Profound alternatives in 2026: an honest guide by team type

The short answer: the best Profound alternative depends on who does the work. 3RD, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Semrush, Scrunch, AthenaHQ and KIME all publish prices and offer a free trial or free tier.

Profound is a strong platform. It's built for teams that have, or want to build, AI visibility specialists, and its paid plan is Enterprise at a custom price. If that's you, keep it. If it isn't, here's how the alternatives differ and which one fits your team.

One thing up front. We're 3RD, so we're one of the options on this list. We also track our own category in 3RD, with 193 buyer questions across five markets. In that tracking, Profound is the brand AI names most often, and we're ninth of fourteen.

Where we stand against the tools buyers compare us with. Profound leads; we are ninth of fourteen.

So this isn't a page written from the top of the table. It's written by a team that measures the category every day, knows who AI recommends and why, and still thinks most teams pick the wrong tool for the wrong reason.

Updated October 19, 2026. Every competitor fact below comes from the vendor's own website, checked October 18–19, 2026, and links to its source at the end.

The short answer by team type

What Profound does well, and when to keep it

Start with the case for staying. Profound has earned its place, and our own data says so: it's the most visible brand in our category.

• Data depth. Up to nine answer engines on Enterprise: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search.
• Agents that publish. Profound's agents draft content and publish it directly to your CMS after an approval step.
• Ads and shopping. Ads Studio builds and runs AI search campaigns. ChatGPT Shopping tracking is available on Enterprise.
• Enterprise security. SSO with SAML, SOC 2 and an API on Enterprise.
• A training path. Profound University runs a Marketing Engineering course for teams that want to build these skills in-house.

Keep Profound if you have specialists who want the deepest data and will build their own workflows, or if your security review requires a SOC 2 report today.

Why teams look for an alternative

Buyers tell us four things when they start looking. In their words:

1. "What does it cost?" Profound's pricing page lists a free trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan. You can't see a price before a sales call.
2. "Will it tell me the truth about my market?" The trial covers one region and one language, with 50 prompts recommended for your industry. You can't change them during the trial. More regions and languages are agreed in the Enterprise contract.
3. "Who does this on Monday?" Profound is built around the idea that marketers become marketing engineers. That suits teams who want the skill. It's a hurdle for a content or brand team that wants the work done, not a new discipline.
4. "It would be our most expensive tool." A Head of Marketing at a European B2B company put it plainly: the cost wasn't outrageous, but it would top their software bill. Teams want to start with one brand or market, prove it and then expand.

If none of these apply to you, you probably don't need an alternative.

How we compared the alternatives

We used two kinds of evidence.

1. What a buyer can check before talking to sales. We read each vendor's own pricing and product pages on October 18–19, 2026, and compared:

• Published price. Can you see the entry price on the website?
• Free trial. Can you try it on your own brand?
• AI models at entry. How many assistants does the cheapest plan track?
• Markets. Can you track several countries and languages, and on which plan?
• From insight to action. Does the tool stop at a score, give you a list, or do the work?

2. How visible each vendor is in AI answers. That's the ranking at the top of this page. It comes from our own 3RD workspace: 193 buyer questions about AI visibility tools, grouped into nine topics and tracked in Denmark, the UK, Germany, France and Portugal.

The questions behind our ranking: 193 buyer questions grouped into nine topics, tracked per market.

What we didn't do. We didn't score the tools on data accuracy. That needs a controlled test on the same prompts at the same time, and no public comparison has done that fairly, ours included. We also didn't rank the tools on our own visibility data. A tool can be great and rarely named by AI. We use the ranking as context, not as a verdict.

Why the number of AI engines matters more than it looks

Before the table, one finding from our customer data changes how you should read the "AI models" column.

Different assistants pick different winners. Across 60 brands tracked in 3RD, the most visible competitor was a different brand on different assistants for 37 of them (62%), using the same prompt set. Inside one brand, the gap between its best and worst assistant was a median 16 points across 83 brands.

