Best Profound Alternatives for 2026: Our Top 8

Based on our testing of 9 AI visibility platforms, Semrush One is the best Profound alternative for 2026 because it publishes its prices, tracks 50 prompts daily from $199/mo billed monthly, and puts a full SEO toolkit on the same login. Profound dropped self-serve in mid-September 2026, so brands now get a 7-day trial, then a sales call; the $99 and $399 tiers still quoted around the web no longer exist.

So I put eight Profound alternatives through the same live client prompt set to find out which ones earn the switch. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the engines, prompt caps, pricing, and catches of each one.

Key Takeaways 🔍

Semrush One is our top pick, with daily AI visibility tracking on 50 prompts and a full SEO toolkit for $199/mo billed monthly (about 17% less billed annually)
Rankscale is the cheapest credible entry at $20/mo billed yearly, and Otterly.AI follows at $29/mo billed monthly
Claude is the catch: Semrush One and HubSpot AEO do not track it, while Rankscale, Peec AI, Scrunch and AthenaHQ do
Execution beats dashboards, and Scrunch’s AXP changes what AI agents read on your site instead of only reporting on it
Choose Profound if you are an enterprise that needs nine engines, conversation-volume data and a security review, and you will sit through procurement

I ran every tool on the same prompts, competitors and region, then priced each one over 12 months. You can read more about our methodology below.

Profound Alternatives Comparison Table

Take a look at the eight picks side by side, with the billing basis printed next to every entry price:

Tool	Best for	Entry price (billing basis)	Tracks Claude?	Prompts at entry
Semrush One	SEO and AI visibility on one bill	$199/mo, billed monthly	No	50, tracked daily
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Prompt research at scale	$199/mo per platform index, plus an Ahrefs plan	Custom prompts only	Real-prompt index; custom checks from $50/mo (2,500)
Peec AI	Agency reporting	About €85/mo, billed monthly	Yes, as a selectable model	50
Rankscale	Claude on a budget	$20/mo, billed yearly	Yes	Credit-based; Essentials allocation unpublished
Otterly.AI	Validating the channel	$29/mo billed monthly ($25 annual)	Paid add-on	15
Scrunch AI	Execution layer (AXP)	$250/mo billed annually ($300 monthly)	Yes	350 custom + 1,000 industry
AthenaHQ	Free start, agentic workflow	Free; Starter $295/mo billed monthly	Yes, on Starter	300 credits free; 3,600 on Starter
HubSpot AEO	HubSpot CRM shops	$50/mo billed monthly ($45 annual)	No	25, tracked daily

1. Semrush One: Best Overall Profound Alternative

Semrush One is the best Profound alternative for most teams because it folds an SEO suite and an AI tracker into one invoice. Prompts are tracked daily across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and keyword allowances scale with the tier, the half of the bill a standalone AI tracker never covers.

However, Claude is not tracked on any Semrush One tier. Claude, DeepSeek and Grok sit in Semrush’s separate Enterprise AIO product at a custom price, so Claude-heavy teams should pair Semrush One with Rankscale. My Semrush One review covers the SEO side in depth, and the Semrush vs Profound comparison breaks the trade down feature by feature.

vs Profound: published prices and daily tracking from $199/mo billed monthly instead of a sales call; you give up Claude coverage, Profound’s agent analytics and its conversation-volume data.

What’s new with Semrush One? ⬇️

SEO and AI visibility now sell as one subscription, with daily tracking on 50, 100 or 200 prompts by tier
An MCP server and API are part of the package, with higher limits on Advanced

Why use Semrush One in 2026? ⬇️

Full SEO toolkit included: keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks and site health checks on 5, 15 or 40 websites
ContentShake AI for content creation on Pro+ and Advanced
Skip it if Claude matters to your buyers, or you need agent analytics fed by server logs

My Semrush One testing notes ⬇️

I ran the client prompt set through Semrush One next to the keyword and rank data for the same domain, and having both views on one login was the practical win. When a prompt lost its ChatGPT mention, I could check whether the cited page had also slipped in organic search without exporting anything.

How Much Does Semrush One Cost?

