Profound Alternatives: 8 Tools Matched to What Users Loved (Plus a Free DIY Method)

If you're looking at Profound alternatives, here's what changed: after its $180M Series D in September 2026, Profound pulled its $99 and $399 self-serve brand plans. Today you get a free 7-day trial, then a custom Enterprise quote. Fine for a Fortune 500 team, a dead end if you just need a price you can put on a card.

The best replacement depends on which Profound feature you'd miss most.

Scrunch is the closest enterprise swap. AthenaHQ pairs prompt volume with an action agent. Peec AI gives you clean dashboards and unlimited seats. OmniSEO covers all 10 AI platforms plus prompt volume from $45 a month.

OtterlyAI is the cheapest start at $29. And if you want zero spend, there's a free DIY method at the bottom.

For the wider lens, our LLM visibility tools roundup covers the whole category, not just Profound.

What Changed With Profound's Pricing?

Profound no longer publishes a paid plan for brands. As of November 4, 2026, its pricing page lists two options:

• Trial (free): 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. You get a recommended prompt set you can't edit, no history, no exports, no API, and 5 Prompt Volumes searches.
• Enterprise (custom): up to 10 answer engines, a tailored prompt plan, all-time history, exports, API, SSO/SAML and SOC 2, with dedicated support. Price comes from a demo.

Profound announced a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation on September 15, 2026, and repositioned around an "AI Marketer" agent. The Starter ($99/month, ChatGPT only) and Growth ($399/month, three engines) brand plans were still listed the day before, per an archived copy cited in one pricing review, and gone within days.

Two footnotes. Agencies still get a self-serve Agency Growth plan, reported at $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace. And one reviewer reported Starter and Growth still appear in-app after sign-up, so treat those as unlisted plans that can change without notice.

Here's the part that should bother you if you're researching this in ChatGPT. In OmniSEO's tracking of 100 AI visibility prompts across 10 AI platforms (November 4, 2026), Profound was named in 282 of 997 answers, and at least one ChatGPT answer still listed it at "$99+/mo." The AI engines haven't caught up with the price change. Don't budget off them.

What Users Liked Most About Profound

Before you pick a replacement, get clear on what you're replacing. Profound holds a 4.5 out of 5 on G2 across 1,133 reviews (checked November 4, 2026). One caveat worth knowing: an independent reviewer found the most recent batch labeled "Seller invite" and several marked incentivized, so read the volume as a review program, not a census. TrustRadius (13 reviews) and Product Hunt (two rated reviews) are thin, per a September 2026 count.

Here's what keeps showing up in the praise:

• Finally seeing how the brand shows up in AI answers. "Before, it was all a bit of a 'black box,' and now we have much more visibility," wrote a G2 reviewer in May 2026. Weekly summaries and share-of-voice views are built to show a VP.
• Prompt Volumes. Profound's estimate of how often people ask AI engines a given question. A September 2026 review called it "a real asset," with the fair caveat that the estimates are noisier than Google search volume.
• Agents that do something with the data. "Profound's agents are extremely helpful for brands who are unsure what to do after reviewing the data," per one G2 review.
• Citation and competitor granularity. Prompt-level detail on who gets cited, by which engine, and which competitors are winning.
• Support and enterprise readiness. Onboarding, dedicated support, SOC 2 and SSO for the security questionnaire crowd.

The complaints are just as consistent. On the first page of G2 reviews (September 2026 sample), three of ten dislikes were about price, three about the learning curve ("a lot of data available and its not always obvious where to start"), and three about reporting and export limits. Engine coverage gated by tier came up too.

That gives you what I call the loved-feature test. Stick with me on that.

Don't shop for the tool with the longest feature list. Write down the one Profound feature you'd actually miss, then find who does that one thing best at a price you can see. Everything below is organized that way.

Profound Alternatives at a Glance

Prices below are what each vendor publishes as of November 2026. This category changes monthly, so check the vendor page before you buy.

The 8 Best Profound Alternatives, by the Feature They Replace

Each one is matched to a loved Profound feature, with its price and the honest tradeoff.

Scrunch

Replaces: enterprise depth, AI bot traffic, and the security checklist. Scrunch is now part of Sitecore, which announced the acquisition on June 3, 2026.

Core is $250/month for 125 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot, with AI agent and bot traffic tracking included. Enterprise adds 9 LLMs, SAML/OIDC SSO, API access and a dedicated account team.

