Citeplane vs Gauge for getting your dev tool cited in AI answers

Gauge Growth tracks 600 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot and writes 18 publish-ready articles a month for $599 (Gauge pricing, checked October 2026). Citeplane Growth tracks 100 buyer questions weekly in Claude and writes 8 sourced, fact-checked pages a month for $999. Pick Gauge for engine coverage and volume today; pick Citeplane when winning pages need facts your engineers hold.

Our position: for a dev tool read by engineers, 8 pages built from your engineers’ answers and traced to sources are worth more than a larger batch whose sourcing and fact-check rules are not published. Citeplane’s ChatGPT tracking is built but not switched on, and Perplexity and Gemini are planned.

Gauge calls itself “The Agent-Led Growth Platform” (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). Citeplane is AEO software for dev-tool and AI companies, in early access with a small group of design partners, and a person on your team approves each page before it ships.

We make Citeplane, so this is a vendor’s page; Gauge’s plans, prices and features below come from Gauge’s own site, checked October 2026. “Gauge” here means the AI visibility company at withgauge.com. It does not mean the Gauge test automation framework from ThoughtWorks, Open Gauge for sensor calibration, or the Gauge agency operations seed.

Citeplane vs Gauge at a glance

Start with the engines row: Gauge Growth covers ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot today, and Citeplane covers Claude with live web search. If your buyers ask ChatGPT, that row settles it for now.

Attribute	Citeplane	Gauge
What the product is	AEO software for dev-tool and AI companies. Finds the buyer questions you lose in AI answers and writes the page that should win from your evidence	“The Agent-Led Growth Platform”: Gauge Chat for AI visibility and AEO, plus Gauge Agents for coding-agent preference and experience testing (homepage)
AI engines tracked today	Claude with live web search. ChatGPT built but not switched on. Perplexity and Gemini planned	Growth: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise adds Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity. Claude and Grok on any plan with your own API key (pricing)
How answers are collected	Asks each buyer question to Claude with live web search and records the sources each answer cites	Asks each prompt on each platform every day. Each answer is checked for whether your brand is mentioned and cited (pricing)
Tracking cadence	100 buyer questions asked again every week on Growth	600 prompts run daily on Growth, “54,000 AI answers tracked per month” (pricing)
Site audit scope	Up to 500 sitemap pages scored by page type, re-audited monthly on Growth. Free audit of up to 40 pages	Action Center recommendations, AI crawler monitoring through Cloudflare and Vercel, agent traffic from server logs (homepage). A page-by-page sitemap audit is not published on withgauge.com, checked October 2026
Content production	8 finished pages a month on Growth, written after questions to your engineers	Content engine: “18 publish-ready articles per month” on Growth (pricing). Generates briefs, outlines and articles (homepage)
Evidence and fact-checking rules	Each number must appear in your facts or a cited source. Each link must point at a real source or a real page on your site. A separate fact-check pass checks every claim	Not published on withgauge.com, checked October 2026
Who publishes	A person on your team approves every page. Citeplane never publishes on its own	“Send approved articles from Gauge to your CMS or code-based blog” (homepage)
Publishing destinations	Framer, Webflow, GitHub pull request with Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra presets, any CMS through a webhook, with structured data	Webflow, Framer, Sanity, GitHub (pricing)
Developer tooling	MCP server so Claude Code and Cursor can work with a workspace	MCP access, Gauge CLI, Slack. Gauge Agents runs evaluations across coding agents (homepage)
Pricing (October 2026)	Growth $999 a month, cancel any time. Enterprise priced to the plan	Growth $599/mo. Enterprise custom. Gauge Agents credit plans from $100/mo to $20,000/mo (AEO pricing, Agents pricing)
Availability	Early access with a small group of design partners	Growth has a “Get started” button. Enterprise is “Book a demo” (pricing). Gauge Agents starts with 1,000 free credits, no card required (Agents pricing)

Gauge values checked against withgauge.com in October 2026. Citeplane values from citeplane.com/how-it-works and /pricing.

Which AI engines do Citeplane and Gauge track?

Citeplane tracks answers from 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 buyer question, Citeplane records the sources the answer cites. You see which pages Claude quoted instead of yours, which tells you what you have to out-write.

Gauge covers more engines today. Its Growth plan tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise covers six core platforms: those three plus Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity (Gauge pricing, checked October 2026). Gauge also offers Claude and Grok tracking on any plan if you supply your own Anthropic or xAI API key. In that case, the provider bills you directly for those runs. Gauge’s pricing page does not say whether those Claude runs use web search. If cited sources in Claude are what you care about, ask Gauge how those runs are configured.

