Unsourced vs Otterly.ai
Updated 2026-07-16 · maintained by Unsourced
Unsourced and Otterly.ai start in a similar place. Both are affordable enough for an independent to begin: Otterly's entry plan is published at $29 a month, and Unsourced starts at £39. So this comparison is not about price. It is about what “visible in AI search” really means, and how far each tool goes to prove it.
How do I find out if ChatGPT is mentioning my brand?
To find out if ChatGPT is mentioning your brand, you need to see its actual answers to the questions your customers ask and check whether your site is named. Unsourced runs those questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and more, captures each answer, and tells you not just that you were mentioned but whether you were genuinely cited and whether a real crawler fetched your page.
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 mention, a citation, and a crawl are three different things
Otterly.ai tracks how your brand appears across AI search, with plans based on the number of search prompts you monitor across four assistants. Knowing you were mentioned is a real signal and a good place to start. But a mention can be a passing reference, a linked citation, or the result of the model actually fetching your page, and those carry very different weight. Unsourced is built to tell them apart.
The difference here is not cost, it is depth of proof: whether a mention was earned by a real crawl, and whether you can prove it.
Where Unsourced goes a layer deeper
- Verified crawler identity. Anything can claim to be GPTBot. Bot Trust checks each crawler against published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS and labels it Verified, Impostor, or Unverifiable.
- A live fetch, or a memory. When an assistant names you, Origin Signal shows whether it fetched your page live or reused something it learned months ago, by tying a verified crawl to the model reproducing your words.
- Proof a fix worked. Mark a gap actioned and Unsourced re-checks that exact topic about a week later, confirming a citation only on measured evidence rather than re-estimating a score.
Same entry price, a different question
Otterly publishes simple, prompt-based plans from $29 up to $489 a month, which makes starting easy. Unsourced is in the same affordable bracket, from £39 with a free trial, but it answers a different question: not only how often AI mentions you, but whether the mention was earned by a real crawl of your page, which competitor took the citation when you missed it, and whether the fix you made actually moved it. If you want the evidence under the mention, that is where Unsourced bridges the gap.
Why a mention count can't answer this
In Unsourced’s own monitoring, across more than 150 versions of questions like “how do I find out if ChatGPT is mentioning my brand?” and “is there a tool that tracks whether my brand gets mentioned by AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Perplexity?”, AI assistants named hundreds of different tools — and rarely the same one twice from one week, or one rewording, to the next.
That is exactly why counting mentions, or turning them into a score, quietly misleads: the moment the question is reworded the answer changes, and a mention count can't tell you which version you actually won. Unsourced hands you the receipt — the exact question, the exact answer, whether your page was genuinely cited, and whether a real crawler fetched it.
Unsourced and Otterly.ai, point by point
| Unsourced | Otterly.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From £39/mo — Studio £89, Agency £199; all flat, self-serve, free trial | From $29/mo (Lite) up to $489 (Premium), priced by tracked prompts |
| Core output | The cited answer plus the verified crawl behind it | Tracking of how often your brand is mentioned across AI search |
| Mention, citation or crawl | Tells the three apart, with the evidence for each | Tracks brand mentions |
| 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 |
| Proof a fix worked | Re-checks the exact topic, confirms a citation only on evidence | Not stated |
| Exportable client reports | AI Visibility Audit + Evidence Report PDFs | Dashboard reporting |
The Otterly.ai column is drawn from Otterly.ai’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
Otterly counts how often your brand is mentioned across AI search. What a mention count can't confirm is whether an AI actually crawled your live page for it — or whether the bot traffic behind your visibility was genuine in the first place.
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
Otterly and Unsourced start at a similar price — so what is the real difference?
Price is the thing they have in common, not what separates them. Otterly tracks how often AI mentions your brand; Unsourced works a layer beneath that, recording the exact answer that cited a competitor instead of you, verifying the crawler that fetched your page, and re-checking a topic after you act. Same affordable bracket, a deeper floor of proof.
What is the difference between a mention and a citation?
A mention is your brand appearing in an AI answer; a citation is the AI pointing to your page as a source; a live-crawl-backed citation means a verified crawler actually fetched that page. They carry very different weight, and a tool that only counts mentions treats all three the same. Unsourced is built to tell them apart and show you which one you earned.
Can I see the evidence on my own site before moving from Otterly?
Yes, and the trial needs no card. Verify your domain, get a citation check right away and then automatically each Monday, and review the real answers, the verified crawls and the competitor gaps for your own site before you decide. On-demand checks any time come with Studio.
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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 Otterly.ai's own published information, accurate as of 2026-07-16. Pricing and features change — follow the link for Otterly.ai'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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