Lumon8, compared
They audit and hand you a to-do list. We measure, fix, and prove it. Here is the honest side-by-side.
Every vendor in this space sells the same three things: a dashboard that shows AI prompts, a report that says what is wrong, and a retainer of people who write content. Most of them do not publish the fix or show the rival. That is the whole difference, and every row below is a version of it.
Read from the public product pages and press releases of the leading companies in each category on September 8, 2026. A filled mark means it is on their page, or ours in production today. A half mark means partial, or the method is not shown. No company is named here; the point is the category, and their pages can change.
| Capability | Lumon8measurement + correction layer | GEO agenciesSEO agency with a GEO add-on and a content retainer | Website vendors' AI add-onsAI-visibility module sold with the dealer website | Generic AI-visibility toolsbrand-monitoring software, not built for dealers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing you can read before the callthe rate card, on the website | ●Published on our pricing page: $299 to $799 a month per rooftop, less on annual. Free audit first, no card, no contract. | ○Not published. A retainer quoted after a sales conversation. | ○Not published. Bundled or quoted with the website contract. | ◐Some publish a rate card, priced for national brands rather than a single store. |
| Share of AI recommendationsone number a GM can repeat: "N of every 100" | ●Fixed shopper panel, per engine, with a stated noise band. Same panel for you and the rival. | ◐"Prompt visibility" and citation frequency. Method and sample size not published. | ◐"Visibility and sentiment" scores. Method not published. | ◐Brand mention rate across prompts you configure yourself. |
| The rival, named, on the same scoreboardmeasured at home and in the rival's own market | ●The rival AI names most is pinned. The same questions are asked in their city. "0 of 11 in Conshohocken." | ○Measures the dealer. The competitor view is keyword rankings. | ◐"Compare positioning against local competitors" is listed; no market-level view. | ◐Competitor brands can be tracked if you add them; no local-market logic. |
| Fixes deploy without dealer workcorrections and structured data through the tag | ●One tag. Corrections, schema and the facts page ship from our side, with one-click approval or auto-approve. The Monday report lists what changed. | ○People write monthly content and schema on the dealer's site. Managed retainer. | ○Findings go to a separate paid GEO Services team to act on. | ○Monitoring only. The dealer's team does everything. |
| Your inventory, readable by AIcounts and floor prices by model, refreshed daily | ●Vehicle listings crawled every day and published in a format AI can read, on the hosted facts page and in structured data. Fresh and reconciled, or not published. | ○Content and schema on the dealer's site. Inventory stays in the website vendor's scripts. | ◐Inventory lives on the vendor's site; whether an AI crawler can read it depends on how the pages render. | ○Monitors brand mentions. Does not touch inventory. |
| Proof AI reads what was publisheda live citation, not a projection | ●A dealer facts page we host was cited by Perplexity in a live answer. Receipt captured with the engine, the question and the answer. | ◐"30% increase in citation frequency" for early adopters. No baseline shown. | ○None published. Beta. | ○They publish nothing for the dealer to be cited. |
| What AI says about youreputation, in the engines' own words | ●Praise, caveats and wrong facts quoted verbatim, counted, with the site each line came from. Counts, never a score. | ●Sentiment tracked; flags review sites showing up in answers. | ●Sentiment listed. | ●Sentiment is standard. |
| Live scan on a callthe GM watches their own store get measured | ●About 90 seconds, no signup. The deck and the emailed report come from the same numbers. | ○Audit delivered after a sales conversation. | ○Demo of the dashboard. | ○Self-serve setup, results over days. |
| Engines checked | ●ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Google AI Overviews. Model version stored on every check. | ◐ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Overviews. | ◐ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity named. | ●Usually all major engines. |
| Numbers that stay comparablefrozen audits, method and model changes marked on the chart | ●Each audit is frozen. A change in our method or an engine's model is stamped on the trend so it never reads as the store moving. | ○Not described. | ○Not described. | ○Not described. |
| Monthly content programlong-form pages, About rebuilds, blog | ○Not what we do. Runs fine alongside anyone who does. | ●Core of the retainer, every profit center, monthly. | ◐Through the paid GEO Services add-on. | ○No. |
| Getting started | ●Free account, no card, no contract. The tag installs in minutes, or we open the ticket with your website provider. | ○Agency onboarding and retainer. | ○Only with that vendor's website, often still in beta. | ◐Self-serve software, priced for brands rather than stores. |
● on the page, or in production◐ partial, or method not shown○ not offered
What the difference looks like for a dealer
- The price is on the website. Ours is the only rate card in this field you can read before a sales call: $299 to $799 a month, a free audit first, and no contract. Everyone else quotes after the conversation.
- Keep whoever writes your content. We are the scoreboard. Lumon8 does not replace an agency or a website vendor. It sits on top and tells the store, every Monday, whether any of that work moved the share of AI recommendations. You are not choosing a vendor; you are adding the referee.
- They audit. We already fixed it. A findings list still needs someone to act on it. Our corrections ship through the tag the week they are found, and the report lists exactly what changed.
- Ask the same question in the rival’s town. Everyone measures the store in its own city. We ask the rival’s market too, so you see where you are invisible before the rival takes the sale.
- Our number means the same thing next month. Engines change models and vendors change methods. We stamp both on the chart, so a jump is the store moving, not the ruler changing.
- See it before you sign anything. A live scan runs in about 90 seconds on the call, then the same numbers arrive by email. No retainer, no onboarding, no card.
What we do not claim
These are true today. A GM who has talked to a GEO agency will ask about them, so here they are first.
- We do not write monthly content. If the store wants long-form pages across every profit center, that is an agency retainer, and good agencies do it well. We measure whether it moved your share.
- We do not score sentiment. We show what AI says about you word for word, counted, with the source. There is no 1-to-10 number, on purpose: a number hides which line is wrong.
- We do not have OEM certification. Some agencies are certified by manufacturers, which can mean co-op money. We cannot say that.
- We do not claim a lift percentage. Our own dealers' gains are real, but only the live citation is cleanly attributable. We show the number and the markers, not a promise.
How this was read
Each category column summarizes the public pages of its leading companies as of September 8, 2026. It is not a description of any one vendor. If you sell in one of these categories and a row is wrong about you, email hello@lumon8.ai and we will correct it.
What we do, in plain words: what Lumon8 does. Or run the scan on your own store: see what AI says about your store.