage, and do not compare sentiment or position figures across the two tools.
6. Test variance. Note how far each score moves over a week for the same prompts.
7. Price your real plan. At Otterly, five engines on Standard means the $189 plan plus a $59 Gemini add-on, $248 a month for 100 prompts; Cognizo Growth includes five chosen engines at $499 for 150 prompts, with the content agent and success partner. The bundles differ, so price the work you need.
8. Ask for security documents. Cognizo says its SOC 2 Type II audit is in progress, and Otterly's help centre says its audit is on the roadmap without a date.

The guide on how to choose an AI visibility tool explains each evaluation axis in more depth.

Who each tool fits

Cognizo is a likely fit for:

• Mid-market and enterprise teams that want a success partner and strategy reviews included rather than bought separately.
• Teams that want a content agent to write and publish from the same data, with someone checking facts before release.
• Teams that need Microsoft Copilot or Grok, many markets and languages, and crawler and referral data from the entry plan.

OtterlyAI is a likely fit for:

• Solo marketers and small teams that want published prices from $29 a month and a trial without a card.
• Teams that need Claude or Google AI Mode without an Enterprise contract.
• Agencies that want unlimited workspaces and the agency partner program, which raises Standard to 150 prompts and Premium to 500, and teams that prefer to write content themselves.

Weaker fit for either: teams that only need saved evidence for a small set of buyer questions and do not plan to use agents, audits or traffic analytics. For a wider shortlist, see our guide to AI visibility tools for B2B companies, or our Profound vs Otterly AI comparison, which sets Otterly beside an enterprise platform.

Where Prime AI Visibility fits

Prime AI Visibility is an AI visibility tracker for teams that want to run a smaller set of saved buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and an AI Overview-style preview, then read every saved answer with the brands named and the links shown. It reports Brand named, Website cited, Source links and Explicit recommendation, each defined on the metrics page linked above.

The Prime AI Visibility features include an AI Search Predictor that finds questions worth pursuing and a Content Studio that drafts source-enriched pages as files, with nothing published without approval. Flash is free each month for five questions across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, with up to 15 answers and no card. Starter is $69 a month for all five, and the pricing page lists every plan.

Limitations: Prime AI does not report sentiment, rank, AI crawler visits, traffic or conversions, so referral and conversion data must come from your analytics. It has no prompt-volume data, no auto-publishing and no ad tracking. It checks monthly by default, with weekly, temporary daily and on-demand checks on paid plans, and does not track Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI or Google AI Mode. PyraBuilds' Prime AI agent profile describes the product in Pyra's agent catalogue.

When the next job is implementation

An AI visibility tool, whether Cognizo, OtterlyAI or another, shows where a brand stands and suggests or drafts fixes. Earning coverage on the publications, forums and review sites that answers cite, and fixing technical problems across a site, is still work for people.

If you want a partner for that work, Percepture, founded in 2004 and Inc. 5000-recognized, offers generative engine optimization services and, for site-wide technical work, enterprise SEO services. Fit: a team that wants SEO, GEO, digital PR and content aimed at the sources AI answers cite, done by people. Limitation: Percepture is a services firm, not a tracking platform, so it pairs with a tool rather than replacing one. Prime AI has a commercial relationship with Percepture.

Teams that like running workflows outside the dashboard, as Otterly's Marketplace does, can also look at Pyra's AI agents for marketing and sales, which include human-approved content operations agents. Pyra is also commercially connected to Prime AI.