The best Profound alternative depends on your budget and whether you want to measure AI visibility or actually fix it. For most teams the strongest self-serve alternatives in 2026 are Peec AI (cleanest prompt tracking, unlimited seats from $95/mo), Frase (tracking plus a content-fix workflow from $39/mo), and the Semrush AI Toolkit (if you already live in Semrush, $99/mo per domain). If your goal is to move a specific page from invisible to cited without a subscription, Metricus Forager is the only truly free page-level AI visibility optimizer on this list — it rewrites and re-tests your copy in place. Profound itself remains the enterprise depth leader but is priced and gated for large teams. Every price below was verified against the vendor's own page the week of August 3, 2026.
Why people leave Profound
Profound reached a $1 billion valuation via a $96M Series C on February 24, 2026, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (with Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Evantic, Saga, and South Park Commons), bringing total funding to $155M+ — the most credentialed answer-engine-optimization platform on the market. But its public entry tier tracks ChatGPT only, and the multi-engine features most teams want begin higher up. As of early August 2026 the tryprofound.com pricing page is demo-led with no public checkout price; the widely cited figures are Starter ~$99/mo (ChatGPT only, 50 prompts) and Growth ~$399/mo (three engines, ~100 prompts, six AEO articles), with all ten engines on custom Enterprise. A separate demo-gated Lite plan is cited at $499/mo for one engine and 50 prompts per day. Treat $399/mo as the real entry price for a multi-engine program.
The 8 best Profound alternatives, compared
| Rank | Tool | Best for | Engines (self-serve) | Self-serve entry | Free tier? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peec AI | Clean prompt tracking, agencies | 3 of 7 (choose) | $95/mo | 7-day trial, no card |
| 2 | Frase | Track + fix in one workflow | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI | $39/mo (billed yearly) | Free checker + 7-day trial |
| 3 | Semrush AI Toolkit | Teams already in Semrush | Multi-engine + Google AI | $99/mo per domain (add-on) | Free one-time checker |
| 4 | Otterly.AI | Budget monitoring | 4 base (+add-ons) | $29/mo | 7-day trial |
| 5 | AthenaHQ | Growth-stage GEO analytics | Broad multi-engine | Published self-serve | Free sampler |
| 6 | Writesonic | Mention + sentiment tracking | Select major | Published self-serve | 7-day trial (25 prompts) |
| 7 | Profound | Enterprise depth & compliance | Up to 10 (Enterprise) | ~$99/mo (ChatGPT only) | No free tier |
| 8 | Metricus Forager | Fixing one page, free | Page-level, engine-agnostic | Free | Truly free, no card |
1) Peec AI — Best overall self-serve tracker
Peec AI is the cleanest way to watch how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI surfaces cite your brand, and it is the reason most Profound refugees land softly. Verified against peec.ai/pricing (rechecked August 2026): Starter is $95/mo for 50 tracked prompts and one project; Pro is $245/mo for 150 prompts and two projects; Advanced is $495/mo for 350 prompts, five projects and a Looker Studio connector. Every paid tier includes unlimited seats — the single biggest cost advantage over Profound — plus daily tracking and a 7-day trial with no card. The constraint: you pick three engines from seven on every self-serve tier, and a fourth engine is a paid add-on ($35–$165/mo). Claude and GPT-5 Search are Enterprise-only. Peec measures and benchmarks; it does not rewrite your pages, so pair it with a page-level optimizer to actually close the gaps it finds.
2) Frase — Best if you want tracking and the fix in one place
Frase tracks citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI, then feeds the gap straight into research, drafting, GEO scoring and publishing. Plans start at $39/mo billed yearly with AI visibility tracking included, and there is a genuinely free AI Visibility Checker and GEO Score that need no card (rated 4.8/5 on G2). Where Profound hands you a dashboard, Frase closes the loop — which matters if your team will not act on one more alert. It is heavier than a pure tracker if all you need is a rank-and-mention number.
3) Semrush AI Toolkit — Best if you already own Semrush
The AI Visibility Toolkit is a $99/mo-per-domain add-on covering 25 tracked prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and more (verified August 2026). Extra prompts are +$60/mo per 50; extra domains +$99/mo each; there is no free trial for the add-on. You can fold it into a Semrush One bundle (Starter $199/mo) if you also want classic SEO. There is a separate free one-time AI-visibility checker at semrush.com/free-tools. Best when AI visibility is one KPI among many, not your primary metric.
4) Otterly.AI — Best budget entry
Verified at otterly.ai/pricing (August 2026): Lite $29/mo (15 prompts), Standard $189/mo (100 prompts), Premium $489/mo (400 prompts), 15% off annually. Four base engines (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot) are included; Gemini and Google AI Mode are add-ons ($9–$149/mo). Genuine entry point for a proof of concept; the jump from Lite to Standard is steep, and it monitors rather than fixes.
5) AthenaHQ — Best growth-stage GEO analytics
Athena pairs prompt tracking across a broad engine set with an "action center" that suggests next steps, plus GA4/Search Console attribution. Published self-serve plans with a free sampler that is among the most useful in the category for a first look. Credit-style tracking can burn fast on broad query sets, and, like the trackers above, it stops short of rewriting your pages.
6) Writesonic — Best for early-mover mention and sentiment tracking
Writesonic tracks select major engines with competitor benchmarking, sentiment and AI-crawler analytics, and layers in AI writing. Note the free-tier truth: what Writesonic markets as free is a 7-day trial (25 prompts across three engines, no card), not a permanent free product. Good if you want tracking plus drafting under one login and can commit to a paid plan after the trial.
7) Profound — Best enterprise depth
Profound's crawler-level Agent Analytics, Prompt Volumes and 1.3B+ real-query dataset are genuinely ahead for large brands that need board-level reporting and compliance (SOC 2, SSO). But its shape — annual billing, ChatGPT-only entry, multi-engine from ~$399/mo, full coverage on custom Enterprise — makes it the wrong tool for a lean team that mainly wants faster visibility gains. Keep it on the shortlist only if AI visibility is a dedicated, funded program.
8) Metricus Forager — Best free way to fix a single page
Every tool above tells you that you are invisible; Forager is the only one here that rewrites the page and re-tests the new copy for citability, free, with no card. It is a page-level AI visibility optimizer, not a portfolio tracker, so it complements rather than replaces Peec or Frase: use a tracker to find the losing page, then use the free AI visibility optimizer to fix it. When you need a one-time, documented before/after audit of a priority page, the Metricus Snapshot is $499 one-time with no subscription — but the free Forager is where almost everyone should start.