ChatGPT search and Claude read the web with separate search crawlers, and each crawler obeys its own robots.txt rule; AEO vs SEO names both crawlers and links OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s documentation. A robots.txt that allows one and blocks the other can put you in one engine’s answer and out of the other’s, and Claude tracking alone would not show the ChatGPT side. Check before you choose: ask Claude and ChatGPT the three questions a buyer asks before picking a tool in your category, and compare the pages each cites. If they differ, track the engine your buyers use.

How does each tool decide which pages to fix?

Citeplane’s full audit scores up to 500 pages from your sitemap for crawl and AI access, structured data, metadata, answer extractability and AI-readable files such as llms.txt. Citeplane judges each page by its type (core pages, guides and comparisons, docs and blog), so a docs page is not scored like a product page (pricing).

You can see this before paying. The free instant AEO audit of up to 40 pages takes about a minute and needs no email or card. On Growth, Citeplane re-audits the site every month and asks your tracked questions again every week. A fix shows up in the next audit, and any change in which sources get cited shows up in the next weekly run.

Gauge works from its daily answer data. Its homepage lists citation analysis (“See which websites and pages AI models cite”) and an Action Center to “Review, assign, and track recommended actions” (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). Gauge’s pricing FAQ says its content engine “writes and publishes articles from your visibility gaps” (Gauge pricing, checked October 2026).

For dev tools, Gauge Agents adds a check that Citeplane does not have. It runs coding agents against your product to “find the docs, setup steps, and integrations that get them stuck” (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). If your problem is that Claude Code picks your product and then fails to install it, that is a different diagnosis from a page audit.

How does each tool produce the pages that get cited?

Before writing, Citeplane asks your engineers questions only they can answer. It can draft those answers from internal docs and call transcripts, and those sources stay private (how it works). For example: which Postgres version does logical replication need, and what breaks below it? To see whether today’s cited pages carry that kind of detail, open the pages Claude cites for the question and look for the version, limit or setting your engineers would name.

Two rules then apply to every draft:

1. Each number must appear in your facts or a cited source.
2. Each link must point at a real source or a real page on your site.

A separate fact-check pass checks every claim in the draft against its source. This page was written under the same rules, which is why Gauge cells we could not source say “not published” instead of carrying a guess.

An engine can only repeat what a page says: “faster” gives it nothing to quote, while “3x faster on this workload, measured like this” gives it a claim and a source (AI quotes specifics. Whether they’re true is on you.). The engineer who clicks the citation then runs the command and compares the number with their own.

Gauge’s homepage lists its content engine as “Generate briefs, outlines, and articles, then publish them” (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). Its Ask Gauge agent is described as “Analyze marketing data and create content with our built-in agent.” Gauge’s pages do not describe a sourcing or fact-check rule for articles, checked October 2026. Ask Gauge directly if that matters to you.

Who publishes, and where do the pages go?

A person on your team approves every Citeplane page, and Citeplane never publishes on its own (how it works). Approved pages publish with their structured data to Framer, Webflow, any CMS through a webhook, or as a GitHub pull request with presets for Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra, so your team reviews the diff like code.

Citeplane also runs an MCP server so Claude Code and Cursor can work with a Citeplane workspace. That suits teams whose docs live in a repo and who already do docs work in an editor.

Gauge’s homepage describes sending “approved articles from Gauge to your CMS or code-based blog,” with Webflow, Framer, Sanity and GitHub listed (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). Sanity is on Gauge’s list and not on Citeplane’s, although a webhook can reach it. Gauge also offers Slack, MCP and a CLI. If your marketing team runs on Sanity or wants AI visibility questions answered in Slack, those are concrete Gauge advantages.

What do Citeplane and Gauge 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, October 2026). Citeplane is in early access with a small group of design partners, so you request access rather than check out.

Gauge Growth is $599/mo for “600 prompts, run daily”, three platforms, “18 publish-ready articles per month”, 3 seats and email plus Slack support. Enterprise is “Customized to your organization” through a demo (Gauge pricing, checked October 2026). Gauge Agents is priced separately in credits, with monthly plans from $100/mo (1,500 credits) to $20,000/mo (430,100 credits). It starts with “1,000 free credits that never expire. No card required” (Gauge Agents pricing, checked October 2026).

On raw volume, Gauge Growth tracks more prompts, more often, on more engines, and produces more articles for less money. The case for Citeplane rests on how each page is made: engineer interviews, a source behind every number, and a separate fact-check pass.

