Cheaper alternatives to Profound for AI search monitoring (2026)

Profound's pricing page shows brands no price. It lists a free Trial, "50 prompts run daily for 7 days" on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, and an Enterprise plan marked "Custom" and "Tailored packages", sold through a demo. The $99 and $399 that older comparisons quote are agency prices, on its "For agencies" tab: Agency Growth at $99 a month, plus $399 a month for each client workspace.

So a cheaper alternative depends on which part of Profound you need: the daily tracking, the reports inside an SEO suite you already pay for, or the pages that get you named. Every price below comes from the vendor's own page, read on November 8, 2026, between 10:50 and 10:57 Japan time. Each page is linked under Sources.

What Profound includes, and what each alternative replaces

Profound sells more than a tracker. Its pricing page and home page list:

• Tracking. Profound "runs structured prompts across AI platforms", "tracking citations, sentiment, ranking, and competitive presence". Enterprise tracks "Up to 9 Answer Engines": ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, DeepSeek, Anthropic Claude, Google AI Overviews, Exa Search, and Muse Spark. "Enterprise includes ongoing daily tracking."
• An AI Marketer that writes. Profound describes it as able to "Research, write, report, and collaborate". Its home page says it "Builds the pages for questions you have no answer for" and "Rewrites pages with citation decay and stages them in your CMS".
• Crawler and page data. Agent Analytics reads AI crawler visits from Cloudflare, Vercel, AWS, and other hosts. Its Pages feature scores each page and can "Request priority indexing for new or updated pages through IndexNow".
• Enterprise terms. SSO/SAML, SOC 2, unlimited seats, and dedicated support.

The Trial is a look, not a plan. Profound's FAQ says "Trial plan users receive a recommended prompt set based on their industry and cannot customize their prompts." Agencies get their own plans: Profound's Agency Growth plan costs "$99/month + add-ons", and each full client workspace is an add-on "for $399/month", tracking 100 unique prompts daily on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. One client workspace comes to $498 a month for 9,000 answers, about 5.5 cents an answer, and each one added after it to about 4.4 cents.

If you need several of those parts for many brands, Profound may still be the pick. If you need one of them, a tool built for that one costs less.

Profound and its cheaper alternatives, side by side

How ≈ per check is worked out: the plan's monthly price ÷ the answers it buys in a month. Answers are prompts × AIs × runs a month (daily = 30, weekly = 4.33), or the vendor's own count of checks where it gives one. Convika's is MAX's price ÷ the checks it includes, so it assumes you use them all.

Two cautions on the per-check column. A tracker that asks every day spends its answers whether or not you look, so its monthly count is large and each answer is cheap. Convika asks only when you or your AI client start a check, and its figure counts every check MAX includes as used.

Daily tracking at the lowest cost per answer: Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Mangools, Goodie

These four do the part of Profound most teams buy it for: the same prompts, asked on a schedule, with your mentions, citations, and competitors in a dashboard.

• Otterly.AI Lite costs $29 a month for "15 search prompts" on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and MS Copilot, with "Daily tracking frequency". Google AI Mode and Gemini cost $9 a month more each on Lite, and Claude $29. Otterly.AI's help center says "OtterlyAI offers a 7 day free trial; no credit card required", with 50 prompts during the trial. Its MCP server comes with Standard, at $189 a month.
• Peec AI Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts, "Choose 3 models", "Daily tracking frequency", and 4,500 AI answers a month. Users are unlimited on every plan, and MCP is included from Starter. An extra model, Perplexity among them, is $30 a month on Starter, shown with annual billing.
• Mangools AI Search Watcher costs $49 a month, or $34.90 a month billed yearly, for 500 prompts. Mangools' help center says it "checks every monitor once a week, on every plan", and each prompt is checked twice. It asks ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Grok, Claude, Llama, and Mistral, from the ones you pick. Its free plan keeps 5 prompts with no card.
• Goodie Core costs $295 a month for 110 prompts on 5 models, daily, with a 7-day free trial. It lists an "AEO CONTENT WRITER" and "BLOG GENERATION", and WordPress among its integrations.

For a small business, these usually come down to Otterly.AI or Peec AI: Otterly vs Peec AI vs Profound sets the three side by side.

If you already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs

• Semrush AI Visibility Base costs "$99/mo per domain", "billed annually", to "Track 25 custom prompts (daily AI rankings)" with "Mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity". Semrush's help center says the toolkit "does not currently offer a free trial". Its SEO + AI Search Starter plan, $199 a month billed monthly, tracks 50 prompts daily alongside its SEO tools.
• Ahrefs sells custom prompts on their own: "Need to track your own prompts only? Subscribe to a package." Basic is $50 a month for 2,500 checks, and "Tracking one prompt on one platform in one location uses 1 check." Every paid Ahrefs plan also includes a few: Lite, at $129 a month, includes "150 checks on AI prompts". Brand Radar AI, with Ahrefs' index of 542 million prompts, starts at $199 a month.

