AI Pick Check vs Otterly

Otterly is a tool for tracking how your brand shows up in AI answers. It is a good example of one big difference between tools: whether they ask the assistants through the same web pages that people use, or through the companies' official APIs. This page explains that difference first, then the rest. All Otterly facts come from its own pages, read on 2026-10-15.

The method difference, in plain words

Otterly says it mostly collects answers by using the public web pages of the AI assistants, so the answers match what a user sees. Its help page says Claude is the exception and is tracked through an API. Otterly gives a reason: it says API output can differ from what appears on screen.

AI Pick Check does the opposite. We ask four assistants through APIs, with web search switched on, and we can say exactly which model answered. One of the four, Google's Gemini model, is reached through Perplexity's API and searches with Perplexity's web search rather than Google Search. Our methodology page explains this.

Both choices have a cost. Web-page collection may sit closer to what a person sees, which is Otterly's stated aim. API collection lets us name the exact model, but its answers may not match a chat window exactly. We have not tested which gives a truer picture, and nobody should claim to know without a test. Our blog post on API answers and app answers goes into the gap.

At a glance (checked 2026-10-15)

Otterly's pricing page shows two sets of prices (for example $29 and $25 for Lite) without saying what each means. It may be monthly against yearly billing. Check the current page.

What Otterly does better

• Daily tracking. You see change as it happens. Our audit is a snapshot with one free re-run.
• More assistants. Including Google AI Overviews, Copilot and Google AI Mode. We do not cover those.
• A tool you can keep open. Its home page says it sends alerts when brand mentions change, and offers a public API for reading your brand reports, prompts and citations.
• A low starting price for ongoing tracking. $29 a month for Lite is lower than the monthly prices of the other tools on our comparison pages. Lite covers 15 prompts, so check that it is enough for you.
• Closer to the screen, by its own account. If seeing what a person sees matters most to you, its approach is aimed at that.

What AI Pick Check does better, in our view

• A one-off cost. $39 once, with no plan to cancel.
• Question design. Buyer questions are written without your name in them and worded three ways.
• A range, not a single figure. Each question is asked twice on each assistant.
• A plan. The report ends with ranked fixes, each tied to evidence.

Which should you pick?

Pick Otterly if you want daily monitoring now, need Google's AI features or Copilot covered, or want to see answers taken from the public web pages.

Pick AI Pick Check if you want a first answer, a to-do list, and no subscription. If you later want monthly tracking, a Monitor plan is coming soon.

Plenty of people will sensibly use both: an audit to decide what to fix, then a tracker to watch it.

A worked example

Take a fictional furniture maker, Example Oak Works, at example.com. The owner wants to know if assistants suggest the workshop when someone asks for a handmade oak dining table.

With Otterly, the owner would load that prompt and a handful of similar ones, pick the assistants, and watch daily results build up. The owner could then set alerts for changes in mentions.

With AI Pick Check, the owner would get a single report with 160 answers, a list of who was named instead, the pages the assistants cited, and ranked fixes. After acting on them, the owner would use the free re-run to see what changed.

Different jobs: watching over time, or deciding what to fix first.

How to check it worked

Run five buyer questions by hand in a fresh chat and note whether you are named. Do it again after a week. If the tool and your notes disagree often, ask the tool's support how the sample was taken.

What this won't do

• No tool can promise that an assistant will recommend you.
• We have not tested Otterly. We only report what Otterly publishes.
• Tracking prompts is not the same as being chosen by a real buyer. Real people ask in many more ways than any list covers.
• This page is written by the makers of AI Pick Check.