The tradeoff: Core covers only four engines and five competitors, and my hunch is the roadmap tilts toward Sitecore customers from here.

Best for: enterprise teams that liked Profound's depth but want a published starting price.

AthenaHQ

Replaces: Prompt Volumes and Agents. AthenaHQ's Starter plan ($295/month) includes numeric prompt volume estimation, visibility across 11 models, and a content optimization agent with on-page and off-page actions. There's also a free Essential tier with $25 of credit to kick the tires.

The catch is the credit model: 3,600 credits a month on Starter, where one credit is one AI response. API access is a paid add-on. Run more prompts in a busy month and the bill moves with you.

Best for: teams that want demand data and an agent that suggests the fix, and can predict their usage.

Peec AI

Replaces: the leadership-ready dashboard. Peec AI's Starter is $95/month for 50 prompts tracked daily, with visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice against competitors, plus unlimited team users and unlimited competitors.

The tradeoff: you pick 3 active models on every self-serve plan. Its prompt volume is a relative 1-5 demand score, not a count, so it won't fully replace Profound's Prompt Volumes. It's a measurement tool, not an execution one.

Best for: mid-market teams that report AI visibility up the chain every month.

OmniSEO

Replaces: Prompt Volumes and engine breadth. Disclosure: this is our tool. OmniSEO tracks all 10 AI platforms on every plan (Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Meta AI, Grok, DeepSeek), with daily scanning.

Every prompt gets Prompt Query Volume (PQV), our estimate of monthly asks per prompt, and Prompt Research helps you find new prompts worth targeting. Try it on one prompt with our free AI prompt volume checker.

Pricing starts at $45/month for 25 saved prompts and 5 competitors, then $89 (50 prompts), $349 (100 prompts, exports, 10 seats) and $899+ for Enterprise. Citation tracking and per-prompt Strategy recommendations come on every plan.

Where it's the wrong pick: there's no content-writing agent, so if Profound's Agents were the draw, look at AthenaHQ or AirOps. Self-serve plans cap you at 5 competitors, exports start at Professional, and if procurement needs a SOC 2 report and SAML SSO on day one, start with Scrunch or AthenaHQ Enterprise.

Best for: teams that want every engine and prompt demand data without an enterprise contract.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Replaces: the reporting layer, plus a version of prompt volume. The AI Visibility Toolkit is $99/month and includes 25 tracked prompts, Prompt Research with topic-level volume and difficulty, competitor gaps, and "presentation-ready reports."

The tradeoff: no free trial, and Semrush's documentation only names ChatGPT and Google AI Mode for prompt tracking. Topic-level volume is broader than Profound's prompt-level view.

Best for: teams already living in Semrush who want AI visibility next to their keyword data.

OtterlyAI

Replaces: the daily visibility check, at the lowest price. OtterlyAI Lite is $29/month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with unlimited team members and citation source tracking. Higher tiers add agent analytics events and API access.

The tradeoff: 15 prompts goes fast, and Gemini, AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons on every tier.

Best for: solo marketers and small teams testing AI visibility for the first time.

AirOps

Replaces: Agents, and then some. AirOps is a content engineering platform first. Its Pro plan covers insights across 10+ answer engines and 100,000 content production tasks, and it lists prompt volume among its intelligence features. Solo is ChatGPT insights only.

The tradeoff: no public price on the pricing page, task-based billing, and reviewers on G2 flag a real learning curve. You're buying a production system, not a dashboard.

Best for: content and SEO teams managing large page libraries who want execution more than reporting.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Replaces: the market-wide view. Brand Radar's AI Visibility Index runs over 531 million prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, and starts at $199/month. Custom prompt tracking is included on paid Ahrefs plans (5 prompts on Lite).

The tradeoff: you're paying for an Ahrefs subscription first, and a handful of custom prompts won't cover a real program. If Google's AI features are your main target, our AI Overview tracker roundup goes deeper.

Best for: teams already paying for Ahrefs who want AI visibility without a new login.

