Profound Alternatives (2026): Tools That Track AI Visibility, and What None of Them Measure

Every list of Profound alternatives starts from the same assumption: you need what Profound sells, just cheaper. Profound closed a $96M Series C at a $1B valuation in February 2026, led by Lightspeed, bringing its total raised to roughly $155M. That money bought the category-leading dashboard for 1 question: how many times did an AI engine mention my brand? It is a fair question. But before you compare 6 trackers on price, ask a harder one: what happens after all of them tell you the same score? Every tool on this list counts the outcome. None of them measure the cause, which is whether an AI model can tell you apart from your category in the first place.

The short version: Profound is the enterprise benchmark, but it is demo-led with no public pricing, and third-party reviews place it around $499/month. If you want the same measurement cheaper, Otterly starts at $29/month, Peec AI at €89/month, Semrush at $99/month, Hall has a free tier, Ahrefs Brand Radar plugs into an existing Ahrefs plan, and Scrunch covers the mid-market from $295/month. All 7 tools, Profound included, measure mentions, citations, and share of voice: the symptom, not the cause. The cause is distinctiveness, and it needs a different instrument.

What Profound sells, in 1 sentence

Profound runs structured prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews daily, then reports where your brand appears, how it is framed, and how you rank against rivals. CEO James Cadwallader built the Answer Engine Optimization category around that loop, and Fortune 500 clients pay for the depth. The gap most buyers hit is simpler: no public price, no self-serve trial, and a sales cycle before you see your own data. That gap is what the alternatives below exist to fill.

The alternatives, compared

Tool	What it measures	Fits
Ahrefs Brand Radar	Mentions and citations across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot	SEO teams already paying for Ahrefs
Peec AI	Multi-model citation tracking, share-of-voice dashboards, source analysis	Mid-market teams that want speed under €100/month
Otterly.ai	Prompt-level brand visibility, link citations, GEO audits across 6 engines	Solo marketers and small teams starting out
Scrunch	Brand presence in AI answers plus the sources engines cite	Mid-market and agencies needing action layers
Semrush AI Toolkit	Prompt tracking, competitor research, AI search site audit per domain	Teams already inside the Semrush ecosystem
Hall	Brand monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot	Anyone who wants a free tier before committing

Read the middle column again. 6 different tools, 6 price points, 1 measurement: did the machine say my name? That is worth knowing. It is not worth confusing with knowing why.

The 6 alternatives in detail

1. Ahrefs Brand Radar. The strongest choice if you already run Ahrefs. Brand Radar checks AI answers against 405M+ search-backed prompts and added YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit mention tracking in early 2026. The catch is the bill: it is a $199/month add-on per AI index on top of a base plan from $129/month, so realistic totals land between $328 and $1,148/month. Reviewers flag the missing Claude and Grok coverage as a real blind spot.

2. Peec AI. The mid-market favourite, and the fastest riser: $29M raised and past $4M ARR within 10 months of launch. Starter is €89/month, Pro is €199/month for 100 tracked prompts, with unlimited countries and languages included. Strong measurement, cleaner interface than most, weaker on telling you what to do about the number.

3. Otterly.ai. The cheapest real entry point. Lite is $29/month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot; Standard is $189/month for 100 prompts; Premium is $489/month for 400. Google AI Mode and Gemini cost extra, and API access only arrives at Standard. Fine for a first look at whether AI mentions you at all.

4. Scrunch. Built for teams that want monitoring plus recommendations. Starter runs $295/month and Pro $495/month billed annually, with the core plan covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot; Enterprise expands to 9 engines including Claude and Grok. Agencies get client-separated workspaces, which is why the agency tier prices higher.

5. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. A $99/month per-domain add-on covering 25 prompts, with 50 extra prompts at $60/month. The Semrush One bundles (Starter $199, Pro+ $299, Advanced $549 per month) fold it in with classic SEO tracking. The obvious pick if your team lives in Semrush already; the prompt limits pinch fast if it does not.

6. Hall. The only one here with a genuinely free plan: 1 project, 25 questions, 300 answers per month, refreshed weekly. Paid tiers run $199, $599, and $1,499+ per month, and coverage includes Claude, which Ahrefs skips. A sensible way to see your baseline before paying anyone anything.

What none of these 7 tools measure

Here is the part every roundup skips. Profound, Brand Radar, Peec, Otterly, Scrunch, Semrush, and Hall all sit at the output layer. They report whether the machine named you last Tuesday. Not 1 of them measures the input that decided it: whether your brand reads as itself or as the category average when a model retrieves it. A model gives generic answers for a mechanical reason, it defaults to the statistical mean of your category unless something in your signal forces it to pick you specifically. And left alone, a model will average your voice into that mean.

This is why brands churn through trackers. The dashboard drops, you publish more, the dashboard stays flat, you switch tools, and the new dashboard reports the same flat line with different fonts. The number was never the problem, because the cause sits upstream: distinctiveness, the measurable distance between how you sound and how your category sounds. Trackers count the vote; they cannot explain why it was cast. Distinctiveness is why the vote went the way it did, and the metric that follows from it is Share of Recommendation: how reliably a machine chooses you, not how many times it happened to say your name.

At Ivanooo, Firoz Azees built the cause-side instrument, one that scores how far your voice, entity, and proof sit from the category average, because a tracker can tell you that you are losing without ever telling you why.

So pick a tracker from the table, and pick by budget; they are closer to each other than any of them admit. Then measure the thing they all skip. Get the free distinctiveness read on your brand: paste your URL, see whether AI can tell you apart, with the evidence. No demo call, unlike Profound.

FAQ

What is the best Profound alternative in 2026? It depends on budget, not features. Otterly at $29/month for starting out, Peec AI at €89/month for mid-market speed, Ahrefs Brand Radar if you already pay for Ahrefs, Scrunch from $295/month for agencies. They all measure the same output: AI mentions and citations.

How much does Profound cost? Profound publishes no pricing; the pricing page routes to a demo. Third-party reviews in 2026 cite figures around $499/month for the platform, with older signals at $99 and $399 tiers. Budget for an enterprise sales cycle rather than a checkout page.

Is there a free Profound alternative? Yes. Hall offers a free Lite plan with 1 project, 25 questions, and 300 answers per month on a weekly refresh. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot, which makes it a reasonable free baseline before paying for anything.

Do AI visibility tools improve my AI visibility? No. They measure it. Every tool in this comparison reports whether engines mention you; changing that number requires changing the input the engines read. That input is distinctiveness: how far your brand sits from the category average. Measurement is not a strategy, because a scoreboard has no lever.

What is the difference between tracking AI mentions and measuring distinctiveness? Mentions are the outcome: the engine named you or it did not. Distinctiveness is the cause: whether a model can tell you apart from your category at all. Trackers like Profound and Peec count the first. An instrument like Ivanooo's scores the second, which is the one you can deliberately move.

Which AI engines should a tracker cover in 2026? At minimum ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity, since those carry most AI-answer traffic. Claude coverage separates the field: Hall, Profound, and Scrunch Enterprise include it; Ahrefs Brand Radar does not. Check the engine list against where your buyers ask questions before comparing prices.