Profound AI Alternatives in 2026: Prices, Plans and Who Each Fits
In short: Profound now sells brands only a free 7-day trial or custom-priced Enterprise, so it suits large teams. As of November 2026, self-serve trackers start at $29 a month (Otterly.AI), $50 (HubSpot AEO, Ahrefs), about $58 (LLM Pulse) and $95 (Peec AI); Goodie adds strategist support from $295 (billed annually). If nobody will act on the findings, consider an agency.
What does Profound offer, and what does it cost?
Profound (tryprofound.com) tracks how your brand appears in AI answers and runs AI "agents" that research and write marketing content; for brands, it sells only a free 7-day trial or a custom-priced Enterprise plan. A "prompt" in these tools is one question the software asks an AI assistant on a schedule, such as "best payroll software for a 50-person company".
Profound's pricing page, as of November 6, 2026:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | Free for 7 days | 50 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; a recommended prompt set you cannot edit; limited AI Marketer credits; no support |
| Enterprise | Custom ("tailored packages"), by demo | Your own prompts, run daily, on up to 9 answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Exa Search, Muse Spark); ChatGPT Shopping; Prompt Volumes with history, exports and API; SSO/SAML and SOC 2; support up to a dedicated specialist with a 24-hour response commitment (SLA) |
| Agency Growth (agencies only) | $99 a month | 10 pitch workspaces a month with 25 prompts each; full client workspaces at $399 a month each (100 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, 400 agent credits); 5 agency seats |
Besides tracking (Answer Engine Insights), Profound sells Prompt Volumes (what people ask AI assistants), Agent Analytics (AI crawler and AI-referred traffic, through integrations such as Cloudflare, Akamai, Vercel and Google Analytics) and AI Marketer agents that run on credits.
The brand plans changed in September 2026: the pricing tracker PricingSaaS recorded on September 21, 2026 that Profound "dropped paid self-serve tiers (Starter $99/mo, Growth $399/mo)", and on September 28 that the trial grew to 50 prompts. Several comparison pages still quote the old plans.
How to check: open tryprofound.com/pricing and compare the "For brands" and "For agencies" tabs. A list offering brands a $99 Profound Starter plan predates September 2026.
Who is Profound a good fit for?
Profound fits large companies with a team that will use deep AI search data and agents every week and can buy through sales. Its strengths are real: up to nine answer engines, prompt-volume data, traffic analytics wired into your CDN (the network that serves your website), enterprise security (single sign-on through SSO/SAML, and SOC 2 compliance) and unlimited seats. Profound says it is "trusted by a third of the Fortune 100" (its own claim).
Profound is a weaker fit if you want to pay by card today, or track a few dozen buyer questions for under a few hundred dollars a month. Our reading, not a measured finding: most small and mid-size companies need fewer engines and more help acting on the results.
What are the best Profound alternatives at a glance?
The best Profound alternative depends on what you need most: a lower price, more human help, enterprise features, a tool inside your SEO suite, or an AEO agency to do the work. (AEO, answer engine optimization, means getting your brand named in AI answers; GEO, generative engine optimization, means much the same.) Vendors' own pricing pages, as of November 6, 2026, in US dollars unless noted:
| Alternative | Entry price on its site | Entry plan covers | Human help listed | Consider it if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | $29/month (less billed annually) | 15 prompts; ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Success manager on Enterprise | You want the lowest-cost tracker |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Prompt package from $50/month (2,500 checks) | Platforms you pick: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude | None listed | You use Ahrefs, or want pay-per-check tracking |
| HubSpot AEO (beta) | $50/month ($45 billed annually) | 25 prompts; ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity | None listed on the AEO page | You run marketing in HubSpot |
| LLM Pulse | €49/month (shown as about $58), weekly tracking | 50 prompts; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews | Account manager on Enterprise | You want five engines on the entry plan |
