Profound alternatives in 2026: seven AI visibility tools compared on price and coverage
Profound removed its $99 and $399 self-serve plans in September 2026. Seven alternatives compared on published price, prompt limits, engines covered and what each does after the score: Peec AI, Otterly, Scrunch AI, Athena HQ, Evertune, AIClicks and Data for AI Search. Sourced to each vendor's pricing page.
The best Profound alternative in 2026 depends on whether you lost a self-serve plan or never had one. Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026, and its pricing page now offers a 7-day free trial and a custom-quoted Enterprise plan that tracks up to nine answer engines (accessed September 26, 2026). That leaves a gap for mid-market brands, agencies and local businesses that want daily tracking without a sales call. Seven tools fill it at published prices: Peec AI from $95 a month, Otterly from $29, Scrunch AI from $250, Athena HQ from $295, Evertune from $800, AIClicks from $59, and Data for AI Search from $99, with a $497 tier that does the citation work instead of only measuring it. This guide compares all seven on price, prompt limits, engines covered and what each one does after the score, sourced to each vendor's own pricing page on the date above.
Why are buyers looking for Profound alternatives right now?
Profound's move up-market is the reason this search spiked in September 2026. Until mid-September a brand could buy Profound's Starter plan at $99 a month or Growth at $399 a month with annual billing, as our Data for AI Search vs Profound comparison recorded in August 2026. Those tiers are gone. As of September 26, 2026 the Profound pricing page lists two options for brands: a 7-day trial with 50 prompts tracked daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and an Enterprise plan with custom pricing, up to nine answer engines, API access, exports and SSO. Trakkr's September 2026 pricing review reports that agencies can still buy an Agency Growth plan at $99 a month plus $399 per client workspace, but brands go through sales.
The company itself is not in trouble. Profound raised a $96M Series C at a $1B valuation in February 2026 and names Target, Walmart, Figma and MongoDB as customers. The point is that the product now serves those customers and their agencies. If your budget is under a few thousand dollars a month, or you want to sign up today without a demo, you need one of the tools below.
What does each Profound alternative cost in September 2026?
Every price in this table comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on September 26, 2026, and the prompt limit is the one the vendor prints next to the price.
| Tool | Entry price (monthly) | What the entry plan includes | Top self-serve tier | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly | $29 | 15 search prompts, 4 engines, daily tracking | $489 for 400 prompts | Custom, 1,000+ prompts |
| AIClicks | $59 | Entry tier per our August 2026 head-to-head | Published tiers | Custom |
| Peec AI | $95 | 50 prompts, 3 models, 1 project, daily tracking | $495 for 350 prompts, 5 projects | Custom, up to 13 models |
| Data for AI Search | $99 (Monitor) | Monthly scan on 6 surfaces, competitor share of voice, alerts | $497 (Engage) with Citation Map, Content Plan, entity work | Pro / Agency, quoted |
| Scrunch AI | $250 annual, $300 monthly | 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts, 3 users | $417 annual, $500 monthly for 700 custom prompts | Custom |
| Athena HQ | $295 | 3,600 credits a month, 11 models | Same tier, add-ons for API and credits | Custom |
| Evertune | $800 | Lowest published tier, 100-sample prompt runs | Quoted | Quoted |
| Profound | Free 7-day trial only | 50 prompts daily, 3 engines | None for brands | Custom, 9 engines |
Sources: Otterly pricing, Peec AI pricing, Data for AI Search pricing, Scrunch AI pricing, Athena HQ pricing, Profound pricing, and our Evertune vs Profound vs Frase vs AIClicks breakdown for Evertune and AIClicks. All accessed September 26, 2026.
Three things stand out in that table. Otterly has the cheapest door at $29, but 15 prompts is a trial-sized allocation and the $189 Standard tier at 100 prompts is where most buyers land (Otterly pricing, September 26, 2026). Scrunch AI prints the largest prompt allocation for the money, 350 custom prompts at $250 a month on annual billing (Scrunch pricing, September 26, 2026). Athena HQ sells credits rather than prompts, 3,600 a month on Starter where one credit equals one AI response, so a buyer has to divide by engines and tracking days to compare it (Athena HQ pricing, September 26, 2026).
Which alternative covers the engines you care about?
Engine coverage is where the alternatives separate most, and the cheapest plan rarely covers Google AI Mode or Claude without an add-on. Otterly's every plan tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, and sells Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as add-ons priced from $9 to $149 a month each for Gemini and AI Mode and $29 to $439 for Claude, depending on plan (Otterly pricing, September 26, 2026). Peec AI lets you choose 3 models on every self-serve plan from a list that includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode, and opens all models, up to 13, on Enterprise (Peec AI pricing, September 26, 2026).
Scrunch AI covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta on its published plans (Scrunch pricing, September 26, 2026). Athena HQ's free Essential plan covers 5 platforms and its $295 Starter covers 11 models including Claude, Grok and DeepSeek (Athena HQ pricing, September 26, 2026). Data for AI Search scans six surfaces on every paid plan: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Google AI Mode (pricing, September 26, 2026). Profound's Enterprise plan lists nine: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa (Profound pricing, September 26, 2026).
Which engines matter is a question your own traffic answers, not a vendor. When we logged 30 days of AI referrals to this site, ChatGPT sent 50 of 52 visits and Gemini sent the other 2, with no visits from Perplexity, Claude or Copilot at all (our own referral log, August 27 to September 26, 2026, published in the best AI visibility tools in 2026). A B2B software brand will see a different split. Check your analytics referrers before paying for an engine add-on.