How to Choose: Run the Loved-Feature Test

Start with the one Profound feature you'd miss, then go here:

• You loved the enterprise depth and security review. Scrunch Enterprise or AthenaHQ Enterprise. Both list SAML SSO and a dedicated team.
• You loved Prompt Volumes. OmniSEO (PQV per prompt, every plan) or AthenaHQ (numeric estimates on Starter). Read our explainer on AI prompt volume before you trust any tool's numbers, including ours.
• You loved the Agents. AthenaHQ for a built-in optimization agent, AirOps if you want a full content production system.
• You loved the dashboard for leadership. Peec AI, or Semrush if you're already there.
• You loved it, but the bill didn't. OtterlyAI at $29 or OmniSEO at $45. Or go free, below.
• You loved the bot and AI traffic data. Scrunch includes bot traffic on Core. Pair any tracker with our guide to tracking AI referral traffic in GA4.

My take: most teams don't need a smaller Profound. They need the one or two Profound features they actually used, at a price that doesn't require a procurement cycle. If you're also weighing HubSpot's built-in tool, our HubSpot AEO alternatives comparison runs the same exercise.

How to Track AI Visibility for Free (No Paid Tool Required)

You don't need a subscription to get a real signal. You need about an hour a month and a spreadsheet.

Search Console's Generative AI Performance Report

As of June 2026, Search Console has a generative AI performance report showing which of your pages appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's generative features, broken out by page, country and device. Google is still rolling it out, so don't panic if it's not in your account yet.

If you don't have it yet, filter your regular Performance report to question-style queries and look for impressions or clicks that dropped without a matching rank drop. That gap is often an AI Overview eating the click.

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance Report

Bing's AI Performance dashboard went into public preview in February 2026. It shows total citations, cited pages and a visibility trend across Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries.

The standout is grounding queries: the phrases the AI used when it pulled your content into an answer. That's the closest thing to a "why was I cited" answer you'll get from a free tool. And since ChatGPT's web search leans on Bing's index, strong citation activity here is a reasonable leading indicator for ChatGPT too.

A Manual Prompt Panel

Pick 10 to 20 prompts your buyers would actually type. Run them in an incognito window across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini once a month, and log if you're mentioned, who else shows up, and how you're described. That's manual prompt tracking without the software. Our guide on how to do prompt research helps you pick the prompts.

One honest caveat: the same prompt can give two different answers an hour apart, so track frequency over several runs. Once logging by hand takes more than an hour, a paid tool earns its keep.

How to Switch From Profound Without Losing Your Data

If you're leaving, do it in this order:

1. Export your prompt library and history before your contract or trial ends. The Trial has no history or exports, so screenshot anything you want to keep.
2. Run your shortlisted tool in parallel on the same prompts for one to two weeks.
3. Compare what each tool stores. Some keep the full AI answer text, others just log a mention.
4. Confirm the engines you need are on the plan you're buying, not an add-on.
5. Re-baseline. Different tools sample differently, so a score change after switching isn't a visibility change.

Here's your homework, and it takes about thirty minutes. Write down the one Profound feature you'd miss most. Pick the two tools above that match it, start their trials on the same 25 prompts this week, and compare what they tell you on Friday.

Are you paying for the feature you actually use, or for the logo?

FAQ

Is there a cheaper alternative to Profound?

Yes. OtterlyAI starts at $29/month for 15 prompts across four engines, and OmniSEO starts at $45/month with all 10 AI platforms and prompt volume included. Peec AI starts at $95/month if you want a stronger dashboard. All three publish prices, while Profound's brand plans now require an Enterprise quote after the free trial.

Does Profound still have a $99 plan?

Not for brands on its public pricing page. As of November 2026, Profound lists a free 7-day trial and custom Enterprise pricing. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans came off the page in mid-September 2026, though agencies still have a self-serve Agency Growth plan.

What is the closest Profound competitor for enterprise teams?

Scrunch is the closest like-for-like option. Its Enterprise plan covers 9 LLMs with SAML/OIDC SSO, API access and a dedicated account team, and its Core plan starts at a published $250/month. AthenaHQ Enterprise is the other strong pick, with SAML SSO, audit logs and a 2-hour SLA.

Is there a free alternative to Profound?

Google Search Console's generative AI report, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report, and a monthly manual prompt panel together give you a free baseline. AthenaHQ also has a free Essential tier with $25 of credit. Expect to trade time for money with the DIY route.

What replaces Profound's Prompt Volumes?

OmniSEO includes Prompt Query Volume for every tracked prompt on every plan, and AthenaHQ includes numeric prompt volume estimates on its $295 Starter plan. Semrush offers topic-level volume through Prompt Research, and Peec AI scores relative demand from 1 to 5. Treat every AI prompt volume number as an estimate and compare trends, not absolutes.