Starter: $199/mo billed monthly, 50 prompts, 500 tracked keywords, 5 websites
Pro+: $299/mo billed monthly, 100 prompts, 1,500 tracked keywords, 15 websites
Advanced: $549/mo billed monthly, 200 prompts, 5,000 tracked keywords, 40 websites
Annual billing: about 17% less on every tier
AI Visibility Toolkit (tracking only): $99/mo per domain with 25 prompts and no free trial; another 50 prompts cost $60/mo

These are list prices in dollars; confirm them on the pricing page, which localizes currency.

2. Ahrefs Brand Radar: Best Prompt Index for Research Teams

What do people actually type into ChatGPT about your category? Brand Radar answers from a database, not from prompts you guessed: Ahrefs says its index covers hundreds of millions of real prompts.

But Claude sits outside the core index. You reach it only through custom prompts, so a Claude-heavy audience means paying for an index and a prompt package. The optimization side is thin too, so if your team already lives in Ahrefs, treat it as the research engine of this list and buy execution elsewhere. My Semrush AI vs Ahrefs AI features breakdown compares the two suites side by side.

vs Profound: a cheaper per-engine entry with no sales call and a prompt-discovery dataset few rivals match; you lose Profound’s optimization layer and native Claude tracking.

What’s new with Ahrefs Brand Radar? ⬇️

Beta coverage now extends to YouTube, TikTok and Reddit visibility
The index spans Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Grok

Why use Ahrefs Brand Radar in 2026? ⬇️

Prompt discovery from real searches, not just the list you wrote yourself
Tracked prompts come with Ahrefs plans: 5 on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced

My Ahrefs Brand Radar testing notes ⬇️

Instead of writing 50 prompts and hoping they matched buyer language, I searched the index for the client’s category, found phrasings I had not thought to track, and moved the useful ones into custom prompts.

The catch: every gap it surfaces still needs a content plan built somewhere else.

How Much Does Ahrefs Brand Radar Cost?

Per platform index: $199/mo each, on top of an active Ahrefs plan (Lite from $129/mo)
Select Platforms bundle: quoted at about $398/mo
All platforms: quoted at about $699/mo, with 2,500 custom-prompt checks
Custom Prompts: $50/mo for 2,500 checks, $100/mo for 7,000, $250/mo for 25,000

Ahrefs reprices Brand Radar often, so confirm both bundle figures on the live page before you budget.

3. Peec AI: Best for Agencies That Live in Reports

Peec AI is the best pick for agencies because it charges nothing for extra seats or extra countries, which removes the two line items that inflate agency invoices. Each plan includes 3 AI models, and Claude is one of the options.

However, extra models are paid add-ons charged per model per month, so the real price depends on how many engines your clients care about. Peec is also monitoring only. At 50 prompts, Starter matches Semrush One’s entry cap for roughly half the price, though without an SEO suite. The Semrush vs Peec AI comparison covers that trade in detail.

vs Profound: the monitoring core at a fraction of the cost, with seats free; you get no execution layer and pay extra for every model past three.

What’s new with Peec AI? ⬇️

The tracked model list now runs to 13 LLMs, including ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude Sonnet 4, Grok, DeepSeek and Perplexity
Agency plans sit alongside the self-serve tiers

Why use Peec AI in 2026? ⬇️

Unlimited users on every plan, and countries and languages add nothing to the bill
No content agent and no site-delivery layer, so it suits agencies sending weekly visibility reports across clients and markets
Skip it if each client needs more than three engines, because add-on models stack every month

My Peec AI testing notes ⬇️

I set the client up as its own project, shared the dashboard with two people on the client side, and nobody had to buy a seat.

For this client I picked ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Claude as the three included models, which covers the gap Semrush One leaves.

How Much Does Peec AI Cost?

Starter: about €85/mo billed monthly, 50 prompts
Pro: about €205/mo billed monthly, 150 prompts
Advanced: about €425/mo billed monthly, 350 prompts
Annual billing: 15% off
Extra models: paid add-ons, charged per model per month
Enterprise: custom

4. Rankscale: Best Budget Pick That Tracks Claude

Rankscale is the cheapest paid tool here, and it lists 17+ engines with no per-engine upsells, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok and Copilot, across 240+ regions and languages, and Claude is tracked on every tier, which no other sub-$50 tool here offers.

That said, capacity runs on credits, and the Essentials allocation is not published, so check the credit count at signup before you build a 12-month budget on the $20 price.

vs Profound: Claude included for about one-twentieth of what Profound’s old Growth plan cost, while its enterprise deals are now reported far higher; credits make capacity math fuzzier than a fixed prompt cap.

