Every AI visibility tool with a published price is now cheaper than Profound for a brand buyer, because Profound no longer sells a self-serve brand plan. As of October 14, 2026, brands get a free 7-day trial or a custom Enterprise quote. The strongest cheaper options depend on the job:
- Rankscale has the lowest published entry price, on credits.
- Otterly has the cheapest prompt-based plan.
- Peec AI and Scrunch AI suit teams that need more prompts.
- Neverdrafts, Data for AI Search and RankAI suit teams that want the fix work done, not only the measurement.
Key takeaways
- Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026. Any review quoting those prices is out of date.
- One competing vendor estimates Profound Enterprise at $2,000–$5,000+ per month. That is an estimate, not a published price.
- Rankscale starts at $20/month on credits across 8+ engines, and Otterly starts at $29/month for 15 prompts.
- Headline prices hide the real cost. Engine add-ons, credit systems and prompt limits change what you actually pay.
- Most cheap tools only monitor. If you need content produced to close citation gaps, compare execution tiers rather than entry tiers.
- Regulated buyers should check compliance first. Profound lists SOC 2 and SSO/SAML on Enterprise, and most cheap tiers do not.
What does Profound actually cost in late 2026?
Profound's brand pricing page now shows two options. The free Trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits, no history, no exports and no API. Trial users cannot customize prompts; they get a recommended industry set instead.
Enterprise is custom-priced and covers up to 9 answer engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa.
The change followed Profound's $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, announced September 15, 2026, when the product was repositioned around an "AI Marketer" agent. Agencies can still self-serve on Agency Growth at $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace; the $99 still visible on Profound's page is that agency base fee, not a brand plan.
For a brand, the practical cost is free for a week, then whatever the sales quote says.
Which cheaper Profound alternatives are worth considering?
This table uses each vendor's published entry price. "Cost per prompt" divides the entry price by the entry prompt allowance, a rough comparison since engine counts and tracking frequency differ.
| Tool | Best for | Standout feature | Entry price | Approx. cost per prompt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rankscale | Broad engine coverage on a small budget | 8+ engines on credits | From $20/mo | Credit-based |
| Otterly | Solo marketers, small teams | Lowest prompt-based entry, unlimited seats | $29/mo, 15 prompts | ~$1.93 |
| Peec AI | SEO and content teams | Choose 3 models; shopping and source analytics | $95/mo, 50 prompts | ~$1.90 |
| Neverdrafts | Teams that want monitoring plus published fixes | Auto-drafted remediation content | $99/mo, 50 prompts, 30 articles | ~$1.98 |
| Scrunch AI | High prompt volume | 350 custom + 1,000 industry prompts | $250/mo annual, $300 monthly | ~$0.71 (annual) |
| Data for AI Search | Monitoring now, citation work later | Separate $497 execution tier | $99/mo Monitor | Monthly scan, not per prompt |
| Athena HQ | Many models on one plan | 11 models on Starter | $295/mo, 3,600 credits | Credit-based |
| RankAI | Execution-focused growth teams | Page generation and auto-rewrites | Free plan; paid from $199/mo | Not stated |
Two more sit at the edges. Evertune's lowest tier is $800/month, still likely below the Enterprise estimate. AIClicks is listed from $59, though its feature details are thin in available sources. LLMrefs is sometimes cited around $79/month with weekly refresh, but confirm current terms on its own pricing page before relying on that figure.
For a broader list built around a fixed budget ceiling, see our 10 options priced under $300.
Rankscale: the lowest published entry price
Rankscale applies a familiar rank-tracker interface to AI citations, billed on credits.
Who it is for: SEO teams moving from classic rank tracking to AI tracking who want many engines without enterprise pricing.
Strengths: Rankscale tracks 8+ engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok and Copilot — one of the broadest engine lists at a published entry price, alongside Athena HQ's 11 models. Onboarding is described as within a day.
Pricing: From $20/month, credit-based. This figure is from a May 2026 snapshot, so confirm it on Rankscale's own page.