| Evertune | $60/month | 5,000 prompt credits; up to 5 models | Dedicated support on Enterprise | You also plan to run ChatGPT ads |
| Writesonic | $79/month billed annually | 50 prompts and 50 answers a day in total; ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews; AI articles and site audits | AI search strategist on Enterprise | You want tracking plus a content writer |
| Peec AI | $95/month (15% off annually) | 50 prompts daily; 3 models you choose; unlimited users | Dedicated support on Enterprise | You want clear analytics for a whole team |
| Semrush AI Visibility | $99/month per domain, billed annually | 25 prompts daily; ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Perplexity | Account manager on Enterprise | You already do SEO in Semrush |
| Scrunch | $250/month billed annually ($300 month to month) | 350 custom prompts, 3 users; ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, Meta | Customer success on every plan; strategy reviews from Growth | You care how AI agents read your site |
| AthenaHQ | Free (300 credits); Starter $295/month | Starter: 3,600 credits (one credit is one AI response); 11 models | Certified GEO/SEO specialist on Enterprise | You want many models and content tools, self-serve |
| Goodie | $295/month billed annually ($354 month to month) | 110 prompts; 5 models | AEO strategist support on every plan | You want a person guiding you at the entry price |
| Gauge | $599/month | 600 prompts daily; ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Copilot; 18 articles a month | Email and Slack; strategy sessions on Enterprise | You want high volume and content output |
| Conductor, Bluefish | Not published | Enterprise platforms | Sales-led | You are an enterprise team |
| An AEO agency | From $3,000/month at larger agencies that publish prices (WebFX) | Whatever the agency tracks | The agency does the work | No one on your team has time to act on a tool |
Profound, Conductor and Bluefish publish no brand price. Writesonic, Semrush, Scrunch and Goodie figures are billed annually (Scrunch is $300 and Goodie $354 month to month). LLM Pulse charges €49, shown on its site as about $58.
Show data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | $29 |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $50 |
| HubSpot AEO | $50 |
| LLM Pulse | $58 |
| Evertune | $60 |
| Writesonic | $79 |
| Peec AI | $95 |
| Semrush | $99 |
| Scrunch | $250 |
| AthenaHQ | $295 |
| Goodie | $295 |
| Gauge | $599 |
Hall, still on some lists, now says it "is now part of Tracksuit" (July 21, 2026) and shows only a waitlist.
A note on lists like this one: in our search for "profound alternatives" on November 6, 2026 (one search, one day), many ranking pages came from competing tools that list themselves first; Writesonic's says so plainly. In our study of 94 "best" list pages in 16 B2B fields, 62 were written by a seller that lists itself and 57 of those put themselves first (Who Writes the "Best" Lists AI Reads). No tool on this page is ours.
Which Profound alternatives are cheaper?
The cheapest Profound alternatives are Otterly.AI at $29 a month, Ahrefs and HubSpot AEO at $50, LLM Pulse at €49 (about $58) and Evertune at $60; unlike Profound for brands, each publishes a price you can pay today.
A lower price usually means one of three trade-offs:
- Fewer questions. Otterly's $29 plan tracks 15 prompts; HubSpot's $50 plan tracks 25.
- Fewer assistants. Otterly's Lite plan adds Google AI Mode or Gemini for $9 a month each and Claude for $29; Peec AI's Starter adds a fourth model, such as Perplexity, for $30; LLM Pulse sells Claude, Copilot and others from $10 a month per model.
- Less frequent runs. LLM Pulse's €49 plan runs weekly; daily tracking costs about $94 a month.
A fairer comparison is how much measurement each plan buys. Among vendors that publish how many AI answers an entry plan collects, the cost per answer varies about sevenfold:
| Tool and entry plan | Monthly price | AI answers per month (vendor's figure) | Cost per 1,000 answers (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gauge Growth | $599 | 54,000 | $11 |
| Ahrefs Basic prompt package | $50 | 2,500 checks (Claude uses 8 checks per update) | $20 |
| Peec AI Starter | $95 | 4,500 | $21 |
| Writesonic Starter | $79 (billed annually) | about 1,500 (50 a day) | $53 |
| LLM Pulse Starter | about $58 | "over 1,000" | under $58 |
| AthenaHQ Starter | $295 | 3,600 | $82 |
Evertune and Scrunch publish no answer counts, so they are left out. More answers do not mean better advice, but AI answers vary from run to run, so stable numbers need many runs.
