HubSpot's free brand-visibility diagnostic was originally launched as the AI Search Grader and was rebranded to the AEO Grader (Answer Engine Optimization Grader) at some point in 2026 — the URL hubspot.com/ai-search-grader now redirects to hubspot.com/aeo-grader.

The Grader is a single-pass diagnostic. A user enters company name, location, product or service description and industry; the tool runs dozens of test queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, scores the brand across five dimensions, and returns a written interpretation with a composite score out of 100. It's free, requires no account, and finishes in 3–5 minutes.

For directory readers, the Grader is the right starting point if you've never measured AI visibility before. It's not a replacement for Profound, Peec AI or Otterly — those are continuous tracking platforms. It is the cleanest way to answer the simple question "does ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini even know who my brand is?" before deciding whether to buy a paid tool.

(There's also a paid sibling — HubSpot AEO, $50/month — that offers continuous tracking. We treat that as a separate product below.)

What it does well

The Grader's strongest asset is the simplicity of the input and the clarity of the output. Where most paid GEO platforms ask the buyer to design their own prompt portfolio before any data lands, the Grader runs an automatic test set based on the brand description and returns:

A composite score out of 100 — easy to share with a CMO or stakeholder.
Five scored dimensions: Sentiment Analysis (weighted up to 40 points), Presence Quality, Brand Recognition, Share of Voice, and Market Position. The five-dimension scoring is the most pedagogically useful framework in the directory for explaining what AI visibility actually means to non-specialists.
Written interpretation of the results — not just numbers. The narrative explanation is genuinely useful for category newcomers.
Source quality breakdown showing which third-party domains the engines drew from when characterizing the brand.

A handful of operator reviews (Almcorp, Stackmatix, Vantage Point, Trooinbound) note that the Grader's output is meaningfully more usable than most "free SEO audit" tools — partly because HubSpot has invested in making the report readable to a marketing leader, not just a practitioner.

The price ceiling is the obvious differentiator: $0. There is no credit card requirement, no account creation, and no usage cap on how many brands a user can grade.

What it doesn't

The biggest limitation is that the Grader is a one-shot snapshot, not a tracker. Every time you run it, you get a fresh score. There is no prompt history, no week-over-week trend, no alerting on changes, no competitor benchmarking surface, and no ability to track custom prompts your buyers are actually asking. For any team that needs to answer "is our visibility improving?" over time, the free Grader is a starting point, not the working tool.

Engine coverage is limited to three engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Claude, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, DeepSeek and Meta AI are not covered.

The five-dimension score is interpretive. Different runs of the same brand can produce slightly different scores, because LLM outputs are stochastic — the Grader compensates for this by averaging across dozens of test queries, but buyers should treat the score as directional rather than precise. The HubSpot disclaimer below the form is unusually candid: "These recommendations are generated by an AI tool and have not been reviewed by a human being, results are not guaranteed and not a substitute for professional advice."

The Grader is also a marketing surface for the broader HubSpot ecosystem. The output naturally pushes the user toward HubSpot AEO, the $50/month paid product that adds continuous tracking. That's a fair commercial outcome — HubSpot is paying to maintain the free tool — but buyers should know they're being funneled toward a HubSpot product rather than getting an unbiased recommendation across the GEO category.

For brands that aren't already in the HubSpot ecosystem, the paid HubSpot AEO upsell is also less attractive than category-native tools. The product depth, while reasonable, is less developed than Otterly at $29–$489/month, Peec AI at $95+, or Profound at the enterprise tier.

Who should use it

The free AEO Grader is the right starting point for:

Anyone who has never measured AI visibility before. Run it on your own brand. The five-dimension breakdown and written interpretation are the cleanest "what does GEO even mean for my company" introduction in the directory.
Marketing leaders presenting AI visibility to a CMO or board. A composite score out of 100 with a sentiment breakdown is meaningfully more communicable than a paid tool's exhaustive dashboards.
Solo founders, content creators and bootstrapped brands who can't yet justify $29–$500/month for continuous tracking. The Grader establishes a baseline.
Agencies running prospect audits. Run the Grader on a target brand before a sales conversation; the report is concrete enough to support a paid engagement pitch.
Anyone deciding whether to buy a paid GEO tool. The Grader's output tells you whether you have a real visibility problem worth measuring continuously.

Who should skip it

The Grader is the wrong tool when:

You need continuous tracking. It's a snapshot, not a monitor. Use Otterly Lite ($29/month), Peec AI Starter ($95/month) or HubSpot AEO ($50/month) for ongoing visibility.
You need to track Claude, Grok, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode, DeepSeek or Meta AI. None are covered. Profound and Peec AI Enterprise are the alternatives for broader engine coverage.
You need custom prompts — questions your specific buyers are asking that the Grader's automatic test set won't catch. Every paid platform in the directory supports custom prompts; the Grader does not.
You need competitor benchmarking, alerting, or historical data. All require a paid tool.
You're a HubSpot customer ready to add continuous AI visibility to your existing stack. Skip directly to HubSpot AEO ($50/month, 28-day free trial with 25 prompts) — the Grader is the front door, not the destination.

Pricing

The AEO Grader is verified to be free as of May 5, 2026. There is no paywall, no account requirement and no run cap; HubSpot operates the tool as a top-of-funnel marketing asset for its broader product line.

The natural upsell path is HubSpot AEO, the company's paid continuous-monitoring product:

Free 28-day trial including 25 prompts tracked across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with no credit card required.
Paid plan starting at $50/month for ongoing tracking with prompt-level visibility, competitor comparison, citation analysis and prioritized recommendations connected to HubSpot's CRM, marketing and content tools.

HubSpot has reported that AEO beta customers prioritizing answer engines saw AI referral traffic grow 20% compared with non-users — though that's a vendor-published claim and should be weighted accordingly.

Models monitored

The Grader currently runs test queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Claude, Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek and Meta AI are not included.

HubSpot AEO Grader