Key takeaways
- Profound's brand plans are quote-only. Its pricing page shows a free 7-day trial (50 prompts, three engines) and a custom Enterprise tier, nothing in between.
- Entry prices across alternatives range from about $29 to $400 a month, but the units differ (prompts, checks, "AI indexes"), so the cheapest sticker is rarely the cheapest tool.
- Most listicle prices conflict with each other. Verify on each vendor's pricing page before you buy.
- Tools that only monitor are cheap. Tools that also fix the problem (content, publishing, crawler data) cost more but remove the second subscription.
- Promptwatch is the option here that publishes prices and covers the full loop from tracking to publishing.
Why people leave Profound over pricing
Profound is a serious product. It tracks up to nine answer engines, offers SOC 2 and SSO, and has recently repositioned itself as an "AI Marketer" with agents that run on credits. The trouble starts when you try to budget for it.
The current pricing page lists two brand tiers. A free trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with no history, no exports and no API. Then there is Enterprise, priced by demo. Agent credits add a second, usage-based variable on top (the self-serve agency plan includes 400 credits per month per client workspace, with overage billed or paused depending on your setting).
If you are a head of marketing who needs a number for a budget request next week, that is friction. If you are an agency pricing a client retainer, it is worse. So "transparent pricing" is the filter this guide uses.
A warning before the list: several third-party roundups still quote old Profound Starter or Growth prices. The current page does not show them, so treat those as stale.
How to compare entry prices without fooling yourself
The sticker price is the least useful number on a pricing page. Four things change what you actually pay.
Units are not the same
Otterly counts prompts. Ahrefs Brand Radar counts checks and sells "AI indexes" separately. Peec counts prompts and models. Semrush bundles AI tracking as a toolkit add-on. A $29 plan with 15 prompts and a $95 plan with 50 prompts are close on cost per prompt, not far apart.
Base subscriptions hide in the footnotes
Alhena's comparison puts SE Ranking at about $192 "with base" and Ahrefs Brand Radar at about $328 "with base", versus lower headline numbers on each vendor's own materials. If you already pay for the suite, the add-on price is what matters. If you do not, the base is part of your cost.
Engine coverage varies
A cheap plan that tracks four engines is not comparable with one that covers all of them. Check whether Google AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini and Claude are included or locked to higher tiers.
Prompts should look like real searches
Promptwatch Data's ChatGPT query fanouts report found average fanout query length fell from about 117 characters in early December to the high 80s by February and March, and to about 53 characters when fanouts returned in April. Average searches per response also sat well under the "3-8+" the page's intro cites. The practical point: tracked prompts should resemble short, keyword-like queries. A tool built around long conversational prompts alone may miss how ChatGPT actually searches.
One more caveat on sources. Pricing in this guide comes from competitor-authored roundups (Alhena, SE Ranking, Frase, Tim Soulo's blog, IndustryLens) and they conflict in places. Frase's ranking, for example, is vendor-authored and orders tools by how much of the fix happens inside the product, which naturally favors Frase.
Price ladder at a glance
| Tool | Published entry price | What the number buys | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | $29/mo | 15 prompts, 4 engines | Lightweight monitoring |
| GetIntel | $29/mo | 25 buyer questions daily | Tiny budgets |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $50/mo (2,500 checks) | Checks, plus a base plan | Existing Ahrefs users |
| Peec AI | EUR 85-89/mo | Starter, 50 prompts, 3 models | Mid-size marketing teams |
| SE Ranking | From $89/mo | Suite with AI tracking | SEO teams wanting one bill |
| Semrush AI toolkit | ~$99/mo | Add-on to Semrush | Existing Semrush users |
| Promptwatch Essential | $95/mo | 50 prompts, all models, site audit, crawler logs | Teams that want to act on the data |
| Scrunch AI | ~$250/mo (annual) | 125 prompts on Core | Agent-readable site layer |
| AthenaHQ | ~$295/mo | Starter, 8+ LLM platforms | Profound-style depth, self-serve |
| Goodie AI | $399/mo | Core, quarterly or annual billing | Full AEO workflow |
All figures come from the supplied sources or Promptwatch's own pricing. Some conflict between sources. Confirm on each vendor's page.
The alternatives, grouped by what you need
Full-loop platforms: monitor, then fix
The expensive part of AI visibility is rarely the dashboard. It is the weeks between spotting a gap and getting a corrected page live. Tools in this group try to close that gap.
Promptwatch is the one I would put first for teams that want a published price and execution in the same product. Plans are listed openly: Essential at $95/mo (50 prompts, 6,000 responses, all AI models, 500 Agent Credits, site audit, 360 Insights, content gap analysis, MCP and API), Professional at $245/mo, and Business at $579/mo, which adds the automated Content Agent, state and city tracking, Shopping Insights and Ads Radar. Annual billing gives 12 months for the price of 10, and monthly Essential and Professional come with a 7-day free trial. Agency plans start at $199/mo with unlimited projects and prompts.
