HubSpot's free AEO Grader (now presented as the AI Search Grader) gives your brand a one-time score out of 100 based on how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini describe you, weighted heavily toward sentiment. It is a useful free first look at brand perception in AI answers. It does not track changes over time, audit your pages, or tell you which of your URLs get cited, so treat it as a diagnostic, not a measurement system.
Key Takeaways
- The free grader scores five dimensions, and sentiment alone is worth up to 40 of 100 points, according to HubSpot.
- It checks three engines: an OpenAI model, Perplexity and Gemini. It needs only your company name, location, and product and industry description.
- It is a snapshot. HubSpot itself describes it as "a single moment in time."
- It misses page-level citations, prompt-level control, Google AI Overviews and technical crawl access.
- Paid HubSpot AEO (standalone at $50/month, or included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise, as of September 2026) adds ongoing prompt tracking and recommendations.
- Use the free grader to open a conversation; use a fixed prompt panel to make decisions.
What the HubSpot AEO Grader Is
HubSpot has several AEO products, and the naming confuses people:
| Product | Cost | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| AEO Grader / AI Search Grader | Free | One-time brand check with a 0-100 score |
| AI Search Sensor | Free | Industry-level trend tracker, no individual brand data |
| HubSpot AEO | Paid | Continuous prompt tracking, share of voice, citation analysis, recommendations |
This review focuses on the free grader, with a section on when the paid product makes sense. Details come from HubSpot's AI Search Grader page and AEO product page, checked in September 2026. HubSpot updates these tools often, so verify before you buy.
How the Grader Works
You enter three things: company name, geographic location, and a description of your product or service with its industry. HubSpot then queries its selected AI engines and returns results in under two minutes, according to the tool page.
Per HubSpot, the analysis runs across GPT-5.4 mini (OpenAI), Perplexity and Gemini. Note that this is a specific, smaller OpenAI model called via API, not necessarily what a logged-in ChatGPT user sees with search enabled. That distinction matters later.
The Five Scoring Dimensions
HubSpot publishes the weights:
| Dimension | Max points | What it's getting at |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | 40 | Is the AI's description of you positive, neutral or negative? |
| Presence quality | 20 | How substantive and accurate the mentions are |
| Brand recognition | 20 | Whether the engines know who you are |
| AI share of voice | 10 | How often you appear relative to competitors |
| Market competition | 10 | How crowded your category is in AI answers |
You also get a written interpretation of how the engines currently characterise your brand.
What the weighting tells you
Sentiment is 40% of the score; share of voice is only 10%. So the grader is primarily a brand perception tool. A well-loved niche brand that rarely appears in category answers can still score well. For most growth teams, how often you show up for buying questions is the bigger commercial issue, and that is the lightest-weighted dimension.
What It Does Well
- Zero friction. No account, no setup, results in minutes. That makes it an easy conversation-starter with a founder or CMO who has never looked at AI search.
- Narrative check. The written summary of how engines describe you is genuinely useful. I have seen it surface outdated positioning (an old product line, a pivot the models missed) that nobody on the team had noticed.
- Competitor framing. Even a rough share-of-voice number reframes the conversation from "do we rank?" to "who gets recommended instead of us?"
- Transparent weights. Publishing the point breakdown is more than many tools do.
What It Misses
This is where a practitioner review has to be blunt.
1. No trend line
One run is one sample. LLM outputs vary between runs, so a score of 62 today and 55 next week may be noise. Without repeated runs on a fixed prompt set, you cannot tell improvement from randomness.
2. You do not control the prompts
The grader generates its own questions from your description. Your buyers might ask very different things. For an Indian edtech brand, "best data analytics course with placement in Bangalore" is a completely different retrieval problem from "what is [brand]?"
3. No page-level citation data
It tells you how you are described, not which of your URLs are cited. Content teams need the URL level to know what to fix.
4. No Google AI Overviews or AI Mode
The three engines checked do not include Google's AI search surfaces, which for many Indian and global brands carry more volume than Perplexity.
5. API model vs consumer experience
Querying GPT-5.4 mini via API is a reasonable proxy, but it is not the same as ChatGPT with search, memory and location. Results can differ.
