Profound alternatives: compare features and fit

What Profound does well and what stays in Enterprise

Profound monitors nine answer engines, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek, with responses captured "directly from the browser", every tracked prompt run daily, and support for more than 30 languages and 150 regions. That covers visibility, share of voice, sentiment, themes and source citations, sliced by region, topic and persona.

What sets it apart, though, is not the monitoring dashboard. It is data that collecting your own prompts does not produce. Prompt Volumes draws on licensed conversations from double-opt-in consumer panels, updated weekly, with data from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity in ten countries, including Brazil. That is the difference between knowing whether your brand appears in the questions you chose to track and knowing which questions people actually ask. Agent Analytics closes the loop from the other side, reading server logs to show which AI bots access your site and how often, without a JavaScript tracker.

The vendor also publishes its method. An internal two-week study in June 2026, covering 5,271 prompt configurations (753 prompts across seven platforms, in the US), compared one collection a day with ten a day. The typical day-to-day difference between the two readings was about 2 percentage points for visibility and 0.3 points for citation share. Citation share is the noisier metric per prompt, because it depends on which sources get retrieved: ten runs a day cut that daily noise by roughly 40%, and a substantial share of the remaining movement still comes from changes in the platforms themselves. It is the vendor's own study, but it is the kind of transparency a data team can evaluate.

Most of this sits behind a sales conversation. For brands, there is a free Trial and Enterprise. The Trial runs 50 prompts daily for seven days on three engines (ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews), with five Prompt Volumes searches and no export, API or history, and Trial users cannot customize their prompts. Agencies have a plan of their own, Agency Growth.

Enterprise has no public price: it is custom-priced, with a tailored prompt plan, up to nine engines, CSV and JSON export, the API, SSO/SAML and SOC 2 compliance. In the Enterprise engine list, Exa Search takes the place of Grok, which appears among the nine in Answer Engine Insights; confirm the exact list in the proposal. General availability of Prompt Volumes was announced for enterprise customers in June 2025.

Why switch: from a free trial straight to a negotiated contract

The main reason is the plan structure. Between the free seven-day Trial, with 50 prompts and three engines, and a negotiated contract there is nothing: ongoing tracking, the nine engines, the full conversation panel, export, the API and SSO all sit in Enterprise, with no public price. For a company with a procurement process, that means a quote and a negotiation before any ongoing data, on a timeline the vendor does not publish.

Two other reasons depend on the operation. The first is the gap between what the tool offers and what the team can consume: if the operation can only assign one person part-time, a dashboard with nine engines, regions, personas and weekly volumes tends to produce more analysis than decisions. The second shows up in markets like Brazil: a trial limited to one language and one region, followed by a contract negotiated without a public price, may weigh more on a brand that sells in Portuguese and needs one monthly indicator rather than a demand panel. The multi-region coverage is real; the question is whether the operation needs it.

What decides the switch

Five dimensions decide the switch: platform coverage in the entry plan, not the marketing list; the declared collection method; whether there is proprietary demand data (a panel or index of real questions, not only the prompts you registered); how the data gets out (export and API); and price. The nine tools below are grouped by the buyer profile each serves best: first the cheap, reversible entry points, then from the deepest data to focused monitoring. The same criteria, without the Profound-specific frame, are in GEO tools: how to choose.

For teams that need a cheap, reversible entry point

Lastfind

Lastfind sits at the opposite end of the cost axis, and that has clear consequences. It is a lean, open source monitoring tool, with an AGPL-3.0-only core and the same codebase behind the Cloud service and the self-hosted installation. The free Cloud account monitors up to 10 prompts weekly, in 1 topic and on ChatGPT only, collecting on Mondays at 4 a.m. Brasília time, with no payment details required. On capacity, it is far smaller than any paid plan in this comparison: ten prompts collected once a week. Cloud has no paid plan at this launch.

The independent installation has no license fee, collects daily on your own infrastructure and lets you choose channels and capacity through your own provider account, which can cover the six platforms the project supports: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. Provider and infrastructure costs are separate and are yours. Anyone running their own installation uses their own DataForSEO credentials and Cloudflare account, and keeps the data under their control.

Collection runs server-side through DataForSEO, with a method per platform: the interface response for ChatGPT and Gemini, the model's API response for Claude and Perplexity, and the AI block of the results page for AI Mode and AI Overviews. Every original response is archived with a hash in private storage, and cited sources are kept separate from consulted sources according to what each provider reports, with missing data marked as missing rather than as an empty list. On the independent installation the collection window is daily, eligible at 4 a.m. Brasília time, and completion depends on the provider. The tool compares your brand with up to ten registered competitors, not with the whole market, and exports a CSV of the full period.

