KI Score and monitoring: what's the difference?
The KI Score and monitoring are two separate measurements with their own questions, schedules, and costs. Here's how to read both numbers.
Last updated 11 days ago
KI Score measures your brand's visibility in two separate ways: the KI Score for your market and the monitoring of your own prompts. This article explains how the two differ, what each costs, and why their numbers don't have to match.
The two measurements at a glance
| KI Score | Monitoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Which questions? | One shared question set per market | Your own prompts |
| How often? | Weekly, monthly on the Essential plan | On your schedule or manually |
| Answers per question | 2 per question and AI provider | 1 per prompt, measurement country, AI provider, and run |
| Cost | No credits | Credits |
| Comparable? | Yes, within the same market | No, not between customers |
| Location | The market's region | One to 10 measurement countries per prompt; a city only if you write it into the prompt yourself |
| In the dashboard | KI-Score, the top item of the Sichtbarkeit (Visibility) sidebar group | In the Sichtbarkeit group, the items Scoreboard (with Overview and Rankings), Prompts (with All prompts, Responses, and Fanouts), and Sources, plus Competitors in the Setup group |
The KI Score: one question set for the whole market
The KI Score is a benchmark. Every brand in a market, such as “Sneakers × Germany,” is measured with the same 10 to 15 questions. Each question goes to every queried AI provider twice, on two measurement days three days apart. Because every brand gets the same questions, you can compare your score directly with the other brands in the same market.
Only the KI Score team sees the question set, internally. Customers can't view it, not even as a workspace admin. The formula weights answers by question intent, and the score shown is the average of the counted measurements from the last three measurement cycles: the last three calendar weeks with weekly measurement, or up to three monthly measurements on the Essential plan with monthly measurement.
Monitoring: your own prompts
In monitoring, you decide which questions get asked. You write prompts, set the measurement countries for each prompt, choose the AI providers, and set the Zeitplan (Schedule) to run daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also start a run manually. Each run returns one answer per active prompt, measurement country, and selected AI provider.
You'll find the results under Scoreboard, Prompts, Responses, Sources, Fanouts, Competitors, and Rankings. Because every customer uses different prompts, monitoring numbers can't be compared between customers. They show how your brand performs on exactly the questions that matter to you.
Your monitoring prompts and their results don't change your KI Score.
Credits: what costs what?
- KI Score: The market measurement doesn't use any credits. It runs centrally and is included in your plan.
- Monitoring: One credit covers one prompt with one AI provider in one run. Each additional measurement country of a prompt counts like a separate prompt. So a run costs the sum of all active prompts' measurement countries × selected AI providers. Only delivered answers stay charged; failed ones are refunded. Every additional run is charged again, even on the same day. A weekly schedule means 4 or 5 runs a month, depending on the month, and a daily one about 30.
You can't buy extra credits. You get more credits with the next billing period or with a larger plan. To see the available plans, go to the plans page.
Why the numbers differ
Your KI Score and your monitoring numbers measure different things, so differences are normal and not a measurement error. The main reasons:
- Different questions: The KI Score uses the market's question set, and monitoring uses your own prompts. Your own prompts can be much more closely tailored to your brand.
- Different calculation: The KI Score weights answers by question intent. The Rankings page in monitoring shows Nennungsrate (mention rate from the AI analysis), Ø Position (average position), and Positionsabdeckung (position coverage) without that weighting. The numbers there therefore don't follow the KI Score calculation.
- Different time frame: The KI Score is based on the counted measurements from the last three measurement cycles. Monitoring pages show a period you choose, such as the last 7, 14, or 30 days or the entire period, and under Scoreboard, Prompts, Responses, Sources, and Fanouts also any range in the calendar.
- Different AI providers: You choose the AI providers for monitoring yourself. KI Score sets the providers for the market measurement centrally.
- Different location: The KI Score measures for the market's region. KI Score measures your monitoring prompts from the measurement countries you choose for each prompt, independently of the market. A city only counts there if you write it into the prompt yourself.
- Retroactive recalculation: Monitoring metrics are calculated using your current list of brand names, aliases, competitors, and domains. If you change these details, the numbers for past answers change too.
Tip: Use the KI Score to see where you stand in your market, and monitoring to follow individual questions and answers in detail.
What teams say about KI Score
“We finally see week by week where our brand shows up in ChatGPT and Perplexity.”
“The score finally gave us one number the whole team actually understands.”
“Instead of guessing which prompts matter, we now have real data.”
“Within the first week we already saw which competitor was beating us in AI answers.”
“Setup took one afternoon, not weeks of onboarding.”
“Finally a tool that takes AI Overviews as seriously as classic SEO.”