AEO Toolkit and OpenSEO
OpenSEO is an open-source SEO tool that covers keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and backlinks, with AI visibility listed as a feature. AEO Toolkit is narrower: an Apache-2.0 audit engine, a Chrome extension and a hosted console for tracking AI answers. If you want to self-host the whole tool, OpenSEO is the one that offers it.
| Dimension | OpenSEO | AEO Toolkit |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Keyword research, rank tracking, site audit, backlinks, domain overview and AI visibility | An audit of how answer engines read a site, weekly tracking of customer questions, and your Search Console, GA4 and Bing data through MCP. It does not track keyword rankings |
| Open source | Described as 100% open source and self-hostable. We did not find a license named on its site pages | The audit engine (six npm packages), the Chrome extension and the Claude skills are Apache-2.0. The console and hosted MCP servers are proprietary, and cannot be self-hosted |
| Where the data comes from | DataForSEO is named as its main data source | Your own site and Google and Bing accounts, the AI engines through their APIs, and Open PageRank over Common Crawl for the authority checker |
| Agent access | MCP, with Claude, Codex, OpenClaw, OpenCode and Gemini listed as clients | Hosted MCP servers for Claude, Cursor and other clients, and a copy-paste setup prompt |
| AI visibility | Listed as a feature: it reviews AI mentions, citations and prompts. The pages we read give no more detail | Each customer question asked weekly in Perplexity, GPT with web search and Gemini, recording whether the brand is named and who is named beside it |
| How you run it | Self-host it, or use its hosted app | Use the free tools in the browser, the Chrome extension, or the hosted console. Run the audit engine yourself from npm |
These tools come from different starting points. OpenSEO is an SEO tool you can host yourself, with AI visibility as one of its features. AEO Toolkit starts from answer engines: whether they can read and quote a site, and whether they name the brand.
The open-source question deserves a plain answer. Part of AEO Toolkit is open and part is not. You can read every audit rule and run the engine on your own machine. You cannot self-host the console. If your requirement is the whole tool on your own servers, that is a real reason to choose OpenSEO.
We have not compared prices or feature depth beyond what each site states about itself. The links below go to OpenSEO directly.
Stay with OpenSEO when
You want to self-host the whole tool, you need keyword research, rank tracking or backlink data from one place, or you want to build on an open codebase.
Use AEO Toolkit when
You want to check whether a site is citable with rules you can read, track whether AI names a brand weekly from a free plan, or use your own Search Console data through an MCP client.
Common questions
Is AEO Toolkit open source?
Partly. The audit engine, the Chrome extension and the Claude skills are Apache-2.0. The hosted console and MCP servers are proprietary. The open core page lists exactly what is public.
Can I self-host AEO Toolkit?
You can run the audit engine and the extension yourself. The console and hosted MCP servers are run by Advance Labs and are not self-hostable.
Does AEO Toolkit replace an SEO tool?
No. It does not track keyword rankings or index backlinks. It audits how answer engines read a site and tracks whether AI names a brand.