Profound AI alternatives, compared on public facts

We make Agentcites, which is one of the products below. Every product, ours included, is judged on the same criteria: we state them before the products, we take every fact about another product from its own page, and we say where each one is ahead of us.

This post adds to our one to one page, Agentcites compared with Profound. That page puts two products side by side. This one looks at the whole field a Profound buyer is likely to consider.

Which Profound AI alternatives are worth a look?

Six products come up most often when a buyer looks past Profound: Peec AI, OtterlyAI, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit and Agentcites. They all ask AI assistants questions and report whether a brand is named, but they differ a lot in price, coverage and what they do after the measurement.

We picked these six because each one publishes enough on its own site to be compared, and because Peec AI, OtterlyAI, Scrunch and AthenaHQ also appear in the list of agency tools Semrush published on 31 July 2026. Other tools exist. Leaving one out says nothing about its quality.

What Profound sells today, from its own pages

Profound sells a free trial and an Enterprise plan with a custom price, and nothing in between on its pricing page. Older comparison articles describe a Starter plan at $99 and a Growth plan at $399, but neither appeared on the pricing page on 10 October 2026.

One of those older articles is a comparison Peec AI published on 5 January 2026. It describes a Profound Starter plan at $99 a month covering ChatGPT only, and a Growth plan at $399 a month. It is a useful record of how fast this market moves. Nine months later, Profound lists neither plan, and Peec AI lists different prices for its own plans too.

So a buyer comparing Profound with anything else is comparing a published price with a quote. That is not a criticism. Enterprise software is often sold this way, and a custom contract can include work a list price cannot. It does mean you should ask for the quote early, before you spend time on a trial you may not be able to afford.

Profound is also the best funded company in this group. It announced a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation on 15 September 2026 and says it serves over 1,000 enterprise brands. Its agents page says its agents "generate optimized drafts, and publish directly to your CMS". So Profound both measures and writes content.

The criteria we used to compare them

We compared every product on six criteria, chosen because a buyer can check each one on a public page. We did not weight them or add them into a score, because the right weight depends on the buyer.

1. Published price. Can you see what the first paid plan costs without a sales call?
2. Assistants covered. Which AI assistants does the plan ask, and which cost extra?
3. Prompts tracked. How many questions does the plan ask, and how often?
4. Content. Does the product write pages, or does it stop at measurement and advice?
5. Large company needs. Does it offer single sign-on, an API and security paperwork?
6. A free way to start. Is there a trial or a free tier, and does it need a card?

The alternatives side by side

On price, OtterlyAI is the cheapest way in and Profound is the only one without a published paid price. On coverage, AthenaHQ and Profound Enterprise ask the most assistants. On content, Profound, AthenaHQ and Agentcites write pages, while Peec AI says it deliberately does not.

The prompt counts are not directly comparable. A prompt asked daily of three assistants produces far more answers than one asked weekly of four. Peec AI shows this on its own pricing page: 25 prompts across 3 models for 30 days is "25x3x30 = 2250 AI answers". Ask any vendor for the answers per month, not the prompt count alone.

Where Profound is still ahead

Profound is ahead on breadth, security paperwork and scale. A buyer who needs those things may find that no alternative replaces it.

• It can ask up to nine answer engines on Enterprise, including Copilot, Claude and Exa Search. Only AthenaHQ and Peec AI Enterprise list more.
• It lists SSO, SAML, SCIM and SOC 2 on its own pages, which a large security team will ask for.
• Its agents write drafts and can publish them to a content system, so measurement and writing sit in one tool.
• It raised $180 million in September 2026, which matters to a buyer worried about a vendor disappearing.
• Its trial gives unlimited seats, so a whole team can look before anyone talks about price.

Which alternative fits which buyer

The right alternative depends on which criterion matters most to you. Here is how each product lines up against each need, using only what its own page says.

You want a published price you can start on today

OtterlyAI starts at $29 a month for 15 prompts. Peec AI starts at $95 a month for 50 prompts. Semrush sells its toolkit at $99 a month per domain on yearly billing. Agentcites is $149 a month per website. Scrunch’s Core plan is $250 a month, and AthenaHQ has a free tier and then $295 a month.

You need the widest set of assistants

AthenaHQ says its paid plan covers 11 or more models, including Grok and Mistral. Scrunch lists four on its Core plan and nine on Enterprise, including Claude and Meta AI. Peec AI lets you choose 3 on standard plans and says Enterprise tracks up to 13. Agentcites asks four today, which is fewer than most.

You want the tool to write the fix

Profound, AthenaHQ and Agentcites all write content. Peec AI says plainly on its own site that it "does not write or publish content itself". If your team already writes well and only needs to know what to write, that may suit you. If you have no writer, it will not.

You sell to a large company with a security review

Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch and AthenaHQ all offer single sign-on on their top plan. Agentcites does not offer single sign-on or an API today. For this buyer, Agentcites is the wrong choice and we would rather say so.

Where Agentcites fits, and where it does not

Agentcites fits a small team, with one website or several, that wants to read the answers, see who is named instead of it and why that might be, and start an editable draft when it decides to act. It does not fit a company that needs many assistants, daily tracking, an API or single sign-on.

What it does, from our own product: it asks 50 questions written from your site, weekly, of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and DeepSeek. It keeps every answer word for word, so each figure can be checked against the text behind it. It counts questions that name you apart from questions that do not. For each lost answer it says why you lost and whether a page could change it, then drafts that page, up to 50 a month. The price is on the pricing page, and setting up costs nothing.

What it does not do: it asks fewer assistants than most products here, it scans weekly rather than daily, each website costs $149 a month, and it has no API, no single sign-on and no agency plan. It is also younger than every product in this list.

How to test any alternative before you pay

Run the same small test on every tool you shortlist, because the same question can get a different answer from week to week. A short trial with your own questions tells you more than any comparison page, including this one.

1. Write ten questions a buyer would type that do not include your brand name.
2. Put the same ten into each trial, with the same assistants where the tool allows it.
3. Open the full answer behind at least three figures in each tool and check that it says what the figure claims.
4. Ask each vendor how many answers per month your plan produces, and whether it counts branded questions apart.
5. Check whether the tool tells you what to do next, and whether it does that work or leaves it to you.
6. Read the pricing page again on the day you sign, because these prices change.

A figure you cannot open and read the answer behind is a figure you have to take on trust, so test that first.

For every product we compared, the one to one pages are on our compare page. Each of them lists where the other product is ahead of us.