Do not choose Lastfind if you need a demand panel, automated sentiment grading, automatic recommendations, crawler monitoring on your site, a public API, Copilot or Grok; anyone who needs an enterprise contract with clickstream data, nine engines and a procurement process will not find it in a lean tool. Lastfind serves teams that have concluded they need daily GEO monitoring with exportable raw evidence and an explicit method and are willing to run it on their own infrastructure, or teams that want to test the method first on a small weekly ChatGPT sample.

Otterly.AI

Otterly.AI is the other reversible entry point: Lite costs US$29 per month and Standard US$189, with 100 prompts and API access, but Standard plus Claude, AI Mode and Gemini totals US$416 per month for 100 prompts across seven engines. Choose it if the lower entry point or the API solves the problem, and use the dedicated Otterly alternatives guide for the plan details.

For teams that need demand data without an enterprise contract

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

The toolkit is a direct alternative for anyone who wanted Prompt Volumes but not the contract. Semrush's database holds more than 317 million prompts and responses across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode, sourced from AI search clickstream data and Google's keyword dataset, in 117 regional databases, with responses captured from real requests and not through LLM APIs. Tracking of your own prompts runs through Position Tracking, which queries each prompt on the chosen platform and location every day; brand performance reports update weekly.

The toolkit costs US$99 per month per domain, billed annually, with 25 tracked prompts; the dollar figure comes from the Semrush knowledge base, and outside the US the price appears in local currency. Each additional user needs their own toolkit access at US$99 per month, and packs of 50 extra prompts cost US$60 per month. Export is capped at 1,000 rows per file and ten exports per user per day. The toolkit has no free trial, even though Semrush advertises a seven-day trial for the platform in general.

It serves teams already on Semrush that want to cross estimated demand with presence in answers. It does not cover Claude, Copilot or Grok in the documented tracking, and 25 tracked prompts is a tight quota for a broad prompt set; extra packs add 50 at a time.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Ahrefs offers two paths, and the distinction matters. The AI Visibility Index starts from real queries in the Ahrefs keyword database, expands each into natural questions and runs more than 481 million prompts through the platforms, storing the responses; the index question sets are re-run monthly on a 90-day window. Custom Prompts are questions you define, checked daily, weekly or monthly, as you choose for each platform. Coverage differs between the two: the index covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot; Claude is available only in Custom Prompts, and each Claude update consumes 8 checks, against 1 on the other platforms.

The index starts at US$199 per month; every paid Ahrefs plan, from US$129 monthly on Lite, also includes a daily Custom Prompts quota (5 prompts on Lite, 10 on Standard, 20 on Advanced), and custom prompt packs cost US$50 (2,500 checks), US$100 (7,000) and US$250 (25,000) per month. Billed in euros, the index runs €179, Lite €119 and the packs €46.70, €93 and €234. A check is one prompt on one platform in one location, which makes the math comparable with other tools' billing units. The index may have limited coverage for brands with little or no search volume, and Ahrefs recommends custom prompts in those cases.

It serves teams already paying for Ahrefs that want a broad benchmark without configuring prompts. It is not a conversation panel: the index derives from search keywords, not from questions asked of assistants, which is a difference in kind from Prompt Volumes, not only in size.

For teams that genuinely need an enterprise contract

If the requirements list includes SSO, an API, multiple domains and a team that consumes data every week, the alternative to Profound is another negotiated contract. The comparison is then between contracts, and what changes is the method and the breadth of what each one integrates.

Conductor

Conductor places AI monitoring inside an enterprise SEO platform, with an "API-first approach" to data collection "wherever possible", and never trains on customer data. It is the methodological opposite of browser capture, which is defended as what the user actually sees. Neither approach is wrong; they are different answers to the question "what counts as an AI answer?", and an enterprise buyer should decide which one they accept before looking at price.

Conductor publishes no price: it sells customized enterprise plans, with a free three-week trial. Platform lists vary between pages on its own site (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity on one; ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on another); ask for the contract's list in the commercial proposal. It serves organizations that want SEO and AI monitoring in the same contract and have the team to use both. It is not an option for anyone who only wants the monitor.

seoClarity (Clarity ArcAI)

seoClarity covers nine engines, including DeepSeek and Grok, the same breadth as Profound's Enterprise tier, with thousands of generated prompts across priority topics and an explicit method decision: visibility is checked weekly by default, described as "the best balance of tracking the probability of your brand appearing" while "remaining cost-effective for enterprise scale", with daily tracking available. Against the daily-collection study above, it is the opposite position; ask the vendor to justify it with numbers.

