Recomma vs Ahrefs Brand Radar (2026): a market index or the questions you track

Ahrefs Brand Radar and Recomma both report how often AI answers name a brand, but they start from opposite ends. Brand Radar's centre is an index: more than 475 million prompts, modelled from Ahrefs' keyword data, run through the AI platforms and searchable for any brand with no setup, with your own tracked prompts sold beside it. Recomma tracks only the questions you choose, prices each by the search demand behind it, attaches a sample size and an error bar to every figure, and re-measures each fix fourteen days after it ships. Teams that want to map a whole market — or already live in Ahrefs — tend to fit Brand Radar; teams that need to watch a fixed set of buyer questions closely and prove what moved them tend to fit Recomma.

At a glance

The table sets the two side by side on the axes a buyer usually asks about first. Ahrefs' figures are from its pricing page and Brand Radar page, in US dollars; the pricing page shows local currency in other countries. Recomma's are from the plan table the product enforces.

An index, or the questions you track

This is the difference that matters most, and it is easy to blur. Brand Radar's AI Visibility Index takes real queries from Ahrefs' keyword database, expands them into natural questions through People Also Ask and semantic fan-out, runs the resulting prompts through each platform and stores the answers. Any brand, product or category can then be searched at once, with history back to 2025 and no domain cap. The ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot sets are re-tested monthly on a 90-day reporting window; AI Overviews and AI Mode update with the keyword database (methodology, Brand Radar FAQ).

An index answers "who does AI name across this market?" — which is a question no prompt tracker can answer, because a tracker only knows the questions you gave it. Ahrefs says so plainly in its own FAQ: the index works best for established brands and topics with meaningful search demand, and may have limited coverage for brands with little or none. For those it points to Custom Prompts, which you define and which Brand Radar runs as often as daily.

Recomma is the second kind of tool only. It does not hold a market-wide index and cannot show you a brand you have not set up. What it does with the questions you track is described below; the point here is that the two are not substitutes.

Plans and prices

Brand Radar can be bought on its own, with an Ahrefs Free account alongside. The AI Visibility Index starts at $199 a month and includes 83 prompts a day, 2,500 checks a month and all platforms, Claude included, with overage at $0.020 a check. Custom prompt packages, for teams that only want their own prompts, are $50 a month for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000 and $250 for 25,000, with overage at $0.020, $0.015 and $0.010 a check. A check is one prompt on one platform in one location at one update, and a Claude update uses eight. Every paid Ahrefs plan also includes a daily quota of tracked prompts: five on Lite ($129 a month), ten on Standard ($249) and twenty on Advanced ($449); Enterprise starts at $1,499 a month on an annual commitment (Ahrefs pricing, Brand Radar). The Brand Radar page also shows a "$699/mo for all models" label without saying which plan it describes.

Recomma sells three self-serve plans and an Enterprise tier quoted by a person. Starter is $30 a month for 50 prompts, sampled weekly, on one project. Growth is $299 for 300 prompts, sampled daily, across three projects. Scale is $999 for 500 prompts, daily, with no limit on projects or engines. Prompts pool across the workspace rather than being allotted per project. The full table is on the pricing page.

Bought by the check, Ahrefs is not expensive. Its $250 package covers about 275 prompts a day on three platforms, close to what Recomma's Growth tracks for $299; its $50 package covers about 55 prompts a day on three platforms, a little more than Recomma's Starter tracks daily for $30. The difference is not the price of an answer but what is done with the answers once they arrive — and whether you need the index, which is a further $199.

Engines, and how answers are collected

The index covers Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; Custom Prompts add Claude. Ahrefs' methodology says every index prompt runs through the free, publicly available web interfaces of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, in locations that mirror its keyword data, strongest in English (methodology). It does not say how Custom Prompts are collected, how many times each prompt is run, or whether the sessions are logged in.

Recomma captures ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and Google AI Mode from the interface a reader sees too — so on collection, the two agree where Ahrefs publishes its method — and asks Perplexity through its own API, where Ahrefs uses the web interface. Capturing matters: in our study of 100 ChatGPT questions, only 8% of the pages the interface cited appeared in the API's answer to the same question. The cost on Recomma's side is coverage: Copilot is not sampled, and Claude is not sampled at all.

What happens after the number

Brand Radar reports mentions, citations, AI share of voice and estimated impressions weighted by the search volume behind each prompt, with cited pages, AI responses, search queries and fan-out queries alongside. Around it Ahrefs adds AI traffic from Web Analytics, AI crawler visits from Bot Analytics, and YouTube, TikTok and Reddit visibility, free for Ahrefs customers while in beta (Brand Radar). Its methodology describes the metrics as "directional indicators, not exact traffic counts".