In plain terms: if your tool only checks one or two assistants, it can tell you you're winning while a competitor owns the assistant your buyers actually use.

Our own account shows the same pattern at a smaller scale. This week, every mention we got came from Google AI Overviews. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini named us zero times.

Visibility splits by model. Our only mentions this week came from Google AI Overviews.

So check two things in every trial. Which assistants are tracked on the plan you'd actually buy? And does the tool show results per assistant, or blend them into one score?

Profound alternatives compared

Prices exclude VAT and change often. Check each vendor's page before you buy.

Watch the unit, not the number. Vendors count prompts differently. In 3RD, one prompt is one question on one AI model in one market, so 100 prompts can be 100 questions on ChatGPT or 33 questions on three models. In Peec AI, every tracked prompt runs on every model in your plan. AthenaHQ counts credits, where one credit is one AI response. Before you compare plans, ask each vendor one question: does a prompt multiply by models, by markets, or by brands?

Watch "mentioned" versus "recommended". Most tools report how often AI mentions you. Fewer report how often AI recommends you over the alternatives. The gap is big. Across 60 brands and 494,000 checked answers in 3RD, the median brand was mentioned in 19.8% of answers but recommended in 0.2%. That's about one recommendation for every 65 mentions. 3RD's definition is strict: a recommendation means the answer picks you over the alternatives, and being listed first doesn't count. Ask every vendor how they define it, and whether they show it at all.

Each alternative, on the same template

Every tool gets the same four lines, so you can compare like for like.

3RD: for marketing teams without an AI visibility specialist

• Best for: content, brand and marketing teams that want the work done, in one market or many.
• What it does well: it works like the specialist on your team. It tracks how AI answers your buyers' questions in each market. It scores the five drivers that decide whether AI chooses you (content coverage, content quality, crawlability, authority and outreach) and explains in plain language which ones hold you back. Then it builds a Playbook toward a goal you set, with tasks ranked by estimated impact. You open 3RD Agent, ask what to focus on, and ask it to do the work. Content Agent drafts in your brand voice, proofread to native quality in each language. You check it and publish.
• Where it falls short: no SOC 2 report yet (SAML single sign-on is on Enterprise, by agreement). Product visibility in shopping answers is coming soon. Starter covers one market. And, as the ranking above shows, AI rarely names us yet. We're fixing that in public.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): Starter €99/month (€84 billed annually), Pro €299 (€254), Growth €499 (€424). 7-day trial, no card.

Here's what "ask 3RD Agent what to focus on" looks like, on our own account. We asked it what to fix first to get chosen when buyers ask AI which platform to use.

We asked 3RD Agent what to fix first. Its answer: build the pages that answer buyer questions. This article is one of them.

See 3RD vs Profound in detail →

Peec AI: for analytics-first teams

• Best for: teams with an analyst who will turn data into a plan.
• What it does well: AI search analytics for marketing and SEO teams, with deep coverage of sources, brand perception, recurring objections AI raises against your brand, and fact-checking. It gives a prioritized list of actions, and its content optimization suggests rewrites to a draft. It's the second most visible brand in our own tracking.
• Where it falls short: someone on your team still turns the list into a plan and does the work. Multi-country tracking starts on Pro.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): €85, €205 and €425 a month (€70, €180 and €360 billed annually), with three models and unlimited users on every plan.

3RD vs Peec AI →

Otterly.AI: for the smallest budget

• Best for: teams that want to see where they stand for little money and will do the work themselves.
• What it does well: four AI engines on every plan, plus unlimited team members, from $29 a month. It's the third most visible brand in our tracking.
• Where it falls short: Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons. The Lite plan tracks 15 prompts and gives three recommendations a week.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): from $29 a month.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: for teams already in Semrush

• Best for: SEO teams that own AI visibility and want it in the tool they know.
• What it does well: tracks 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, next to the keyword data your SEO team already uses. It adds an AI Visibility Score, share of voice, sentiment and an AI search site audit.
• Where it falls short: it reports issues; your team acts on them. Markets aren't stated on the pricing page.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): $99 a month per domain, billed annually.

