Tool review · HubSpot · checked November 8, 2026
HubSpot's AEO Grader, called AI Search Grader again since July 2026, is a free one-time check: it asks GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity and Gemini how they describe your brand and scores the answers out of 100, with 40 points on sentiment.
Our pick for a free alternative
Want to know whether AI recommends you when buyers don't type your name? supereo's free audit ours is our pick. It writes the questions your buyers ask from your own site, asks all six engines (Claude, AI Mode and AI Overviews included) and marks every answer mentioned, recommended or cited. About 2 minutes, no card. Grade your brand or open the audit.
You enter four things: company name, location, product or service, and industry. HubSpot sends them to three models, GPT-5.4 mini (OpenAI), Perplexity and Gemini, and "asks each model how it characterizes your brand based on its training data." HubSpot's AEO product page says the grader runs pre-set queries on your behalf, with ChatGPT and Gemini answering from training data and Perplexity from live search. The snapshot is ready in under two minutes. No account is needed, but you complete a short form to see the full report: your composite score, a breakdown and a written interpretation.
The score adds up five dimensions:
| Dimension | Points | What HubSpot says it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment Results | 40 | General, contextual and source-based sentiment: the tone the engines use when they characterize your brand |
| Presence Quality | 20 | Mention depth, source quality and data richness |
| Brand Recognition | 20 | How widely recognized your brand is across AI training data |
| AI Share of Voice | 10 | Your estimated percentage of category voice, plus a rank bonus |
| Market Competition | 10 | Category role (Leader, Challenger or Niche Player) and innovation perception (Innovator, Disruptor or Traditionalist) |
Source: hubspot.com/ai-search-grader, read November 8, 2026.
Our count: 80 of the 100 points (sentiment, presence quality and recognition) grade how the models talk about you. The 20 that compare you with competitors are share of voice and market competition. None of the five is a count of answers that recommend you, and the page describes no questions that leave your name out.
Searchers call it the HubSpot AEO Grader, HubSpot's product page still links it as "AEO Grader," and the tool's own page says AI Search Grader. The Internet Archive's copies show why, and what changed along the way:
Two shifts stand out. The engine list grew from one model to three, and the free offer narrowed from "as many times as you'd like" to a "one-time check." If you graded your brand in 2025, that grade came from GPT-4o, so don't compare it point for point with a new one.
It can tell you how three models describe your brand today: the tone, the facts they repeat, whether they place you in the right category, and how that compares with a competitor's grade, since it accepts any brand name. If a model lists a service you dropped or the wrong location, that's a fix you can make on your own pages this week.
It can't tell you whether AI recommends you when a buyer asks about the problem you solve without naming you, because every question is about your brand. It also asks GPT-5.4 mini from training data, not the ChatGPT app a buyer uses with search on, and one run can't show how much the grade would move if you ran it again.
“Most people test this wrong. They ask the model "do you know my brand" and get a polite yes. That tells you nothing. You have to ask the question a real buyer types right before they decide.”u/MarketingOB1 on r/digital_marketing · Jun 26, 2026 · Read the post
What helpssupereo's audit is built on that difference: it writes the questions buyers ask, from your site, and marks the answers that recommend you.
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | supereo free audit ours | |
|---|---|---|
| What it asks | How each model characterizes your brand | 20 questions your buyers ask, written from your site |
| Engines | GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity, Gemini | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews |
| How it reaches them | ChatGPT and Gemini from training data; Perplexity from live search | ChatGPT and Gemini as consumer apps; AI Mode and AI Overviews as live results; Perplexity and Claude by API, labeled |
| Sign-up | No account; a short form for the full report | A work email; no card |
| Time | Under two minutes | About 2 minutes |
| What you get | A score out of 100, a breakdown, a written interpretation | Every answer, each marked mentioned, recommended or cited, with the first fixes |
| Recommendations counted | No dimension for them | On every answer |
| The paid next step | HubSpot AEO, $50 a month: 25 prompts on 3 engines | Copilot, $149 a month: up to 40 questions on 6 engines, plus what to change on each page |
Sources: HubSpot's grader, HubSpot AEO and supereo's audit page, read November 8, 2026.
Both free checks lead to a paid tracker. HubSpot AEO is $50 a month ($45 paid yearly) with 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, a free trial with no card, and no HubSpot subscription required; it's also included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise. Dividing each plan by what it tracks puts them on one scale:
| Plan | Price / month | Prompts | Engines | Per prompt | Per prompt, per engine | Also included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AEO | $50 | 25 | 3 | $2.00 | $0.67 | Prompt suggestions, citation analysis, prioritized recommendations |
| supereo Copilot ours | $149 | 40 | 6 | $3.73 | $0.62 | What to change on each page with the evidence and wording; each change you ship measured; the MCP server; AI crawler reads through Cloudflare or Vercel |
Our arithmetic on monthly prices published November 8, 2026. HubSpot sells extra prompts at any time; its page doesn't list their price.
