Earned mention tools: find the Reddit threads and listicles AI cites

Earned mention tools find the Reddit threads you can join and the listicles, roundups and directories that name your competitors but not you. Asky finds new Reddit threads and the AI-cited pages that leave you out on its entry plan, from €99 a month. We compared it with eight others as of 5 November 2026: Octolens, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Semrush, Ahrefs, Syften, MentionGap and Brand24.

Those third-party pages carry weight. In a University of Toronto study of 143,249 ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity API answers about US home internet, 75.0% of citations went to third-party websites (University of Toronto). Every fact about each tool below comes from its own website, checked on 5 November 2026.

Which criteria should earned mention tools meet?

An earned mention tool should show you where to show up next, and why those places matter for AI answers. We applied four tests to every tool on this list.

• It finds new Reddit threads. The tool surfaces fresh discussions that mention your competitors, so you can join while the buyer is still deciding.
• It finds pages that leave you out. It lists the roundups, comparisons and directories that name your competitors but not your brand.
• It knows what AI cites. It ties those pages and threads to the ones ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews actually cite.
• It turns targets into work. It ranks the targets, shows who wrote each page and lets your team track the outreach.

Price comes after these tests. We list the cheapest plan that includes the earned mention features, because several tools keep them on higher tiers.

1. Asky: best for new Reddit threads and AI-cited roundups on one plan

Overview

Asky is an AI-native SEO and GEO platform from Stockholm that closes the loop from insight to execution. It tracks how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews mention and cite your brand. Asky then turns the cited sources into ranked next actions, including the third-party pages and threads worth winning.

Strengths

• Reddit discovery searches Reddit from your brand, your competitors, your topics and the communities AI already cites, and lists new threads first with the competitors each one mentions.
• Roundups lists the cited pages that name two or more of your competitors but not you, with each page's listed authors and its AI citations this week.
• Trusted Platforms shows the review sites, directories and publications that AI answers cite where Asky has not found you yet.
• Cited Socials lists the Reddit and LinkedIn threads AI answers already quote, so a reply joins a conversation AI reads.
• Each target goes into your tasks with an owner and a status, next to your content and technical work.

Weaknesses

• Asky finds and ranks the targets and shows the contacts a page lists, but your team writes and sends the pitch.
• Reddit discovery runs as scans rather than a live alert feed. The first scan is free, and later scans use monthly credits.

Best for

Marketing teams that want the Reddit threads and roundups shaping AI answers in their category, worked from the same place they track AI visibility.

2. Octolens: best for social listening across many platforms

Overview

Octolens, from Berlin, calls itself social listening for the agent era. It tracks your brand and competitor keywords across Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Hacker News and other communities, and scores each post for relevance to your business.

Strengths

• Its Reddit pages say new posts and comments arrive within minutes, tagged as competitor mentions, buy intent or product questions. Its pricing page lists hourly search on Pro.
• Its AI Visibility page says it finds the listicles that mention competitors but not you.
• Pro includes an API, webhooks and an MCP server, and every plan has unlimited seats.

Weaknesses

• Its pricing page puts the Web source, which covers blogs and listicles, on Scale at $599 a month. An FAQ elsewhere on its site includes the web source on Pro.
• It finds conversations but does not build contact lists, in its own words.
• Its AI Visibility page says it monitors the open web, not the inside of AI answers.

Best for

Teams that want a feed of social conversations about them and their competitors across many platforms.

3. Peec AI: best for cited-source gaps by AI model

Overview

Peec AI, from Berlin, tracks how AI models mention brands across daily prompts. Its Gap Analysis shows the domains and URLs AI platforms use as sources that mention your competitors but not your brand.

Strengths

• Gap Analysis is included on every brand plan and can be filtered by AI model.
• It labels cited URLs by type, including listicles, comparisons and discussions on Reddit or forums.
• Recommended actions include a group for getting mentioned on the third-party sites AI already relies on.

Weaknesses

• Its pages describe Reddit as threads AI already cites, not a search for new threads to join.
• Its pages describe finding listicle authors' contacts as an MCP workflow with other tools, not a built-in list.

Best for

Teams that want to see, model by model, which cited sources favor their competitors.

4. Otterly.AI: best for citation gaps next to AI tracking

Overview

Otterly.AI, based in Austria, tracks how AI search engines mention and cite brands across the prompts you set. Its Citations report lists every cited URL and whether your brand appears on it.

Strengths

• A Not Mentioned filter turns the Citations report into a list of pages where competitors appear and you do not.
• A Reddit Conversations recommendation flags threads where a competitor is cited and your brand is not.
• The Citations report and its filters are on every plan.

Weaknesses

• On Lite, recommendations are a preview of three per week; full recommendations start on Standard.
• In the app, Reddit threads come from the sources AI engines cite for your tracked prompts; a wider Reddit search is a beta agent that runs through the API.

Best for

Small teams that want citation gaps next to their AI visibility tracking.

