# Free AI Brand Check - Is Your Brand in ChatGPT's Answer? (`desvela/brand-check`) Actor

Free AI brand check: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini one buyer question three times and see if your brand is in the answer, how often, and who else is. No API keys, no signup beyond Apify. Entry step for AI Brand Watch (scheduled AI visibility monitoring).

- **URL**: https://apify.com/desvela/brand-check.md
- **Developed by:** [Llorenc Ballester](https://apify.com/desvela) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, SEO tools, Marketing
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 0.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-usage

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## AI Brand Check — is your brand in the AI's answer? Free.

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini **one buyer question, three times**, and see whether your brand is in the answer, how often, in what position, who else is named, and which pages the engine cited. Free. No API keys, no signup beyond your Apify account.

*by [Desvela](https://desvela.ai) — the free step before [AI Brand Watch](https://apify.com/desvela/brand-watch).*

### What you get

One record per check:

| Field | What it says |
|---|---|
| `mentionRate` | Fraction of the three answers that name your brand (0, 0.33, 0.67, 1) |
| `avgPosition` | Where your brand appears among brand + competitors (1 = first) |
| `competitorRates` | Same rate for each competitor you listed, or for the ones inferred from your brand |
| `ownDomainCitedRate` | Fraction of answers that cite your own site (needs `domain`) |
| `topSources` | The pages the engine cited, most repeated first |
| `answers` | One excerpt per answer, around your brand when it appears |
| `verdict` | One sentence: *"ChatGPT mentioned Notion in 3 of 3 answers to 'best all-in-one workspace for teams'. Competitors named: Monday.com in 3/3, Asana in 2/3."* |
| `nextStep` | The input JSON, already filled in, to run the full measurement with AI Brand Watch |

Leave `question` empty and the check infers one buyer question and up to three competitors from the brand name (one small model call, on us). **Give the `domain` when the name alone is ambiguous**: on a bare "Otterly" the inferred question was about otter plushies, not AI visibility software; with `otterly.ai` it is not.

### How it counts, and why three

AI engines are non-deterministic: ask the same question twice and the brand set can change. One answer is a snapshot chosen by luck. Three answers give you a rate, which is still a small sample, but it already tells 0/3 from 2/3, and that is the difference between "the AI does not know you" and "you are in the running".

Failures are not zeros. If the engine does not answer one of the three attempts, the rate is computed over the answers that came back and `failedSamples` says how many were lost. If none came back, `measured` is `false` and there is no rate at all. A cell we could not measure is not a cell at zero.

We call the engines' **APIs with web search on**. API answers correlate with, but are not identical to, each consumer product. We always measure the same way, so two checks are comparable with each other.

### What this is not

It is one question, one engine, three samples, once. It is **not** a measurement of your AI visibility: visibility is a rate over the 5-10 questions your buyers actually ask, across the engines they use, tracked over time so you know when it moves. That is what [AI Brand Watch](https://apify.com/desvela/brand-watch) does, and every check ends with the input to run it: the question you just tested, the competitors, `promptSetAction: keep` so the question set stays frozen, and `autoGenerateQueries: true` so the actor adds the rest of the category. A full first run costs about $1.66 (pay per check, no subscription); add an Apify Schedule to make it weekly.

### Limits

Every check is paid from our own API keys, so there are two caps: **3 checks per account per day**, and a monthly budget across all users. When a cap is reached the run does not fail; it returns a `quota_exhausted` record that says which cap, when it resets, and how to run the uncapped actor instead.

### Input

```json
{
  "brandName": "Notion",
  "domain": "notion.so",
  "question": "best all-in-one workspace for teams",
  "engine": "openai",
  "competitors": ["Confluence", "Monday.com", "Asana"]
}
```

Only `brandName` is required. `engine` is one of `openai` (ChatGPT, default), `perplexity`, `anthropic` (Claude), `gemini`.

### Real example

Run on 2026-09-18, brand Notion, question inferred:

> ChatGPT (OpenAI API, web search on) mentioned Notion in 3 of 3 answers to "best all-in-one workspace for teams". Competitors named: Monday.com in 3/3, Asana in 2/3.

`avgPosition` 1.3, `ownDomainCitedRate` 0 (the engine cited comparison sites, not notion.so), `topSources` led by two "X vs Y vs Z" articles. That last detail is the kind of thing a rate over time would tell you about: who the engine trusts to describe your category.

# Actor input Schema

## `brandName` (type: `string`):

The brand to look for in the AI's answer, spelled the way people write it.

## `domain` (type: `string`):

Lets the check tell whether the engine cited your own site.

## `question` (type: `string`):

The buyer question to ask, e.g. "best note-taking app for small teams". Leave empty and one is inferred from the brand.

## `engine` (type: `string`):

One engine per check. ChatGPT (OpenAI API with web search forced) by default.

## `competitors` (type: `array`):

Brands to count alongside yours in the same answers.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "brandName": "Notion",
  "domain": "notion.so",
  "engine": "openai"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `check` (type: `string`):

One record: whether the brand was in the engine's answers, how often, who else was named, the cited sources and the input to run the full measurement with desvela/brand-watch.

## `report` (type: `string`):

The same record as a single JSON document, with the three answer excerpts and the next step.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "brandName": "Notion",
    "domain": "notion.so"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("desvela/brand-check").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "brandName": "Notion",
    "domain": "notion.so",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("desvela/brand-check").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "brandName": "Notion",
  "domain": "notion.so"
}' |
apify call desvela/brand-check --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,desvela/brand-check"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/orzd9YOjcvCsyipbs/builds/gkigMhWVDY2tkhqn7/openapi.json