Which alternatives go beyond monitoring?
Most Profound alternatives measure visibility and stop there, which is the split that matters more than price. Otterly, Peec AI and Athena HQ are trackers: they run your prompts daily, chart share of voice against competitors, and show which sources the assistants cited. Peec AI adds gap analysis and ranked recommended actions on its published feature list, and Athena HQ's Starter tier includes a content optimization agent (Peec AI pricing and Athena HQ pricing, September 26, 2026). Scrunch AI adds page audits and personas, with 5 page audits in its 7-day trial (Scrunch pricing, September 26, 2026).
Data for AI Search is built the other way round. The $99 Monitor tier is the tracker. The $497 Engage tier produces the work: a Citation Map of every source AI cites in your market, a ranked Content Plan with a writing prompt per page, the YouTube plan, the entity and directory presence work, and drafts for the live Reddit, Quora and forum threads the assistants pull from (pricing, September 26, 2026). The reasoning behind that split is in AI visibility trackers vs a system that gets you cited: a score with no follow-through is a dashboard, and the SE Ranking study of 300,000 domains from November 2025 found brand mention frequency, an off-site signal, to be the strongest single predictor of AI citation. Trackers cannot move that number for you.
How does Data for AI Search compare with Profound?
Data for AI Search covers the buyer Profound just left. Profound's trial tracks 3 engines for 7 days and its Enterprise plan is quote-only, while Data for AI Search's Monitor plan is $99 a month, self-serve, on 6 surfaces, and starts with a free 10-point scan of any domain (Profound pricing and pricing, September 26, 2026). The methodology is also public. Every check behind the score is published in the 10-Point AI Citation Framework, so a buyer can verify the grade by hand, and every article on this site is scored against the same 40-Point Content Geometry Standard it recommends.
Profound wins on breadth for a large brand. Nine engines, agent analytics across unlimited domains, SOC 2 and SSO, and a customer success team are things a $99 plan does not include (Profound pricing, September 26, 2026), and a marketing organization of 20 or more people with multi-brand portfolios should evaluate Profound Enterprise first. The full comparison, including what each platform measures and how the content models differ, is in Data for AI Search vs Profound.
Which Profound alternative fits which buyer?
Match the tool to the job, not to the feature count.
| Buyer | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Solo operator testing whether AI search matters for them | Otterly Lite at $29 | Cheapest paid entry, 15 prompts is enough to check 3 or 4 core queries |
| SEO team that wants daily share-of-voice charts | Peec AI Pro at $245 | 150 prompts, 2 projects, gap analysis, daily tracking |
| Content team that needs many prompts and page audits | Scrunch AI Starter at $250 annual | 350 custom prompts plus 1,000 industry prompts and audits |
| Brand that wants 11 models on one plan | Athena HQ Starter at $295 | Widest published model list under $300 |
| Local business or agency that wants the citation work done | Data for AI Search Engage at $497 | Citation Map, Content Plan, entity presence, forum drafts, bi-weekly proof scan |
| Enterprise brand team with procurement | Profound Enterprise or Evertune | Nine engines, SSO, dedicated support; Evertune for 100-sample depth |
Sources: the vendor pricing pages listed above, all accessed September 26, 2026.
Agencies are the one profile with a real fork. Profound still sells an agency plan, Peec AI publishes separate agency pricing with prompts tracked across multiple brands, Otterly gives agency partners bonus prompts, 150 on Standard and 500 on Premium, and Data for AI Search's Pro / Agency tier is multi-site and white-label with the report under your brand (Peec AI pricing, Otterly pricing, white-label, September 26, 2026). An agency that resells monitoring should compare the per-client workspace cost. An agency that has to show clients movement should compare what each tool hands the client to do next.
Frequently asked questions
Did Profound stop selling to small businesses?
Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026. As of September 26, 2026 its pricing page offers brands a 7-day trial and a custom-quoted Enterprise plan. Agencies can still buy a published agency plan, according to Trakkr's September 2026 review.
What is the cheapest Profound alternative?
Otterly's Lite plan at $29 a month for 15 search prompts is the cheapest published paid plan among the tools compared here, as of September 26, 2026. AIClicks at $59 and Peec AI at $95 are the next two. The free option is running the 10-Point Framework audit by hand from the published methodology.
Which Profound alternative tracks the most AI engines?
Athena HQ lists 11 models on its $295 Starter plan and Peec AI lists up to 13 on Enterprise, as of September 26, 2026. Profound's own Enterprise plan lists nine. Most buyers only need the two or three engines that actually send them traffic.
Is a tracker enough, or do I need a tool that does the work?
A tracker is enough if you have an SEO or content team that will act on the gaps it finds. If nobody on your side will build the pages, claim the directories and post in the threads AI cites, a tool that produces that work, such as Data for AI Search's Engage tier, is the one that moves the score.
Can I switch from Profound without losing my history?
Profound's Enterprise plan includes CSV and JSON exports, and the trial does not include data history or exports, as of September 26, 2026. Export your prompt list and share-of-voice history before the plan ends, then load the same prompts into the new tool so the baseline carries over.
Companion guides: The best AI Visibility tools in 2026 · Data for AI Search vs Profound · Peec AI vs Otterly · Evertune vs Profound vs Frase vs AIClicks · AI visibility trackers vs a system that gets you cited.