The AI visibility category has split into two pricing models, and most merchants don't realize the choice until they hit the wall.
The credit-metered model
Apps in this category charge by "credits," where each credit equals roughly one product audit, one rewrite, or one schema check. Pricing usually starts around $9.99 per month for 50 credits and tops out around $79.99 per month for 500 credits.
The math gets uncomfortable fast. A store with 500 active products needs 500 credits just to audit the catalog once. On a 200-credit plan, that's three months of credits for one full audit. Re-audits eat into the same pool. Fix-and-recheck workflows eat into it again. By month two, the merchant is either upgrading, throttling their use of the tool, or wondering why a tool they're paying for can't be used to audit the store they're paying it to audit.
The credit model exists because the underlying tools were architected around AI generation costs. Every rewrite or schema generation calls an LLM, and the credits exist to ration LLM spend. That's a vendor problem. It becomes a merchant problem because the pricing model that solves the vendor's cost structure punishes the merchant for having a catalog.
The flat-rate model
Apps in this category charge a fixed monthly rate per store, with no per-product or per-scan fees. ShelfScore charges $49 per month for Starter, $149 for Growth, $349 for Agency. The audit runs against your whole catalog every time. Weekly automated re-audits are included from $49. Score history is included from $49. There is no credit pool to deplete.
The flat-rate model exists because some tools, including ShelfScore, were architected around audit logic that reads from the Shopify Admin API rather than LLM generation. There's no per-product LLM cost to recover, so there's no reason to charge as if there were one.
When credit-metered makes sense
If you have a small catalog (under 30 SKUs), if you want AI to write your product descriptions for you, and if you're going to use the tool once or twice and walk away, credit-metered pricing is fine. The entry tier is cheap, and you'll use a small fraction of the credits.
When flat-rate makes sense
If you have more than 50 active products, if you want to audit your store regularly to catch newly broken signals (a theme update that adds a Disallow rule, a third-party app that breaks your JSON-LD), if you manage multiple stores or run an agency, or if you simply want to know what the audit will cost next month, flat-rate is the structurally honest choice.
What to look for when comparing
Ask any AI visibility app the following four questions before installing:
How many products can I audit per month at each tier? If the answer involves "credits" or a number lower than your active SKU count, that's the model.
Are re-audits included or do they consume the same credit pool? If re-audits consume credits, weekly monitoring becomes a usage-tax problem.
Do you audit my robots.txt and AI crawler access, or only product-page content? Bot access is the gating signal. If a tool only checks schema and content, it misses the issue that blocks AI engines from reading your store in the first place.
Can I see this month's bill in advance? Flat-rate gives you a number you can budget. Credit-metered gives you usage anxiety.
ShelfScore's position
ShelfScore is flat-rate per store, audits your whole catalog, audits bots and schema and data quality together, and includes weekly automated re-audits on every paid plan. We audit against real specs from Shopify, Schema.org, and Google. We don't generate content; we audit what's there and tell you what to fix.
Run a free audit. See your AI Visibility Score in under sixty seconds. No credit card.