A new free tool called Llumo has launched to help developers and marketers track their brand's visibility across AI-powered search engines and answer platforms. The service operates on a bring-your-own-key (BYOK) model, meaning users connect their own API keys rather than being locked into another vendor's pricing structure. According to the announcement posted on DEV.to by user mr_cray_1f7710bfb27766b47, Llumo is built on modified and extended open-source technology that the team continues to develop.

Why AI Search Visibility Matters Now

As AI assistants and large language models increasingly shape how people discover information online, understanding your presence in these new answer ecosystems has become critical for brand strategy. Traditional SEO metrics don't capture how often a company's name appears when users ask ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI systems questions relevant to their industry. Llumo aims to fill that gap by providing visibility scores and tracking across multiple AI search platforms from a single dashboard.

Supported Platforms

Llumo currently supports monitoring across several major AI-powered search and answer engines including ChatGPT (with GPT-4o), Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and other prominent AI services. This breadth allows brands to understand their visibility across the most widely-used platforms where consumers increasingly seek information. The announcement notes that supported platforms may expand over time as new AI services gain adoption.

What Gets Tracked

Beyond simply listing which platforms are monitored, Llumo provides visibility scores that indicate how prominently your brand appears when relevant queries are made to various AI services. This includes tracking mentions in responses generated by large language models, helping marketers understand whether their content is being referenced and cited by AI systems. The tool gives brands a unified view rather than requiring manual checks across dozens of different systems.

The BYOK Approach

The bring-your-own-key model distinguishes Llumo from many analytics tools that bundle API costs into subscription pricing. Users maintain control over their spending by using their own credentials for the underlying AI services Llumo queries. This architecture also means developers can self-host components if they want deeper customization, though the hosted version provides a faster path to getting started.

Self-Hosting Options

For teams requiring more control over their data or wanting to avoid external API dependencies entirely, Llumo supports self-hosted deployment. Developers can run the tracking infrastructure on their own servers and connect it directly to the AI platforms they want to monitor. This approach appeals to organizations with strict data residency requirements or those building custom integrations around the visibility tracker.

Open-Source Foundation

The team behind Llumo emphasizes that the project builds on open-source technology they modified and extended. While specific licensing details aren't yet clear from the announcement, this approach suggests the community may eventually be able to contribute improvements or audit the underlying code—a welcome shift in an analytics space where black-box vendor solutions often dominate.

API Cost Considerations

Since Llumo operates on a BYOK model, users are responsible for their own API calls. For basic monitoring—tracking five AI platforms with daily visibility checks using moderate query volumes—costs typically run between $2-5 per month depending on which services you use and your specific usage patterns. Weekly scans instead of daily can reduce this further to around $1-3 monthly. Heavy users running hourly checks across many platforms could see costs rise into the tens of dollars, but for most marketing teams doing periodic brand monitoring, expenses should remain minimal.

Getting Started

Llumo is available now at llumohq.com with no upfront cost beyond providing your own API keys for the AI platforms you want to track. Setup involves connecting your credentials for whichever services you wish to monitor—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or others—and configuring your brand terms and queries to track. The dashboard then aggregates visibility data across all connected platforms into unified reporting.

Key Takeaways

  • Llumo is free to use with BYOK pricing—pay only for your own API calls
  • Built on modified open-source technology the team continues developing
  • Tracks brand presence across multiple AI search and answer engines in one place
  • No vendor lock-in; users maintain control of their data and spending

The Bottom Line

As AI-powered search reshapes how audiences discover brands, having visibility into these new ecosystems will become essential rather than optional—and Llumo's BYOK model makes that insight accessible without adding another subscription to your stack. Whether the open-source foundation delivers on its transparency promise remains to be seen, but for teams already managing API costs elsewhere, this is worth watching.