When comparing AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) tools built to win you more citations in AI search results, Profound and Scrunch AI consistently rise to the top. But which platform actually delivers better visibility in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews?
After researching both platforms, reviewing dozens of features, and analyzing how they perform in real-world testing scenarios, Scrunch AI is the best choice if you want fast, actionable AEO wins without custom integrations — while Profound is the better option if you’re running AEO as an enterprise-level operation.
Profound vs Scrunch AI: Quick Verdict
Scrunch AI – Best for fast insights, prompt-level diagnostics, and AI-agent site delivery (via AXP)
Profound – Best for enterprise AEO programs that need deep analytics, prompt research, and scalable content workflows
In this comparison, I’ll break down why each tool shines in different areas of AEO — and compare the criteria that matter most, like monitoring features, content tools, pricing, agent tracking, and how well each platform helps you get cited across AI platforms like Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and more.
Key Takeaways:
- Scrunch AI now supports share-of-answer tracking across Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini
- Profound’s “Prompt Volumes” now includes prompt trends by country (US, UK, FR, DE, ES)
- Scrunch’s AXP now integrates with Akamai, Vercel, and Cloudflare
- Profound’s ChatGPT Shopping module now tracks SKU-level sentiment and tile visibility
- Both tools have updated agent analytics to better identify LLM bot traffic
A Quick Comparison of Profound vs Scrunch AI
Get a side-by-side look at the core features and differences between Profound and Scrunch AI in the table below:
| Feature | Profound | Scrunch AI |
|---|---|---|
| Best For | Enterprise AEO programs | Fast implementation & technical site fixes |
| Prompt Research | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Share of Answer Monitoring | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Agent Site Delivery (AXP) | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Content Workflows | ✅ Built-in | ❌ Not included |
| Ecommerce Visibility (ChatGPT Shopping) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Pricing | Custom (Enterprise only) | From $83/month (USD) |
| Free Trial | ❌ No | ✅ 7-day free trial |
What Kinds of Businesses Are Profound or Scrunch AI Best For?
Need help deciding which AEO platform fits your setup? Here’s a summary of who each tool serves best:
Scrunch AI Is Best For…
Mid-sized brands and SEO teams that want clear diagnostics, quick setup, and an AI-friendly site version — without requiring a full tech stack overhaul.
Profound Is Best For…
Enterprise businesses, ecommerce brands, or teams running structured AEO campaigns that need prompt demand data, log-based agent analytics, and in-house content workflows.
What Is AEO and Why It’s Crucial Now
Before comparing Profound and Scrunch, it’s important to clarify what AEO is and why it’s fundamentally different from traditional SEO.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) focuses on helping your content become the cited source in AI-generated responses. Instead of simply ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs), you’re now trying to influence AI agents like ChatGPT, Google SGE, and Perplexity to quote or refer to your site when answering user queries.
Here’s how AEO differs from traditional SEO:
- SEO optimizes for ranking on pages of Google or Bing.
- AEO optimizes for citation within AI-generated summaries or responses.
Major answer engines are designed to summarize web content directly in their responses. Your goal with AEO is to ensure that your content gets picked up, referenced, or directly quoted in those AI outputs.
Key reasons to invest in AEO now:
- AI agents are consuming more of the search share, especially for informational and commercial queries.
- Many of these tools prioritize domain authority, content clarity, and entity alignment — which can be optimized.
- Visibility in AI-generated results can drive direct traffic and trust, even if you’re not ranking #1 in traditional SERPs.
Profound: Built for Enterprise AEO Programs
Profound positions itself as a full-scale AEO solution for brands that want complete insight into how AI engines perceive, cite, and surface their content.
The platform breaks down AEO into five distinct modules: monitoring, prompt research, agent analytics, content workflows, and ecommerce tracking. This makes it particularly valuable for teams managing AEO as a dedicated program, rather than an experimental add-on.
1. Answer Engine Insights
Profound’s Answer Engine Insights module tracks your brand’s visibility across various AI-powered platforms. These include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Meta AI, and even emerging engines like DeepSeek and Amazon Rufus.
The key differentiator here is that Profound gathers data from front-end user experiences, not just backend APIs — giving you a more realistic view of what users actually see.
This module covers:
- Share-of-voice across engines
- Sentiment and topic-level analysis
- Citation frequency and competition benchmarking
- Daily tracking and reporting on shifts in answer visibility
This is particularly useful for enterprise SEO or content teams that need visibility into how their brand is showing up across a growing network of AI engines.
2. Prompt Volumes
One of Profound’s most unique features is its Prompt Volumes tool. This feature gives insight into estimated prompt demand — essentially, the AI equivalent of keyword search volume. It shows how often certain prompts or topics are being asked across different regions (US, UK, FR, DE, ES, etc.) based on anonymized and modeled data from opt-in consumer panels.
This helps you:
- Understand what users are asking AI engines
- Align your content strategy with emerging AI search behavior
- Identify content gaps and topic opportunities based on prompt demand
For content teams looking to create net-new assets that are built to rank in AI answers, Prompt Volumes is a game changer.
