The short answer
Profound is the enterprise standard among AEO tools, and its pricing has swung back to opaque: the pricing page now shows a free trial and custom Enterprise quotes, and the $99 and $399 self-serve tiers it listed earlier in 2026 no longer appear. So the reason to shop alternatives is once again the buying motion itself: every real deployment starts with a sales conversation. If that shape does not fit, the best overall alternative is Peec AI: transparent pricing from $95/mo, unlimited seats, broad engine coverage, and agency plans built for tracking multiple brands. On a tight budget, Otterly.ai starts at $29/mo. For brand and PR monitoring, Scrunch AI (published at $250/mo on annual billing). If you already pay for Ahrefs, Brand Radar bolts AI tracking onto your existing stack. And if your budget is zero, manual tracking is free and good enough to start.
Why teams look for a Profound alternative
Profound earned its position. It is the most established AI visibility platform, it tracks brand presence across a wide range of engines, analyzes the sources those engines cite, and reports at the scale large organizations need. For enterprise teams with budget and stakeholders, it is a defensible default, and we say as much in our full Profound review.
The friction is opacity again. For a stretch of 2026 Profound published self-serve Starter and Growth tiers at $99/mo and $399/mo billed yearly, which briefly made it shoppable without a call. As of September 2026 those tiers no longer appear: the pricing page shows a free Trial plan (10 prompts run once, ChatGPT only) and a custom-priced Enterprise tier, which is the only way to reach the up-to-nine-engine coverage, daily runs, API access, SSO/SAML and SOC2 that earned Profound its reputation. Every real deployment now starts with a sales conversation.
Most teams evaluating an AEO tracker are not enterprises. They are agencies tracking several client brands, in-house marketers proving a concept, or SEO teams adding AI monitoring to an existing stack. Each of those buyers has a better-fitting AEO platform, and one thing to check before choosing any of them:
If most citations point at third-party pages, an AEO monitoring tool that only counts brand mentions is measuring the wrong thing. Every recommendation below tracks citations, meaning the actual source URLs behind AI answers, because that is the data you can act on. Prices and features move fast in this category, so treat everything here as a 2026 snapshot and confirm current details with each vendor.
1. Peec AI: best overall Profound alternative
What it is. Peec AI is an AI visibility platform that tracks how often AI engines mention and cite your brand across the prompts you define, with each plan covering 3 models of your choice (from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gemini; additional models are paid add-ons and Enterprise reaches 12, including Claude). It reports visibility, position, and sentiment, benchmarks you against competitors on the same prompts, and, critically, tracks the source domains behind the answers, so you can see which third-party pages the engines trust. We run our own client tracking on Peec daily across multiple brands, so this is the tool on this list we know from hands-on use; our full Peec AI review goes deeper.
Pricing. Fully transparent and self-serve. Starter is $95/mo for 50 prompts, Pro $245/mo for 150 prompts, and Advanced $495/mo for 350 prompts. Agency plans run on usage-based credits: from $245/mo for 10,000 credits, Growth $495/mo for 25,000, and Scale $795/mo for 65,000. Every paid plan includes unlimited seats, and annual billing takes 15 percent off.
Best for. Agencies and in-house teams that want serious multi-engine tracking, citation-source data, and competitor benchmarking without a sales call. The unlimited seats and credit-based agency tiers make it the natural pick for anyone managing more than one brand, which is why it tops most lists of AEO tools for agencies.
Vs Profound. On modelability, Peec's $95 Starter includes 3 engines of your choice at a price on the page, where Profound's cost for any real deployment now sits behind a custom Enterprise quote. You can start at $95/mo, see exactly what you are paying for, and scale up as your prompt set grows. Profound retains the edge for enterprise depth, scale, and support. For everyone below enterprise, Peec covers the tracking that matters at a price you can see before you talk to anyone.
2. Otterly.ai: best budget alternative
What it is. Otterly.ai is the budget-friendly entry point to AEO tracking software. It monitors brand visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, with a clean interface that first-time users pick up quickly.
Pricing. Lite is $29/mo for 15 tracked prompts, Standard $189/mo for 100, and Premium $489/mo for 400. Annual billing brings those to roughly $25, $160, and $422/mo. One thing to budget for: Claude, Google Gemini, and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons, running about $9 to $439/mo each depending on plan and model.