If you hire for that writing process instead of buying software, specialist technical content agencies cost $5,000 to $15,000 a month (Hackmamba pricing, checked October 2026).

When should you choose Gauge?

• If you need ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or Copilot tracked this quarter, Gauge Growth covers those three engines daily. Enterprise adds Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity (pricing). Citeplane tracks Claude today and has not switched on ChatGPT.
• If you want to buy and onboard now, Gauge Growth has a “Get started” button on its pricing page, and Gauge Agents starts with 1,000 free credits and no card (Gauge Agents pricing, checked October 2026). Citeplane has no self-serve checkout yet.
• If your team already has writers and wants monitoring and reporting, Gauge Growth’s 600 daily prompts come to 54,000 answers a month, with competitor and citation analysis (homepage) and GA4, Search Console and DataForSEO integrations. Gauge says this data “sits alongside your organic performance” (Gauge pricing, checked October 2026).
• If you want to test how coding agents use your product, Gauge Agents runs “evaluations across coding agents”, with “task traces and failure analysis” and “docs and onboarding experiments” (homepage). Gauge’s homepage lists Neo4j (agent evals that shaped onboarding) and Clerk (3x CLI adoption, which Gauge’s homepage ties to an SDK change and smoother agent onboarding) as agent-experience stories (withgauge.com, checked October 2026). Citeplane does not run agent evaluations.

When does Citeplane fit better?

• The questions you lose need answers from your engineers. You sell a dev tool or AI product, and the winning page needs setup steps, limits and versions. Citeplane interviews your engineers, or drafts from internal docs and call transcripts, before writing.
• Every published number has to trace to a source. Your readers paste commands and check claims. Citeplane requires each number to appear in your facts or a cited source and runs a separate fact-check pass on every claim.
• Your docs run on Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight or Nextra. Both tools publish to GitHub (Gauge pricing lists Webflow, Framer, Sanity and GitHub). Citeplane’s pull requests come with presets for those four frameworks, and your team reviews them before merge.
• You are weighing it against an agency. At $5,000 to $15,000 a month for a specialist technical content agency, Citeplane Growth at $999 a month gives you 8 pages a month plus 100 questions tracked weekly and a monthly site re-audit.

The open-source GTM Co-Founder project, built by Citeplane’s founder Shane O’Connor, was crawlable and still cited in 0 of 15 buyer questions Claude answered on 20 October 2026 (case study). Citeplane re-asks your tracked questions every week, so you see which sources each answer cites after a page ships.

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

If you need ChatGPT coverage today, run both: Gauge for the engines Citeplane does not track yet, Citeplane for the technical pages. Neither publishes an import format for the other, so the steps are manual.

1. Run the free instant AEO audit, then request early access.
2. Note which Gauge prompts matter most (exports are an Enterprise feature on Gauge’s pricing page), to check against the buyer questions Citeplane finds.
3. Choose 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'

4. Each week, read Citeplane’s Claude results next to Gauge’s results on its own engines (Gauge can add Claude with your own Anthropic API key, per its pricing page), then decide whether to keep both.

Frequently asked questions

Does Citeplane track ChatGPT answers yet?

No. ChatGPT tracking is built but not yet switched on, and Perplexity and Gemini are planned. Today Citeplane asks your buyer questions to Claude with live web search and records the sources each answer cites. If you need ChatGPT tracking now, Gauge’s Growth plan includes ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot.

Can I try Citeplane without talking to sales or entering a card?

Yes. The free instant AEO audit reads up to 40 pages, takes about a minute and needs no email or card. Tracking and page production on the Growth plan go through the early access program.

Can I buy Citeplane today, or is it invite-only?

Not through a checkout. You request access at /early-access, and the Growth plan terms are on the pricing page.

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. Approved pages go to Framer, Webflow, a GitHub pull request or a CMS webhook, depending on what you connect.

Can I use Citeplane and Gauge together?

Yes, and for teams that need ChatGPT, Google AI Mode or Copilot coverage today, that is the realistic setup. Use Gauge for daily tracking on those engines and Citeplane for Claude tracking and sourced technical pages. Both tools produce content, so assign questions to one tool or the other.

Does Citeplane work with docs sites built on Mintlify or Docusaurus?

Yes. Approved pages can publish as a GitHub pull request, with presets for Mintlify, Docusaurus, Starlight and Nextra, including their structured data. Citeplane’s MCP server also lets Claude Code and Cursor work with a Citeplane workspace from the repo.