Citeplane vs AirOps for winning AI answers at dev-tool companies

AirOps is a task-metered platform for AI-visibility insights and content production; its Pro plan lists “Insights Across 7+ Answer Engines” (AirOps pricing, checked October 2026). Citeplane tracks Claude today and writes evidence-led pages: Growth is $999 a month for 100 weekly-tracked buyer questions and 8 finished pages (pricing). Pick AirOps for multi-engine tracking or volume work today; pick Citeplane when each page must carry evidence your engineers can defend.

Citeplane publishes this page, so read it as a vendor’s comparison (who builds Citeplane). Every AirOps claim below links to an AirOps page or doc, checked in October 2026. The page argues one position: when your buyers are engineers, the verifiable evidence on each page decides more than the number of pages you ship. An answer engine can only repeat what a page states, and the engineer who clicks the citation checks those statements before trusting the product. A sentence like “3x faster on this workload, measured like this” gives the engine a claim to quote and the engineer a method to check; the bare word “faster” offers nothing to quote or check. The background is in what AEO changes compared with SEO.

Citeplane vs AirOps at a glance

Citeplane and AirOps differ on engine coverage and on output. AirOps’s analytics docs list ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok and Muse Spark, and its plans meter content production in tasks. Citeplane tracks Claude and delivers 8 fact-checked pages a month on Growth.

Attribute	Citeplane	AirOps
Primary job	Finds the buyer questions a company loses in AI answers and writes the page that should win from its own evidence (how it works)	“Run the strategy that wins AI discovery” (homepage); a platform organized around Insights, Actions and Context (core concepts)
Who it is built for	Dev-tool and AI companies	Plans are “For individuals”, “For small teams” and “For organizations building enterprise-grade content” (pricing)
AI engines tracked today	Claude with live web search. ChatGPT built but not switched on. Perplexity and Gemini planned (how it works)	ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Muse Spark. Claude and Muse Spark depend on plan and configuration (analytics docs). Solo plan: “ChatGPT Insights Only” (pricing)
How questions are monitored, and how often	100 buyer questions on Growth, asked again every week (pricing); the sources each answer cites are recorded (how it works)	Prompts area tracks buyer questions (core concepts). Insights default to the last 90 days with Weekly aggregation, with a Daily view (analytics docs). Collection frequency: not named on the AirOps pages checked (checked October 2026)
Where page facts come from	Answers from the client’s engineers, which Citeplane can draft from internal docs and call transcripts that stay private	Brand Kits and Knowledge Bases: “Upload documents, scrape websites, or connect databases” (core concepts). Solo 3 Knowledge Bases, Pro 5, Enterprise unlimited (pricing)
Fact-checking	Each number must appear in the client’s facts or a cited source. A separate pass checks every claim against its source	Content Scores: “automated checks for readability, claim support, information gain, SEO, and AEO” (platform)
Who approves publishing	A person on the client’s team approves every page. Citeplane never publishes on its own	Human Review checkpoints. Agents pause, route work to an Inbox and resume after a reviewer edits or approves (platform)
Publishing destinations	Framer, Webflow, GitHub pull request (presets for Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight, Nextra), any CMS by webhook, with structured data	Webflow, WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, ContentStack, Ghost, Strapi (launch post, March 2026). GitHub: not named on the AirOps pages checked (checked October 2026)
Site audit scope	Free instant audit of up to 40 pages. Full audit of up to 500 sitemap pages, re-run monthly on Growth (check, pricing)	Onsite insights: Pages (traditional and AI search performance) and Agent Analytics (how AI crawlers and assistants access the site). Sitemap audit: not named on the AirOps pages checked (checked October 2026) (core concepts)
Work beyond your own site	Records which outside pages each answer cites. Publishes to your own site	Offsite Citations, Reddit Community insights and ChatGPT Ads intelligence (core concepts)
Developer tooling (MCP)	MCP server so Claude Code and Cursor can work with a workspace	MCP server for “AI assistants like Claude and Cursor”. Resource tools need a paid workspace (MCP tools)
Pricing model and entry price	Growth $999 a month, cancel any time. Enterprise priced to the plan (checked 24 October 2026)	Solo and Pro “Start for free” with 35,000 and 100,000 tasks. “Our pricing is based on your task volume and specific needs.” Enterprise: “Work with us” (AirOps pricing, checked October 2026)
Availability	Early access with a small group of design partners (early access)	“Start for free” on Solo and Pro. The pricing FAQ describes a 14-day trial that “gives you access to all Scale plan features” (pricing, checked October 2026)

Checked on: Citeplane values from citeplane.com on 24 October 2026. AirOps values from airops.com and docs.airops.com in October 2026. Plans change, so confirm both before you buy.

