7 Profound Alternatives for AI Visibility (2026)

Why look past Profound?

Profound is well funded (a $96M round at a $1B valuation in early 2026) and genuinely capable: conversation-volume data, multi-engine tracking, agent analytics, SOC 2 and SSO. But its self-serve entry is roughly $99/mo for ChatGPT only, real multi-engine tracking starts around $399/mo, and enterprise deployments commonly run $2,000-5,000+/mo. If you are a founder, a small team, or an agency handling many small clients, that is more monitoring than your budget or your stage calls for. Here are seven alternatives, with honest pricing and where each fits.

1. Peec AI

Peec is a clean, marketing-team-friendly AI-visibility tracker. Self-serve plans start around $95/mo for 50 prompts, with agency plans from about $245/mo on a credit system. It tracks a shared pool of seven engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok) but you pick three at onboarding on lower tiers, and some models cost extra. Unlimited users and daily tracking across plans make it attractive for teams. Like Profound, it is monitor-first: it shows your visibility, it does not fix your pages.

2. Otterly.AI

Otterly is the most budget-friendly pure monitor on this list, with a Lite plan from $29/mo (15 prompts), Standard at $189/mo (100 prompts) and Premium at $489/mo (400 prompts). Four base engines are included (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot); Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons. It offers 50+ country tracking, unlimited team members and a 7-day free trial. Good value for entry-level tracking, but again, it measures rather than diagnoses.

3. AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ leans into "agents to win on AI search" and uses a credit-based model. Its Self-Serve plan is about $295/mo for 3,600 credits (with a first-month intro around $95), and higher tiers reach $545/mo Growth and $2,000+/mo enterprise. It layers in citation-engine and optimization features on upper plans. Capable, but the credit model means costs scale with how actively you monitor, and the entry price is well above lean-team budgets.

4. Scrunch AI

Scrunch positions itself as an AI customer-experience and visibility platform, starting around $250-300/mo for a few hundred prompts. Entry tiers include a site map (25 pages), AI bot/agent traffic reports, sentiment analysis, insights, limited page optimizations and content generation, with a 7-day trial. It reaches further toward optimization than pure monitors, but the price floor puts it out of range for small teams and single-founder projects.

5. HubSpot AI Search Grader

HubSpot's AEO Grader is free, with no account required. Enter a brand and get a one-time snapshot of how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini represent you, scored across sentiment, presence, brand recognition, share of voice and market position. It is a great zero-cost first look. The catch: it is a one-time snapshot, not ongoing monitoring, and not a page-level fix workflow. HubSpot's paid AEO monitoring starts around $50/mo for continuous tracking.

6. SEO AEO Specialist (the affordable diagnose-and-fix option)

SEO AEO Specialist is the odd one out here, on purpose. The other tools mostly track your AI citation share. SEO AEO Specialist diagnoses why AI engines skip your pages and hands you the fixes: schema gaps, weak answer structure, thin entity coverage, question-to-answer mapping, crawlability issues, SEO and AEO problems, prioritized so you can ship them. Pricing is deliberately accessible: free on up to 50 pages, a one-time report for €9, and €19/mo per domain for ongoing checks. If your problem is "the number is low and I do not know what to change," SEO AEO Specialist is built for exactly that, at a fraction of a monitoring subscription.

7. Profound itself (for reference)

Worth keeping on the shortlist if you are enterprise-scale. Profound's Conversation Explorer, Answer Engine Insights and Agent Analytics are best-in-class for continuous, multi-engine measurement, backed by SOC 2, SSO and an API. If measurement and executive reporting across many engines is the deliverable and you have the budget ($399+/mo, or custom enterprise), it earns its place.

Quick comparison

Pricing per vendor pages and third-party 2026 reviews; verify current tiers directly, as several vendors route larger buyers to custom quotes.

Monitor vs diagnose: pick the right kind of tool

Most of this list answers "is my AI visibility going up or down?" That is useful but lagging. It does not tell you which page caused a drop or how to reverse it. SEO AEO Specialist answers the other question: "why am I not being cited, and what do I change?" That is the actionable half. A sensible order for most teams is diagnose and fix first (cheaply), then add monitoring once you have fixes shipped and a budget that justifies it.

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