3RD vs Semrush →

Scrunch: for enterprise teams focused on what AI agents read

• Best for: enterprise brands with a web team ready to manage a machine-facing version of their site.
• What it does well: generous on prompts (350 custom prompts on Starter) and covers seven AI platforms, including Meta AI. Its Agent Experience Platform (AXP) generates an AI-friendly version of your site. SAML and OIDC single sign-on are on Enterprise.
• Where it falls short: markets and languages aren't stated on the pricing page, and the entry price is the highest with a public number.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): $300 a month ($250 billed annually). 7-day trial, no card.

AthenaHQ: for teams that want many engines

• Best for: teams where engine breadth matters more than markets.
• What it does well: eleven engines on Starter, including Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral, with a content optimization agent and on-page and off-page actions.
• Where it falls short: Starter supports a single language; multi-language and multi-region tracking are on Enterprise.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): free tier with 300 credits; Starter $295 a month with 3,600 credits.

KIME: for teams that want agents to run tasks automatically

• Best for: teams comfortable letting agents act in their brand's name.
• What it does well: KIME calls itself "the agentic operating system for AI search". Its AWX agents execute tasks such as outreach emails and blog posts, and you decide which run automatically. Unlimited countries and languages come on every plan.
• Where it falls short: fewer engines on the entry plan (two on Explorer). Automatic execution means less review before anything goes out under your name.
• Pricing (as of October 2026): Explorer €99 with two engines; Core €399 with three.

3RD vs KIME →

Where AI gets its answers about this category

One more thing a buyer can learn from our tracking: which pages AI reads when it answers "which tool should we use?". Most of them are third-party "best tools" lists. Several of them name our competitors and not us.

The pages AI cites for our category. Red boxes: two lists that name our competitors but not us, and one where we earned a mention.

That's useful for you as a buyer too. The tools AI recommends most are, partly, the tools that appear in the most third-party lists. Visibility in AI answers tells you about a vendor's marketing reach. It doesn't tell you whether the product fits your team. Read the lists, then run a trial.

Our own pages that AI cites most are the homepage and our comparison pages, which is one reason we publish them carefully and date every fact.

Our most-cited pages are the homepage and our comparison pages.

How to choose: a decision guide

You have AI visibility specialists, and security review needs a SOC 2 report. Stay with Profound. 3RD offers SAML single sign-on on Enterprise by agreement, but has no SOC 2 report yet.

You're a content, brand or PR team without a specialist. The bottleneck isn't data. It's turning the data into work. Look for a tool that explains why AI picks a competitor and does the drafting. That's what 3RD is built for. A data-first tool will leave you with a dashboard and no time to act on it.

You sell in several countries and languages. Check two things. First, whether each country–language pair is tracked separately: AI answers Denmark in Danish differently from Denmark in English. Second, which plan unlocks more markets. 3RD tracks any market from Pro (€299). KIME includes unlimited countries on every plan. Peec AI includes 3 countries from Pro. Profound agrees regions and languages in an Enterprise contract.

You want the lowest monthly bill. Otterly.AI from $29, then 3RD, Peec AI and KIME around €85–€99. Compare what the entry plan includes, not only the price: the number of models, markets and users, and whether you get a diagnosis or only a score.

You already pay for an SEO suite. Try the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit first. If your marketing team, not the SEO team, will own AI visibility, test a dedicated tool next to it.

You're an agency. Ask each vendor for agency terms. Profound mentions an Agency Growth plan per client workspace. 3RD sets up agency organizations with client accounts, per-brand licenses and free 5-day demo brands for pitches. See 3RD for agencies.

