Profound alternatives: 8 AI visibility tools and when each beats Profound

What is Profound, and who is it for?

Profound is an AI visibility and AI marketing platform that tracks how answer engines describe, cite and recommend brands, then helps teams act on it. It is built for enterprise marketing teams. In February 2026 it raised a $96 million Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $1 billion valuation, taking total funding past $155 million, and it says it serves more than 10 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 700 enterprises, naming Target, Figma, Walmart, Ramp, MongoDB, Chime and U.S. Bank2 (Profound).

The platform has grown well past prompt tracking. Its site lists Answer Engine Insights, Prompt Volumes (built from what it describes as billions of real conversations), Agent Analytics for how AI bots crawl, cite and refer to your pages, FactCheck for misinformation about your brand, SKU-level Shopping data, and Profound Agents, which run marketing tasks on its data3 (Profound).

What does Profound cost?

Profound does not publish paid prices. Its pricing page lists three options1:

Profound review: where it is strong

Profound's edge is breadth plus paperwork. Few tools combine bot analytics, shopping placement, prompt-volume estimates and agents in one contract, and fewer have the compliance paperwork (SSO, SOC 2) that a large procurement team will ask for. Profound also publishes useful research; its study of 680 million citations is one we cite in our GEO guide. If you are a multi-brand enterprise with a team to act on the output, it belongs on the shortlist.

Why do teams look for Profound alternatives?

Teams usually look elsewhere because Profound won't give a paid price without a sales call, its trial runs prompts it picked instead of yours, and its platform is bigger than a tracking job needs. Agencies add a fourth reason. Each one points to a different alternative.

• You need a price before a sales call. Every alternative below publishes at least one price.
• You want to test your own prompts. Profound's trial uses prompts it picks and cannot be edited, so you cannot see your real buyer questions until you sign.
• You are an agency with many small clients and need per-client economics and white-label reporting.
• You only need tracking. If agents, shopping data and bot analytics will go unused, you are paying for a platform when a tracker would do.

How do the alternatives compare with Profound?

Every alternative here publishes a price where Profound quotes, and two of them track more engines than Profound Enterprise's nine: AthenaHQ Starter lists 11 models and ZeroRank lists up to 17 platforms. Profound's Enterprise plan still bundles the extras large buyers ask for: SSO, SOC 2, all-time history and SKU-level shopping data.

The 8 Profound alternatives

Peec AI is the one most in-house teams should trial first; the other seven win in narrower situations, from agency portfolios (ZeroRank) to teams already paying for Ahrefs, Semrush or HubSpot.

1. Peec AI: the best all-round alternative

Peec AI is what most mid-market teams should compare Profound against. It publishes three self-serve plans, includes unlimited users and daily runs on every one, and its feature list covers source classification, gap analysis by URL, crawl insights from CDN logs, an ads library and AI shopping (not every feature is on every plan)4.

Pricing

Starter $95 a month (50 prompts), Pro $245 (150), Advanced $495 (350, multi-country, Looker Studio), Enterprise custom (Peec AI pricing).

Engines

Choose 3 per plan from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Naver AI; Enterprise tracks up to 13.

Pick it over Profound if

You track one to five brands, want to load your own prompts from the first day, and need a number to put in a budget.

Stay with Profound if

You need more than three engines per brand without paying per extra model, or SKU-level shopping data at scale.

2. Scrunch: the closest match on coverage

Scrunch tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta on every plan, and adds its Agent Experience Platform (AXP), which serves an AI-friendly version of your site to AI agents5. Sitecore bought Scrunch in June 20266 (Sitecore).

Pricing

Starter $300 month to month or $250 a month annually (350 prompts, 3 personas, 3 users); Growth $500 or $417 annually (700 prompts); Enterprise custom with SSO and a data API (Scrunch pricing). 7-day trial, no card.

Pick it over Profound if

You want Claude and Meta tracked on a self-serve plan, persona-based prompts, and a 7-day trial on your own 350 prompts.

Stay with Profound if

You want independence from a CMS vendor, or you rely on Profound's agents and prompt-volume data.

3. AthenaHQ: the free starting point with the most models

AthenaHQ has the only permanent free tier among the enterprise-style platforms, and its paid Starter lists 11 models7. On Profound vs AthenaHQ, AthenaHQ wins on entry cost and model count (11 on Starter against Profound Enterprise's 9), while Profound's Enterprise plan lists SSO, SOC 2 and all-time history, the extras a large procurement team asks about first.

Pricing

Essential free (300 credits, 5 engines, $25 starting credit); Starter $295 a month (3,600 credits, 11 models); Enterprise custom. One credit is one AI response (AthenaHQ pricing).

Engines

Starter: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

Pick it over Profound if

You want to try the workflow free, then track Grok, Meta AI or Mistral alongside the big engines.