What does each tool actually do?

Citeplane runs one loop for a fixed set of buyer questions. It asks each question to Claude with live web search, records the sources the answer cites, writes the page that should win from the company’s evidence, has a person on the company’s team approve it, then publishes it (how it works). The deliverable is the page. Tracking exists to pick which page to write and to name the cited pages it has to beat.

AirOps describes itself as a platform plus a team: “AirOps works with you to set and execute the right AI discovery strategy to earn an agent’s trust and drive growth for your brand” (airops.com). Its docs split the product into Insights (analytics, prompts, onsite and offsite citations, ads), Actions (Playbooks, Grids and Workflows that run agents) and Context (Brand Kits, Knowledge Bases, integrations) (core concepts). The platform page says “Agents research, create, publish, review, monitor, and refresh your content” (platform), and Enterprise adds a dedicated account manager and “1:1 Expert Onboarding” (pricing).

The audiences differ. Citeplane is built for dev-tool and AI companies, and its full audit judges each page by type: core pages, guides and comparisons, docs and blog. AirOps addresses brands broadly: its platform page opens with “The winning playbook for marketing teams”, and its homepage quotes growth leaders at Chime, Sanity and Venn.

AirOps also argues against the model Citeplane uses. Its platform page says prompt-tracking tools “run a selected list of questions through AI engines and count how often your brand appears for any buyer, not your ICP”, and it sells market-level data instead, citing “6B citations” and “70M high value prompts” (platform). Citeplane does run a selected list. The difference is what the list is for. Citeplane’s 100 questions are the ones your buyer asks before choosing a tool in your category, and the output of asking them is the list of pages each answer cites, which becomes the brief for a better page. If your board wants a market-sized share-of-voice model, AirOps is built for that job.

Which AI engines does each tool track today?

Citeplane tracks Claude with live web search today. ChatGPT tracking is built but not switched on, and Perplexity and Gemini are planned (how it works). For each tracked question, Citeplane records the sources the answer cites. That source list is what the page brief targets: the new page has to answer the question better than the pages Claude quotes now.

AirOps’s analytics docs list ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok and Muse Spark, with the note that “Claude and Muse Spark tracking availability depends on your workspace plan and configuration” (analytics docs, checked October 2026). Solo lists “ChatGPT Insights Only”; Pro lists “Insights Across 7+ Answer Engines” (pricing). The docs also describe a collection status that marks answers as “Delayed” when some arrive late, which you should check before reading a drop as a real change.

Profound’s AirOps review, written by a competing vendor in January 2026, listed “Limited LLM and regional coverage” as a con (Profound review). The review predates the October 2026 docs, so check the current engine list against the plan you would buy.

If your buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews and you need that data now, give this row more weight than the rest of the table. Citeplane cannot supply it today. For a tracking-first tool compared the same way, see Citeplane vs Peec AI.

Where do the facts in each tool’s pages come from?

Before writing a page, Citeplane asks the client’s engineers questions only they can answer, and can draft those answers from internal docs and call transcripts, which stay private (how it works). Two rules then apply to every draft. Each number must appear in the client’s facts or a cited source. Each link must point at a real source or a real page on the client’s site. A separate fact-check pass checks every claim in the draft against its source.

A hypothetical, with no client data: a draft says the client’s sync engine is “<N>x faster than Debezium”, and neither the client’s facts nor a cited source holds that benchmark. Under Citeplane’s rules that number cannot stay. The fact-check pass flags it, and the sentence either gets a source (the engineer supplies the benchmark with its dataset and hardware) or is rewritten as the mechanism the engineer did describe, such as “reads changes through a logical replication slot”. The engineer who arrives from the AI answer finds a claim they can verify or a mechanism they can reason about.

AirOps grounds its agents in the material your team connects. Knowledge Bases hold “Internal documentation and guides”, “Product information and specifications” and “Customer data and insights”, and Brand Kits hold voice, product lines, audiences and writing rules (core concepts). Workflows can add “Web research and SEO tools”. Before content ships, Content Scores run checks that include “claim support” (platform). The AirOps pages checked do not state whether a draft is blocked when a number lacks a source, and they do not describe interviewing your engineers before writing (checked October 2026).

AirOps agents draw on what your team has loaded into Knowledge Bases; Citeplane asks your engineers for what the currently cited pages do not know. If your strongest evidence is a production setup or a migration story that exists only in an engineer’s head, the interview is how it reaches the page.

For a hands-on view of AirOps output, Profound’s review (a competing vendor) rated it “Decent AI generated content that takes your brand voice into account” and warned that the workflow builder has “a steep learning curve” (Profound review).

