Unsourced vs Ahrefs Brand Radar
Updated 2026-06-26 · maintained by Unsourced
Ahrefs earned its name on rigorous, search-backed data, and Brand Radar carries that reputation into AI search: it measures your share of AI visibility and how it trends over time, grounded in real searches rather than invented prompts. That grounding is a genuine strength. So this comparison is not about whether the data is serious — it is about what the data is. Brand Radar gives you a visibility share and a trend line. Unsourced gives you the answer that moved it, the verified crawl behind it, and proof that a fix worked. Here is where the two diverge.
An estimate from sampled prompts. Cited in which answer? By whom? Did an AI actually read your page? The number can’t say — so when it moves, you’re guessing why.
The actual answer, the verified fetch behind it, and the exact topic where a competitor won instead — open it, check it, act on it.
A visibility share, and what a share leaves unsaid
Brand Radar's approach is to quantify how present you are across AI answers and chart that share against competitors over time. For tracking a trend and comparing brands at a glance, a visibility share is a clean, defensible metric, and Ahrefs' search-backed prompts make it more grounded than a generic prompt list. But a share is still an aggregate: it can tell you that your presence dipped without telling you which answer you lost, who was cited instead, or whether an AI fetched your live page for that answer at all.
Unsourced works underneath the share. It surfaces the individual answer where a competitor was cited over you, the question that produced it, and the verified crawl that confirms whether the model actually read your page — the specifics a trend line necessarily smooths away.
Where Unsourced goes a layer deeper than a trend
- The answer behind the dip. Open the exact AI response and question where a rival was named instead of you, not a moved percentage point.
- A crawl you can trust. Bot Trust checks each crawler against the operator's published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS, labelling it Verified, Impostor or Unverifiable.
- Proof, not just a trend. Mark a gap actioned and Unsourced re-checks that exact topic about a week later, confirming a citation only when the evidence appears.
Enterprise-tier coverage, or a focused tool at an independent price
The clearest practical difference is price and shape. As published at the time of writing, Ahrefs Brand Radar starts from a $129-a-month Lite plan, with the AI platform indexes at $199 a month each or about $828 a month to monitor your brand across all six — an investment built for established marketing teams. Unsourced is a standalone, self-serve tool at £39 a month with a 10-day free trial and no card. If you want a broad visibility index with deep historical trends, Brand Radar is built for that; if you want the evidence under the trend on a plan an independent can start alone, that is Unsourced.
Unsourced and Ahrefs Brand Radar, point by point
| Unsourced | Ahrefs Brand Radar | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From £39/mo — Studio £89, Agency £199; all flat, self-serve, free trial | Lite from $129/mo; AI indexes $199/mo each, ~$828/mo for all six platforms |
| Core output | The cited answer plus the verified crawl behind it | AI visibility share with historical trend data |
| Verified crawler identity | Yes — published IP ranges + reverse DNS (Verified / Impostor / Unverifiable) | Not stated |
| Live crawl vs training data | Yes — Origin Signal separates a live fetch from old training data | Not stated |
| Where the prompts come from | The searches you already rank for in Google and Bing | Search-backed prompts |
| Proof a fix worked | Re-checks the exact topic, confirms a citation only on evidence | Tracked via the historical visibility trend |
| Exportable client reports | AI Visibility Audit + Evidence Report PDFs | Dashboard reporting and exports |
The Ahrefs Brand Radar column is drawn from Ahrefs’s own published information and was accurate at the time of writing; “not stated” means the company does not publish that detail. Pricing and features change — see the source link below.
The number most visibility tools never check
Brand Radar reports your share of AI visibility and how it trends. A visibility share still can't tell you whether the crawler behind a given mention was genuinely the AI it claimed to be — and that gap is bigger than most dashboards admit.
In a two-week study, Human Security found 5.7% of traffic claiming to be a well-known AI crawler was fake, and DataDome reports the same agents are routinely impersonated. A tool that trusts the user-agent counts those spoofs as real AI interest. Unsourced checks every crawler against the operator’s published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS — Verified, Impostor or Unverifiable — so the crawl behind a citation is evidence, not a string anyone can type.
Common questions
Does Ahrefs Brand Radar verify the crawler behind a visibility number?
Not in anything it publishes. Brand Radar's strength is reporting your share of AI visibility with historical trends; confirming that the crawler behind a given result was genuinely the AI it claimed to be is a different job. Unsourced does exactly that — checking each crawler against the operator's published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS — so the visibility you act on rests on verified activity, not an unchecked user-agent.
How much does Ahrefs Brand Radar cost to track all the AI platforms?
As published at the time of writing, Ahrefs starts from a $129-a-month Lite plan, with each AI platform index at $199 a month or roughly $828 a month to cover all six. Unsourced is a flat £39 a month with a 10-day free trial, covering seven assistants plus verified crawler identity, the gap report, measured lift, and two exportable reports. Prices change, so check each site for current figures.
Ahrefs uses search-backed prompts — how is Unsourced different?
On that point they actually agree: Unsourced also tests the searches you already rank for in Google and Bing rather than a generic list, so it is common ground, not a dividing line. The difference is the layer beneath the prompt — Unsourced records the specific cited answer, verifies the crawler that fetched you, separates a live crawl from training data, and re-checks a topic after you act, where Brand Radar reports the resulting visibility share.
Does Unsourced show historical AI visibility trends like Ahrefs?
Unsourced builds a record over time of the topics you actually act on — the citation, the crawl evidence, and the before-and-after when you fix a gap — rather than a broad historical visibility index across every prompt. The emphasis is proof on the things you change, not a long trend line you can only watch.
More comparisons
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What you walk away with
Whichever tool you choose, ask what it hands you. Every Unsourced account generates two reports built from your own live data — open them, check them, hand them to a client or your boss:
Sources & disclosures
This comparison is based on Ahrefs's own published information, accurate as of 2026-06-26. Pricing and features change — follow the link for Ahrefs's current details.
All competitor names, logos and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here solely for nominative, comparative identification; their use does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by them. Each comparison is drawn from the competitor’s own publicly available information and was accurate as of the date shown — pricing and features change, so check the linked source for current details.
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