10 European GEO tools for 2026: what they measure and whether it works
European GEO start-ups are attracting investors this year because they promise companies a place in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers. We reviewed 10 of them: what they actually measure, how much they cost, and what they cannot prove.
Why GEO promises need to be checked
GEO (generative engine optimisation) is an attempt to influence what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews say about a company. On October 19, EU-Startups published a roundup of 15 European companies in this category. The site says that in 2026, the area recorded investments of nearly 30 million euros. Compared with the US, that is not much: Value Add VC estimates that ten tracked GEO companies raised about $604 million in total, with more than half going to the US-based Profound.
The market promises more, however, than can actually be measured. Researchers from Fudan University described an experiment in a paper published on arXiv on October 8; they ran the tests themselves in March and April. On Medium, YouTube and similar platforms, they posted entries about the fictional “Cactus Gravity Protocol.” Within a week, eight out of ten AI tools tested were citing those posts. Grok provided a link in 30 out of 32 answers, ChatGPT in 7 out of 20.
The same experiment also has another side. Posts about a fictional keyboard did not break through to any of the four Western tools during that time. Perplexity did not repeat the planted false details even once. 40 posts on a self-hosted WordPress site did not produce a single citation in seven days. We can infer from this that the outcome depends heavily on the topic and the tool, and the study authors do not determine exactly what caused the differences. In these tests, the publishing platform mattered more to the effect than the number of posts. None of the tests involved a real brand.
There is also the problem of measurement. The industry often cites a 2024 study by Princeton and IIT Delhi. It found that citations and statistics in content increase visibility in AI answers by 28-41 percent. However, the study measured presence in the answer, not site traffic or sales. Gartner calls the AI visibility tools market “immature and fragmented.”
How we compared the tools
From the EU-Startups list, we selected 10 companies that cover different needs: from simple monitoring to sales through AI assistants. We describe each one according to the same framework and the same criteria:
Information about the companies comes mainly from funding round announcements. We did not find independent effectiveness tests for any of these tools. We list prices only where we found them in external reviews from 2026, and we treat them as indicative. The materials also do not say whether any of the tools has a Polish interface. The order of entries is not a ranking.
1. Peec AI (Germany)
Who it’s for: marketing departments at mid-sized and large companies that compare themselves with competitors. What it does best: measures brand visibility, sentiment, position and citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. It also shows the sources AI uses for recommendations.
Limitations: this is a measurement tool, so the decision about what to do with the data remains with the team. Each additional AI model costs extra. Cost: from 85 euros per month (Starter, 50 prompts, meaning questions the tool regularly asks AI) to 425 euros (Advanced, 350 prompts). Additional models cost 30-140 euros extra per month; the pricing changed in August. Peec AI is the best-funded company on this list: about 25 million euros.
2. OtterlyAI (Austria)
Who it’s for: small teams and freelancers who want to start by getting a view of the situation. What it does best: tracks mentions, citations and prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Google Search with AI. It has an API (an interface for connecting with other systems) and integrations with marketing tools.
Limitations: this is monitoring, not optimisation. Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are add-ons costing $9-149 per month. Cost: Lite $29 per month (15 prompts), Standard $189 (100), Premium $489 (400), Enterprise from about $1000. The company is growing without venture capital funding.
3. Rankscale (Austria)
Who it’s for: large e-commerce companies and corporations. What it does best: analyses visibility, citations, sentiment and position versus competitors. In June, it announced a partnership with OTTO, resulting from a multi-month selection process led by the OTTO DOCK 6 unit and including a four-month pilot. Among other things, the German retailer required a KPI dashboard for management, share of voice in AI responses versus competitors, and a feature showing how often the brand appears at the top of answers.
Limitations: we did not find published results of the pilot, and we know the client list only from the company’s website. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials.
4. Searchable (United Kingdom)
Who it’s for: performance marketing teams working with Google Analytics and Search Console. What it does best: tracks visibility across ten AI platforms, combines that data with site analytics, and suggests automatic fixes.
