# Profound alternatives in 2026: an honest guide by team type

Magnus Windeløv, Head of Marketing · Oct 19, 2026

Seven Profound alternatives compared on published pricing, free trials, AI models and markets, and which fits your team best.

Most teams pick an AI visibility tool for the wrong reason. They buy the deepest data, when what they're short of is time.

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. A Head of Marketing at a European B2B company put the other side plainly: the cost wasn't outrageous, but it would top their software bill. If that sounds more like you, the best 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.

One thing up front. We're 3RD, so we're one of the options on this list. To keep it fair, every competitor fact comes from the vendor's own website, and we say where other tools are stronger.

Every tool on this list shows some version of a competitor rank: how often AI names you compared with the brands you compete with. Here's what it looks like in 3RD, in a demo workspace for a sportswear brand tracked against six competitors. In the past week, the brand was second of seven at 45% visibility, and the leader was at 51%.

![Competitor rank with recommended rate and visibility score (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S02-competitor-rank-demo.png)

*Competitor rank for the past week: second of seven at 45%, behind a leader at 51%. Every tool on this list reports some version of this view. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

*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

| Your team | Best fit | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Enterprise team with in-house AI visibility specialists | **Profound** | Deepest data, up to 9 answer engines, SSO, SOC 2 and an API on Enterprise |
| Marketing or content team without a specialist | **3RD** | Diagnosis, a ranked plan and drafts in your brand voice; you ask 3RD Agent and it does the work |
| Brand selling in several countries and languages | **3RD** or **KIME** | 3RD tracks each country–language pair separately from €299/month; KIME includes unlimited countries and languages on every plan |
| Analytics-first team that will act on the data itself | **Peec AI** | Strong analytics at a low published price, unlimited users |
| Smallest budget | **Otterly.AI** | Plans from $29/month, four AI engines included |
| Already pays for an SEO suite | **Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit** | AI tracking next to your keyword data, $99/month |
| Enterprise brand that wants to control what AI agents read | **Scrunch** | Its Agent Experience Platform builds an AI-friendly version of your site |
| Team that wants many AI engines on one plan | **AthenaHQ** | Eleven engines on its $295/month Starter plan |

## What Profound does well, and when to keep it

Start with the case for staying. Profound has earned its place.

- **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 compared 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 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?

Whichever tool you pick, the setup looks similar: buyer questions grouped into topics and tracked per market. Here's that view in a demo workspace: 207 prompts for a sportswear brand, grouped into eight topics and tracked in Denmark, Sweden, the UK and the US.

![Prompts grouped by topic with recommended rate and visibility (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S13-prompts-by-topic-demo.png)

*Buyer questions grouped into topics, from basketball shoes at 85.2% visibility to socks at 10.4%, each tracked per market. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

**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 by how often AI names them. A tool can be great and rarely named by AI.

## 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.

Here's what that looks like in a demo workspace. Over the past week, a sportswear brand was named in about 60% of ChatGPT answers but only about 21% of Google AI Overviews answers, on the same questions.

![Visibility per AI model (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S03-ai-models-demo.png)

*Visibility splits by model: about 60% on ChatGPT, about 20% on Google AI Mode and AI Overviews. The same brand can look strong on one assistant and weak on another. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

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

| Tool | Entry price (monthly) | Free trial | AI models on entry plan | Several markets | Insight to action |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Profound** | Custom (Enterprise) | 7 days, 50 preset prompts, 1 region, 1 language | 3 on the trial, up to 9 on Enterprise | Custom, on Enterprise | Agents draft and publish to your CMS after approval |
| **3RD** | €99 (€84 billed annually) | 7 days, no card | Up to 2 (up to 4 on Growth, 13 on Enterprise) | Any market from Pro (€299) | Diagnosis, a ranked Playbook, and 3RD Agent drafts the work; you check and publish |
| **Peec AI** | €85 (€70 billed annually) | Check peec.ai | 3 on every plan | 1 country on Starter, 3 on Pro and Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise | Prioritized actions with steps and owners; suggested rewrites to your draft |
| **Otterly.AI** | $29 | Not stated on the pricing page | 4 (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot) | Multi-country support | Recommendations (3 a week on Lite, unlimited from Standard) |
| **Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit** | $99 per domain, billed annually | 7 days (Semrush-wide) | ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity | Not stated on the pricing page | Site audit issues for AI search; your team acts on them |
| **Scrunch** | $300 ($250 billed annually) | 7 days, no card | 7 platforms incl. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Meta | Not stated on the pricing page | Page audits with fixes, and an AI-friendly version of your site (AXP) |
| **AthenaHQ** | Free tier; Starter $295 | Free tier with 300 credits | 11 engines on Starter | Single language on Starter; multi-language on Enterprise | Content optimization agent, on-page and off-page actions |
| **KIME** | €99 (Explorer) | 7 days | 2 on Explorer, 3 on Core, 10 on Enterprise | Unlimited countries and languages on every plan | AWX agents execute tasks; you choose which run automatically |

