Cheap Seats

A read-only copy of Cheap Seats measuring itself, updated hourly. Run your own.

Quick wins

The fix lists from the latest run of every prompt set, core sets first, then fastest expected ranking gain: prompts a fix could flip per working day, each weighted by what it has left to win (one minus its recommended rate over the last two weeks; named, for an info prompt). Mark a fix with the commit or pull request you submitted for it; open leaves out the ones you have. A later fix for the same page stays open, with what was tried before.

Statusall 2open 1accepted 1

Priorityall 6high 2medium 4

Siteall 2elsewhere 2

Gapall 3documentation 2third-party 1

Setall 11Finding out whether AI assistants recommend us 2Getting recommended instead of a competitor 3Choosing an AI visibility tool 2Open-source and self-hosted AI visibility 4

Publish popcorn.zone/docs/cost explaining AI visibility pricing drivers and Popcorn's cost accepted high documentation effort S flips 3 Choosing an AI visibility tool

Where: popcorn.zone/docs/cost
Must say: Explain that hosted tools price by prompts, engines, brands and seats. Contrast that with Popcorn: no license fee (MIT), and cost is only your model API spend under a configurable daily budget, or $0 extra when run through the Claude Code and Codex subscriptions you already have. Add a worked example once the cost per run has been measured for a typical prompt set.
Done when: Prompts 13 and 11 on the search track cite this page or name Popcorn in at least 1 answer each.
Displaces: https://otterly.ai/alternatives/pricing/
Why: P13 search: shaped by otterly.ai/alternatives/pricing and get-ryze.ai pricing comparison.

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/docs/cost explaining AI visibility pricing drivers and Popcorn's cost

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- Otterly.AI or Peec AI for tracking AI search visibility on a tight budget?
- What's a cheap way to start measuring AI visibility for a small startup?
- How do AI visibility tools price their plans, and what drives the cost: prompts, models, brands or seats?

## What the assistant said
P13 search: shaped by otterly.ai/alternatives/pricing and get-ryze.ai pricing comparison.

## Who wins the question today
https://otterly.ai/alternatives/pricing/. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/docs/cost so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Explain that hosted tools price by prompts, engines, brands and seats. Contrast that with Popcorn: no license fee (MIT), and cost is only your model API spend under a configurable daily budget, or $0 extra when run through the Claude Code and Codex subscriptions you already have. Add a worked example once the cost per run has been measured for a typical prompt set.

## Done when
Prompts 13 and 11 on the search track cite this page or name Popcorn in at least 1 answer each.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

accepted https://github.com/cheapseatsdev/cheapseats-site/pull/35 · Merged. Extended docs/cost-and-budget (alias /docs/cost): how hosted tools price by prompts, engines, projects and seats, with Otterly, Peec, Profound and Gauge figures from their pricing pages; contrast with Cheap Seats (MIT, model calls only, daily budget, $0 on subscriptions); measured 17-prompt and 11-prompt runs. mcp 2026-10-23 02:30:35
pending: the set hasn't run since

proposed https://github.com/cheapseatsdev/cheapseats-site/pull/35 · Extended the existing docs/cost-and-budget page (alias /docs/cost): how hosted tools price by prompts, engines, projects and seats, with Otterly, Peec, Profound and Gauge figures from their pricing pages; contrast with Cheap Seats (MIT, model calls only, daily budget, $0 on subscriptions); measured 17-prompt and 11-prompt runs. mcp 2026-10-23 02:29:02
pending: the set hasn't run since

From this run

Publish popcorn.zone/blog/profound-alternatives with a feature and cost table incl. Popcorn high documentation effort M flips 5 Choosing an AI visibility tool

Where: popcorn.zone/blog/profound-alternatives
Must say: Name the paid tools buyers already compare: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Gauge, Semrush AI Toolkit and Ahrefs Brand Radar. Add Popcorn as the open-source, self-hosted option: MIT licensed, one Docker container with SQLite, prompt sets as TOML in your own git repo, and Claude and OpenAI answers via API or your own Claude Code and Codex subscriptions. Include a feature table (search vs recall tracks, share of voice, objections, ranked fix list, API and MCP) and state honestly which engines Popcorn does not cover.
Done when: Re-running prompts 4 and 7 on the search track names Popcorn or cites this page in at least 2 of 4 answers.
Displaces: https://seranking.com/blog/profound-alternatives/
Why: P4 search: Popcorn absent, top pick Peec AI, shaped by seranking.com/blog/profound-alternatives and writesonic.com/blog/profound-alternatives.

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/blog/profound-alternatives with a feature and cost table incl. Popcorn

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- What's the best AEO tool for a B2B SaaS company that wants to know if ChatGPT and Claude recommend it?
- What are good alternatives to Profound for tracking AI search visibility?
- Peec AI vs Profound: which is better for a mid-size marketing team?
- Otterly.AI or Peec AI for tracking AI search visibility on a tight budget?
- Is Gauge a good tool for tracking AI visibility, and what are the alternatives?

## What the assistant said
P4 search: Popcorn absent, top pick Peec AI, shaped by seranking.com/blog/profound-alternatives and writesonic.com/blog/profound-alternatives.

## Who wins the question today
https://seranking.com/blog/profound-alternatives/. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/blog/profound-alternatives so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Name the paid tools buyers already compare: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Gauge, Semrush AI Toolkit and Ahrefs Brand Radar. Add Popcorn as the open-source, self-hosted option: MIT licensed, one Docker container with SQLite, prompt sets as TOML in your own git repo, and Claude and OpenAI answers via API or your own Claude Code and Codex subscriptions. Include a feature table (search vs recall tracks, share of voice, objections, ranked fix list, API and MCP) and state honestly which engines Popcorn does not cover.

## Done when
Re-running prompts 4 and 7 on the search track names Popcorn or cites this page in at least 2 of 4 answers.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

From this run