Otterly is the bottom-of-market AEO monitoring tool at $29/mo. Lantern is $99/mo purpose-built pipeline attribution for B2B SaaS CMOs. Two different products, two different buyers — and a very different renewal conversation.
The dimensions that decide the choice.
| Feature | Lantern | Otterly |
|---|---|---|
| Primary buyer | B2B SaaS CMO / Head of Growth | SMB marketer / SEO tinkerer / founder |
| Entry price | $99/mo flat | $29/mo |
| Highest public tier | Enterprise (custom) | $549/mo Scale |
| AI engines tracked | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini | 6 engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot) |
| Country coverage | US, English-market default | 40+ countries |
| Citation + share-of-voice tracking | ||
| Clean, lightweight UI | Yes | Strong reputation; 4.9/5 G2 |
| HubSpot CRM integration | Native, day-one | |
| Citation → opportunity attribution | ||
| Monthly pipeline ROI report (PDF) | ||
| Pre-publication content check | ||
| Deal-stage mapping | ||
| Self-serve onboarding time | ~10 min | ~5 min |
| G2 rating (early 2026) | New category entrant | 4.9/5 (250+ reviews) |
Pricing verified against otterly.ai/pricing as of April 17, 2026. Lantern pricing at runlantern.com/#pricing.
Otterly is the largest low-end AEO footprint in the category. Bootstrapped out of Austria, no institutional funding, 20,000+ claimed users, and a 4.9/5 G2 rating across 250+ reviews through early 2026. Gartner named them a Cool Vendor in 2025. G2 named them a High Performer. The product has real traction.
The wedge is price and breadth. Entry tier at $29/mo. Six AI engines tracked (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot). Forty-plus countries. Clean UI. Fast self-serve setup. It is everything a solo founder, an SMB marketer, or an SEO consultant experimenting with AEO for a client would want — and at a price point that does not require any procurement conversation.
Otterly is also the rare AEO tool with strong organic traffic ratios of its own (86.9% organic share per SimilarWeb), meaning they earn a lot of their reach through educational content and community. They do the hands-on experiments. They write the 600-word explainers. They cover the long tail of AEO education.
The limits: no CRM integration, no pipeline attribution, no monthly ROI report. Otterly is not trying to be those things. If your budget is $29–$100/mo and your job is "monitor whether we are showing up," Otterly is a great pick.
Lantern is a tier up on purpose. Not cheaper. Not a different flavor of the same product. A different category.
The core bet: at a B2B SaaS 50–500 person company, the person deciding the AEO line item is the CMO or Head of Growth — not the SEO analyst who swipes the $29 card. The CMO answers to the CEO and the board. The board asks "how are we showing up in ChatGPT?" and the follow-up is always "and did that drive pipeline?" A $29 visibility dashboard does not close the loop.
Lantern is built to produce the one number the CMO needs: "In April, your AEO program drove $180K of pipeline attributed through HubSpot, $42K closed-won, 14% of total AI-sourced pipeline." That sentence is impossible to produce from Otterly's data because Otterly doesn't read HubSpot.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about the AEO category: most tools are optimized for the SEO analyst. Otterly is a great SEO analyst tool. So is Ahrefs Brand Radar. So is Semrush AI Visibility. So, mostly, are Profound and Peec. They all have rich visibility dashboards, they all track engines, and they all leave the CMO with the same unresolved question at renewal.
The B2B SaaS CMO typing "AEO tool for HubSpot" into Google doesn't want another visibility dashboard. They want attribution. The specific word matters. Monitoring, not attribution — that is the phrase coming out of G2 reviews and discovery calls.
Otterly is the cleanest execution of monitoring in the category at the SMB price tier. Lantern is purpose-built to do what Otterly explicitly doesn't: close the loop to the CRM.
An expensive dashboard that generates anxiety without solutions. The verdict from G2 reviews across the AEO category is remarkably consistent. Otterly avoids the "expensive" part. It does not avoid the "doesn't solve the renewal problem" part.
There are real scenarios where Otterly is the correct choice:
In these scenarios, Otterly is genuinely good. Nothing in this comparison is a critique of Otterly's execution — it is a statement about what the product is and isn't built for.
Lantern is the right pick when the decision has moved up the org chart:
That is the pipeline attribution job. That is what Lantern ships.
If $29/mo monitoring isn't clearing your board review, jump a tier. Lantern connects HubSpot + GA4 in 10 minutes and delivers the first attribution-backed PDF in 7 days.
Join WaitlistEach client pays $500–$1,500/mo in retainer. AEO is a small slice. Need lightweight visibility reporting. Pick Otterly. At $29/mo per client Otterly fits cleanly inside the retainer. Lantern would be overkill for the reporting depth these clients need.
Board review every month. CEO asks the ChatGPT question. CMO needs a defensible pipeline number by Q3. Pick Lantern. Otterly's $29/mo dashboard won't hold up at the board table. The $99/mo Lantern upgrade buys the one output — the monthly PDF — that the job requires.
SEO lead wants fast, cheap daily monitoring. CMO wants monthly pipeline ROI. Run both. Otterly at $29/mo for the SEO team's day-to-day. Lantern at $99/mo for the CMO's attribution layer. Combined $128/mo is less than a single Profound Growth tier, with better-fit tools for each stakeholder.