--- title: "Lighthouse Local vs. Rankscale - AI Visibility Platforms Compared (2026)" description: "Compare Lighthouse Local and Rankscale on AI assistants tracked, local prompts and pricing, every Rankscale fact checked against its own pages." source: "https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/compare/lighthouse-local-vs-rankscale" --- [Home](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/) / [Compare](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/compare) / Lighthouse Local vs. Rankscale # Compare Lighthouse Local vs. Rankscale Rankscale is an AI visibility tracker with up to 100 brand dashboards, 17 or more engines, checks from hourly to monthly, and a credit budget that every run draws from. Lighthouse Local asks the assistants the questions customers type, by city and service area or nationally, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI, and turns the gaps into fixes our specialists can make. Here's how they compare, every Rankscale fact sourced from its own pages. [Start Free Trial](https://app.lighthouselocal.ai/?utm_source=lighthouselocal&utm_medium=marketing-site&utm_campaign=compare-rankscale&utm_content=hero-cta) Book a Demo 14-day free trial on self-serve plans Checked against Rankscale's pages, October 12, 2026 Checked on every Lighthouse Local plan ChatGPT Claude Gemini Perplexity Google AI ## Which one is built for you? Two honest lists. Pick the one that sounds like your week. ### Choose Lighthouse Local if - You want to add a service or a town at a published price, with a monthly allowance of answer checks instead of a credit meter. - You want to be told who ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI recommend instead of you, in words an owner can act on without learning a metrics dashboard. - You'd rather have the fix made than read it as a prioritized card, so our specialists do the work and you approve it. - You want each client inside a dashboard under your brand from your first agency plan, rather than a shared link with the vendor's logo swapped out. ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png) ### Choose Rankscale if - You want Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek, Mistral and Meta Muse Spark tracked beside the assistants we cover, each priced in credits per run. - You want to choose hourly, daily, weekly or monthly checks per search term and pay only for the runs you schedule. - You want an MCP server on every plan and a REST API from Pro+, with Looker Studio and CSV exports. - You want up to 100 brand dashboards and an agency program with client discounts and a partner listing. ## Feature by feature The same eighteen rows on every comparison we publish. ### AI platforms checked | Feature | Lighthouse Local | ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png)Rankscale | | --- | --- | --- | | ChatGPT | Yes | Yes | | Google Gemini | Yes | Yes | | Claude | Yes | Yes Costs 2 credits per run | | Perplexity | Yes | Yes | | Google AI Overviews | Yes | Yes AI Overviews and AI Mode | ### What gets tracked | Feature | Lighthouse Local | ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png)Rankscale | | --- | --- | --- | | Local-intent questions, by city and service area | Yes | No Regions set by country; AI map listing tracking announced in its changelog | | Weekly sweep of every tracked question | Yes | Yes Hourly to monthly per search term; each run spends credits | | Daily checks on priority questions | Yes | Yes Daily or hourly cadence available | | Competitor tracking on every platform | Yes | Yes Competitors monitored automatically with share of voice | | Ranked, plain-English fix list | Yes | Partial Recommendations in beta, prioritized by where visibility is lost | | Optional done-for-you fixes | Yes | No | ### For agencies | Feature | Lighthouse Local | ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png)Rankscale | | --- | --- | --- | | White-label client dashboard | Yes | Partial White-label shared dashboards from the Growth plan | | Unlimited client reports | Yes | Partial Read-only share links per brand; a limit isn't stated | | Embeddable white-label audit for lead capture | Yes | No | | Ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini about your own data | Yes | Yes MCP on every plan | ### Plans and trial | Feature | Lighthouse Local | ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png)Rankscale | | --- | --- | --- | | 14-day free trial | Yes Self-serve plans | No 7-day Pro trial | | Month-to-month billing | Yes | Yes Monthly on every plan except Essentials | | Dedicated agency plans | Yes | Yes Growth is labeled for agencies, with an agency program | ## Plans, side by side Lighthouse Local prices come straight from our plan catalog. Rankscale's are what its pricing page showed on October 12, 2026. A prompt count on its own undersells coverage, because Lighthouse Local runs every tracked prompt on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI, so compare the answer checks a month. ### Lighthouse Local - Starter $79 / month 1,400+ AI answer checks a month 50 tracked prompts (weekly sweep) · 3 daily slots (checked