What separates it from pure trackers is the stuff Profound gates behind Enterprise or does not emphasize. It reads real UI output from ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Alexa and Meta AI, shows IP-verified AI crawler logs, and ties AI traffic to conversions through visitor analytics. Then the Content Agent plans, writes and publishes to WordPress, Webflow or Framer, and the Action Board tracks whether each page got crawled, cited and clicked. Crisp reported 2x higher conversion rates from AI traffic than from traditional channels using this workflow. It is also ISO/IEC 27001 certified, which matters if procurement is why you were looking at Profound.
The free tier is limited (1 project, 10 prompts, ChatGPT only), so use it to check the product, not to run a program.
Frase ranks itself first in its own roundup, which is worth discounting, but the underlying idea is sound: it combines daily tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI with research, drafting and publishing. Its product is closer to a content platform that added tracking. Check current plan prices on its site.
Writesonic GEO sorts tracking results into a prioritized to-do list and pushes on-page edits into a CMS. It is a reasonable pick if you already use Writesonic for drafting.
Closest like-for-like to Profound
AthenaHQ is the usual answer when someone asks for "Profound but with a price tag." Several sources put it at about $295/mo, and it covers visibility, citation and hallucination tracking across 8+ LLM platforms, with a content agent and Shopify publishing path.
Scrunch AI goes past tracking by building a machine-readable layer so AI agents crawl and represent your brand accurately. Alhena lists it at about $250/mo billed annually, and IndustryLens lists the Core plan at 125 prompts.
Goodie AI runs from AI-visibility research through content optimization and publishes a $399/mo Core plan billed quarterly or annually. It is the priciest on this list at entry level.
Evertune is worth a look if you want an enterprise peer that publishes a price, per IndustryLens.
Cheap trackers
If you only need to answer "did we get mentioned?" these are fine, and the price is hard to argue with.
Otterly.AI starts at $29/mo, and three separate sources agree on that figure: 15 prompts across four engines. It is the cheapest paid option I found. Expect to outgrow it quickly if you track more than a handful of topics.
Peec AI is the step up. Pricing is reported as EUR 85 (Alhena) or Starter at EUR 89 and Pro at EUR 199 with a 15% annual discount (Tim Soulo's blog), so check which is current. Peec has reported raising $29M and serving 1,500+ teams. It reports each prompt individually, but it does not include crawler logs, visitor analytics or content generation.
GetIntel, at $29/mo for 25 buyer questions checked daily, and Rankscale and LLMrefs are other low-cost options, though I would test them on a trial before committing.
SEO suites that add AI tracking
If your team lives in one of these already, adding the AI module may be the lowest-friction path.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit is about $99/mo per Alhena, with a roughly 17% annual discount. It is convenient, but prompt sets are fairly fixed and it does not give you AI crawler logs.
Ahrefs Brand Radar is the most confusing pricing here. One source lists $50/mo for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000, $250 for 25,000, $199 per AI index, or $699/mo for all six indexes with 2,500 custom prompt checks. Another puts it near $328 with the base plan. Do the math on your own prompt count.
SE Ranking starts at $89/mo according to its own blog, which pairs daily AI prompt tracking with classic rank tracking and an on-page checker.
Which one should you pick?
You need a budget number this week
Pick a tool that publishes tiers. Otterly or Peec for monitoring only, Promptwatch Essential if you also want site audits, crawler logs and content gap analysis at a similar price to Peec.
You are an agency
Look at per-client economics. Promptwatch's Agency plans start at $199/mo with unlimited projects, pitch projects and prompts, white-label exports and client read-only access. Scrunch and Semrush are the other options with agency-oriented packaging.
You want to replace Profound's depth, not downgrade it
AthenaHQ and Promptwatch Professional or Business are the two I would trial side by side. Compare engine coverage, prompt limits and whether the product helps you ship pages.
You are already deep in an SEO suite
Try the add-on first. If you find yourself exporting data to a spreadsheet to decide what to write, move to a platform with an action layer.
A short checklist before you sign
- Count your prompts and convert every vendor's unit to cost per prompt per month.
- Ask whether the price includes all engines you care about.
- Check for a mandatory base subscription.
- Confirm whether exports and API are included. Profound's trial excludes both.
- Check annual vs monthly pricing, since discounts range from 15% to about 17%.
- Run a free trial on your own domain. A free scan such as Promptwatch's AI Visibility Report takes minutes and shows what you would actually get.
If you want to keep browsing, the GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com lists many more options by category.
Bottom line
Profound stays a sensible pick if you need nine engines, SSO and a dedicated specialist, and you are fine with a sales call. For everyone else, the market has caught up. Otterly and Peec are cheap ways to start measuring. AthenaHQ and Scrunch are the closest self-serve peers. Promptwatch is the one that publishes every tier and then helps you produce and publish the content that moves the numbers, which is the part most budgets end up paying for twice.