5. Semrush: best for teams already on Semrush

Overview

Semrush, based in Boston, covers this job with two toolkits. The AI Visibility Toolkit finds the domains and pages AI cites for your competitors, and the AI PR Toolkit monitors media and Reddit mentions.

Strengths

• The Missing filter shows domains that cite competitors but not you, and each domain expands into the exact pages.
• AI-Cited Media lists the outlets AI platforms cite most for a topic, with the journalists who write for them.
• Backlink Gap shows domains that link to all of your competitors but not to you.

Weaknesses

• Reddit monitoring sits in the AI PR Toolkit, a separate subscription from $279 a month on Pro.
• The AI Visibility Toolkit has no free trial.

Best for

SEO and PR teams that already run Semrush and want AI citation gaps next to their link data.

6. Ahrefs: best for link and mention research at scale

Overview

Ahrefs, based in Singapore, adds AI tracking through Brand Radar. Brand Radar shows the pages AI answers cite where competitors are mentioned and you are not, next to Ahrefs' web and link indexes.

Strengths

• Brand Radar filters AI answers that mention competitors but not you, then opens the pages those answers cite.
• Alerts can email you new web pages that mention your competitors but not you, filtered by authority and traffic.
• A Reddit visibility report shows threads that rank on Google, with a column for threads cited in AI.

Weaknesses

• The Reddit report tracks Google's results rather than Reddit itself, and is a free beta on Lite and higher plans.
• Ahrefs offers no free trial; Content Explorer and mention alerts start on Standard at $249 a month.

Best for

SEO teams that want earned mention research inside the Ahrefs link and content data they already use.

7. Syften: best for fast keyword alerts from Reddit and communities

Overview

Syften, from Kraków, monitors Reddit and other online communities for keywords you set. It has run since 2019 and sends alerts by email, Slack, webhook or RSS.

Strengths

• It scans all of Reddit, posts and comments, and fetches alerts live.
• It also covers Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, Stack Exchange and forums.
• A web scraper finds new public pages that mention a term, including directories.

Weaknesses

• It does not describe a view of pages that name competitors but leave you out.
• It does not describe tracking what AI answers cite.

Best for

Founders and community teams that want to hear about every relevant Reddit thread quickly.

8. MentionGap: best for roundups with outreach drafts

Overview

MentionGap finds roundup articles, best-of posts, comparison pages and directories where your competitors appear and you do not. Then it drafts your outreach to the author.

Strengths

• Each opportunity is an article that names your competitors but not you.
• It finds author details on the page and verifies emails before you reach out.
• Drafts can be regenerated in different tones, and a weekly digest lists new opportunities.

Weaknesses

• Its pages describe web articles only, not Reddit or other communities.
• It does not say which of those pages AI answers cite.

Best for

Small SaaS teams that want a short list of roundups to pitch, with drafts ready to edit.

9. Brand24: best for broad media and social listening

Overview

Brand24, a social listening tool, tracks keyword mentions across social media, news, blogs, forums, reviews and podcasts. Reddit is covered on every plan.

Strengths

• It monitors your direct and indirect competitors alongside your own brand.
• AI sentiment analysis is included on every plan.
• Its AI Visibility module, sold as an add-on and as the sister product Chatbeat, adds AI answer tracking and the publications AI cites where your brand is missing.

Weaknesses

• The core product does not describe a view of pages that name competitors but not you.
• The entry plan covers three keywords and one user.

Best for

Communications teams that want one listening tool across social, news and reviews.

How do you find which social content gets cited by AI?

Start with the threads AI already cites for your category: Asky lists them as Cited Socials, with how often AI answers cited each one this week.

Then look at what those threads have in common: the subreddit, the question, and the kind of answer that earned the citation. Engines lean on social content differently. In an earlier University of Toronto study of ranking questions about well-known brands, 23.8% of Perplexity's cited links were social content, against none of ChatGPT's (University of Toronto).

Our guide to citable community threads covers how to write the reply itself.

Do you need a Reddit tool and a backlink tool, or one platform?

You need one platform if your goal is AI visibility, because the targets that matter are the ones AI cites. Asky covers both on one plan, from €99 a month.

A Reddit alert tool such as Syften shows every thread that matches your keywords, and a backlink index shows the pages that link to competitors. Neither view, on its own, shows which of them AI answers use. In the 2026 Toronto study, a cited third-party page naming a vendor raised the odds that ChatGPT named it 39.7 times, in a market of small B2B software firms.

How did we compare these tools?

We read each vendor's pricing page, product pages and documentation on 5 November 2026, and quote prices as each vendor lists them. Where a vendor's own pages disagree, we say so or leave the claim out.

We did not test outreach results. We list Asky first because it meets all four tests on its entry plan.

Which earned mention tool should you choose?

Choose by the targets you need to find. Asky fits teams that want the Reddit threads and roundups behind AI answers in one place, worked as tasks next to the rest of their SEO and GEO work. See how Reddit discovery works, how third-party discovery works, or compare plans and prices.

For a manual start, our guide to third-party listings walks through the search, and our competitor benchmarking guide shows where rivals win.