Recomma's additions are about whether a number can be trusted and acted on:

• Every figure carries the number of answers behind it and a 95% Wilson interval, and a reading too thin to mean anything is dimmed rather than drawn as a trend. Why the error bar.
• Each tracked question is priced with keyword data — monthly searches, the share of clicks a top result takes, and what advertisers bid — so you can see what the market behind a gap is worth.
• A gap becomes an action. When the action closes, the reading on its prompts is frozen, and fourteen days later the same prompts are asked again on fresh answers. The verdict is kept whether or not anything moved.
• The brand's own site is audited against fifteen markup rules that AI crawlers trip on, with each failing page's markup as it is and as it should be. The checklist lists all fifteen.
• Visits that assistants send to the site are reported beside the answers that sent them.

API, MCP and exports

Ahrefs lists API and MCP access on Lite and above, with uncapped API access on Enterprise (pricing). Its MCP server has two Brand Radar tool groups, at domain and at entity level, and a management group that covers "Brand Radar configuration" (MCP tool categories). Ahrefs does not publish whether those writes are previewed before they apply. Letaido, Ahrefs' automation layer, adds bulk prompt creation, scheduled reports and custom dashboards on top.

Recomma's read-only REST API comes with Scale; CSV export comes with every plan. Its MCP server, also on every plan, reads and writes: an assistant can list the gaps, read the site findings with their before-and-after markup, propose new prompts and close an action. Every write previews first, needs a separate write scope, and new prompts land as suggestions that spend nothing until a person accepts them. Fixing what AI search gets wrong, from Claude Code walks through it.

Where Ahrefs is the better choice

• Market-wide view. An index of 475M+ prompts you can search for any brand, with history back to 2025 and no setup. Recomma only knows the prompts you track.
• Engine breadth. Copilot in the index, Perplexity read from its web interface, and Claude on custom prompts. Recomma tracks five, with Perplexity asked through its API.
• Price per answer. Checks from $0.010 to $0.020, and a $50 package that tracks more prompts than Recomma's Starter.
• Flexible cadence. Daily, weekly or monthly, chosen per platform, on every package.
• One suite. Keyword data, rank tracking, site audit, web and bot analytics and an MCP server in the same account — and a few tracked prompts free on every paid plan.
• Track record. Ahrefs is long established, used by 3,000+ companies for Brand Radar by its own count; Recomma is new and has no third-party reviews yet.

Where Recomma is the better choice

• Numbers you can defend. A sample size and confidence interval on every figure, so a change that is noise is shown as noise; Ahrefs calls its own metrics directional.
• Proof that a fix worked. Actions re-measured fourteen days after they close, against a frozen baseline.
• What the gaps are worth. Every prompt shows the priced demand behind it, so a gap comes with a market size, not only a count.
• A site audit aimed at AI crawlers. Fifteen markup rules, with each failing page's markup as it is and as it should be.
• An assistant that can act. An MCP server that writes as well as reads, behind a preview and a separate scope.
• A single price that includes the work. $299 for 300 daily prompts, intervals, re-measurement and audit included, rather than checks plus a suite.

Choose Ahrefs if… choose Recomma if…

Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar if you want to see share of voice across a whole market, including brands you have never set up; you need Copilot or Claude, or Perplexity as its interface shows it; you already pay for Ahrefs and want AI visibility in the same place; or you want to buy tracked answers by the check and choose the cadence per platform.

Choose Recomma if ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and Google AI Mode and Perplexity cover the engines your buyers use; you track a defined set of buyer questions and have to show which changes moved them, with the error bar to back it; you want to see what the market behind each gap is worth; or you work from an AI assistant and want it to fix the site, not only read a report.

Many teams will reasonably run both: the index to find where a market is talking, a tracker to work on the questions that matter. For the same comparison against other tools, see Recomma vs Semrush, Recomma vs Peec AI and Recomma vs Otterly.AI; for the whole field, the best AI visibility tools.

How we compared

Ahrefs' plans, prices, engines and collection method were read from its public pricing page, Brand Radar page, Brand Radar methodology (updated 26 February 2026) and MCP documentation on 14 October 2026, in US dollars. Where Ahrefs does not publish something — how custom prompts are collected, how many times a prompt is run, whether MCP writes are previewed, a trial — the page says so rather than guessing. Third-party review scores were left out because they could not be checked at the source. Recomma's figures are drawn from the same plan table its API enforces, so they change on this page when they change in the product.