# Compare

> Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, is a free place to start. How it relates to Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Gauge and the Semrush AI Toolkit, and how to tell when to move to one.


Popcorn (popcorn.zone) is the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker. It is openly inspired by hosted tools like Gauge, Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI and the Semrush AI Toolkit. Those products do a lot. Most teams starting out use a small part of it most of the time: ask the assistants your buyers' questions, see whether the answers recommend you, and find out what to change. Popcorn is that part, free and open source, running on the Claude subscription you already have (ChatGPT optional).

## Start here

If you want to find out whether AI assistants recommend your product, without a sales call or a monthly plan, start with Popcorn. It asks Claude and OpenAI models your buyers' questions, grades whether each answer recommends your brand, merely mentions it or leaves it out, and ends every run with a ranked list of fixes.

Claude is required, through a subscription or an API key; ChatGPT (Codex or an OpenAI key) is optional and adds a second assistant's answers. On your own machine, a Claude Code subscription is enough: no API key, no extra spend. Host it and you pay your host (and, in a container, API usage, since the image has no CLIs).

## When to move

You may outgrow it, and that's fine. The usual signs:

- **You need engines Popcorn doesn't ask.** Popcorn asks only Claude and OpenAI models. It doesn't cover Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews or AI Mode. The hosted tools do.
- **You'd rather not run anything.** Popcorn is software you or your host keeps running.
- **You're an agency,** or you need white-label reports, seats and team workflows.
- **You need enterprise boxes ticked,** such as SOC 2, SSO and a support SLA.

When that happens, bring your prompts. Popcorn's prompt sets are plain TOML in your own git repo, each prompt a line of text with an id, so the buyer questions you've refined are yours to copy into whichever tool you choose.

## One tool at a time

The pages below take one tool at a time, using only Popcorn's public facts and what each vendor says on its own pages, as of October 2026. Each says what the tool does that Popcorn doesn't, and when it's time to move. [Gauge](/compare/gauge/) is the place to begin: Popcorn started as a small, self-hosted take on it. For six tools side by side, see [AI visibility tools compared](/blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared/).

Popcorn is not affiliated with Bad Popcorn (badpopcorn.ai), Popcorn AI (trypopcorn.ai), popcorn.ai, popcorn.co or Reclaim Protocol's popcorn-oss.


## Pages

- [Popcorn vs Profound](https://popcorn.zone/compare/profound/index.md): Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, is a free place to start before Profound. Engines, pricing, hosting, prompts, grading, fixes and API compared as of October 2026, and when to move.
- [Popcorn vs Peec AI](https://popcorn.zone/compare/peec-ai/index.md): Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, is a free place to start before Peec AI. Engines, pricing, hosting, prompts, grading, fixes and API compared as of October 2026, and when to move.
- [Popcorn vs Otterly.AI](https://popcorn.zone/compare/otterly-ai/index.md): Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, is a free place to start before Otterly.AI. Engines, pricing, hosting, prompts, grading, fixes and API compared as of October 2026, and when to move.
- [Popcorn vs Gauge](https://popcorn.zone/compare/gauge/index.md): Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, started as a small take on Gauge. A free place to start, compared with Gauge's Action Center and plans as of October 2026, and when to move.
- [Popcorn vs Semrush AI Toolkit](https://popcorn.zone/compare/semrush-ai-toolkit/index.md): Popcorn, the MIT-licensed, self-hosted AI visibility tracker at popcorn.zone, is a free place to start before Semrush's AI Toolkit (now the AI Visibility Toolkit). Popcorn queries Claude; Semrush's pages don't mention it. As of October 2026.