Profound used to have a price you could actually read. Starter was $99 a month for 50 prompts, ChatGPT only. Growth was $399 for 100 prompts across three engines.
Then both plans vanished.
In mid-September 2026, Profound pulled its self-serve brand tiers. Its pricing page now shows a free trial (50 prompts, run daily for seven days) and a custom Enterprise plan you reach through a demo. That change landed the same week the company announced a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation.
So if you can’t get a number out of Profound, you’re not imagining it. And plenty of comparison pages still quote the old $99 and $399 tiers.
The fairest way to compare what’s left? Divide the monthly price by the prompts you actually get to track.
Price per prompt tracked: the comparison table
Most Profound alternatives pages compare headline prices. That hides what you get. Here’s the math instead. We took each tool’s entry plan at its monthly list price and divided it by the number of tracked prompts. Then we divided again by the number of AI engines each prompt runs on, because a prompt checked on six engines does six times the work of a prompt checked on one.
Every price below comes from the vendor’s own pricing page or a listing that quotes it, checked in October 2026.
| Tool (entry plan) | Monthly price | Prompts | Engines included | Price per prompt | Price per prompt-engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrunch (Starter) | $300 | 350 | 6 | $0.86 | $0.14 |
| LLM Pulse (Starter) | €49 | 50 | 5 | €0.98 | €0.20 (weekly runs) |
| Trakkr (Growth) | $100 | 50 | 8 | $2.00 | $0.25 |
| Otterly.AI (Lite) | $29 | 15 | 4 | $1.93 | $0.48 |
| Peec AI (Starter) | $95 | 50 | 3 (your pick) | $1.90 | $0.63 |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99 per domain | 25 | 4 | $3.96 | $0.99 |
| Profound Agency Growth (per client) | $399 + $99 base | 100 | 3 | $3.99 | $1.33 |
| Profound Growth (retired Sept 2026) | $399 | 100 | 3 | $3.99 | $1.33 |
| Profound Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Up to 9 | Not published | Not published |
A few things jump out.
Scrunch has the highest entry price on the list and the lowest cost per prompt. You pay for volume up front. Otterly is the reverse: the cheapest door, but each prompt costs more than double.
Semrush lands closest to Profound’s old Growth rate. That surprised us.
And there’s a catch with LLM Pulse. Its Starter plan runs prompts weekly, not daily, so its per-prompt price isn’t a like-for-like match with the daily trackers.
One more caveat. Annual billing knocks roughly 15–17% off several of these, and engine add-ons push the real bill up. Treat the table as a starting point for your own quote, not the quote itself.
Why teams look past Profound
The data isn’t the problem. Profound’s reputation for depth is earned.
The problem is access. Before September, the cheapest way in was a ChatGPT-only plan. Perplexity and Google AI Overviews needed the $399 tier. Now, as eClincher’s breakdown of the change points out, anyone who was about to buy Starter or Growth needs a demo and an Enterprise budget instead.
For a two-person SEO team at a Series A SaaS company, that’s a non-starter. You want to start tracking on Monday, not after procurement.
That’s the gap the Profound alternatives below fill. None of them needs a sales call to start.
The 6 best Profound alternatives
1. Scrunch: closest to Profound’s enterprise feel
Scrunch is the pick if you want Profound-style depth without a sales gate. The Starter plan costs $300 a month (or $3,000 a year) and includes 350 custom prompts, up to 1,000 industry prompts, five page audits and three user licenses.
Prompts run on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Meta AI, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. That Claude line matters: Peec, Otterly, LLM Pulse and Semrush don’t include Claude on their entry plans.
It also sells AXP, a layer that serves AI-optimized versions of your pages to AI agents visiting your site.
The thing to watch? Ownership. Sitecore announced it was acquiring Scrunch in June 2026. Ask about the roadmap before you sign a long contract.
Best for: mid-market brands that need hundreds of prompts and want Claude tracked.
2. Peec AI: the balanced mid-market pick
Peec keeps things simple. Starter is $95 a month for 50 prompts, Pro is $245 for 150 and Advanced is $495 for 350, according to its Capterra pricing listing.
Every plan lets you choose three models from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with daily tracking and unlimited users. Extra models cost more. Annual billing saves 15%.
Peec also reworked its pricing in March 2026 to give existing plans more capacity and let teams set models and tracking frequency per project. Agencies juggling clients will like that.
Three engines by default is the limit. If you need five, the add-ons erase most of the price gap.
Best for: in-house teams and agencies that want daily data and no seat math.