How to test an alternative in 7 days

Most of these tools offer a 7-day trial. Use it on your own brand, not the demo:

1. Day 1: set up the same ground. Add your top three competitors, your main market and 20–30 questions your buyers actually ask. Include unbranded questions like "best [category] for [use case]".
2. Day 2: check your market. Add a second country or language if you sell there. See whether the tool keeps them apart.
3. Day 3: read the diagnosis. Does the tool tell you why a competitor is chosen, or only that it is? Does it show results per assistant?
4. Day 4: ask for the plan. What should you do first, and why that before anything else?
5. Day 5: do one task. Draft one page or one fix. Note how long it took and who did it.
6. Day 6: share it. Send one screen to your manager. Would it survive the budget conversation?
7. Day 7: decide on the bottleneck. If your team lacked data, pick the deepest data. If it lacked time, pick the tool that did the most work.

One warning about the week itself: don't judge a tool on a single day's score. Across 111 brands in 3RD, the median brand's visibility moved 12.5 points between its best and worst day in a month, with no change to its prompts. A week gives you a feel for the workflow, not a verdict on the numbers.

What we've seen with teams without a specialist

Boë Beauté, a beauty brand, started at 0.0% AI visibility. One in-house marketer with no GEO or SEO background followed the plan in 3RD. Within a quarter, the brand reached 22.2% visibility and the top five of seven competitors. Read the Boë Beauté case →

That's one brand, not a promise. It shows what's possible when the know-how is built into the tool and one person has time to act on it.

Switching from Profound

1. Export your prompts from Profound.
2. Map them to the import template: prompt, country, language, topic, category and tags. 3RD imports up to 10,000 prompts per CSV file.
3. Set up audiences afterward. They aren't part of the import.
4. Run both side by side for the trial week and compare the diagnosis and the plan on the same prompts.

About the data

The visibility ranking, the per-model chart and the cited sources come from 3RD's own workspace, tracking 193 buyer questions about AI visibility tools in five markets (week to October 19, 2026). The customer findings come from aggregated, anonymised 3RD data between September 19 and October 18, 2026: model disagreement from 60 brands, the mentioned-versus-recommended gap from 60 brands and 494,000 checked answers, and daily variance from 111 brands and 732,000 answers. The sample leans toward Nordic brands. No brand, domain or prompt is named. These are observational data, not a controlled experiment.

FAQ

What is the most affordable Profound alternative for several countries and languages? KIME includes unlimited countries and languages from €99 a month. 3RD tracks any market from its Pro plan at €299 a month (€254 billed annually), with each country–language pair tracked separately. Peec AI includes three countries from its Pro plan. Count how many prompts each market needs before you compare prices.

Which Profound alternatives offer a free trial and published pricing? 3RD, Scrunch and KIME publish prices and offer a 7-day trial. Peec AI and Otterly.AI publish prices; check their sites for current trial terms. Semrush publishes the AI Visibility Toolkit price and offers a 7-day trial of Semrush. AthenaHQ publishes its Starter price and has a free tier. Profound offers a free 7-day trial, but its paid plan is priced on request.

Is there a Profound alternative for a content marketing team without an AI visibility specialist? Yes. 3RD is built for that team. It explains which of five drivers hold you back, builds a ranked plan toward your goal, and 3RD Agent drafts the work in your brand voice. Your team checks it and publishes.

Which is better for a multi-market European brand, Profound or 3RD? For a team without specialists that sells in several European markets, 3RD fits better: it tracks each country–language pair separately from €299 a month and drafts in each language. Profound fits better when specialists run the work and security review needs a SOC 2 report.

Can we run Profound and an alternative side by side? Yes. Most alternatives offer a 7-day trial. Load the same prompts and competitors into both, then compare the diagnosis, the plan and the time it takes your team to act.

Sources

Checked October 18–19, 2026. We update this page when a product changes.

• Profound: tryprofound.com/pricing, tryprofound.com and its features and Marketing Engineer pages
• Peec AI: peec.ai/pricing and docs.peec.ai
• Otterly.AI: otterly.ai/pricing
• Semrush: semrush.com/pricing/ai
• Scrunch: scrunch.com/pricing
• AthenaHQ: athenahq.ai/pricing
• KIME: kime.ai/pricing
• 3RD: docs.get3rd.com and pricing

See all 3RD comparisons →