How do pages get approved and published?

A person on the client’s team approves every Citeplane page, and Citeplane never publishes on its own (how it works). Approved pages go to Framer or Webflow, to a GitHub pull request with presets for Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra, or to any CMS through a webhook, with their structured data. For a docs site on one of those four frameworks, the page arrives as a diff, so the approver reviews it where the docs team already reviews code.

Citeplane’s MCP server lets Claude Code and Cursor work with a Citeplane workspace.

AirOps launched native CMS integrations on 3 March 2026 for Webflow, WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, ContentStack, Ghost and Strapi, plus Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com and Airtable for project management (launch post). The post describes importing “an entire CMS collection”, running it through a refresh workflow and pushing it back “in one click”, with task statuses syncing to the project tracker. It also states: “Every workflow routes through review before anything goes live.” The platform page lists review tooling: inline comment threads, suggestion mode, visual content diffs, and version history with rollback (platform). GitHub and the Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra frameworks are not named on the AirOps pages checked (October 2026).

AirOps’s MCP server gives “AI assistants like Claude and Cursor programmatic, AI-native access” to a workspace, with tools for AEO analytics, Brand Kits, Grids, Knowledge Bases, Playbooks and Workflows. Free workspaces can connect and list workspaces, but data requests “return a plan restriction” (MCP tools).

The publishing models fit different volumes. AirOps is designed around collections, refreshing a library in bulk (launch post). Citeplane ships 8 pages a month, each approved individually.

How do the site audits compare?

Citeplane’s free instant audit reads up to 40 pages in about a minute with no email or card, and the full audit scores up to 500 pages from a site’s sitemap (check, pricing). The full audit checks crawl and AI access, structured data, metadata, answer extractability and AI-readable files such as llms.txt. It judges each page by its type (core pages, guides and comparisons, docs, blog), so a docs page is not scored against the standard for a blog post. On Growth the site is re-audited monthly.

AirOps’s docs do not describe a sitemap audit (checked October 2026). The closest feature is Onsite Insights: Pages combines traditional and AI search performance for your content inventory, Agent Analytics “shows how AI crawlers and assistants access your site”, and Content Updates records publish and refresh dates (core concepts). The two answer different questions. Citeplane’s audit reads your pages and scores whether engines can reach and quote them. AirOps reports how crawlers and assistants are accessing the site and how pages perform. You can run the free instant AEO audit on your site before talking to either vendor.

What does each cost?

Citeplane Growth costs $999 a month, cancel any time, for 100 buyer questions tracked weekly and 8 finished pages a month; Enterprise is priced to the plan (pricing, checked 24 October 2026). AirOps lists no dollar price for its Solo or Pro plans, both marked “Start for free”, and says “Our pricing is based on your task volume and specific needs” (AirOps pricing, checked October 2026).

Option	Price as listed	What the listing includes	Source and date
Citeplane Growth	$999 a month, cancel any time	100 buyer questions tracked weekly, 8 finished pages a month, monthly re-audit	citeplane.com/pricing, 24 October 2026
Citeplane Enterprise	Priced to the plan	Not listed	citeplane.com/pricing, 24 October 2026
AirOps Solo	“Start for free”. For Solo plan users, additional tasks cost $0.025 per task	35,000 tasks for content production, ChatGPT insights, 1 Brand Kit, 3 Knowledge Bases, single user	airops.com/pricing, October 2026
AirOps Pro	“Start for free”. No dollar price listed	100,000 tasks, insights across 7+ answer engines, 1 Brand Kit, 5 Knowledge Bases, unlimited seats	airops.com/pricing, October 2026
AirOps Enterprise	“Work with us”	Custom prompt, page and task limits, dedicated account manager, 1:1 expert onboarding	airops.com/pricing, October 2026
Specialist technical content agency (context)	$5,000 to $15,000 a month	Agency-written technical content	Hackmamba pricing, checked October 2026

AirOps defines tasks as “the ‘currency’ used to complete certain actions in AirOps like generating content or extracting data”, counted when a workflow step completes. The same FAQ describes a 14-day free trial that gives access to the Scale plan, although Scale is not one of the three plan cards on the page (checked October 2026). Profound’s review, from a competing vendor, judged that AirOps “can be too expensive if you don’t create a lot of content” (Profound review).

One price buys a set number of finished, fact-checked pages; the other buys task capacity for workflows your team designs. Count the pages a month that need evidence only your engineers have: if it is 8 or fewer, Growth covers them; if the work is a backlog of refreshes to existing posts, that is task volume AirOps meters.

When should you choose AirOps?

