OtterlyAI
Updated 2026-06-21Bootstrapped AI-search monitoring platform positioned as "Semrush for AI search," tracking brand visibility across six AI engines, with customers including Videoloft and Bacula Enterprise. Recent releases: a Public API, a packaged Claude Skill, and a Marketplace of 101 marketing workflows.
Three scores, refreshed weekly from live market signals rather than a once-a-year analyst report. Presence is how established a vendor is in the market right now. Velocity is how fast they are shipping, raising, and winning customers. Agent Readiness is how easily your own agents can build on them through an API, MCP server, SDK, or CLI. Scores are relative across the vendors we track; the raw inputs ship in the downloadable dataset.
The Solution & Approach
OtterlyAI is a bootstrapped, product-led AI-search monitoring platform that positions itself as "Semrush for AI search." It tracks where a brand appears, what is said about it, and which sites get cited across six AI search engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. It sits in the AEO/GEO category as the bootstrapped self-serve floor against venture-funded peers Profound and Peec AI.
The product ties monitoring to action through a GEO Audit that scores 25-plus on-page factors, including content, page speed, structured data, and AI readiness, then generates prioritized fix lists. In 2026 it extended toward a programmatic surface with a Public API, a packaged Claude Skill, and a Marketplace of 101-plus marketing workflows. An MCP server has been announced but had not yet shipped as of June 2026.
Otterly's distribution strategy is to ride incumbents rather than fight them, launching inside the Semrush App Center in January 2025 and partnering with Storyblok and Press Ranger. Its published research pushes a clear POV: 95% of AI search citations draw from third-party sources rather than brand-owned content, which reframes AI visibility as an earned-media and PR problem as much as an on-page one.
Best for
Self-serve teams, SEO professionals, and agencies that want affordable AI-search visibility monitoring with on-page optimization guidance, without enterprise pricing or a sales process.
Pricing & trial
Self-serve paid tiers run from $29/month (Lite) to $489/month (Premium), with a sales-only Enterprise band, after a 7-day, 3-prompt free trial that requires no card; there is no free plan. Pricing.
Agent Experience
How you build on this platform (or wire it into your own agents):
| Surface | Available | Docs |
|---|---|---|
| API | Yes | docs |
| MCP | No | — |
| SDK | No | — |
| CLI | No | — |
| llms.txt | No | — |
A capable build-on option for an AEO tool: a versioned REST Public API with read-only and read-write key tiers plus a packaged Claude Skill expose every brand report, prompt, citation, and GEO audit, though the announced MCP server had not yet launched.
Reference customers
Videoloft, Bacula Enterprise, Skale, Downtown Ecommerce.
Recent moves
- 2026-06-01Formalized its Public API and Claude Skill via press release and launched the OtterlyAI Marketplace, a library of 101-plus production-tested marketing workflows open for community submissions. source
- 2026-05-27Launched its Public API and a packaged Claude Skill, giving developers programmatic access to every brand report, prompt, citation, recommendation, and GEO audit, with an MCP server flagged as coming soon. source
- 2026-05-22Won Best AI Search Software Solution at the European Search Awards 2026 in Porto, and reported passing 30,000 active users. source
- 2026-03-02Published a YouTube Citation Study of 100-million-plus AI citation instances, finding YouTube is the #2 social source for AI citations behind Reddit and that 94% of cited YouTube content is long-form video. source
- 2026-02-25Placed 10th on G2's 2026 Best New Software Awards, the only Answer Engine Optimization vendor in the overall top 10. source
- 2026-02-19Released research on 1-million-plus AI citations showing 95% draw from third-party sources, and announced a partnership with media-outreach platform Noble to turn that into an executable workflow. source
Company, Financials & Funding History
OtterlyAI was founded in 2024 in Vienna, Austria, by Thomas Peham (CEO, formerly Storyblok VP Marketing and the first growth hire at Usersnap), Josef Trauner (ex-Usersnap CEO), and Klaus-M. Schremser (ex-Usersnap head of growth, who runs the GroWTF incubator that backed Otterly). Trauner and Schremser had sold Usersnap to saas.group in 2023, and the fully bootstrapped company grew from roughly 1,000 users at its December 2024 stealth exit to 30,000-plus active users by May 2026.
Analyst placement
Named one of five vendors in the 2025 Gartner Cool Vendors in AI for Marketing report, its first analyst-house recognition (GlobeNewswire). Placed 10th on G2's 2026 Best New Software Awards, the only AEO vendor in the overall top 10 (GlobeNewswire), and won Best AI Search Software Solution at the European Search Awards 2026 (Manila Times).