HubSpot AEO costs less a month. Per question per engine, Copilot comes in lower and covers twice the engines, Claude among them, and it tells you exactly what to change on each page, with the evidence and the wording. Autopilot, its higher plan, with more questions, ships the fixes itself and tests each one against control questions.
Public posts, copied word for word, complaints first. They're individual posts, not reviews or ratings.
“ok so I poked at it once. It's a brand-sentiment thing really. How the models talk about you, nothing about whether a crawler could actually read the page.”u/madongrind on r/Agent_SEO · Oct 30, 2026 · Read the post
What helpssupereo's Copilot plan shows AI crawler reads of your pages through Cloudflare or Vercel, next to how the answers treat you.
“running a one-off audit through the grader feels pretty useless for a real pipeline since temperature variance and model updates swing the output constantly, and a static score does not show which specific URLs are getting cited.”u/Menby_Pritts on r/AiAutomations · Oct 18, 2026 · Read the post
What helpssupereo's audit shows every answer and whether it cites your site, and its tracking asks the same questions again and again, so a trend comes with a range.
“the headline score is noisy and changes between runs, the useful part is the citation list.”u/y3rk3 on r/content_marketing · Oct 20, 2026 · Read the post
What helpssupereo's audit gives you every answer behind its marks, so there's no headline number to take on faith.
“…many of their metrics in their reports tend to be arbitrary vanity metrics of reporting that don't often translate through into real world data that will help a company make the proper strategic decisions.”u/brickmarketingagency on r/Agent_SEO · Oct 30, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsEvery mark supereo gives comes with the answer it was made from, so you can check it.
“what the grader actually gives you is a sentiment read. useful if the worry is being described wrongly, less so if the worry is never getting fetched in the first place.”u/madongrind on r/Agent_SEO · Nov 8, 2026 · Read the post
“It’s a useful free baseline. We’d treat one run as a rough read, though, and not a score to manage.”u/Nurosparx on r/content_marketing · Oct 26, 2026 · Read the post
“ChatGPT scored AUDAZ 32 out of 100 on HubSpot’s AI Search Grader. New business, starting line. I’ll retest in 90 days.”Rene Galan on LinkedIn · Nov 2, 2026 · Read the post
All eight free checks, side by side: the grade sheet.
A free, one-time check from HubSpot that asks GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity and Gemini how they characterize your brand and scores the answers out of 100 across sentiment, presence quality, brand recognition, share of voice and market competition. It now lives at hubspot.com/ai-search-grader under the name AI Search Grader.
Yes. It costs nothing and needs no account; you complete a short form to see the full report. HubSpot describes it as a one-time check. Its paid tracker, HubSpot AEO, is $50 a month.
Yes. It launched as AI Search Grader in 2024, was renamed AEO Grader in August 2025, and went back to AI Search Grader in July 2026. hubspot.com/aeo-grader redirects to the current page.
GPT-5.4 mini (OpenAI), Perplexity and Gemini. ChatGPT and Gemini answer from training data, Perplexity from live search. Claude, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews aren't included. supereo's free audit covers all six: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews.
Five weighted dimensions add up to 100: Sentiment Results 40 points, Presence Quality 20, Brand Recognition 20, AI Share of Voice 10 and Market Competition 10. HubSpot says the scoring is deterministic, with schema validation and retry logic.
The grader is a free one-time snapshot of how three models describe you. HubSpot AEO is the paid tracker: $50 a month for 25 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with share of voice, citation analysis and recommendations, updated daily.
Not directly. It asks GPT-5.4 mini how it characterizes your brand, so it measures how the model describes you, not whether ChatGPT picks you when a buyer asks for options. For that, use a check that asks buyer questions: supereo's free audit marks every ChatGPT answer that recommends you. Checking ChatGPT, free.
Yes. HubSpot says it accepts any brand name, so you can run your competitors and compare grades.
supereo's free audit, if you want to know whether AI recommends you: 20 buyer questions, all six engines, every answer shown, about 2 minutes, no card. Ahrefs' and Semrush's free checkers need no sign-up and count mentions.
We read HubSpot's AI Search Grader page and its AEO product page on November 8, 2026, checked that hubspot.com/aeo-grader redirects to hubspot.com/ai-search-grader, and read nine Internet Archive copies of the two addresses from August 2024 to July 2026. Point counts and engine names are as HubSpot publishes them; the per-prompt costs are our arithmetic. We didn't run HubSpot's grader for this page and report no grade from it. Full method.
More: all eight free AEO graders · what each visibility score counts · a free ChatGPT check