What’s new with Rankscale? ⬇️

No per-engine upsells, so engine coverage does not change the bill
A 7-day Pro trial lets you test the credit math before you commit

Why use Rankscale in 2026? ⬇️

The lowest paid entry price on this list, at $20/mo billed yearly
Rankscale beats Otterly if Claude matters, since Otterly sells it as an add-on
Otterly wins if you want a fixed prompt count you can explain to a client in one line

My Rankscale testing notes ⬇️

On the Pro trial, Claude results landed in the same view as ChatGPT, with no add-on to buy first.

By my estimate, Pro’s 1,200 credits buy about 4,800 engine queries a month, or roughly 40 prompts a day across four engines, so run your own prompt list through the 7-day Pro trial to test that before you commit a year.

How Much Does Rankscale Cost?

Only Essentials is quoted on yearly billing; the paid tiers below are monthly list prices before the 15% annual discount.

Essentials: $20/mo billed yearly, credit allocation not published
Pro: $99/mo billed monthly at list, 1,200 credits per month
Pro+: $229/mo billed monthly at list, 3,000 credits per month
Growth: $385/mo billed monthly at list, 5,500 credits per month
Enterprise: $780/mo billed monthly at list, 12,000 credits per month
Credit burn: roughly 0.25 credit per engine query

5. Otterly.AI: Cheapest Serious Entry Point

You don’t need an enterprise contract to learn whether AI answers mention your brand, and Otterly.AI proves it at $29/mo billed monthly. Base engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, and higher tiers bring the per-prompt cost down: on monthly billing, Standard works out to about $1.89 per prompt per month and Premium to about $1.22.

However, Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons on every tier so the Lite price only holds if those four base engines cover your buyers. If Claude or Gemini is core for you, the add-ons erase the price gap with Rankscale. My Otterly.AI review goes deeper on the dashboard.

vs Profound: the price of a few coffees a month instead of a sales call to get started; 15 prompts and add-on engines run out fast once you scale.

What’s new with Otterly.AI? ⬇️

API, MCP and agent analytics now start on the Standard plan
GEO URL analysis checks how individual pages read to AI engines

Why use Otterly.AI in 2026? ⬇️

Unlimited team members on every plan
50+ countries for location-specific tracking
Built for teams validating whether AI visibility matters before they commit budget

My Otterly.AI testing notes ⬇️

I loaded 15 of the client’s highest-intent prompts on Lite, and the cap bit within the first week once I wanted regional variants.

That makes Lite a validation tool; Standard is where the per-prompt cost starts to make sense.

How Much Does Otterly.AI Cost?

Lite: $29/mo billed monthly ($25/mo billed annually), 15 prompts
Standard: $189/mo billed monthly ($160/mo billed annually), 100 prompts
Premium: $489/mo billed monthly ($422/mo billed annually), 400 prompts
Enterprise: from 1,000 prompts at a custom price
Extra 100 prompts: $99/mo
Premium engines: $9 to $439 per month depending on the plan

6. Scrunch AI: Best Execution Layer (AXP)

Most tools here tell you an AI agent misread your site. Scrunch changes what the agent reads, because AXP, Scrunch’s Agent Experience Platform, serves a lightweight, machine-readable version of your site to AI agents and answer engines, which Scrunch says gets more of your pages read and cited. Agent traffic observability shows which AI systems request which pages.

At $250/mo billed annually, Scrunch costs more than Semrush One Starter, but 350 custom prompts is seven times Semrush’s entry cap, and the delivery layer is the part no monitor offers. It is the pick for teams that already know where they are invisible and want to fix it at the delivery layer. For a head-to-head, see my Profound vs Scrunch AI comparison.

vs Profound: overlaps Profound’s execution ambitions at a published price; you track fewer engines than Profound’s nine, and Starter caps you at 3 seats.

What’s new with Scrunch AI? ⬇️

AXP now pairs with agent traffic observability in one product
Enterprise adds SOC 2 Type II and a Data API

Why use Scrunch AI in 2026? ⬇️

Engines include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot
Personas run the same prompt as different buyer types, so you see whether a CFO and a marketer get different shortlists
A 7-day Starter trial that needs no card

My Scrunch AI testing notes ⬇️

On the client site, the agent traffic view showed which product pages the AI systems actually pulled, and that reshaped our content priorities more than the prompt data did.

