10 Best Profound Alternatives for AI Search Visibility in 2026

DemandSphere tracks SERP rankings, AI Overviews, and AI Mode alongside brand mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. Every plan, including the entry-level Starter tier, includes unlimited users and unlimited domains rather than charging per seat.

Plans start at $79 a month and scale with tracked keywords and prompts, since one prompt draws from the same daily volume budget as ten keywords. 

Analytics AX, the platform's log analytics module that shows how GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot crawl a site, is available only as an add-on to Enterprise plans. DemandSphere is best for in-house SEO teams and agencies that want SERP rankings and AI citation tracking in one platform without per-seat pricing, and for larger programs that also want crawl-level log analytics on the same account.

It is one of the few platforms in this list that offers crawl behavior data at all, even though that layer sits on the Enterprise tier rather than the base plan. That distinction matters because a page cannot be cited by an AI engine if the underlying bot cannot crawl it in the first place.

Teams on the Starter or Pro plan get full SERP and AI citation tracking today, and can add the BigQuery export at any tier along the way. Log analytics through Analytics AX becomes available once the program grows into an Enterprise contract.

Otterly.ai is a Gartner Cool Vendor for 2025, built for individual marketers and small teams who want to get started quickly. Pricing is prompt-based and starts at $29 a month with unlimited team members included, according to GetMentioned's alternatives roundup.

It covers a broad set of surfaces including Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Copilot alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Teams that need per-answer evidence or deep competitive segmentation tend to outgrow the entry tiers fairly quickly.

Otterly.ai earned its Gartner recognition partly by making setup fast, with most accounts tracking their first prompts within minutes of signing up. That speed makes it a reasonable starting point for a team that has never measured AI visibility before and wants a low-commitment way to see where they stand.

Rankscale is a Vienna-based platform built around strong coverage of German-language and DACH markets. Pricing runs on a credit system that starts around $20 a month, which makes it accessible for smaller budgets.

The tradeoff is that credit-based pricing can climb fast once a team adds more prompts and engines. Brands whose primary audience speaks German get the strongest value here, since regional depth is the platform's main differentiator.

A team evaluating Rankscale should map expected prompt and engine volume before signing up, since credit systems are harder to budget against than a flat monthly seat price. That upfront math is the difference between a genuinely cheap tool and one that quietly becomes expensive by the third month.

GetMentioned stores every AI-generated answer it tracks, so a team can open the exact sentence where their brand appeared and see which source the engine cited. Coverage spans ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, with strong support for European markets including Poland and the wider CEE region.

Plans start at EUR 89 a month with unlimited competitors and seats on every tier. It is a solid fit for European brands and agencies that want daily, inspectable data without signing an enterprise contract.

Peec AI is a European platform with a strong research reputation and a loyal following among SEO teams. Entry pricing starts around EUR 89 a month with unlimited seats included on that plan.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews come included, but Gemini, Claude, and several other engines are paid add-ons at roughly EUR 20 to 30 each per month. A full multi-engine setup on Peec ends up costing noticeably more than the headline price suggests.

Semrush folded AI visibility into its existing SEO suite through the AI Visibility Toolkit, priced at $99 a month per domain when billed annually. The toolkit tracks 25 custom prompts daily and reports on mentions across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, and Perplexity, based on Semrush's own published pricing.

It also includes an AI Search Site Audit feature that checks whether a site's technical setup supports AI crawlers. Teams already living inside Semrush for keyword research and backlinks get the most value, since the AI toolkit sits on top of data they are already paying for.

AthenaHQ is a Y Combinator-backed platform founded by engineers who previously worked on Google Search and DeepMind. It tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, with pricing starting around $295 a month.

There is no free trial, so teams need to commit before testing the platform on their own data. AthenaHQ tends to suit technically minded US startups that want a GEO tool built by people with search infrastructure backgrounds.

Its Y Combinator backing also means it ships features quickly, since the team operates with the same iteration speed common to other YC-funded companies. That pace can be an advantage for early adopters willing to trade a missing free trial for faster access to new tracking capabilities.

Ahrefs Brand Radar runs as an add-on to an existing Ahrefs subscription, which starts at $129 a month for the Lite plan. Each AI platform index costs $199 a month on its own, or $699 a month bundled across all six supported engines, according to Ahrefs pricing details reported by Ekamoira.

That puts a full six-engine setup between roughly $828 and $1,148 a month once the base subscription is included. Brand Radar covers Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot, but it does not track Claude or Grok at all.

Scrunch AI was acquired by Sitecore in June 2026 and now operates inside Sitecore's digital experience platform. It pairs brand-representation monitoring with an Agent Experience Platform that reformats content specifically for AI agents to consume.

Pricing is enterprise and custom, which runs counter to what most teams leaving Profound over cost are looking for. It is best suited to enterprises that are already Sitecore customers or that want AI content optimization bundled together with visibility measurement.

The acquisition folded Scrunch's monitoring layer into a much larger digital experience suite rather than keeping it as a standalone point solution. That makes it a stronger fit for a marketing organization already standardized on Sitecore than for a team simply shopping for the cheapest AI visibility tracker.

HubSpot's AI Search Grader is free, requires no account, and returns a one-time visibility score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. It works well as a first gut check before committing budget to any paid platform.

The tool only produces a single snapshot rather than continuous tracking, so it cannot show a trend over time. It also cannot confirm whether a specific content change actually improved visibility, since there is nothing to compare the score against.

Treat it as a starting point rather than a monitoring solution, similar to how a one-time site audit differs from ongoing rank tracking. Most teams that like what they see from the free grade eventually move to one of the paid platforms above for repeated, dated measurements.

1. Is there a free alternative to Profound?

There is no free version of continuous, enterprise-grade AI visibility tracking. HubSpot's AI Search Grader offers a free one-time score, which is useful for a first check but not for ongoing monitoring.

2. What does Profound cost compared to these alternatives?

Profound has historically published a $99-a-month Starter tier limited to ChatGPT only, plus a $399-a-month Growth tier covering three engines, with Enterprise running custom and reportedly $2,000 to $5,000 or more a month. Most alternatives on this list start well below Growth's $399 price point, from $20 to $295 a month depending on coverage and depth.

3. Which alternative is best for agencies managing multiple clients?

DemandSphere and Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit both work well for agencies because pricing scales with tracked volume rather than per client. GetMentioned and Otterly.ai also include unlimited seats, which helps when several team members need account access.

4. Do these tools track Google AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Most do, including DemandSphere, Otterly.ai, Peec AI, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, and Ahrefs Brand Radar. Coverage details vary, so it is worth confirming which specific AI Overview features are included on the entry-level plan before subscribing.

5. What should a team check before switching from Profound?

Confirm which AI engines are tracked on the plan a team can actually afford, since some platforms move Gemini or Claude to paid add-ons. It also helps to check whether the tool stores full answer text or just a mention count, since stored answers make it possible to see exactly how a brand was described.

6. Can a team use more than one AI visibility tool at once?

Yes, and many agencies do this during a trial period to compare data quality before committing to one vendor. Running two tools side by side for a month is usually enough to see whether the numbers and cited sources roughly agree.