Limitations: Credits make direct comparison hard; you have to estimate how many prompts, engines and tracking days your workload consumes. It is a monitoring tool, not a content or execution tool.
Otterly: the cheapest prompt-based entry point
Otterly is a lightweight tracker built for teams that want daily monitoring without a sales call.
Who it is for: solo marketers, PR teams and small businesses testing AI visibility for the first time.
Strengths: Every plan tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot daily, with unlimited team members. Lite includes brand visibility and sentiment analysis, citation source tracking, a GEO audit and a crawlability audit. Standard adds API access, MCP access and Agent Analytics.
Pricing: Lite is $29/month ($25 annually) for 15 prompts. Standard is $189/month for 100 prompts, Premium is $489/month for 400 prompts. Extra prompts cost $99 per 100 on Standard and Premium.
Limitations: 15 prompts is close to a trial allowance, and Standard at 100 prompts is where most buyers land. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons: Gemini and AI Mode cost $9–$149/month each, and Claude costs $29–$439/month, depending on plan. A Lite buyer who adds Claude likely pays around $58 a month, not $29, though exact add-on pricing by plan isn't broken out in the source.
Peec AI: a mid-tier tracker with deep analytics
Peec AI is a self-serve analytics platform with a clear ladder from Starter to Enterprise.
Who it is for: SEO and content managers who want structured visibility data and room to grow.
Strengths: Every self-serve plan lets you choose 3 models from a list including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode, with daily tracking and unlimited users. The feature set goes beyond share of voice: prompt volume scoring, intent classification, an ads library showing sponsored placements in AI answers, SKU-level AI Shopping tracking, citation share and brand attribute scoring.
Pricing: Starter is $95/month for 50 prompts and 1 project. Pro covers 150 prompts and 2 projects. Advanced is $495/month for 350 prompts, 5 projects, multi-country tracking and a Looker Studio integration.
Limitations: You are capped at 3 models until Enterprise, which opens up to 13 models, API access and SSO. Peec AI recommends actions but does not produce content for you.
Neverdrafts: monitoring plus auto-published fixes
Disclosure: Neverdrafts is our product.
Neverdrafts tracks where ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Mode and Perplexity cite competitors instead of you, checked daily. It then drafts remediation content aimed at the prompts you are losing, with one-click publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Shopify or Framer and an API for custom stacks.
Who it is for: small teams and agencies that want the monitor, diagnose, fix and prove loop in one subscription, without staffing a writer for every gap.
Strengths: Tracking runs on real web interfaces rather than APIs. Visibility is scored by position, 0–100 per response. Competitive citation analysis shows which domains rank highest per prompt, and AI crawler traffic tracking shows whether bots reached the new pages. Content generation works in 150+ languages, and agencies get white-label reporting.
Pricing: Starter is $99/month for 1 brand, 50 prompts and 30 remediation articles. Growth is $199/month for 3 brands, 150 prompts and 100 articles. Agency is $399/month for 10 brands, 500 prompts and 300 articles. Billing is monthly with no contract, and a free audit needs no credit card.
Limitations: Coverage is four engines; Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and DeepSeek are not on the list, so buyers who need those should look at Rankscale or Athena HQ. We do not publish compliance certifications or SSO, so regulated buyers with those requirements will need another option. Our full side-by-side is on the Neverdrafts vs Profound page.
Scrunch AI: the most prompts for the money
Scrunch AI bundles custom prompts with a large set of industry prompts.
Who it is for: brands that need wide prompt coverage across a category without paying per prompt at the higher rates other tools charge.
Strengths: The entry plan includes 350 custom prompts and 1,000 industry prompts with 3 users, covering ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta. Page audits and personas are included, with 5 page audits in the 7-day trial.
Pricing: $250/month on annual billing, $300 monthly. The top self-serve tier is $417 annual or $500 monthly for 700 custom prompts.
Limitations: The industry prompts are bundled, so your effective custom allowance is 350 at entry, and the entry price is more than eight times Otterly Lite. Scrunch is mainly a tracker with audits.
