Bottom line: When choosing a GEO monitoring tool in 2026, the first dividing line is engine coverage—overseas tools such as Profound and Otterly do not support Doubao, Kimi, Qwen, or ERNIE Bot. If your primary market is China, choose among tools that support domestic engines by answering three questions about budget, engine scope, and depth of analysis.
The number of generative AI users in China has reached 602 million, with a penetration rate of 42.8% (CNNIC’s 57th report, 2026-02); 81% of consumers will partly follow AI recommendations when making a purchase (a Zhihu Research Institute white paper, as reported by China News Service). Your customers are asking AI questions. What did AI answer, and did it mention you? Those are the questions a GEO monitoring tool must answer.
The market has indeed heated up: China’s GEO market was worth approximately 600 million yuan in 2025 and is expected to exceed 50 billion yuan in 2030 (iResearch industry report, 2026-02). As the number of tools grows, selection becomes confusing. This GEO tool comparison puts YinJen, 透镜 GEO, AIDSO, and overseas tools in the same table. All pricing and coverage information follows figures published on official websites or in public reports. We list both strengths and weaknesses; you make the judgment.
Disclosure: this article comes from the team behind YinJen (ZhiMaHang). All competitor pricing and coverage information includes its source and can be independently verified. We guarantee only that the methodology is transparent; we do not draw the conclusion for you.
Start with the Conclusion: One Comparison Table
| Dimension | YinJen | 透镜 GEO | AIDSO | Overseas tools (Profound / Otterly) |
|---|
| Engine coverage | 12: Doubao, DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen, ERNIE Bot, Tencent Yuanbao, Zhipu Qingyan, and StepFun, plus ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity | Refer to the list published on its official website (not individually verified in this article) | Refer to the list published on its official website (not individually verified in this article) | Overseas engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity; does not support Doubao / Kimi / Qwen / ERNIE Bot |
| Deployment model | Desktop app (macOS / Windows), with monitoring performed locally | Web SaaS | Web SaaS | Web SaaS |
| Pricing (verified figures) | Creator plan starts at ¥29.9/month; 14-day free trial, no credit card required | Core monitoring is free; Basic plan 1668 yuan/year, Professional plan 4188 yuan/year (official website figures) | Starts at 798 yuan/year for the Individual plan and goes up to 17548 yuan/year for the Flagship plan (official website figures) | Profound starts at $82.5/month; Otterly starts at $29/month (official website figures) |
| Best suited for | Brands and creators that need to monitor domestic and overseas engines together, compare competitors, and receive revision recommendations | Teams that want to validate whether “AI mentions me” with zero budget | Companies whose requirements will grow with scale and that need a complete pricing ladder | Global-facing brands whose target customers primarily use English-language engines |
Tool by Tool: Each One’s Strengths and Weaknesses
透镜 GEO: Core Monitoring Is Free, So Starting Costs Nothing
Its core monitoring features are free, which is its greatest advantage—even with zero budget, you can get started and understand the brand’s baseline in AI. Its paid tiers of 1668 yuan/year and 4188 yuan/year sit in the midrange of the domestic market. For teams that are new to GEO and have not yet decided how much to invest, starting here carries no financial burden.
AIDSO: A Complete Pricing Ladder from Individual to Flagship
From 798 yuan/year for the Individual plan to 17548 yuan/year for the Flagship plan, the tiers cover a very wide range, allowing everyone from individual webmasters to midsize and large enterprises to find a fit. For users whose needs will grow with scale and who do not want to switch tools midway, this pricing ladder is a genuine advantage.
Overseas Tools: Mature Methodologies, but No Domestic Engines
Profound (starting at $82.5/month) and Otterly (starting at $29/month) entered the market early and have mature reporting systems. Their critical weakness is equally clear: neither supports Doubao, Kimi, Qwen, or ERNIE Bot. Yet Doubao has 345 million monthly active users and DeepSeek has 127 million (QuestMobile 2026Q1), meaning the largest AI entry points by user volume in China fall outside their monitoring scope. They can work for global expansion; if your primary market is China, they are the wrong battlefield.