every day) - Growth $249 / month 4,700+ AI answer checks a month 150 tracked prompts (weekly sweep) · 12 daily slots (checked every day) - Enterprise Custom From \~$599 / month Custom prompts (\~250+), sites & seats · \~25 daily slots, custom competitors - Agency Starter $349 / month 5,500+ AI answer checks a month 160 shared prompts · 16 daily slots - Agency Growth $999 / month 17,000+ AI answer checks a month 500 shared prompts · 50 daily slots - Agency Enterprise Custom From \~$1,999 / month Custom client sites, prompts & seats ### ![](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/images/compare/rankscale.png)Rankscale - Essentials $17 per month, billed yearly only Entry plan; credits and dashboards not itemized on the page - Pro $99 per month, with yearly billing saving 15 percent 1,200 credits, up to 4,800 answers, 10 brand dashboards, 50 page audits, unlimited seats - Pro+ $229 per month, with yearly billing saving 15 percent 3,000 credits, up to 12,000 answers, 25 dashboards, 100 page audits, REST API - Growth $385 per month, with yearly billing saving 15 percent 5,500 credits, up to 22,000 answers, 50 dashboards, 200 page audits, white-label options, agency benefits - Enterprise $780 per month, with yearly billing saving 15 percent 12,000 credits, up to 48,000 answers, 100 dashboards, 200 page audits Rankscale prices are in dollars as shown on its pricing page on the verified date, with yearly billing saving 15 percent. Plans are sized in monthly credits, with a prompt run on one engine costing a fraction of a credit for most engines and 2 credits for Claude, and unused credits rolling over up to two or three times the monthly amount. [See full pricing](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/pricing) ## What a credit buys A credit is the unit to understand first. Rankscale's Pro plan carries 1,200 credits a month for up to 4,800 answers, and its calculator prices most engines at a quarter credit per prompt run, with DeepSeek at one credit and Claude at two. Search terms are unlimited, but every scheduled run spends from the pool, and you pick the cadence per term from hourly to monthly. Unused credits roll over, up to two or three times the monthly amount depending on the tier. For a team that wants hourly checks on a launch week and monthly checks on the long tail, that control is a real strength. The question to ask any vendor is what one more town, one more engine or a daily cadence costs. On a credit model the answer moves with all three, so you size the plan around the schedule you'll actually run, and a brand with many services across many towns does the arithmetic before each change. Lighthouse Local sizes each plan by a monthly allowance of AI answer checks, shown on the pricing cards above, and every plan covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI for every question at the published price. The sweep runs weekly over every question with daily checks on the ones you mark, and coverage packs, priced on our pricing page, add questions when you add a town or a service. ## From a recommendation to a change on your site Rankscale ties tracking to a recommendations feature, in beta on the verified date, that lists prioritized next steps based on where visibility is being lost, plus page audits that return the top fixes for any URL, 50 to 200 audits a month by plan. Citations, sources, sentiment and competitors each get their own view, and the MCP server can pull all of it into Claude or ChatGPT. For an analyst who wants to work the data, there's a lot to work with. Now the harder question. Who turns a prioritized card into a change? A recommendation to earn a citation on a page a rival owns is a piece of outreach. A content gap is a page to write. A listing problem is a profile to fix. Someone schedules that, does it, and checks it moved the answer. Lighthouse Local's answer is a [ranked fix list](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/how-it-works) in plain English, ordered by what moves your visibility most, that reads the same to an owner as to an analyst. When your team would rather not do that work, [our specialists take it on](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/for-business), from on-page changes to your Google Business Profile and local citations, with you approving each change first. If you have a team that wants the raw data and the API, Rankscale gives them more to pull. ## Reporting to a dozen brands Think about the monthly report before the dashboard. Rankscale organizes clients as brand dashboards, 10 on Pro, 25 on Pro+, 50 on Growth and 100 on Enterprise, with unlimited seats on every plan. Each brand gets read-only share links that need no login, with the visible tabs chosen and filters locked by you, and from the Growth plan those shared dashboards can carry your logo instead of Rankscale's. An agency program adds client discounts, a partner directory listing and a Slack channel. If read-only links and your own logo are how you report, that's a sound setup. Before you commit, get two answers from any vendor in writing. Does the client's live view sit on your own domain, and does each new client add to the bill? Rankscale's pages describe a logo swap on shared dashboards and don't mention a custom domain for them, so that's the one to confirm. Our agency plans give every client a [white-label dashboard](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/for-agencies) on your domain starting at the first agency plan, unlimited client reports, and a prompt pool you share across clients. Beacon, Lighthouse Local's [embeddable AI visibility audit](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/beacon), runs on your own site and turns a visitor into a qualified lead. Price a typical client on [our agency plans](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/pricing) and on a Growth credit pool, then compare. