9 Best Profound Alternatives in 2026

Profound does not sell a self-serve plan to brands: on 25 September 2026 its pricing page offered a free 7-day trial and an Enterprise plan priced by quote. So the useful Profound alternatives are the ones you can buy today at a published price. Scored on five criteria, three tie at the top: Rankscale (from $20 a month, credits spent across 16 engines), Cituna ($39 a month, seven engines checked daily, Search Console built in; built by the developer who runs Automate Basics) and AthenaHQ (free plan, then $295 a month for 11 models). Ahrefs Brand Radar and SE Visible come next.

To compare prices, trials and engines for every tool in this field, browse our AI visibility category, which lists each tool's current plans with the date they were read.

Why people look past Profound

Profound is built for large teams: its Enterprise plan covers up to nine answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search), SSO and SOC 2, and AI Marketer agents that run on credits. The pricing page also announced a $180M Series D. None of that has a list price. The trial runs a fixed set of 50 prompts a day on three engines for seven days, with no history, no exports and no API, so it shows you the product without giving you data you can keep (Profound pricing, read 25 September 2026).

If you need a number to put in a budget, or you want to track a handful of your own buyer questions next week without a procurement cycle, that is the gap every tool below fills in a different way. For a sense of what the category costs overall, see how much an AI visibility platform costs.

How we ranked them: the criteria

We started from the ten tools in the Automate Basics AI visibility directory and re-read every vendor's own pricing page on 25 September 2026. Profound is the subject of this page, so it is scored as the baseline but not numbered, leaving nine entries. Each tool was scored the same way on five criteria, using its cheapest paid self-serve plan:

• Engines on the entry plan without add-ons: 7 or more scores 2, 5 or 6 scores 1, 4 or fewer scores 0. We count only engines the vendor's page names.
• Published entry price, billed monthly: $50 or less scores 2, $51 to $150 scores 1, more than $150 or no published price scores 0.
• Prompt allowance on the entry plan, as prompts tracked a day: 100 or more scores 2, 25 to 99 scores 1, under 25 or not shown scores 0. For credit or check plans that state no prompt count, we divide the monthly allowance by 30 on one engine.
• Google Search Console connection named on the vendor's own pages for the product: 1 point, beta included.
• Free trial or free plan: 1 point.

This page is published by Automate Basics, and one of the ranked tools, Cituna, is built by the developer who runs Automate Basics; it was scored on exactly the same criteria as every other entry. The maximum is 8. Ties are broken by the lower entry price. The criteria are the ones a buyer leaving Profound usually cares about: coverage, a price you can see, capacity, a link to search data and a way to try before paying. They do not measure answer accuracy, support or the quality of recommendations, which we could not test the same way for every tool.

Profound alternatives compared

1. Rankscale

Best for: small teams who want the lowest entry price and a long engine list.

Rankscale is the opposite of Profound's model: every price is on the page. Essentials starts at $20 a month; Pro is $99 with 1,200 credits (up to 4,800 AI answers), 10 brand dashboards and 50 page audits, and comes with a 7-day trial that charges nothing until day 7. A check usually costs 0.25 credits per engine, though DeepSeek costs 1 and Claude 2, and engines include ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and Mistral. You can schedule each search term anywhere from hourly to monthly (Rankscale pricing, read 25 September 2026). The home page lists a GA4 and Search Console connection, marked beta.

Where it falls short: credits make the monthly cost harder to forecast than a flat plan, and the Essentials allowance did not display on the pricing page when we read it, so it scored 0 for prompts. The REST API and white-label dashboards start on Growth at $385 a month.

See Rankscale in our directory or Cituna vs Rankscale.

2. Cituna

Cituna is built by the developer who runs Automate Basics.

Best for: founders and small marketing teams who want a flat price and every covered engine checked daily.

Cituna checks seven engines on every plan: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Starter is $39 a month for one brand and 10 buyer prompts, Pro is $119 for three brands and 30 prompts with alerts and competitor tracking, and Max is $399 for 10 brands and 90 prompts. Every plan includes a Google Search Console connection, written fixes such as schema, FAQ markup and llms.txt, publishing to the main CMSs, and white-label reports. It draws its buyer questions from the queries Google already shows your site for, which is a different starting point from Profound's prompt-volume estimates (Cituna pricing, Cituna home page, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: 10 prompts on Starter is the smallest allowance among the paid plans here, and it scored 0 on that criterion. It does not track Microsoft Copilot, which Profound Enterprise does. The 3-day trial needs a card and turns into Starter unless cancelled, competitor tracking is listed from Pro, and cancelling does not refund a part-used month.

To see Cituna's plans and limits in one place, open Cituna in our directory, or read the head-to-head Cituna vs Profound comparison.

3. AthenaHQ

Best for: teams who want Profound-like breadth on a plan they can buy online.

