What Profound does better than anyone on this list
Start with the honest part. If you are a large brand with a security review, several markets and a team that wants a vendor to sit in its Slack, Profound is built for you and the tools below are not. Its Enterprise plan covers more answer engines than any self-serve plan here (DeepSeek and Microsoft Copilot among them), adds ChatGPT Shopping, prompt volumes, CDN and analytics integrations, an agent layer for content work, and SSO with SOC 2 compliance. None of the alternatives below matches all of that in one contract.
Why teams look for a Profound alternative
The reasons cluster, and naming yours first turns this page into a five-minute read:
- No public price. You cannot budget for a tool whose price arrives after a demo, and a procurement cycle is a real cost for a small team.
- Scale mismatch. A site with twenty buyer questions does not need an enterprise contract, a dedicated specialist or every answer engine on the market to learn where it stands.
- The trial is short and narrow. Seven days on three engines tells you how the product feels, not how your numbers move over a month.
- You want to start this week, pay monthly and cancel without a conversation.
The alternatives, by need
Peec AI is the closest thing to Profound's analytics depth at a self-serve price. Position, sentiment and share of voice per answer, brand perception and objections, AI Shopping at SKU level, and log connectors for most CDNs. You pick three models per plan and add more for a fee. If you were shown Profound's dashboards and liked them, start here.
Otterly.ai is the lowest entry point for daily tracking, and every plan includes Microsoft Copilot alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons, so price the plan with the engines you actually want before comparing.
Semrush's AI Toolkit and Ahrefs Brand Radar are the consolidation plays. Neither goes as deep into answer analysis as the dedicated tools, but if your team already pays for one of those suites, extending it costs less friction than onboarding a new vendor. That is a legitimate trade.
Where Promvia fits — full disclosure: this is our product
Promvia tracks the six default AI surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, with Grok as an option on paid plans) and measures the visits and revenue AI assistants send: a one-line snippet on every plan including Free, verified Shopify orders, and a read-only Google Analytics connection, with confirmed and inferred visits kept in separate columns. Every rate carries its sample size and a 95% interval, so a small sample looks small.
- Free: 1 site, 5 tracked questions, Perplexity only, checked on demand.
- Starter, €29 a month: 1 site, 20 questions, all default engines on demand, a weekly automatic check plus a trend check every 3 days on 10 priority questions.
- Pro, €119 a month: 5 sites, 80 questions, daily checks on Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode with a weekly deep check on ChatGPT and Claude, plus the API and MCP server.
- Agency, €449 a month: 15 sites, 220 questions (up to 420 with question packs), the same cadence, and white-label client reports.
Those are the list prices on our pricing page as of 7 October 2026, in euros. Paid checkout had not opened yet on that date; the free plan is live. Choosing fewer engines lets any paid plan track up to three times as many questions.
Where Promvia is NOT a Profound replacement, in plain words: we have no SSO, no SOC 2 report and no contractual uptime SLA (our availability page explains why); we do not measure Microsoft Copilot or DeepSeek today (our methodology lists what we do measure); we have no ChatGPT Shopping capture; and our largest plan holds 420 questions, not thousands. If your shortlist exists because of any of those, Profound or Peec's Enterprise plan is the honest answer.
How to choose in 30 minutes
- Write down your 10 realest buyer questions: what customers type, not your brand name.
- Decide which engines you cannot do without. If Copilot or DeepSeek is on that list, the shortlist gets short.
- Run the same 10 questions through two tools' free plans or trials and compare what each caught, not the demo videos.
- Price the plan you would need in month three, engines and add-ons included, not the cheapest rung.
- Ignore any vendor who guarantees you'll be recommended. No tool can promise placement in AI answers; the honest ones measure where you stand.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Profound cost?
Profound does not publish a price. On 7 October 2026 its pricing page showed a free 7-day Trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan. Figures for annual contracts circulate in third-party articles, but we could not verify any of them against Profound's own page, so we do not repeat them here. Ask Profound for a quote.
Which Profound alternative has the widest engine coverage?
Among self-serve plans, check each vendor's current list rather than a count: Otterly includes Microsoft Copilot from its cheapest plan and sells Claude, Gemini and AI Mode as add-ons; Peec lets you pick three models per plan and add more; Promvia includes its six default surfaces on every paid plan, with Grok optional, and does not measure Copilot today. Profound's Enterprise plan still covers more than any of these self-serve plans.
Is there a free alternative to Profound?
Profound's own trial is free for seven days. Promvia has a free plan with no time limit (one site, five questions, Perplexity only), and Otterly and Peec offer free trials of their paid plans.
Can any of these tools guarantee AI assistants will recommend my brand?
No, and treat any vendor who promises it with suspicion, us included. AI answers are probabilistic and change between runs. What a tool can honestly do is measure where you stand, show who is cited instead of you, and point at the fixes that improve your odds.