Profound Alternatives: 11 AI Visibility Tools Compared (2026)

Profound alternatives are the AI visibility platforms that track how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI surfaces mention and cite a brand, at a price or packaging Profound no longer offers. Profound is still the category benchmark: it raised $180 million at a $1.8 billion valuation on September 15, 2026, and reports more than 1,000 enterprise customers. But the same month it moved brands off self-serve plans, which changed the question from "is Profound worth $399?" to "do we need an enterprise contract at all?" Our Profound AI review covers what the product does. This guide covers what to buy instead: eleven verified alternatives, their entry prices as of September 2026, the engines each one tracks, and where each falls short.

Why Teams Look for Profound Alternatives in 2026

Four reasons come up in almost every evaluation, and the first one is new this month.

• There is no self-serve brand plan anymore. Profound's pricing page, checked on September 29, 2026, lists two options for brands: a free Trial (50 prompts daily for seven days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) and Enterprise at a custom price. Trakkr's pricing tracker dates the removal of the $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans to mid-September 2026. Agencies still have a self-serve route, which Trakkr lists at $99 a month plus $399 per client workspace.
• Engine breadth sits behind the sales call. Enterprise covers nine engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude and Exa Search. That is excellent coverage, but there is no published price for it.
• Procurement time. A custom contract means a sales cycle, security review and usually annual commitment. Teams that need a baseline this quarter often cannot wait.
• It reports visibility, not revenue. Profound tells you how often you are mentioned and cited. It does not tell you what that was worth in pipeline, and no tool on this list fully does either.

Profound Alternatives Compared: Pricing and Engines (as of September 2026)

Prices were checked on each vendor's pricing page in late September 2026. Entry price means the cheapest plan that tracks AI engines.

The 11 Best Profound Alternatives, Tool by Tool

1. Peec AI

Who it is for: mid-market brands and agencies that want clean prompt, source and competitor analytics without an enterprise contract, especially across several countries. Engines: self-serve plans track three models you choose from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot and others; each extra model is a paid add-on. Entry price: Starter includes 50 prompts, three models, unlimited users and daily tracking; third-party reviews list it at $95 a month (about EUR 85), with Pro at 150 prompts and Advanced at 350. Weaknesses: the three-model cap is the real limit, and Claude is not in the default set. Our Peec AI review goes deeper, and if Peec is also on your shortlist, see Peec AI alternatives.

2. Promptwatch

Who it is for: teams that liked Profound's prompt-and-citation loop and want the nearest self-serve equivalent. Engines: four models per plan chosen from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google, Claude, Gemini, Meta, DeepSeek and Grok. Entry price: Essential at $95 a month for 50 prompts and 6,000 responses; Professional at $245 adds AEO article generation. Weaknesses: a smaller company with less published research and fewer enterprise controls than Profound; the four-model cap still forces a choice.

3. Scrunch

Who it is for: enterprise marketing teams, particularly Sitecore customers, that want monitoring plus a way to change what AI agents read on their site. Sitecore acquired Scrunch on June 3, 2026, in a deal Bloomberg valued at about $225 million. Engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta. Entry price: Starter at $250 a month billed annually or $300 month to month, with 350 custom prompts, 3 seats and agent-traffic monitoring. Weaknesses: the product direction now follows Sitecore's platform strategy, which matters if you run a different CMS. We compare it on attribution in our Scrunch alternative piece.

4. Otterly.AI

Who it is for: small teams and consultants who need a first baseline this week. Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot included; Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are add-ons. Entry price: Lite at $29 a month for 15 prompts; Standard at $189 for 100 prompts; about 15% less billed annually. Weaknesses: 15 prompts is a sample, not a category map, and adding Claude on Standard costs $109 a month, which erodes the price advantage quickly.

5. AthenaHQ

Who it is for: teams that want the broadest self-serve engine list and recommendations, not just charts. Engines: the free Essential tier covers five engines; Starter covers eleven, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. Entry price: free with 300 credits a month; Starter at $295 a month for 3,600 credits, unlimited seats. Weaknesses: one credit equals one AI response, so eleven engines times your prompt set burns credits fast; model the volume before you commit.

6. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Who it is for: teams already on Semrush that want AI visibility next to keyword and backlink data. Engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode alongside classic search. Entry price: $99 a month as a standalone toolkit per Semrush's knowledge base; Semrush One bundles start at $165.17 a month billed annually with 50 daily prompts. Weaknesses: citation and source analysis is lighter than dedicated tools, and Claude is not a headline engine.

7. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Who it is for: SEO teams that want market-wide research, not just their own tracked prompts. Engines: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. Entry price: custom prompts from EUR 47 a month (some prompt tracking is included with paid Ahrefs plans); the AI Visibility Index is EUR 179 a month. Weaknesses: no Claude coverage, and the index measures a modeled market rather than the exact prompts your buyers ask.

8. Writesonic GEO

Who it is for: content teams that want visibility tracking and AI writing in one subscription. Engines: self-serve plans track ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; Enterprise tracks ten platforms including Perplexity and Claude. Entry price: Starter at $79 a month billed annually for 50 prompts. Weaknesses: missing Perplexity below Enterprise is a real gap for B2B, and it is a writing platform first.