3. Otterly.AI: the cheapest way in
Otterly’s Lite plan is $29 a month for 15 prompts. Standard is $189 for 100 and Premium is $489 for 400, per its G2 pricing page.
All three plans track Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot daily, with unlimited team members. Otterly’s help center lists Google AI Mode and Gemini as paid add-ons, and Standard or Premium users can bolt on extra prompts in batches of 100.
Fifteen prompts won’t cover a real category. It will tell you whether AI engines know you exist.
Best for: solo marketers and founders running a cheap pilot before they commit budget.
4. LLM Pulse: the most engines per euro
LLM Pulse charges €49 a month for 50 prompts on Starter and €99 for 150 on Growth. It raised prompt limits on every plan without changing prices.
Five models come standard: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews. No add-on fees for the Google surfaces, which is where Otterly and Peec charge extra.
The weekly cadence on Starter is the trade-off. Weekly is fine for trend reporting. It’s thin if you’re testing whether last Tuesday’s page update moved anything.
Best for: European teams and budget-conscious brands that care about Google’s AI surfaces.
5. Trakkr: wide engine coverage at a flat price
Trakkr’s published plans start at $100 a month for 50 prompts on eight AI models with three seats. Scale jumps to 500 prompts and unlimited seats for $500.
That’s $2.00 per prompt at entry. Per engine, though, it’s $0.25, because each prompt runs on eight models. Scale halves the per-prompt cost to $1.00.
Fair warning: Trakkr publishes a lot of Profound comparison content. Read its claims about competitors with that in mind, and run your own trial.
Best for: teams that want breadth across models without stacking add-ons.
6. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: if you already live in Semrush
Semrush prices its AI Visibility Toolkit at $99 a month per domain, with 25 tracked prompts by default and more available as an add-on.
At $3.96 per prompt, it’s the most expensive entry on a per-prompt basis. The value is elsewhere. Your AI visibility data sits next to your keyword rankings, site audit and backlink data in one login.
The per-domain pricing hurts if you run several brands. Three domains means three bills.
Best for: SEO teams already paying for Semrush who want AI tracking without a new vendor.
Who Profound is genuinely right for
Profound isn’t overpriced for everyone. For some buyers it’s the only tool on this list that clears the bar.
Pick Profound Enterprise if most of these are true:
- Procurement demands it. Enterprise includes SSO/SAML and SOC 2 compliance, which many cheaper trackers don’t advertise.
- You need nine engines in one place. Enterprise can track ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews and Exa Search.
- You want real demand data, not guesses. Profound sources prompt data from consumer panels, groups of users who share their AI queries with researchers.
- You care about AI crawler traffic. Agent Analytics plugs into Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, Vercel and WordPress.
- Your stakeholders want a recognized vendor. Gartner named Profound a Representative Vendor in its first Market Guide for answer engine visibility tools.
If that sounds like your org, take the seven-day trial, then get a quote. Just budget for an annual contract.
How to pick the right Profound alternative
Start with prompt volume. Count the buying questions your customers actually ask. Under 30? Otterly or Semrush works. Somewhere between 50 and 150? Peec, LLM Pulse or Trakkr. Hundreds? Scrunch.
Then check engines. If your buyers use Claude or Copilot, cross off any tool that charges extra for them.
Last, check cadence. Daily data matters when you’re shipping page changes and want to see the effect fast.
One honest note: AI search monitoring doesn’t fix anything on its own. These tools show you which prompts you’re missing. The fix is usually a refresh of a page you already have, which is the part WordPattern automates for content teams.
For the broader category, see our roundups of the best AEO tools for 2026 and the best LLM optimization tools for AI visibility.
Choosing on cost, not hype
Profound’s move upmarket makes sense for Profound. It doesn’t make sense for most teams with a 50-prompt problem. That gap is exactly where Profound alternatives earn their keep.
Pick the tracker whose per-prompt math fits your volume, run the same prompt set in two trials side by side, and compare the answers, not the dashboards. Then spend the money you saved on the pages AI keeps skipping.
FAQs
As of October 2026, Profound’s brand pricing page lists a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans were removed in mid-September 2026. Agencies can still self-serve on an Agency Growth plan, which third-party reviews put at $99 a month plus $399 per client workspace.
Yes. Tryprofound.com is Profound’s website, so “tryprofound alternatives” and “Profound alternatives” point to the same set of tools. The company’s legal name is Cooper Square Technologies Inc.
Not a lasting one among the tools here. Most offer free trials instead: Scrunch runs a seven-day trial, and Otterly and Peec both offer trials too. Profound’s own trial is free for seven days. For ongoing tracking, Otterly’s $29 Lite plan is the lowest paid entry.