Which alternatives give you more hands-on help?
Goodie is the only tool we found that lists AEO strategist support on every plan, from $295 a month billed annually ($354 month to month); most vendors add people only on enterprise plans. On Goodie's Core plan that means a 30-minute onboarding call and email support; Slack and bi-weekly meetings come with Enterprise. Scrunch's Growth plan ($417 a month billed annually) also includes strategy reviews.
Enterprise plans add people: AthenaHQ (a certified GEO/SEO specialist, Slack channel and 2-hour SLA), Scrunch (a dedicated go-to-market team), Gauge (recurring strategy sessions), Otterly.AI (a success manager and a quarterly "GEO Health Check"), Writesonic (a dedicated AI search strategist) and Profound (a dedicated specialist option).
Which alternatives suit enterprise teams?
Enterprise teams that want Profound-level depth usually compare AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Peec AI, Evertune, Goodie, Conductor and Bluefish, which all sell custom-priced enterprise plans. Each one's standout enterprise feature, from its own page:
- AthenaHQ: claim review against your knowledge base; Tableau, Power BI and Looker dashboards.
- Scrunch: SAML/OIDC single sign-on, a data API, and AXP (Agent Experience Platform), which builds an AI-friendly version of your site.
- Peec AI: up to 13 models, single sign-on and a SOC 2 Type II report on request.
- Evertune Pro ($800 a month billed annually): 11 models, each prompt sampled 100 times, and a ChatGPT ads agent priced as a share of media spend.
- Goodie: up to 14 models, revenue attribution and a dedicated strategist.
- Conductor: an enterprise SEO and AEO platform; free trial on its Essentials plan.
- Bluefish: an "agentic marketing platform for the Fortune 500" that says over 10% of the Fortune 500 trust it.
Which SEO suites already include AI visibility tracking?
Semrush, Ahrefs, HubSpot, Conductor and Writesonic sell AI visibility tracking inside a wider SEO or marketing product, so check what you already pay for first.
- Semrush: besides the $99 toolkit, Semrush One "SEO + AI Search" Starter costs $199 a month ($165.17 billed annually) with 50 prompts tracked daily plus SEO tools.
- Ahrefs: paid plans (Lite from $129 a month) include 5 tracked AI prompts on one platform, checked daily; Standard includes 10 and Advanced 20.
- HubSpot: Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise include AEO with more prompts and recommendations informed by your CRM data, HubSpot says.
- Conductor: AEO and SEO reporting, with AI search credits on its Growth and Enterprise plans; prices not published.
- Writesonic: Basic ($199 a month billed annually) combines SEO tools with tracking for 100 prompts.
How to check: in your SEO tool, look for "AI Visibility", "Brand Radar" or "AEO" in the menu. Free snapshot checks from HubSpot (AI Search Grader), Ahrefs and Semrush give a quick picture.
Should you hire an agency instead of buying a tool?
Hire an agency instead of buying a tool when nobody on your team has a few hours a week to act on what a tool shows: writing pages, fixing listings and getting onto the sites AI assistants read. A tool shows what to fix; it does not fix it.
Top Seed AI is a done-for-you AEO agency, so this is the option we sell; weigh this section with that in mind. Among agencies that publish prices, WebFX's GEO service starts at $3,000 a month with a six-month commitment; How Much Does an AEO Agency Cost? compares 16 agencies' prices and what each buys, and AEO Agency vs AI Visibility Software covers the trade-offs.
Top Seed AI writes and publishes the pages that answer your buyers' questions, works on the outside sources AI assistants read, and measures before and after. We are not the best fit if you want a dashboard you run yourself or many published case studies; we started in 2026.
Profound vs Peec AI: which should you choose?
