Elmo is an open-source AI visibility platform for AEO and GEO. It tracks how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other models describe your brand, which sources they lean on and what to change. You can run it free on your own servers or pay for the hosted Elmo Cloud. For teams comparing open-source AEO software, it’s one of the projects worth testing.
Open source changes who controls the data. With a self-hosted tracker, prompts, answers and metrics live in your own database, and you can read the code that calculates them.
What is Elmo?
Elmo comes from elmohq and is published on GitHub under the MIT license. It records whether AI answers mention and cite a brand, tracks competitors and turns the results into ranked opportunities.
The product has two forms. Self-hosted Elmo is the full product on your own infrastructure. Elmo Cloud is the managed version with paid tiers.
Is Elmo open source and free?
Yes. The code is MIT-licensed, so you can inspect it, change it and deploy it. Self-hosting has no license fee, and Elmo says it comes with unlimited prompts and every model.
Free doesn’t mean zero cost, though. You bring your own API keys for each AI provider, and scraping consumer apps needs a scraping provider. Those bills scale with your prompt count and run frequency.
Elmo Cloud starts with a ChatGPT-only tier and moves up to plans covering any four platforms, more brands and premium models. All cloud plans include unlimited seats plus API and MCP access. Elmo offers a live demo; its site doesn’t list a free trial.
How do you self-host Elmo?
Install the Elmo CLI → Run elmo init → Start with Docker Compose → Add provider keys → Prompts run on a schedule
Setup goes through the npm package @elmohq/cli. The stack is TypeScript with TanStack Start, PostgreSQL for storage and pg-boss as the job queue, all shipped with Docker Compose.
A background worker runs each prompt several times a day by default. Plan for a server, a database backup routine and someone who can update the containers.
Budget for providers, not licenses. Self-hosted Elmo costs nothing to license, but every prompt run on a scraped app or an API has a price. Estimate prompts times runs per day first.
Which AI platforms does Elmo track?
Elmo’s list covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. It adds Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Mistral and Qwen, among others, and any model on OpenRouter.
Self-hosted Elmo can run every model you have keys for. Cloud tiers cap you at four platforms, and the entry tier covers ChatGPT only.
How does Elmo collect AI answers?
Elmo uses two methods. Scraping providers capture what consumer apps show: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. Direct API calls to OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and OpenRouter cover Claude and other models, with web search turned on.
The method matters. A consumer app answer can differ from an API answer to the same prompt. The app may search the web, use a different model or format results its own way. Know which one each number comes from.
What does Elmo measure?
| Report | What it shows |
|---|
| Visibility | How often answers mention your brand, with trends |
| Share of voice | Who AI recommends instead of you |
| Citations | The sources AI trusts in your category |
| Query fan-out | The searches AI runs behind each answer |
| Opportunities | What to do next, ranked by impact |
You can also open single responses to see which brands and sources appeared. The query fan-out view is useful for content planning, since it shows the sub-searches an engine ran before answering.
Elmo vs GetCito
People often search the two together, and for a good reason. The open-source GetCito repository says in its README that it is a fork of Elmo, with both copyright notices kept under MIT.
| Elmo | GetCito (open source) |
|---|
| Origin | Original project by elmohq | Fork of Elmo |
| License | MIT | MIT, Elmo copyright kept |
| Extras | Elmo Cloud, MCP and API on cloud plans | White-label mode with Auth0 SSO, REST API |
GetCito adds a white-label mode with Auth0 single sign-on and a REST API. Elmo’s repository has a much longer commit history. Check recent activity on both before you choose, since a fork can drift from upstream fixes. Our GetCito entry covers the hosted product.
Why open source matters for AEO software
An AI visibility score is only as good as its method. With open code you can see how a mention is detected, how share of voice is weighted and what counts as a citation. You also keep the raw answers if you switch tools.
Open source doesn’t make a metric correct. It makes it checkable. You still need a stable prompt set, repeat runs and someone who reads the answers.
Developers already rely on GitHub for this category. In our tracking, GitHub held 11.5% of third-party citations in AI answers. Our list of top GitHub repositories for AEO and GEO drew 7,007 citations in 30 days. Source: Ansvisor tracking data, September 15 to October 14, 2026.
Who is Elmo for, and where does it fall short?
Elmo suits developers, technical marketers and agencies that want control and can run their own stack. The MIT license also lets you fork it into an internal tool.
- Self-hosted Elmo fits teams with engineering time that want every model and unlimited prompts.
- Elmo Cloud fits teams that want the same reports without running servers, and can live with four platforms.
Either way, the core job is AI visibility tracking: the same prompts, run on a schedule, read over weeks.
The limits are mostly operational. Self-hosting means paying for API and scraping providers and maintaining the deployment. Elmo’s feature list centers on answers; it doesn’t list AI crawler or AI referral traffic reporting. Our roundup of open-source AEO and GEO tools compares it with other projects.
Elmo vs Ansvisor
| Elmo | Ansvisor |
|---|
| Model | Open source (MIT), self-hosted or Elmo Cloud | Open source, self-hosted or Ansvisor cloud |
| Getting started | Free self-host; paid cloud tiers, live demo | Self-host from GitHub; 14-day free cloud trial |
| Engines | Any model with keys or a scraping provider | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity; Claude on Enterprise plans |
| Beyond answers | Query fan-out, opportunities | Mentions and citations separate, AI traffic analytics, Action Center |
Both give you the code and the data. Elmo is the lighter choice if you want to plug in many models yourself. Ansvisor’s repository fits teams that want visibility, AI traffic and a task list in one open-source product.
Ansvisor’s AI Traffic Analytics adds AI crawler visits and AI referral traffic next to prompt results. Start a 14-day free trial of the cloud version, or self-host it.