3. Agent Analytics
Unlike most SEO tools that rely on JavaScript tracking, Profound uses server log analytics to track and verify agent activity. This provides a much more accurate and complete view of which bots are crawling your site, what they’re seeing, and how they’re interpreting your content.
Key capabilities include:
- Bot identification and verification
- Crawl behavior analysis
- “Submit to AI Search” workflows
- Compatibility with popular hosts like Cloudflare, Vercel, WordPress, and Netlify
This type of technical observability is essential if your site uses frameworks or technologies that can interfere with bot crawling.
4. Content Workflows
Profound also includes templated workflows designed specifically for citation-first content creation. These templates are based on millions of pages that have historically been cited by AI tools, giving your team a proven framework for building pages that get picked up in answers.
Workflows help you:
- Identify relevant citation sources
- Summarize external research cleanly
- Draft content using structured prompts
- Ensure entities, schema, and headings are optimized for agent consumption
5. Ecommerce Focus: ChatGPT Shopping
For ecommerce brands, Profound includes a dedicated ChatGPT Shopping module that tracks visibility within product tiles and recommendation responses. It monitors SKU-level sentiment, placement, and retailer benchmarking to help you improve product content performance across AI platforms.
Scrunch AI: Actionable AEO With Fast Time-to-Value
Scrunch AI is a more nimble, marketer-focused tool designed to help businesses measure, fix, and optimize for AEO — fast. It shines in environments where content already exists, and the goal is to make it more agent-friendly without rebuilding the entire site.
Scrunch’s biggest advantage is the Agent Experience Platform (AXP) — a separate, parallel layer of your website that’s specifically optimized for AI crawlers and bots.
1. Share-of-Answer Monitoring
Scrunch tracks share-of-answer and citation data across AI engines including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google SGE, and Perplexity. You can segment this data by:
- Persona (demographics, regions)
- Topic or keyword cluster
- LLM model (e.g., GPT-4 vs Gemini)
- Sentiment and citation frequency
This helps content teams quickly pinpoint which content is getting picked up and where improvements need to happen. It also shows referral traffic from AI agents, giving a full picture of attribution.
2. Prompt + Persona Workflows
Scrunch allows users to define personas (by region, demographics, or niche) and generate or analyze prompt performance for those segments. This feature helps refine targeting and gives SEOs better clarity on how different types of users interact with AI agents.
Once personas and prompts are set up, you can track prompt-level results and prioritize which content to optimize.
3. Technical Layer: AXP
The AXP (Agent Experience Platform) is arguably Scrunch’s most unique feature. It creates a parallel version of your website that is optimized specifically for AI agents. This version is invisible to human users but can be served directly to bots from platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
Key highlights of AXP:
- Automatically strips JS-heavy or bloated page elements
- Rebuilds content in agent-digestible format
- Works with Cloudflare, Akamai, Vercel, and other CDN layers
- Explicitly avoids Googlebot or Bingbot to prevent cloaking issues
This gives technical and non-technical teams a way to make their site “agent-ready” without a full-scale rebuild. For sites that are difficult for bots to crawl or render correctly, AXP can be a significant performance booster.
4. Real-Time Monitoring and Refresh Cadence
Scrunch collects data using browser automation and official APIs where available. Its refresh cadence is aggressive:
- Daily prompt tracking for the first 14 days
- Default 72-hour refresh cycle after that
- Manual refresh options for critical changes
This fast feedback loop allows SEOs and marketers to move quickly from insight to action, closing the gap between content updates and measurable impact.
Pricing Breakdown: Profound vs Scrunch AI
When it comes to pricing, Scrunch is transparent and accessible, while Profound is clearly positioned for enterprise adoption with custom quotes and an application-based onboarding model.
Scrunch AI Pricing (as of 2026)
- Explorer Plan: $83/month (billed annually)
- Growth Plan: $417/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Free Trial: 7-day trial available
Scrunch’s pricing makes it a strong option for agencies, SMBs, or in-house teams with mid-sized budgets that want to test AEO capabilities quickly.
Profound Pricing
- No public pricing listed
- Requires application and onboarding
- Designed for enterprise SEO or ecommerce teams
- Includes white-glove support and strategy layers
While Profound doesn’t offer a trial, it comes with a wider suite of tools that may reduce the need for additional analytics, technical SEO, or content creation platforms.
Final Thoughts: Which One Should You Choose?
If you’re deciding between Profound and Scrunch AI for AEO, the right choice depends heavily on your current team structure, content maturity, and whether you’re prioritizing speed, control, or scale.
Choose Profound if:
- You need AI prompt data to guide new content
- You want deep analytics tied to AI platform performance
- You’re an ecommerce brand targeting ChatGPT Shopping
- You have internal content/SEO resources and prefer an end-to-end suite
Choose Scrunch AI if:
- You already have content and want to optimize fast
- You need a cost-effective tool with transparent pricing
- Your site struggles with bot rendering or JS issues
- You like the idea of AXP and want AI bots to better understand your content
Ultimately, both platforms are powerful — they’re just built for different styles of execution.
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