Choose Peec AI for a published, self-serve plan from $95 a month; choose Profound if you need up to nine engines, prompt-volume data, content agents and enterprise security, bought through sales.
| Profound | Peec AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan for a brand | Enterprise, custom price | Starter, $95/month (15% off annually) |
| Free option | 7-day trial: 50 fixed prompts, 3 engines | Free trial |
| AI assistants | Up to 9 on Enterprise | 3 of your choice on paid plans (from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Naver AI); Perplexity and others as add-ons from $30/month; up to 13 on Enterprise |
| Prompts | Custom | 50, 150 or 350; unlimited on Enterprise |
| Run frequency | Daily | Daily (daily or weekly on Enterprise) |
| Seats | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Content and agents | AI Marketer agents on credits | Recommended actions; agent with 500 credits on Starter |
| Site traffic analytics | Agent Analytics with CDN integrations | Agent analytics and a crawlability audit |
| Support | Options up to a dedicated specialist | Chat on Starter; dedicated support on Enterprise |
| Security | SSO/SAML and SOC 2 | SSO on Enterprise; SOC 2 Type II report on request |
Prices and features from each vendor's pricing page, as of November 6, 2026.
Profound vs AthenaHQ: which should you choose?
Choose AthenaHQ for many models on a self-serve plan (Starter, $295 a month, covers 11 models with unlimited prompts); choose Profound if you need its enterprise features and can buy through sales.
| Profound | AthenaHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | 7-day trial: 50 fixed prompts, 3 engines | Essential: 300 credits ($25 of free credit), 5 models |
| Cheapest paid plan for a brand | Enterprise, custom price | Starter, $295/month (17% off annually) |
| How usage is counted | Prompts plus agent credits | Credits: one credit is one AI response; 3,600 a month on Starter |
| AI assistants | Up to 9 on Enterprise | 11 on Starter, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral |
| Content and actions | AI Marketer agents | Content optimization agent; on-page and off-page actions |
| Human help | Dedicated specialist option on Enterprise | Certified GEO/SEO specialist on Enterprise |
| Who the vendor says it suits | "Companies operationalizing AI Search insights... at scale" | Starter: "Self-Guided SMBs"; Enterprise: enterprises and agencies |
Prices and features from each vendor's pricing page, as of November 6, 2026. For more AthenaHQ options, see AthenaHQ Alternatives.
How should you compare AI visibility tools before you buy?
Compare AI visibility tools on the questions you need answered, not on the headline price: count prompts, assistants and runs, then test it on your own buyer questions in a trial.
1. Write down 15 to 50 real buyer questions
Use your buyers' words, without your brand name; an accounting firm might track "best outsourced bookkeeping for a 20-person agency" (an illustrative example).
How to check: ask three of them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and note who is named.
2. Multiply prompts by assistants by runs
Fifty prompts on three assistants daily is about 4,500 answers a month; weekly on one, about 200. SparkToro's study with Gumshoe (about 600 volunteers, 2,961 runs, late 2025) found AI tools rarely give the same list of brands twice, and called "visibility % across dozens to hundreds of prompts run multiple times" a reasonable metric. Gumshoe sells AI tracking; the post discloses that.
3. Check which assistants cost extra
Many entry plans leave out Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Mode, or sell them as add-ons.
How to check: open the full plan comparison table, not just the plan cards.
4. Ask for raw answers and exports
You should be able to read and export the full answer text behind every score. Leaving Profound? Export your prompts and history first (Enterprise includes CSV and JSON exports and an API), then run the new tool on the same prompts for a few weeks before cancelling (our suggestion). Our method is in How We Test.
5. Run the trial on your questions
Profound, Scrunch and Goodie list 7-day trials, LLM Pulse a 14-day trial (card required), and Otterly.AI, Peec AI and HubSpot free trials. Load your own questions on day one (Profound's trial prompts are fixed).
What not to do
Avoid these mistakes when choosing or using a tool; each costs money or traffic:
- Do not pay for a "rank" in AI answers. SparkToro found the same list in the same order in roughly 1 in 1,000 runs and called tools that report an AI "ranking position" "full of baloney". Consequence: you budget against a number that will not repeat.
- Do not trust a tool that promises results. Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI says to "be wary of third-party tools that promise ranking success" and that "indexing and serving aren't guaranteed" (last updated July 10, 2026). Consequence: you pay for a promise no vendor controls.
- Do not mass-publish pages with a tool's content agent. Google's spam policies (last updated August 28, 2026) list "using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users" as scaled content abuse, and its AI guide applies that policy to separate pages for every query variation. Consequence: "Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all," or get a manual action.