Neither writes or publishes pages for the gaps it finds. Both show you where a competitor is cited and you aren't.

If you want the page that gets you named: Convika MAX

Profound's AI Marketer writes a page and stages it in your CMS, and Peec AI's early-access CMS publishing edits a page already in one. Both assume you have a CMS and someone to approve what goes live. Convika is the host itself: it makes the page, puts it live on your own domain, and tells you when ChatGPT or Perplexity has read it, so you can ask again.

Convika's AI answer check asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews the questions you save, when you or your AI client run it. One check is one question answered by one AI. A check that gets no answer back, such as a search with no AI Overview, is given back. For each question, the dashboard's AI & search screen shows how many answers named your brand, whether they linked to your site, and the links they cited instead, then offers Make a page that answers this. From Claude Code, the same loop runs over MCP: how to do AIO with Claude Code.

• MAX costs $49 a month with 3,500 checks, 200 saved questions, up to 10,000 live pages, and 1,000 new pages a day. Its checks ask all 200 questions on the 4 AIs 4 times a month, whenever you choose. Pick it to run AIO yourself, from Claude Code or the dashboard: many questions a week, and a page that answers each one the AIs don't name you for, with questions that ask the same thing sharing one page.
• Pro costs $12 a month with 100 checks, for a handful of questions.
• Packs add checks on any plan, Free included, from 100 checks for $3, with no expiry: pay-per-check tools compared.

Before you pay anything, check one question free on the 4 AIs, with no sign-up.

When Profound is still the better pick

Convika runs no schedule, and it asks 4 AIs, not Claude, Copilot, or AI Mode. It counts your own brand and links, with no sentiment or share of voice across competitors. Pick Profound, or Scrunch or AthenaHQ from the wider comparison, when you need:

• daily tracking on up to 9 AI engines, for many brands, languages, and regions
• SSO, SOC 2, and a dedicated support team
• agents that draft content into the CMS your team already runs
• AI crawler traffic and page scores across your existing site

Frequently asked questions

How much does Profound cost?

Profound shows brands no price. Its pricing page lists a free Trial, 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, and an Enterprise plan marked "Custom", sold through a demo. For agencies, Profound's Agency Growth plan costs $99 a month, plus "$399/month" for each full client workspace.

Does Profound have a free trial?

Yes. Profound's Trial is free and runs "50 prompts run daily for 7 days" on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits. Trial users get "a recommended prompt set based on their industry and cannot customize their prompts."

What is the cheapest alternative to Profound?

For daily tracking, Otterly.AI Lite at $29 a month for 15 prompts on 4 AIs, about 1.6 cents an answer. Per answer, Mangools AI Search Watcher costs less, $49 a month for 500 prompts, each asked twice in its weekly run, but it doesn't track daily. Mangools' free plan tracks 5 prompts, and Profound's Trial is free for 7 days.

Is Otterly cheaper than Profound?

Yes. Otterly.AI's plans are $29, $189, and $489 a month, on its own pricing page. Profound shows brands no price after its 7-day Trial. Otterly.AI tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot daily, and sells AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude as add-ons.

Is Peec AI cheaper than Profound?

Yes. Peec AI Starter costs $95 a month for 50 prompts on 3 models, daily, with unlimited users and MCP. Profound's paid plan for brands is Enterprise, on custom pricing.

Is there a Profound alternative that writes and publishes pages?

Yes. Goodie lists a content writer and blog generation, and Peec AI's early-access CMS publishing edits pages in a connected CMS. Convika goes further: it makes a page that answers a question the AIs don't name you for, hosts it on your own domain, and lets you ask again once the AI has read it.

Which Profound alternative tracks the most AI engines?

Mangools AI Search Watcher lets you pick from 8, Claude among them. Otterly.AI covers 4 and adds 3 more as paid add-ons. Peec AI asks 3 of its 6 below Enterprise. Profound Enterprise tracks up to 9. Convika asks 4: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.

Can I track AI visibility from Claude Code instead?

Yes. Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Mangools, Ahrefs, and Convika run MCP servers that Claude Code connects to. Most read the data their schedule collected; Convika's run_answer_check asks the AIs when you ask. MCP servers for AI search visibility compares them.

Sources

Each page was read on November 8, 2026, Japan time:

• Profound: Pricing, brands tab and the FAQ (10:50 to 10:51), agencies tab (11:49), home page (10:50), and Pages (10:52)
• Otterly.AI: Pricing (10:50) and How long is the free trial (10:50)
• Peec AI: Pricing (10:51) and MCP tools reference (10:53)
• Mangools: AI Search Watcher (10:51) and How AI Search Watcher works (10:51)
• Goodie: Pricing (10:51)
• Semrush: AI Visibility pricing (10:51), SEO + AI Search pricing (10:51), and AI Visibility Toolkit help (10:52)
• Ahrefs: Pricing, in US dollars (10:51)

Convika's plans and checks come from its pricing page.