YinJen: A Desktop App Covering 8 Domestic and 4 Overseas Engines
Of its 12 engines, 8 are domestic; add ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and you can view domestic and overseas entry points under the same methodology. There are three differences. First, it is a desktop app (macOS / Windows) that runs locally: prompt audits automatically test your custom question set every day on your own computer, making the environment closer to that of a real user. Second, beyond mention rate and a 0-100 visibility score, it provides competitor share-of-voice comparisons and citation-source tracing—you can see whom AI recommended and which content it cited. Third, its paragraph-level optimization recommendations do more than tell you that “you were not mentioned”; they identify which paragraph should be revised. Starts at ¥29.9/month, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required.
One real example (with identifying details removed): from 2026-06-30 to 07-10, an electronic-components manufacturer in Suzhou used YinJen to run 43 monitoring questions and 524 valid tests, producing an overall mention rate of 50.2% (263/524)—but the differences by engine were enormous: Qwen 85%, Tencent Yuanbao 83%, DeepSeek only 12%, and Gemini 4%. Of 19 “product-selection knowledge” questions, only 1 produced a hit, meaning AI was using other people’s content to educate the manufacturer’s customers. Without breaking the data down by engine, these blind spots would never be found.
Three Selection Questions
Question 1: What is your budget? With zero budget, start by using 透镜 GEO’s free core monitoring to establish a baseline. At a monthly budget in the hundreds of yuan, consider YinJen (starting at ¥29.9/month) or Otterly (starting at $29/month). For an enterprise budget, look at AIDSO’s higher tiers or the 透镜 Professional plan. One point of comparison: the standard package for managed GEO services on the market costs 19800 yuan/30 days (reported by 36Kr). Use a tool to understand your current state first, then decide whether to buy services—do not reverse the order.
Question 2: Which engines matter? The tool must support the places where your customers ask questions. For mass-market consumers in China, look at Doubao (345 million monthly active users); for technical and office audiences, look at DeepSeek and Kimi; for global expansion, look at ChatGPT and Perplexity. No matter how good the monitoring data looks, it is useless if engine coverage does not overlap with customer entry points.
Question 3: How much depth do you need? If you only want to know whether “AI mentioned me,” a free tool is enough. If you want to answer “why was a competitor recommended, which content did AI cite, and which paragraph should I revise,” you need the full combination of competitor comparison, source tracing, and paragraph-level recommendations.
One Compliance Reminder
The 2026 CCTV 315 Gala exposed the underground GEO practice of “AI poisoning”: 11 sponsored articles were enough to get a fictitious product recommended by AI. When selecting a tool or service, be wary of anyone promising “guaranteed indexing” or “rapid screen domination”—no party can guarantee an AI engine’s recommendation results. The value of a monitoring tool is precisely the opposite: it gives you verifiable data so that every unit of optimization investment can withstand retesting.
FAQ
Are there any free GEO detection tools? Yes. The core monitoring features of 透镜 GEO are free; YinJen offers a 14-day full-feature free trial with no credit card required. You can also manually ask each AI engine your questions, but that produces only a single snapshot—the sample is small, it cannot be retested daily, and it cannot reveal trends.
Can a GEO monitoring tool guarantee that AI will recommend my brand? No. No tool or service provider can. A monitoring tool turns “whether AI mentioned you, which questions mentioned you, and which sources it cited” into verifiable data. Whether optimization worked is determined by retesting.
Are overseas tools suitable for domestic brands? If your target customers are overseas, Profound and Otterly are worth considering. If your primary market is China, they do not support Doubao, Kimi, Qwen, or ERNIE Bot, which means missing the entry points with the largest user bases.
Want to see your brand’s real performance across 12 AI engines first? Download YinJen for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you then want to run content and advertising together after monitoring, our sister product Sail covers an SEO content agent and advertising automation.