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Lighthouse Local an alternative to Rankscale? Yes, if what you want is to know who the assistants recommend where you sell and have the fixes handled. Both products track how AI assistants answer questions about a brand. Rankscale covers more engines and lets you set a cadence per search term on a credit budget. Lighthouse Local covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI on every plan at a published allowance, by city and service area or nationally, ranks the fixes in plain English, and can make them for you. ### Which AI engines does Rankscale track? Its pricing page lists ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, DeepSeek, Mistral and Copilot on the Pro plan and above, with Grok and Meta Muse Spark listed too. Each engine costs credits per run, with Claude at two. If your customers ask Grok or Copilot, that breadth matters. Lighthouse Local checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI on every plan. ### How does Rankscale pricing work? In credits. Essentials is $17 a month billed yearly, Pro is $99 a month with 1,200 credits for up to 4,800 answers, Pro+ is $229 with 3,000 credits, Growth is $385 with 5,500, and Enterprise is $780 with 12,000, with yearly billing saving 15 percent. A prompt run on most engines costs a quarter credit and Claude costs two, so the bill follows your cadence and engine mix. Our plans show a monthly allowance of AI answer checks on the cards above instead. ### Does Rankscale track AI visibility by city? Its feature pages set a region per search term at the country level, and its enterprise page lists coverage for 240 or more countries. A Local Results feature that tracks how often assistants recommend your map listings appears in its changelog, without a product page or plan tier, so check with Rankscale on what it includes. Lighthouse Local points every question at a city and service area, or nationally, so a gap in one town is reported as that town's gap. ### Does Rankscale have a free trial? Its AI rank tracker page offers a 7-day free trial of the Pro plan with a limited credit allowance, and no charge if you cancel before it ends. On Lighthouse Local, every self-serve plan gets a 14-day free trial with all features included, and tracking begins when the trial does. ### Can agencies white-label Rankscale? Shared dashboards, from the Growth plan. Its pricing page lists white-label options on Growth, and its changelog describes uploading your own logo to replace Rankscale's on white-label shared dashboards, with read-only share links per brand that need no login. A custom domain for those links isn't described, so confirm it if your clients expect yours. With Lighthouse Local, the client dashboard is white-label on your domain from the first agency plan, and Beacon runs a branded audit on your site to capture leads. ### How did we check these facts? Every Rankscale fact on this page comes from Rankscale's own pages, read on October 12, 2026. Where a page doesn't publish something, the scorecard says No. If you spot a change, [contact us](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/contact) and we'll re-verify. Sources: [Rankscale pricing](https://rankscale.ai/pricing) (seen October 12, 2026) · [Rankscale AI rank tracker](https://rankscale.ai/features/ai-rank-tracker) (seen October 12, 2026) · [Rankscale MCP docs](https://rankscale.ai/docs/mcp) (seen October 12, 2026) · [Rankscale enterprise AI visibility platform](https://rankscale.ai/enterprise-ai-visibility-platform) (seen October 12, 2026) · [Rankscale help center, sharing your dashboard](https://help.rankscale.ai/articles/1538901743-sharing-your-dashboard) (seen October 12, 2026) · [Rankscale changelog](https://rankscale.ai/changelog) (seen October 12, 2026). ## Ready to see how AI describes your business? Set up in ten minutes with a 14-day free trial on every self-serve plan, or talk to a specialist first. [Start Free Trial](https://app.lighthouselocal.ai/?utm_source=lighthouselocal&utm_medium=marketing-site&utm_campaign=compare-rankscale&utm_content=closing-cta) Book a Demo ![Lighthouse Local Online Presence dashboard](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/_astro/online-presence.Bf6-fV_P_1YFuFw.webp?dpl=dpl_DfpqxA2kzoGswa4dpGX8giY7tPQR) ## Sitemap - [Markdown sitemap](https://www.lighthouselocal.ai/sitemap.md)