AirOps fits better when you need ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews data today, self-serve signup, or content volume well beyond a fixed monthly page count.

• You need answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews today. AirOps’s analytics docs list those engines alongside Gemini, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Claude and Muse Spark, with Claude and Muse Spark depending on plan (analytics docs). Citeplane tracks Claude, and its ChatGPT tracking is not switched on.
• You need to buy and onboard this week. AirOps Solo and Pro are marked “Start for free” (pricing). Citeplane is in early access with a small group of design partners and is not open for general signup.
• Your team produces content at high volume across many topics and wants to build its own workflows. Grid runs Playbooks “across many rows” (core concepts), and the CMS integrations import and refresh whole collections. Citeplane delivers 8 finished pages a month and you do not build the workflow.
• You are not a dev-tool or AI company. Citeplane is built for that category; AirOps addresses brands and marketing teams generally (platform).
• You want help beyond your own pages. AirOps covers offsite citations, Reddit community discussions and ChatGPT ads, and offers “a team of experts to help you set and execute the right strategy” (airops.com).
• You want a vendor with public customers and its own research program. The AirOps homepage quotes leaders at Chime, Sanity and Venn and publishes research such as “Creator citations doubled to 6% in a year” (airops.com).

When does Citeplane fit better?

Citeplane fits better when your buyers are engineers who check numbers, your docs live in a Git repo, or you want a fixed number of pages each approved by your team.

• Your buyers are engineers who check numbers. Each page needs facts your engineers supply, every number must trace to the client’s facts or a cited source, and a separate pass checks each claim before a person approves the page.
• Your docs live in Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight or Nextra. Citeplane delivers pages as a GitHub pull request with presets for those frameworks, so review happens in the repo.
• You want a fixed, reviewable output. Eight pages a month, each approved by someone on your team, is a volume a developer relations lead can read line by line.
• You want an audit that judges pages by type. The full audit scores up to 500 sitemap pages and treats docs, guides and comparisons, core pages and blog posts separately.
• You work in Claude Code or Cursor. Citeplane’s MCP server gives those tools access to the workspace.
• You are weighing a specialist technical content agency. Specialist technical content agencies cost $5,000 to $15,000 a month (Hackmamba pricing, checked October 2026). Citeplane Growth costs $999 a month, cancel any time, for 100 buyer questions tracked weekly and 8 finished pages a month, so compare cost per page against the agency’s quote. For other options in the same space, see alternatives to answer-tracking tools.

How do you move from AirOps to Citeplane, or run both?

Running both is a fair end state: AirOps for broader engine monitoring and volume workflows, Citeplane for evidence-led pages on the questions that decide a technical purchase.

1. Run the free instant AEO audit, then apply for early access.
2. Note which questions you track in AirOps matter most, so you can check them against the buyer questions Citeplane finds.
3. Run both for a month of weekly checks. If your AirOps plan includes Claude (availability depends on the plan, per its analytics docs), compare the sources each tool records for Claude on the same questions.
4. Set where Citeplane publishes, decide which tool owns which pages, and check each live page carries structured data:

curl -s https://<your-site>/<page-path> | grep -c 'application/ld+json'

Frequently asked questions

Does Citeplane track ChatGPT or Perplexity answers?

Not today. Citeplane tracks Claude with live web search. ChatGPT tracking is built but not switched on, and Perplexity and Gemini are planned. AirOps’s analytics docs list ChatGPT and Perplexity among its tracked engines (checked October 2026).

Can I sign up for Citeplane today?

No. Citeplane is in early access with a small group of design partners, and you can apply at early access. The free instant AEO audit is open to anyone and needs no email or card.

How does Citeplane’s $999 a month compare with AirOps pricing?

Citeplane Growth is $999 a month, cancel any time, for 100 buyer questions tracked weekly and 8 finished pages a month. AirOps’s pricing page lists no dollar price for Solo or Pro, both marked “Start for free” with 35,000 and 100,000 tasks, and Enterprise is “Work with us”. For Solo plan users, additional tasks cost $0.025 per task (checked October 2026).

Will Citeplane publish pages to my site without my approval?

No. A person on your team approves every page, and Citeplane never publishes on its own.

Can Citeplane open a pull request against my Mintlify or Docusaurus docs?

Yes. Approved pages can publish as a GitHub pull request, with presets for Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra, and they carry their structured data. You review and merge the pull request like any other change to the docs repo.

Can I use AirOps and Citeplane together?

Yes. One way to split the work: AirOps for monitoring ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, which Citeplane does not track today (AirOps analytics docs, checked October 2026), and Citeplane for sourced pages on your top 100 buyer questions. Assign each URL to one tool so two workflows never overwrite the same page.