Best for. Small teams and solo marketers who want to prove AI visibility tracking is worth paying for before committing real budget. At $29/mo it is the cheapest credible AEO rank tracker on the market.
Vs Profound. These tools are not competing for the same buyer. Otterly's $29 entry tier is a published price for an ongoing tracker, where Profound now offers a free one-time trial and a custom Enterprise quote. But if your question is "do AI engines mention us at all, and who beats us," Otterly answers it for less than the cost of a lunch meeting. Just factor in the Google add-ons if Gemini or AI Mode matter to your audience.
3. Scrunch AI: best for brand and PR monitoring
What it is. Scrunch AI approaches AI visibility from the brand and communications side. Beyond tracking mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and Meta, it focuses on narrative control: hallucination detection, brand-accuracy monitoring, page audits, and agent-traffic monitoring. The core question it answers is not just "are we mentioned" but "is what AI says about us true."
Pricing. Published at scrunch.com: Starter $250/mo on annual billing ($300 month-to-month, 3 seats, 350 custom plus 1,000 industry prompts), Growth $417/mo annual, Enterprise custom. Confirm current tiers with the vendor.
Best for. Brand, comms, and PR teams whose priority is how AI engines describe the company, catching inaccuracies and hallucinations before customers or journalists do.
Vs Profound. Profound is a visibility and citation analytics platform first. Scrunch overlaps on tracking but differentiates on narrative accuracy and hallucination detection, a use case Profound is not primarily built around. If your risk is being described wrongly rather than not being mentioned, Scrunch is the more targeted buy, priced between Profound's two published tiers.
4. Ahrefs Brand Radar: best for existing Ahrefs users
What it is. Brand Radar folds AI visibility tracking into the Ahrefs suite. The AI Visibility Index covers all platforms (AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and Grok, whose data collection is currently paused) on a check-metered basis, it monitors YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit alongside them, tracks third-party citations, and draws on a very large prompt database rather than only the prompts you enter by hand.
Pricing. The AI Visibility Index is $199/mo (83 prompts/day, 2,500 checks/mo, $0.02/check overage), covering all platforms on a check-metered basis; heavier platforms consume more checks per update, with Claude at 8 checks per update. Custom Prompts start at $50/mo and require a paid Ahrefs plan. Ahrefs' help pages now describe standalone purchases of the Index, so a base subscription is no longer the automatic prerequisite it used to be.
Best for. Teams already invested in Ahrefs who want their AEO tracker sitting next to their SEO data, in a tool their team already knows.
Vs Profound. At $199/mo the Index is a published, modelable price where Profound now requires a custom Enterprise quote for any real deployment. What it adds that Profound does not is the surrounding SEO suite plus social and video monitoring in one login. If you are not an Ahrefs customer, buying the base subscription just to unlock Brand Radar rarely beats the purpose-built alternatives above.
5. Manual tracking: the free alternative
What it is. No software at all. You pick 20 to 50 prompts that match real buyer questions in your category, run them across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews on a recurring schedule, and log the results in a spreadsheet: were you mentioned, at what position, who else was mentioned, and which source URLs did the engine cite. We walk through the full workflow, templates included, in our guide to free AEO tools.
Pricing. Free, apart from your time and any AI subscriptions you already pay for.
Best for. Teams with zero tool budget, or anyone who wants to understand the mechanics of AI visibility before paying an AEO platform to automate them. Running prompts by hand teaches you faster than any dashboard which sources the engines actually trust in your category.
Vs Profound. This is not a like-for-like comparison; it is the proof-of-concept stage. Manual tracking does not scale past a few dozen prompts, engines personalize and fluctuate between runs, and you get no history, benchmarking, or alerting. But it costs nothing, and the day the spreadsheet becomes the bottleneck is the day you know exactly what to buy.