AthenaHQ is the closest in scope to Profound among the self-serve tools. Its free Essential plan gives $25 of credit (300 AI responses) on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter is $295 a month billed monthly, or 17% less billed yearly, for 3,600 credits across 11 models, adding AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. One credit buys one AI response. The plan page lists GA4 and Search Console integration, Shopify and Webflow, and smart robots.txt and llms.txt management (AthenaHQ plans, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: the step from free to $295 is steep, API access and extra credits are add-ons priced on request, and multi-region tracking sits on Enterprise.

See AthenaHQ in our directory or Profound vs AthenaHQ.

4. Ahrefs Brand Radar

Best for: Ahrefs customers, and brands that want market-wide data without setting up prompts.

Brand Radar has two halves. Custom Prompts start at $50 a month for 2,500 checks, where each prompt costs one check per platform, location and update; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode are covered, and Claude is available at 8 checks per update. The AI Visibility Index, from $199 a month, lets you look up any brand across Ahrefs' database of 451M prompts, re-tested monthly. Paid Ahrefs plans include 5 to 20 daily prompts free (Ahrefs Brand Radar, read 25 September 2026). The Index is the nearest thing here to Profound's prompt-volume research.

Where it falls short: Ahrefs' pricing FAQ says it never runs discounts and points to Ahrefs Free rather than a trial (Ahrefs pricing). Search Console lives in a separate Ahrefs tool, not on the Brand Radar pages, so it scored 0 there. Spread over the six engines it lists besides Claude, $50 of checks is roughly 14 prompts a day on each.

See Ahrefs Brand Radar in our directory or Cituna vs Ahrefs Brand Radar.

5. SE Visible

Best for: marketing and PR teams who need many prompts on the main five engines.

SE Visible, from SE Ranking, gives the most prompts for the money among the entry plans: Basic is $99 a month (20% less yearly) for 200 prompts, about 30,000 AI answers a month and three projects, across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, Perplexity and AI Overviews. It collects answers through each platform's own interface rather than an API, refreshes daily and offers a 10-day trial (SE Visible, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: no Claude yet (the FAQ says it is coming), no Search Console connection named, and five tracking languages.

See SE Visible in our directory or Cituna vs SE Visible.

6. Otterly.AI

Best for: solo marketers who need a cheap monitor with Copilot in it.

Otterly Lite is $29 a month (15% less yearly) for 15 prompts tracked daily on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with unlimited team members and ChatGPT Ads tracking. Standard, at $189, adds 100 prompts, API and MCP access and Agent Analytics (Otterly pricing, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons on every plan, and 15 prompts is a small base for anyone used to Profound's scale.

See Otterly.AI in our directory.

7. Peec AI

Best for: SEO and content teams who want clean dashboards with unlimited users.

Peec Starter is $95 a month for 50 prompts on three models you pick (from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI), tracked daily, in one project, with unlimited users. More models can be added from the dashboard for an extra charge that depends on the plan. Advanced, at $495, adds multi-country tracking and Looker Studio; Enterprise reaches up to 13 models with API access and SSO (Peec AI pricing, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: three included models is among the lowest here (Semrush names two), though Peec sells extra models as dashboard add-ons, and the integrations listed are Google Analytics and CDN log providers, not Search Console.

See Peec AI in our directory or Profound vs Peec AI.

8. Scrunch

Best for: mid-size brands that want site audits and room to grow into an enterprise contract.

Scrunch Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts, five site audits a month, one brand workspace and five users, on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with a 7-day trial. Enterprise goes to nine models and adds its Agent Experience Platform, API access and SSO (Scrunch pricing, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: four models on Core, one country, and the features that make it Profound-like are Enterprise-only.

See Scrunch in our directory or Cituna vs Scrunch.

9. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Best for: teams already living in Semrush who want AI data in the same account.

The toolkit is $99 a month for 25 tracked prompts and one domain for Brand Performance reports, plus prompt research and an AI crawler check in Site Audit. Extra users need their own $99 licence, and 50 more prompts cost $60 a month (Semrush knowledge base, read 25 September 2026).

Where it falls short: Semrush says there is no free trial of the toolkit, and its page names only Google AI Mode and ChatGPT for prompt tracking, so it scored 0 on engines.

See Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit in our directory.

When staying with Profound makes sense

Profound scored 1 of 8 here, but only because our criteria reward buying without a sales call. If you need Copilot, DeepSeek and Claude together under one contract, SSO and SOC 2, and agents that write and report for a large marketing team, Enterprise is built for that and none of the self-serve plans above replaces all of it. See Profound in our directory.

If you are unsure you need a paid tracker at all, our guide to whether an AI visibility tool is worth paying for walks through a free manual check first.

Ready to shortlist? Compare all ten AI visibility tools in our category with current prices, trials and engines side by side.

Try this now

Write down the ten buyer questions you most want AI answers to get right, and the engines your buyers use. Price those ten prompts on those engines under each tool's meter (prompts, credits or checks) before you book any demo.