Is there a free tool to check my brand in ChatGPT?

Before most client engagements, someone asks whether there is a free way to check how the brand looks in ChatGPT. There is, and we encourage it. A free check often shows in an afternoon what a slide deck of theory cannot. We also point out what a free check cannot do, so nobody concludes too much from it.

The routine we start with

We give the client a worksheet with 15 prompts to run themselves in ChatGPT:

Category prompts: "best [category] for [use case]".
Comparison prompts: "[brand] vs [competitor]".
Reputation prompts: "is [brand] any good?" and "[brand] reviews".
Problem prompts: the pain points that lead to the category.

For each, they record whether the brand is named, the order, how it is described, and which sources are linked. They repeat it in a new chat and again the next day. Three runs show the real picture: usually that the answer is unstable, that competitors the client does not consider rivals appear, and that sources the client does not control carry the answer.

The limits are obvious. It is manual, answers vary by account and country, there is no history and no way to see why.

Free tools that make it better

Promptwatch's free tools. The Explore plan is free: one project, 10 prompts, 310 responses, ChatGPT only. It turns the worksheet into a scheduled run with history, which fixes the variance problem. The AI Visibility Report scans a brand without a login. The GEO Inspector Chrome extension shows ChatGPT's fan-out queries and which sources were fetched versus cited, and runs locally. The Agentic Readiness Check and an AI bots directory (440+ crawlers) help with the technical side, and there are llms.txt and robots.txt generators.

Other free routes. AthenaHQ has a free Essential plan with 300 credits. Ahrefs includes Custom Prompts in paid Ahrefs plans, with small daily quotas. Profound, Am I Cited and GetIntel offer short free trials. Local Falcon gives 100 free credits for local scans.

What a free check tells you, and what it does not

Tells you: whether the brand appears for a handful of prompts, which competitors show up, and the rough shape of the sources.

Does not tell you: how stable that is over weeks, which pages are cited at scale, whether AI crawlers can read your site, whether AI referrals convert, or what to change. It also covers one engine, while buyers use several.

When we move clients to a paid tool

When one of these becomes true: the client wants Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Google AI Overviews as well; they need more than ten prompts; they want trends for reporting; or they need the why. We run client programs on Promptwatch, so the step is usually from Explore to Essential ($95 a month, 50 prompts, 6,000 responses) or, when crawler data is needed, Professional ($245 a month). Crawler logs, IP-verified for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, start there. Agencies go to the agency plans from $199 a month.

Honest caveats

Free tiers are designed to show you the product, not to run a programme. A 10-prompt panel on one engine is a good first read, not a basis for a budget decision. And no tool, free or paid, can guarantee that ChatGPT will name a brand. What you control is the evidence: content that answers real questions, credible mentions elsewhere, and a site that AI bots can fetch.

A quick plan for this week

Run 15 prompts by hand and log the results.
Open a free Explore account and put the same prompts on a schedule.
Run the free AI Visibility Report on your domain.
Install the GEO Inspector extension and look at fan-outs for your two most important prompts.
After two weeks, write down what you learned and what you could not see.

That last list is your case for upgrading, or for not upgrading. Start at Promptwatch and see how far the free tier takes you.