Profound vs the alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Best for | Entry price | Engine coverage | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | Enterprise teams | Free trial, then custom Enterprise quote | Up to 9 engines on Enterprise | Sales-led; the earlier $99/$399 self-serve tiers no longer appear |
| Peec AI | Best overall alternative; agencies | $95/mo | 3 of your choice from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini; extras paid, Enterprise covers all models | Self-serve, transparent |
| Otterly.ai | Budget, first-time tracking | $29/mo | ChatGPT, AIO, Perplexity, Copilot (Claude and Google engines are add-ons) | Self-serve, transparent |
| Scrunch AI | Brand and PR monitoring | $250/mo annual ($300 monthly) | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Mode/AIO, Meta | Published tiers, Enterprise quoted |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Existing Ahrefs users | $199/mo (AI Visibility Index, now purchasable standalone) | All platforms, check-metered (Claude burns 8 checks/update), + YouTube, TikTok, Reddit | Check-metered; Custom Prompts packs need a paid Ahrefs plan |
| Manual tracking | Zero budget, proof of concept | $0 | Any engine you can open | Your time |
Two newer vendors are also worth a look if engine breadth is why you considered Profound. AthenaHQ tracks 11 models on its $295/mo Starter plan and has a genuinely useful free tier, and Rankshift covers 9 engines from $82/mo on annual billing with unlimited seats and an API, though it is a newer entrant with thin third-party review volume. For every vendor's price in one place, see how much AEO tools cost.
Entry price compared
Here is the monthly entry price for each option side by side. Profound has no published dollar price any more, so its bar shows the free trial with a custom quote beyond it. Ahrefs Brand Radar is shown at its $199/mo AI Visibility Index price, which Ahrefs' help pages now describe as purchasable standalone.
How to choose
The right AEO tool depends on who is buying and why, not on which vendor has the biggest logo wall:
- Agency or multi-brand team: Peec AI. Unlimited seats, credit-based agency tiers from $245/mo, and citation-source tracking across 3 engines of your choice per plan.
- Small team testing the waters: Otterly.ai at $29/mo, upgrading once 15 prompts stops being enough.
- Brand or comms team worried about accuracy: Scrunch AI, for narrative monitoring and hallucination detection.
- Already paying for Ahrefs: Brand Radar, via the $199/mo AI Visibility Index, which covers all platforms on a check-metered basis.
- No budget yet: manual tracking, then graduate to a paid AEO tracker when the spreadsheet breaks.
- Enterprise with budget and procurement: honestly, still take the Profound demo. It is the standard for a reason, and the alternatives above are for everyone whose engine coverage needs outrun what the self-serve tiers deliver.
Whichever you pick, apply the same tests we use in our complete guide to the best AEO tools: coverage of the engines your buyers actually use, tracking of citations and not just mentions, competitor benchmarking on identical prompts, and a prompt set built from real buyer questions.
Watch: understand AEO before you buy tracking for it
If you are still getting oriented, this short explainer from Ahrefs covers what Answer Engine Optimization is and why the measurement layer matters.
Key takeaways
- Profound is the enterprise standard, but its pricing page now shows only a free trial and custom Enterprise pricing; the $99/$399 self-serve tiers from earlier in 2026 no longer appear.
- Peec AI is the best overall alternative: transparent pricing from $95/mo, unlimited seats, 3 engines of your choice per plan, and agency plans built for multi-brand tracking.
- Otterly.ai is the budget pick at $29/mo; watch for the paid Google Gemini and AI Mode add-ons.
- Scrunch AI ($250/mo on annual billing) fits brand and PR teams focused on narrative accuracy; Ahrefs Brand Radar fits Ahrefs-centric teams at $199/mo for the check-metered AI Visibility Index, now described as purchasable standalone.
- Manual tracking is free and a legitimate starting point; upgrade when scale, history, or reporting demands it.
- Whatever you buy, insist on citation-source tracking. With brands' own sites earning only 2 to 6 percent of AI citations in our tracking, the third-party sources are the data that matters.
The tool is the scoreboard, not the game
Every option on this page, Profound included, answers the same question: where does your brand stand in AI search right now. None of them move the number. That takes answer-first content, structured data, and the third-party citations that decide most AI answers, which is the work an AI visibility audit from AEO Labs scopes for you. Start with the full AEO tools guide if you are still comparing categories, or read our hands-on Peec AI review and Profound review if you have narrowed it to the top of this list.