How Much Does Scrunch AI Cost?

Starter: $250/mo billed annually ($300 month to month), 3 users, 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts, 3 personas, 5 page-level reviews
Growth: $417/mo billed annually ($500 monthly), 5 users, 700 custom prompts, 2,500 industry prompts
Enterprise: custom, with SOC 2 Type II and a Data API
Extra seats: $25/mo each

7. AthenaHQ: Best Free Tier and Agentic Workflow

AthenaHQ is the only pick here with a free plan rather than a time-limited trial. The free tier covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot, and Starter expands to 11 models, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral, so Claude starts on the first paid plan.

The workflow is where AthenaHQ separates from pure monitors. Ask Athena is an agentic copilot you query in plain language, and a content optimization agent drafts fixes for the gaps it finds. But capacity is credit-based, and API access and extra credits are paid add-ons, so watch the burn rate in your first month.

vs Profound: a free start instead of a sales call, plus Claude on the first paid tier; credits need watching where Profound’s enterprise contract covers volume.

What’s new with AthenaHQ? ⬇️

Enterprise adds the ACE citation engine, a knowledge base and SSO/SAML
AthenaHQ’s own case studies claim results such as 6x share of voice in 60 days for one brand; read those as vendor-reported outcomes, not a forecast

Why use AthenaHQ in 2026? ⬇️

A free plan with live prompts, not a countdown trial
Skip it if your budget needs a fixed prompt cap rather than a credit pool

My AthenaHQ testing notes ⬇️

I used the free credits to baseline the client’s top prompts before deciding whether the paid tier earned its price.

The jump is steep, though: there is no rung between free and $295/mo billed monthly.

How Much Does AthenaHQ Cost?

Essential: free, 300 credits across 5 platforms
Starter: $295/mo billed monthly (about $245/mo billed annually, 17% off), 3,600 credits
Enterprise: custom
Add-ons: API access and extra credits cost extra

8. HubSpot AEO: Best If Your Marketing Lives in HubSpot

If your contacts, deals and content already sit in HubSpot, HubSpot AEO adds visibility tracking for $50 a month on monthly billing, without another vendor login. Its recommendations draw on your HubSpot data, so a gap on a prompt linked to a high-value segment ranks above one nobody buys from.

However, HubSpot AEO tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and nothing else: no Claude, no Google AI Overviews, no Copilot. My HubSpot AEO review walks through the recommendation engine in detail, and HubSpot AEO vs Semrush One compares it with this list’s top pick.

vs Profound: a rounding error on price, and free if you already pay for Marketing Hub Professional; you get a fraction of the engine coverage.

What’s new with HubSpot AEO? ⬇️

AEO is sold standalone and also included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise
Standalone buyers can purchase extra prompts as they grow

Why use HubSpot AEO in 2026? ⬇️

Visibility score, sentiment, competitor share of voice and citation analysis per prompt
Skip it if you need Claude, AI Overviews or more than three engines

My HubSpot AEO testing notes ⬇️

I found the recommendations more specific than the generic advice other dashboards produced on the same prompts.

The engine list is the ceiling, though: it works as a CRM add-on, not a full Profound replacement.

How Much Does HubSpot AEO Cost?

Standalone: $50/mo billed monthly ($45/mo billed annually), 25 prompts tracked daily
Marketing Hub Professional: included, up to 50 prompts
Marketing Hub Enterprise: included, 50 prompts and 5,000 answers per month
Add-on: +10 prompts and +1,000 monthly answers for $20/mo

How Do I Choose the Right Profound Alternative?

Try to buy Profound today and you find a trial button and a contact form. There has been no published price since mid-September 2026, and enterprise deals are reported to run into the thousands of dollars per month. Agency pricing is reportedly charged per client workspace, which multiplies fast once you manage more than a handful of brands.

Some users report that the old plans gated engines and seats so tightly that the entry tier worked more like a demo than a tool. The trial that replaced them is narrow too: 50 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, one language, one region, and no exports, history or API, so nothing you learn carries into a paid tool.