9. Goodie

Who it is for: consumer brands and ecommerce teams, including SKU-level agentic-commerce visibility on Pro. Engines: five on Core, eight on Pro, up to thirteen on Enterprise (including Amazon Alexa). Entry price: Core at $399 a month for 120 prompts and 5 seats, with a 7-day trial. Weaknesses: it costs what Profound Growth used to, so it is not a budget option.

10. Conductor

Who it is for: enterprise SEO organizations that want AEO reporting inside an established SEO and content platform. Engines: AI search tracking runs on usage-based AI Search credits across the major engines. Entry price: not published; Essentials, Growth and Enterprise tiers are usage-based, with a three-week free trial. Weaknesses: if the reason you left Profound was a sales-led contract, Conductor is another one.

11. Evertune

Who it is for: large brands and agencies that want AI visibility and AI advertising in one place; it reports more than 700 advertisers and agencies as users. Engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, DeepSeek and Meta. Entry price: not published. Weaknesses: enterprise procurement and pricing, so it solves coverage, not cost.

Head-to-Head: Profound vs Peec, Scrunch and Otterly

Profound vs Peec AI

Peec has a published price and Profound, for brands, no longer does. Profound Enterprise covers nine engines including Claude; Peec's self-serve plans cover three of your choice. Pick Peec if you need a mid-market tool with multi-country tracking this month; pick Profound if you need every engine in one contract and have the procurement runway.

Scrunch AI vs Profound

Both are enterprise-grade. Scrunch publishes a $250 annual Starter with seven engines including Claude, and adds a layer that reformats pages for AI agents. Profound goes deeper on research, citation decay and prompt-volume data. Sitecore ownership is a plus for Sitecore shops and a question mark for everyone else.

Profound vs Otterly

This is not a like-for-like comparison. Otterly at $29 is a lightweight monitor with 15 prompts; Profound is a platform. Use Otterly to prove the category matters to your business, then decide whether the answer is an enterprise contract.

How to Choose a Profound Alternative

1. List the engines your buyers use. For B2B, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and increasingly Claude and Gemini are the minimum. Then check which tier actually includes them; most caps sit at three or four models.
2. Size the prompt set before the plan. 50 prompts is enough for one product line in one market. Multi-product or multi-country programs need 150-350.
3. Price the add-ons. Extra models on Peec and Otterly, credits on AthenaHQ and extra seats on Scrunch change the real monthly cost.
4. Decide whether you need data or action. Monitors report; Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Writesonic and Goodie add optimization or content. See our broader best AEO tools list for execution-focused platforms.
5. Decide what success is measured in. Every tool here measures visibility: mentions, share of voice, citations. If the board question is revenue, you need attribution from AI answer to pipeline, which is a separate system.

That last point is where MultiplierAI fits, and only for a specific buyer: established companies that need AI search tied to attributed revenue rather than another visibility dashboard. Its Recon agent maps demand across the engines, Strategist models the revenue moves and Closer builds the assets, with results traced in a database the client owns. If you only need to know how often you are cited, one of the tools above is the right purchase. For the monitoring side, our guides to AI visibility tools and AI brand monitoring cover the wider field.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Profound cost?

As of September 2026, Profound lists two options for brands: a free seven-day Trial with 50 prompts a day on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and a custom-priced Enterprise plan with nine engines, API and SSO. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans were removed in mid-September 2026. Agencies can still buy a self-serve plan with per-client workspace fees.

What is the Profound platform?

Profound, at tryprofound.com, is an answer engine optimization platform that tracks how AI engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews mention and cite a brand. It reports share of voice, sentiment, citations and AI crawler activity, and it adds agents and templates for acting on the data. It raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation in September 2026.

Is Profound a good company?

By most measures, yes. Profound is backed by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed and Khosla, reports tripled revenue in six months and more than 1,000 enterprise customers including Walmart and Comcast, and publishes some of the category's most-cited research. The question is fit, not quality: it is now built and priced for enterprise buyers.

What is the cheapest Profound alternative?

Otterly.AI is the cheapest paid option at $29 a month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. AthenaHQ has a free tier with 300 credits a month across five engines. For a fuller like-for-like replacement, Peec AI and Promptwatch both start around $95 a month for 50 prompts.

Which Profound alternative tracks Claude?

At self-serve prices, AthenaHQ Starter ($295) includes Claude among eleven engines, Scrunch Starter ($250 annual) includes it among seven, and Promptwatch lets you pick Claude as one of four models from $95. Otterly and Peec offer it only as a paid add-on or model choice, and Ahrefs Brand Radar does not track Claude.

Is Peec AI better than Profound?

Peec is better for teams that need a published price, unlimited users and multi-country tracking without an enterprise contract. Profound is better for breadth: nine engines in one plan, deeper research features and enterprise controls such as SSO and API access. Many mid-market teams now choose Peec because Profound no longer sells a self-serve brand plan.

References

1. https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing
2. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/15/aeo-startup-profound-hits-unicorn-valuation-raises-180m-series-d-7-months-after-last-round/
3. https://trakkr.ai/reviews/profound-review/pricing
4. https://peec.ai/pricing
5. https://scrunch.com/pricing
6. https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2026/06/sitecore-acquires-scrunch-to-help-brands-influence-discovery--and-buying-decisions
7. https://otterly.ai/pricing
8. https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing
9. https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar
10. https://www.promptwatch.com/pricing