Limitations: automatic optimisation is an area worth comparing with Google’s new rules (below). There are no independent tests. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials. The company has raised about 19 million euros in total; in its 11.9 million euro round in May, its valuation was reported at 72.1 million euros.
5. Promptwatch (Netherlands)
Who it’s for: content marketing teams that want to act on data right away. What it does best: combines monitoring with content recommendations and automatic publishing.
Limitations: Google describes mass, automatic publishing of pages as abuse (“scaled content abuse”), so every automation needs to be supervised. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials; funding 7.2 million euros.
6. geoSurge (United Kingdom)
Who it’s for: large brands that want to understand where models get their knowledge about them. What it does best: instead of counting mentions, it examines how AI models retrieve and remember information about companies. The company calls this approach “Corpus Engineering”.
Limitations: from the outside, it is difficult today to verify what such a method actually measures. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials. In July, the company raised 10 million euros.
7. Ranketta (Czech Republic)
Who it’s for: online stores and B2B companies (selling to other businesses). What it does best: checks how often specific products appear in shopping recommendations from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and compares them with competitors’ products.
Limitations: a very early stage, with a 1 million euro pre-seed round from November 2025. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials.
8. Lemrock (France)
Who it’s for: sellers and brands with large catalogs. What it does best: instead of measuring, it connects the catalog, prices, availability and transactions to AI assistants so the customer can buy a product in conversation.
Limitations: the model depends on how open AI platforms become to shopping. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials; funding 6 million euros.
9. SOUS (Netherlands)
Who it’s for: independent restaurants and small food service businesses. What it does best: takes care of visibility in search engines, maps and AI assistants, and directs traffic straight to its own ordering system and customer base.
Limitations: narrow industry; the materials do not say whether SOUS operates in Poland. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials.
10. WP SEO AI (Netherlands)
Who it’s for: companies with a WordPress website. What it does best: combines classic SEO, GEO and search ads. Automated agents select keywords, write and publish content, and track visibility in AI.
Limitations: it only works with WordPress, and automatically written content requires editorial oversight. Cost: no pricing is provided in the materials. The company is growing from its own revenue, with no disclosed funding rounds; in March it exceeded 12.5 million euros in ARR (annual recurring revenue).
Where optimisation ends and spam begins
On May 15, Google added attempts to manipulate generative answers in search to its spam policies. The tactics listed include biased “best of…” roundups written to be cited by AI. There is also “recommendation poisoning,” meaning hiding instructions in content intended to push the model to treat the page as an authority. The penalties are the same as for ordinary spam, including removal from results. In February, Microsoft Security described 50 such attempts detected within 60 days in email traffic; 31 real companies from 14 industries were behind them.
Others are filtering too. DeepSeek, which made its search engine available to developers on October 17, says it filters out “GEO manipulation.” However, it has not defined what it means by that.
What to choose if…
The choice depends primarily on the size of the company and on whether it needs measurement or changes in sales:
- you run a microbusiness or work as a freelancer: first ask ChatGPT and Perplexity a dozen or so questions that your customers ask. If you want to do this regularly, the cheapest monitoring is enough, for example OtterlyAI Lite at $29 per month, checked over a quarter,
- you run a restaurant or a WordPress site: SOUS or WP SEO AI make sense, as long as a person reads automatically written content before publication,
- you sell products online: Ranketta will show how you perform in shopping recommendations, and Lemrock is an option for those who want to sell through AI assistants,
- you lead the marketing department of a large company: Peec AI, Rankscale or Searchable, but through a pilot with clearly defined indicators, as OTTO did.
In a large organisation, who is responsible for the outcome matters more than the tool. According to Forrester data cited by companies in the GEO industry, 70 percent of marketers consider visibility in AI a leadership priority, but only 30 percent have a specifically assigned person responsible for this area. Without such a person, and without linking measurement to traffic and sales, even the best dashboard will only show how often AI mentions the brand.