6. No technical diagnosis
It does not check whether AI crawlers can access your site, whether your robots.txt blocks search bots, or whether your key pages render content without JavaScript.
Paid HubSpot AEO: What Changes
According to HubSpot's product page, as of September 2026:
- Standalone AEO: $50/month ($45/month billed annually), 25 tracked prompts, no other HubSpot subscription required. Extra prompts can be purchased.
- Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise: AEO included, with expanded prompt limits and recommendations informed by CRM data.
Features include visibility scoring across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, competitor share of voice, citation analysis by domain and content type, prompt tracking and prioritised recommendations.
Agency Big Sea, which tested the paid tool, reported that the auto-setup was not reliable enough to trust, that setup of competitors, ICPs and prompts took more manual work than expected, and that URL tracking was limited to recommended pages. That matches my general experience with AI visibility tools: the output is only as good as your prompt panel.
Who Should Use It
| Situation | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Never looked at AI search before | Run the free grader today |
| Need to convince leadership AEO matters | Free grader plus 10 manual prompt tests |
| Already on Marketing Hub Pro/Enterprise | Turn on AEO and spend time on prompt setup |
| Not on HubSpot, small budget | Standalone at $50/month is among the cheaper trackers, but compare engine coverage |
| Need Google AI Overviews or 100+ prompts | Look at other trackers; see my AI visibility tools comparison |
How I Use It in Client Work
- Run the free grader in the first week and screenshot the written summary.
- Compare the summary against the brand's actual positioning. Every mismatch becomes a content or PR task.
- Build a separate fixed panel of 20-30 buyer prompts and test them manually three times each across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google.
- Re-run the grader quarterly as a sentiment sanity check, not as the KPI.
Improving Your Score (the Right Way)
Because sentiment dominates, the levers are mostly off-site:
- Earn reviews and third-party mentions that describe you accurately.
- Correct outdated information on directories, Wikipedia-style profiles and partner pages.
- Publish clear "about" and product pages with direct, extractable answers.
- Get into the listicles and comparison pages that the engines already cite for your category.
Do not chase the number itself. A higher grader score that does not come with more appearances in buying-intent answers is a vanity metric.
Verdict
The HubSpot AEO Grader is a good free brand-perception snapshot and a strong way to start an AEO conversation internally. It is not a measurement system. Pair it with a fixed prompt panel, GA4 AI referral tracking and server-log checks before you make budget decisions.
FAQ
Is the HubSpot AEO Grader free?
Yes. HubSpot states there is no cost to run the AI Search Grader and no account is required. The continuous tracking product, HubSpot AEO, is paid.
Which AI engines does the HubSpot AEO Grader check?
According to HubSpot, it analyses GPT-5.4 mini from OpenAI, Perplexity and Gemini. It does not cover Google AI Overviews, Claude or Microsoft Copilot.
How is the AEO Grader score calculated?
HubSpot publishes five dimensions: sentiment (up to 40 points), presence quality (20), brand recognition (20), AI share of voice (10) and market competition (10), totalling 100.
Why did my AEO Grader score change between runs?
AI engine outputs vary between runs, so a single score has natural noise. Treat small changes as meaningless and look for consistent shifts across multiple runs.
What's the difference between AEO Grader and HubSpot AEO?
The grader is a free one-time snapshot. HubSpot AEO is a paid product that tracks a set of prompts continuously, analyses citations and share of voice, and gives recommendations.
How much does HubSpot AEO cost?
As of September 2026, HubSpot lists the standalone product at $50/month or $45/month billed annually with 25 prompts, and includes AEO in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise. Check HubSpot's site for current pricing.
Does a good AEO Grader score mean I get AI traffic?
Not necessarily. The score is weighted toward sentiment, so you can score well while rarely appearing for buying-intent questions. Check GA4 for AI referral sessions to see actual traffic.
Can the AEO Grader tell me which pages to optimise?
No. The free grader works at brand level. For page-level insight, test your own prompts and note which URLs are cited, or use a tracker with citation analysis.
Let's Look at Your AI Visibility Together
I have 4+ years of marketing experience building organic growth for edtech and startup brands, and I use tools like this as a starting point, never the final answer. If you would like to see my work or get a clear read on how AI engines describe your brand, reach out through the contact form at younusfardeen.in.