Data for AI Search and Athena HQ: scan-based and credit-based options
Data for AI Search splits its product into a tracker and a separate execution tier. The $99 Monitor tier scans six surfaces — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Google AI Mode — with competitor share of voice and alerts. The $497 Engage tier adds a Citation Map, a ranked Content Plan, entity and directory work, and drafts for community platforms. Monitor is a monthly scan, not daily tracking, so it suits trend-checking rather than day-to-day response.
Athena HQ sells credits instead of prompts, where one credit equals one AI response. The $295 Starter covers 11 models, including Claude, Grok and DeepSeek, plus a content optimization agent; a free Essential plan covers 5 platforms. To compare it with prompt-based tools, divide credits by engines and tracking days — 3,600 credits spread across 11 models daily over 30 days covers roughly 11 prompts.
RankAI: execution over dashboards
RankAI pairs strategists with AI agents to ship and rewrite pages for Google and AI search, rather than just reporting gaps.
Who it is for: growth teams that want published pages rather than another report.
Strengths: Programmatic page generation, an auto-rewrite engine on a 3-week performance threshold, and multi-CMS publishing to WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Sanity, Framer and custom stacks, plus a free AI search audit on signup.
Pricing: Free plan; paid from $199/month.
Limitations: RankAI says it focuses on engines that drive measurable citations rather than maximum count, but does not list which ones. The source is RankAI's own article, which ranks RankAI first.
How to choose a cheaper Profound alternative
1. Start from the engines your traffic uses
Data for AI Search logged 30 days of its own AI referrals and found ChatGPT sent 50 of 52 visits. Check your analytics referrers before paying for engine add-ons.
2. Convert every plan to your own unit
Prompts, credits and bundled industry prompts are not interchangeable. Multiply your prompt count by the engines you need and your tracking frequency, then see which plan covers that workload.
3. Price the add-ons
Otterly's Claude add-on runs $29–$439/month depending on plan, so on Lite it can double the bill. Annual billing also changes the numbers, as with Otterly's $25 annual vs $29 monthly Lite price.
4. Decide whether you need monitoring or execution
Trackers tell you where you are missing. Execution tools produce the content to change it. If no one on your team will act on a dashboard, a cheaper tracker can end up costing more in practice.
5. Check compliance before price
If procurement requires SOC 2 or SSO, your shortlist narrows fast. Profound lists SSO/SAML and SOC 2 on Enterprise. Otterly and Peec AI list SSO only on their Enterprise tiers.
Agencies managing several brands should also read our guide to AI search visibility tools for multiple client websites.
Next step
To see where you are losing AI citations before choosing a tool, run the free Neverdrafts audit (no credit card required) to see where you stand before committing to a tool. Start from the pricing section, or read the Neverdrafts vs Profound comparison first.
Frequently asked questions
Does Profound still have a $99 plan?
Not for brands. Profound's $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans were removed in mid-September 2026. Brands now choose between a free 7-day trial and a custom Enterprise quote. The $99 still on the pricing page is the Agency Growth base fee, plus $399 per client workspace.
What is the cheapest AI visibility tool right now?
Rankscale starts from about $20/month on credit-based billing, and Otterly Lite is $29/month ($25 annually) for 15 prompts across four engines. The cheapest headline price may not be cheapest for your workload, since credits, prompt caps and engine add-ons can raise the real monthly cost quickly.
How much does Profound Enterprise cost?
Profound does not publish it. A competing vendor estimates $2,000–$5,000+ per month based on known customer contracts — a rough anchor, not a quote. The actual figure is set in a sales conversation and depends on prompts, engines, regions and agent credits.
Which cheaper tool comes closest to Profound's engine coverage?
Rankscale tracks 8+ engines, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok and Copilot. Athena HQ's $295 Starter covers 11 models. Profound Enterprise lists nine engines, including Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Exa, so check your required engines one by one.
Is Profound's free trial enough to evaluate it?
It shows the product but limits the test: 50 prompts daily for 7 days on three engines, no prompt editing, and no history, export or API. You're measured on Profound's recommended prompts rather than your own, so results may not reflect your real buyer questions.