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 tracking in shopping answers is in closed beta. Starter covers one market.
- **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 in a demo workspace. The sportswear brand asks: "What should we focus on first to get chosen more often when buyers ask AI which running shoes to buy?" The answer starts with the numbers: a 1.8% recommended rate, second behind a leader at 5.4%, while the brand is mentioned in 50% of answers. It calls that "a content and positioning problem, not a reach problem". Then it lists three things in order: get shoe specs and claims in front of buyers, close the gap on Gemini and Google AI Mode, and test more specific prompts.

![3RD Agent answering what to focus on first (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S12-3rd-agent-what-to-focus-on-demo.png)

*3RD Agent reads the numbers, names the problem and ranks three things to do first. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

[See 3RD vs Profound in detail →](https://www.get3rd.com/compare-3rd-vs-profound)

### 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.- **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 →](https://www.get3rd.com/compare-3rd-vs-peecai)

### 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.- **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 →](https://www.get3rd.com/compare-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 →](https://www.get3rd.com/compare-3rd-vs-kime)

## Where AI gets its answers about a category

One more thing to check in any tool: which pages AI reads when it answers "which one should I buy?". In most categories, they are third-party "best of" lists and reviews. Across 100 brands tracked in 3RD, the median brand's own website made up just 6.8% of the sources AI cited in its category.

![Top cited sources with mention status (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S16-cited-sources-gaps-demo.png)

*The most-cited sources for the past week are review sites and "best of" guides. Three of the top seven don't mention the brand; those are outreach targets. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

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.

A good tool also shows which of your own pages AI cites. In the demo workspace, the sportswear brand's most-cited pages are its global homepage, its Danish homepage, a sustainability campaign page, a kids' size chart and a buying guide.

![Most-cited owned pages (3RD demo workspace; brand names blurred)](https://www.get3rd.com/media/S15a-owned-cited-pages-demo.png)

*The brand's most-cited owned pages. A size chart and a buying guide make the list: help content earns citations. Demo workspace; brand names blurred.*

## 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](https://www.get3rd.com/for-agencies).

## How to test an alternative in 7 days

Most of these tools offer a 7-day trial. Use it on your 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 →](https://www.get3rd.com/case-boe-beaute)

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 screenshots and worked examples come from a demo workspace for a sportswear brand, with brand names blurred. They are not customer results. 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, owned citation share from 100 brands, 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](https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing), [tryprofound.com](https://www.tryprofound.com) and its features and Marketing Engineer pages
- Peec AI: [peec.ai/pricing](https://peec.ai/pricing) and [docs.peec.ai](https://docs.peec.ai)
- Otterly.AI: [otterly.ai/pricing](https://otterly.ai/pricing)
- Semrush: [semrush.com/pricing/ai](https://www.semrush.com/pricing/ai)
- Scrunch: [scrunch.com/pricing](https://scrunch.com/pricing)
- AthenaHQ: [athenahq.ai/pricing](https://www.athenahq.ai/pricing)
- KIME: [kime.ai/pricing](https://kime.ai/pricing)
- 3RD: [docs.get3rd.com](https://docs.get3rd.com) and [pricing](https://www.get3rd.com/pricing)

[See all 3RD comparisons →](https://www.get3rd.com/compare)