Profound alternatives (2026): competitors, with prices

Profound is excellent for enterprises that want the deepest measurement. If you need a public price, a smaller budget, an add-on to your SEO suite, or proof that a fix worked, these alternatives are worth a look.

Profound is the best-funded name in AI search visibility, and for large enterprises it is often the right call. But its brand plans are sold through sales, its trial covers three engines, and plenty of teams want something they can buy today, cheaper, or built around a different job. This guide groups the alternatives by the reason you'd switch. Every fact comes from each vendor's own pages, checked on 26 September 2026, with Semrush, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, Rankscale, Scrunch and Profound re-checked on 17 October 2026.

One clarification, since the name sometimes appears beside marketing automation: Profound is an AI search visibility platform. Its Agents automate content work, such as drafting pages and staging them for approval, but its pricing page lists no email sending, lead scoring or nurture campaigns (checked 18 October 2026).

Our bias, stated up front: Stellarcast is our product, and it is one of the options below. We've kept the others to what their own sites say.

Why teams look beyond Profound

• No public brand price. Beyond a free 7-day trial, Profound's brand plan is "Custom". The Agency Growth plan shows no price, and each client workspace is $399 a month.
• Three engines below Enterprise. The trial tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; agency workspaces track ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. The nine-engine list is an Enterprise feature.
• You need a specific job done. Some teams need a budget tracker, some need an add-on to an SEO suite they already pay for, some need proof that a change worked.

The alternatives at a glance

Checked 26 September 2026 against each vendor's own pages; Semrush, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, Rankscale, Scrunch and Profound re-checked 17 October 2026. See the full pricing table for top-tier prices and trials.

Not sure which gaps matter for your brand? Get a free visibility audit first: no card, results by email.

If you want to fix gaps and prove the lift: Stellarcast

Stellarcast is built around a loop: monitor, diagnose, execute, prove. Every paid plan checks six engines daily, including both of Google's AI surfaces. From the $89 Starter plan it drafts fixes and, once you approve them, sends them to WordPress as drafts. From Growth ($249) every lift claim sits in a ledger with a confidence label, MEASURED, LIKELY or TOO-EARLY, so you never report a number you can't defend. Each market is measured with native-language prompts, and pricing is public. Choose it if Profound's analytics depth is more than you need and proof of results is what you're missing.

If you want focused monitoring for agencies: Peec AI

Peec's Starter plan is $95 a month (less on annual billing) and lets you pick three engines from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with extra models sold individually. Its agency plans include unlimited client workspaces and free 7-day pitch projects. It does not publish changes to a CMS itself, and Starter covers one country.

If budget is the constraint: Otterly.AI or Rankscale

Otterly's Lite plan is $29 a month and includes ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, with Gemini, AI Mode and Claude as paid add-ons; it offers a 14-day trial with no card. Rankscale's Essentials plan is $17 a month billed yearly only ($20 list; Pro is $99) and covers 21 engines on every plan, though engines consume credits at different rates. Neither publishes fixes to your site; both are trackers first.

If you already pay for an SEO suite: Semrush or Ahrefs

Semrush now sells its AI Visibility Toolkit inside its plans: the $139 a month SEO plan includes AI search tracking, and the $199 Starter plan adds 50 tracked prompts a day on one domain across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google Search (the standalone $99 per-domain toolkit we listed on 26 September no longer appears on its pricing page as of 17 October 2026). Ahrefs Brand Radar combines a large pre-built index of AI answers (the AI Visibility Index from $199 a month; custom prompt packages from $50 a month, or $699 for all models) with custom prompts on its paid plans. Both are strongest when you want AI visibility next to your existing SEO data; neither describes publishing fixes.

If you want Shopify or Webflow integrations: AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ has a free Essential tier and a $295 Starter plan tracking 11 engines, and its plans page lists on-page and off-page actions with Shopify and Webflow integrations (the eight-CMS list we saw on 26 September no longer appears there as of 17 October 2026). Its Starter plan covers a single market, and multiple countries are an Enterprise feature.

If you want AI agents to see an optimised site: Scrunch

Scrunch Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews and Copilot. Its distinctive idea, on Enterprise, is serving an AI-optimised copy of your site to AI agents at the edge without changing the site people see.

If you want an automated content pipeline: Profound alternatives that draft and publish

Profound's answer to content pipeline automation is its Agents: they generate briefs and optimised assets, every run stops at an approval step, and approved work publishes to one of ten CMSs, including WordPress, Contentful, Webflow and Sanity. Agents run on credits: the brand plan is custom-priced, and agencies get 400 agent credits a month with each $399 client workspace.

If what you want is that pipeline without a sales-led contract, three alternatives do the same job at a listed price:

• Stellarcast drafts each fix from a diagnosed gap, meaning a specific buyer question where a competitor is named and you are not, so the pipeline works on what is losing you answers rather than on a generic content calendar. Nothing publishes until you approve it, every approval is recorded with the change it made, and approved fixes go to WordPress as drafts from the $89 Starter plan. From Growth ($249), the lift from each shipped fix is tracked with a MEASURED, LIKELY or TOO-EARLY label.
• AthenaHQ lists on-page and off-page actions with Shopify and Webflow integrations from its $295 Starter plan.
• Writesonic and Goodie also publish approved changes to a CMS, usually on their higher tiers, and Knowatoa from its $59 Starter plan.

The efficiency question to ask any of them: does the pipeline start from the prompts you are losing, and can it show afterwards whether a published change moved anything? Drafting and publishing are the easy half.

How to choose

• Stay with Profound if you need nine engines, 30+ languages, log-level crawler analytics and enterprise security, and a sales-led contract suits you.
• Pick a budget tracker if you only need to know whether AI mentions you.
• Pick an SEO-suite add-on if your team already lives in Semrush or Ahrefs.
• Pick Stellarcast if you need gaps fixed and the lift proven, at a price you can see.

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