Stay with Profound if

You need a published API on a mid-tier plan; AthenaHQ prices API access and extra credits through sales.

4. Ahrefs Brand Radar: the benchmark without the prompt list

Brand Radar shows any brand's AI visibility across a large prompt index that Ahrefs says is modeled from real searches, plus YouTube and Reddit mentions8 (Ahrefs).

Pricing

Brand Radar AI add-on from $199 a month; custom prompt packages from $50 a month for 2,500 checks, on top of an Ahrefs plan (Ahrefs pricing)9.

Engines

AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, with Claude listed on pricing.

Pick it over Profound if

You want to see which competitors AI already favors across a whole category in an afternoon, and you already pay for Ahrefs.

Stay with Profound if

Your decisions hinge on your own buyer prompts tracked daily; modeled index prompts will not match your buyers' wording.

5. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: for Semrush shops

Profound vs Semrush is mostly a question of scope: Semrush's $99 toolkit tracks 25 prompts on ChatGPT and AI Mode, while Profound Enterprise runs a custom prompt plan daily on up to nine engines. The toolkit adds an AI Visibility Score, competitor research, prompt research with volume and difficulty, brand sentiment and narratives, daily prompt tracking and an AI search site audit10.

Pricing

$99 a month with 25 prompts; 50 extra prompts for $60 a month; no free trial (Semrush).

Engines

Semrush's help page names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode for prompt tracking.

Pick it over Profound if

You want AI prompt research beside keyword research, at a fixed low price.

Stay with Profound if

You track more than a few dozen prompts or need Perplexity, Claude and Copilot runs.

6. ZeroRank: the budget pick for agencies

ZeroRank prices on AI answers and lets you spend them across up to 17 platforms, with unlimited prompts, seats and countries, white-label dashboards, an MCP server and a REST API on every plan11.

Pricing

Starter $39 a month (2,400 answers, 1 workspace), Growth $199 (13,500, 10 workspaces), Agency $499 (31,500, unlimited workspaces), Enterprise custom (ZeroRank pricing).

Pick it over Profound if

You run AI visibility for many clients and need per-client dashboards without enterprise contracts.

Stay with Profound if

You need SOC 2 paperwork and a dedicated enterprise team, or volumes above 31,500 answers without custom terms.

7. Otterly.AI: the cheapest way to start tracking

Otterly.AI covers brand monitoring, citations, prompt research, a content audit with crawlability checks, and a public API12.

Pricing

Lite $29 a month (15 prompts), Standard $189 (100), Premium $489 (400), Enterprise from 1,000 prompts (Otterly.AI pricing).

Engines

ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot included; Gemini, AI Mode and Claude are add-ons ($59, $59 and $109 a month on Standard).

Pick it over Profound if

You are a small team that needs a baseline now and will decide on a platform later.

Stay with Profound if

You need all major engines; Otterly.AI Standard with every add-on costs $416 a month, and the reporting stays lighter.

8. HubSpot AEO: for HubSpot customers

HubSpot AEO tracks brand visibility, sentiment, competitor share of voice and citations, with prioritized recommendations, inside HubSpot13.

Pricing

$50 a month, or $45 paid annually, for 25 prompts; free tracking of 25 prompts with no card (HubSpot).

Engines

ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Pick it over Profound if

Your marketing runs on HubSpot and you want AI visibility next to the contacts and deals it may influence.

Stay with Profound if

Google AI Overviews, AI Mode or Claude matter to your buyers; HubSpot AEO does not track them.

Which Profound alternative should you pick?

Pick Peec AI if you're an in-house team with $100 to $500 a month, ZeroRank if you run many clients, and the Ahrefs or Semrush add-on if you already pay for that suite. The full breakdown by situation:

• Budget under $100 a month, one brand: Otterly.AI Lite, ZeroRank Starter or HubSpot AEO. Run your 15 to 25 most commercial prompts.
• In-house team, $100 to $500 a month: Peec AI. Choose Scrunch if Claude and Meta must be tracked from day one.
• Agency with 5 or more clients: ZeroRank Growth or Agency, or Peec AI agency bundles. Profound's Agency Growth plan is worth a quote if clients expect the Profound name.
• Already on Ahrefs or Semrush: test the add-on for one month before buying anything new.
• Enterprise with SSO, SOC 2, multiple brands: Profound, Scrunch Enterprise and Peec AI Enterprise. Ask all three for answer volumes, retention and API limits in writing.

Before you commit to any of them, check whether AI engines mention you at all. A quick run of the free Arobis AI visibility checker, one of the other free AI visibility checkers we compared, or 20 prompts by hand will tell you whether you need a tracker yet or need to fix visibility first. The method for building a prompt set that is worth tracking is in how to measure AI visibility.

Want the wider field, including SE Ranking and Rankscale? See the best AI visibility tools, with a full comparison table and a trial checklist.

Frequently asked questions

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