Here’s the checklist I now run against any replacement:

Is the price published, with the billing basis printed next to the number?
Does it track your engines, Claude included? Ask by name, because Claude is the most common upsell in this category
Can you predict the prompt math? A fixed cap beats an opaque credit pool over 12 months
Is there an execution layer that turns a visibility gap into a page change, not just a chart?

When Is Profound Still the Right Buy?

Profound’s Enterprise plan tracks up to nine answer engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. Profound’s pitch is conversation-scale volume data behind its prompt rankings, sold as Prompt Volumes and explored through Conversation Explorer. Agent analytics connect through CDN and log integrations, and AI Marketer agents handle execution. On top sit SSO/SAML, SOC 2, all-time history, CSV and JSON export, API access and unlimited seats.

Rankscale claims more engines, but no pick above pairs that coverage with conversation-volume data, log-level agent analytics and enterprise security in one contract. The 7-day trial (50 prompts, 3 engines, no exports) is enough to see whether that depth matters to your team before you talk to sales. If you have an enterprise budget and want the deepest single platform, book the call. Everyone else gets more per dollar from the eight picks above, starting with Semrush One.

How We Test and Rank Profound Alternatives

I run the same client prompt set through every tool on this list, with the same competitors and the same region. Then I compare each tool’s reported mentions against my own hand checks in each engine, because AI answers vary from run to run and a tracker that samples badly shows it fast. I also price every tool out over 12 months at the caps a real client would hit, not the entry price.

Our framework weights five criteria by what buyers leaving Profound care about most:

Engine coverage (30%): We check which engines each tool tracks at entry, Claude by name.
Pricing transparency and 12-month cost (25%): We look for a published price and billing basis, then cost the tool over a year.
Prompt math and caps (20%): We assess whether you can predict capacity, favoring fixed caps over credit pools.
Insight to action (15%): We test whether a visibility gap turns into a recommendation, a content draft or a page change.
Reporting and seats (10%): We review seat limits, sharing, exports and the cost of adding people or markets.

For the wider category beyond Profound replacements, see my best AEO checking tools roundup.

Semrush One is the Profound alternative I recommend for most teams, because it publishes its prices, tracks 50 prompts daily from $199/mo billed monthly, and keeps AI visibility next to your rank tracking on one bill. If Claude matters to your buyers, pair it with Rankscale.

On a tight budget, start with Rankscale at $20/mo billed yearly for Claude coverage, or Otterly.AI at $29/mo billed monthly for a fixed prompt count. If you already know where you are invisible, Scrunch is the one that fixes it at the delivery layer. Whichever you pick, run your own prompts through its trial or free plan before you commit a year.

FAQs

What is the cheapest Profound alternative?

Rankscale is the cheapest paid option, at $20/mo billed yearly, and it tracks Claude on every tier, though its Essentials credit allocation is not published. Otterly.AI Lite costs $29/mo billed monthly ($25 annually) for 15 prompts, with Claude, AI Mode and Gemini sold as add-ons. Pick Rankscale for Claude and Otterly for a fixed prompt count.

Does Semrush One replace Profound?

For most teams, yes. Semrush One Starter costs $199/mo billed monthly, tracks 50 prompts daily across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and bundles a full SEO toolkit. It does not track Claude, and it lacks Profound’s agent analytics and conversation-volume data. If either matters, add Rankscale for Claude coverage or stay on Profound.

Which Profound alternatives track Claude?

Rankscale tracks Claude on every tier, Scrunch includes it from Starter, AthenaHQ adds it on the paid Starter plan, and Peec AI lets you choose it as one of your three included models. Otterly.AI sells Claude as a paid add-on, and Ahrefs Brand Radar reaches it only through custom prompts. Semrush One and HubSpot AEO do not track Claude at all.

Is there a free AI visibility tool?

AthenaHQ Essential is free, with 300 credits across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Elsewhere you get trials: Scrunch offers 7 days on Starter with no card, Rankscale a 7-day Pro trial, and Profound a 7-day trial with 50 prompts. Semrush has a free plan with one demo project, but its AI Visibility Toolkit has no trial.

How much does Profound cost now?

Profound has had no published price since mid-September 2026. Brands get a 7-day free trial with 50 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, then a sales call for a custom Enterprise quote, and enterprise deals are reported to run into the thousands of dollars per month. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans no longer exist, so any list still quoting them is out of date.