- Do not hide text or instructions meant only for AI crawlers. Google defines hidden text abuse as placing content "solely to manipulate search engines"; our reading, not a Google statement, is that hidden instructions for AI crawlers count too. Consequence: lower rankings or a manual action.
- Do not pick a tool from a self-ranked list alone. In our check of 16 B2B fields, 57 of 62 self-listing "best" pages put the publisher first. Consequence: you shortlist the publisher rather than the best fit.
- Do not budget from old price tables. Profound's $99 and $399 brand plans ended in September 2026 (PricingSaaS). Consequence: a surprise when sales quotes Enterprise.
Questions people ask
Does Profound still have a $99 plan?
Not for brands. Profound's pricing page shows only a free 7-day trial and custom Enterprise for brands; PricingSaaS recorded the removal of the $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans on September 21, 2026. The $99 price you may still see is Agency Growth, which is for agencies and charges $399 a month per client workspace.
Is there a free version of Profound?
Only a 7-day trial: 50 fixed prompts, run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. For ongoing free use, AthenaHQ's Essential plan gives 300 credits; HubSpot, Ahrefs and Semrush offer free snapshot checks that do not track over time.
What is the cheapest alternative to Profound?
As of November 6, 2026, Otterly.AI is cheapest at $29 a month for 15 prompts, followed by Ahrefs' $50 prompt package and HubSpot AEO at $50 for 25 prompts. Measured by AI answers per dollar, Gauge ($599 a month) gives the most of the tools that publish answer counts.
Is Profound worth it for a small business?
Usually not, in our reading. A small business rarely needs nine engines and enterprise security, and Profound now requires a sales-led contract. A $29 to $99 tracker covers the main assistants, and the savings can pay for the work it points to.
Sources
- Profound pricing, Profound, checked Nov 6, 2026. Vendor's own page; agency plan figures from its "For agencies" tab.
- Profound homepage, Profound, checked Nov 6, 2026. Customer claims are Profound's own.
- Profound pricing changes, week 39 2026, PricingSaaS, Sep 21, 2026 (with later entries Sep 28 and Oct 19). Third-party pricing tracker.
- AthenaHQ plans, AthenaHQ, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Peec AI pricing, Peec AI, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Otterly.AI pricing, Otterly.AI, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Scrunch pricing, Scrunch, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Semrush AI Visibility pricing and Semrush SEO + AI Search pricing, Semrush, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar and Ahrefs pricing, Ahrefs, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- HubSpot AEO, HubSpot, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Goodie pricing, Goodie, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- LLM Pulse pricing, LLM Pulse, checked Nov 6, 2026. USD prices shown as approximate conversions from euros.
- Writesonic pricing, Writesonic, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Gauge pricing, Gauge, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Evertune pricing, Evertune, checked Nov 6, 2026.
- Bluefish, Bluefish, checked Nov 6, 2026. No public pricing.
- Conductor pricing, Conductor, checked Nov 6, 2026. No public prices.
- Hall, Hall Technologies, checked Nov 6, 2026. States it is now part of Tracksuit.
- WebFX AI search optimization, WebFX, checked Nov 6, 2026. Agency's own prices.
- NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products, SparkToro, Jan 27, 2026. Run with Gumshoe.ai, an AI-tracking startup; the post discloses the possible conflict; data from Nov and Dec 2025.
- Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features, Google Search Central, last updated Jul 10, 2026.
- Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central, last updated Aug 28, 2026.
- Who Writes the "Best" Lists AI Reads?, Top Seed AI, Nov 1, 2026. Our own study; we sell AI visibility work.
Related guides
- How Much Does an AEO Agency Cost?: published prices from 16 agencies, if you would rather hire help than buy a tool.
- AEO Agency vs AI Visibility Software: decide whether you need a tool, an agency or both.
- AthenaHQ Alternatives: the same comparison, starting from AthenaHQ.
- How to Measure AI Search Traffic and Visibility: what to track once you pick a tool.
- How to Choose an AI Visibility Agency: ten questions to ask if you hire help instead.
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