Writesonic

Writesonic started as an AI writing assistant. In 2026 the product describes itself as "The AI Search Growth Engine": it tracks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other AI platforms mention or cite a site, and its Action Center suggests what to fix. The older writing templates appear to have been absorbed or retired. Surfer and Semrush have added AI visibility features to their SEO suites; Writesonic has made it the whole product.

What Writesonic does

The product covers three things: tracking brand mentions in AI answer engines, showing which outside sources those engines cite, and listing fixes in order of priority. Content creation and site audits are included so you can act on the recommendations in the same tool, but the focus is now measuring and improving AI search visibility rather than writing content.

Main features

AI visibility tracking

Monitors how AI answer engines respond to the prompts you choose to track. The top tier covers 10 platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity and Meta AI. Lower tiers cover fewer: Starter is ChatGPT only, Basic adds Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and Growth keeps those three platforms and adds sentiment analysis.

Citation analysis

Shows which outside sources AI engines cite when answering prompts about your category. You can use it to pick outreach targets among the sources that appear in answers, and to see where competitors are cited and your brand isn't. It tells you where citations come from, not only how often your brand is mentioned.

Technical audits for AI bots

Checks robots.txt, schema and crawlability for AI bots such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, separately from a standard SEO audit. If robots.txt blocks these bots, the audit flags it, and that is usually a quick fix.

Action Center

Lists recommended fixes ranked by expected impact on visibility, instead of leaving you to read the dashboards and decide. It's a trial on the Growth tier and fully available on Enterprise.

Who Writesonic fits

Writesonic fits teams whose main question is whether their brand comes up when buyers ask AI assistants for recommendations. That question matters most in categories where buyers compare options before purchasing, such as software, B2B services and comparison-heavy niches. For a Shopify DTC store doing under $50K a month, ad creative or retention is probably a better use of the budget first.

It doesn't fit teams that only need traditional on-page SEO scoring; Surfer and Frase are built for that. It's also harder to justify if you already pay for Semrush One, which includes AI visibility tracking.

Pricing

• Starter: $79/mo. ChatGPT tracking only. Works as a single-platform test.
• Basic: $199/mo. Adds Gemini and Google AI Overviews. This is the first tier that tracks more than one platform.
• Growth: $399/mo, labelled "Most Popular". Adds sentiment analysis and an Action Center trial.
• Enterprise: custom pricing. All 10 platforms, the full Action Center, agentic workflows, SSO and SOC 2 Type II.

Things to watch

• The pivot: Writesonic is betting that AI visibility becomes its own software category. That hasn't been settled yet.
• Bundled competitors: Surfer's AI Tracker and Semrush One include similar features inside existing SEO suites. Writesonic has to be worth a separate subscription.
• Older plans: if you signed up for Writesonic as an AI writer, check what your current plan includes before renewing on the new tiers.

Alternatives

The tools most often compared with Writesonic are Surfer SEO and Semrush.

Surfer's AI Tracker is the closest match on AI visibility alone. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and comes with Surfer's SERP-based content editor. If you also need on-page work, the bundle makes sense. If you only need AI visibility, you'd be paying for an editor you don't use.

Semrush's AI Visibility Index is part of the larger Semrush platform. For stores already on Semrush, it adds AI visibility tracking without a new subscription. For stores not on Semrush, it means buying into the full suite.

In short: if you already use Semrush or Surfer, check their AI visibility features before adding another tool. If you don't use an SEO suite and AI visibility is the main problem, Writesonic is the focused option.

Where to start

Starter's ChatGPT-only coverage is narrow, so Basic at $199/mo is the more practical entry tier. A reasonable approach is to track a fixed list of prompts on Basic for a quarter, compare your citation share with competitors, then decide whether Growth (for the Action Center trial) is worth it. Enterprise is for teams that want full platform coverage.