Base plans start at US$2,500 per month and ArcAI is priced separately, with no public figure. It serves companies with many domains that already run SEO on the platform. It makes no sense as a first monitoring tool.

Evertune

Evertune tackles variation between runs with published sampling rather than collection frequency. The tool samples each prompt 100 times on every model and maintains EverPanel, a proprietary panel of more than 150 million user prompts. It is the only alternative in this group with both a proprietary conversation panel and documented statistical sampling.

Starter costs US$60 per month, billed annually, with 5,000 prompt credits per month and tracking on up to five models. The 100-samples-per-prompt statistical design starts only at Pro, which costs US$800 per month billed annually, with 100,000 prompt credits per month, 11 models, Prompt Volumes, 25 content-agent articles per month, data download and a data MCP for Claude or ChatGPT. Enterprise, unpriced, adds bot analytics, site audit, export to a cloud bucket and APIs, SSO and unlimited content. The ads agent is charged as a share of media spend (10% on Starter, 8% on Pro), and the Ads Manager Agent has a seven-day free trial on Starter.

It serves consumer and media brands that need to defend a number statistically and want activation (ads, affiliates) in the same place. It is overkill for a team monitoring 100 prompts in one B2B category.

For teams that want focused monitoring, in between

Scrunch AI

Scrunch has two plans. Core costs US$250 per month, with 125 unique prompts, five site audits per month, one brand workspace, five user licenses and four platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot), limited to one country and one language; sentiment, recommendations and AI bot traffic are already included in that plan, and there is a seven-day trial. Enterprise, priced on request, lists nine platforms (adding Claude, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Meta AI and Grok), API access, SSO (SAML and OIDC) and a dedicated account team. Collection combines browser automation with official APIs, with responses collected daily for the first 14 days of a prompt and every 72 hours by default after that.

Against Profound's Enterprise, which runs every prompt daily on up to nine engines with no public price, Scrunch's Core publishes its price: four platforms, 125 prompts and up to 5,000 responses a month for US$250, but with no demand panel, one country and one language, and a default 72-hour cadence after the first two weeks instead of daily collection. It serves mid-sized companies that want to monitor and also serve content to agents. Claude, Gemini and AI Mode sit in Enterprise.

Peec AI

Peec AI is the focused option when daily interface collection and three models of your choice are enough; consider an enterprise contract if demand data and greater regional depth are requirements, and use the dedicated Peec alternatives guide for the full comparison.

Price, platforms and demand data side by side

"Entry" is the cheapest paid plan displayed; where no paid plan is public (Profound), the row shows the trial or free plan. The platforms column refers to that plan, not the whole product.

Tool	Public entry price	Platforms in the entry plan	Declared method	Proprietary demand data	Export and API
Lastfind	Free Cloud account (10 prompts weekly); no license fee for the independent installation; no paid Cloud plan at launch; open source	Free Cloud: ChatGPT; independent installation: up to 6 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews), per your provider account	DataForSEO per platform; Free weekly, installation daily	None	Full-period CSV; no public API
Profound	No public price for brands; free Trial (50 prompts, 7 days); Enterprise custom	Trial: ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews; Enterprise: up to 9	Browser capture, daily	Prompt Volumes (licensed panels): 5 searches in Trial, custom in Enterprise	CSV/JSON and API in Enterprise only
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	US$99/mo per domain (annual)	ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity	Daily Position Tracking; clickstream	317 million prompts, 117 databases	1,000 rows per export, 10/day
Ahrefs Brand Radar	US$199/mo (index); Custom Prompts included in paid plans from US$129	Index: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot; Claude only in custom prompts (8 checks per update)	Monthly index + custom prompts (daily to monthly)	Index of 481 million keyword-derived prompts	Not detailed
Conductor	No public price	Lists vary by page	API-first where possible	Not documented	AgentStack (APIs, MCP)
seoClarity ArcAI	No public price for ArcAI; base from US$2,500/mo	9 (includes DeepSeek and Grok)	Not detailed; weekly by default	Prompt research module (search demand); source not detailed	Not detailed
Evertune	US$60/mo (Starter, annual); Pro US$800/mo	Starter: up to 5 models; Pro: 11	100 samples per prompt per model (Pro and Enterprise)	EverPanel, 150 million prompts; Prompt Volumes from Pro	Data download from Pro; cloud-bucket export and APIs in Enterprise
Scrunch AI	US$250/mo (Core)	4 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot); 9 in Enterprise	Browser + official APIs; daily for 14 days, then every 72h	Not listed on the pricing page	Export not detailed on the pricing page; API Enterprise only
Peec AI	Price not published by the vendor; third-party figures conflict	3 models of your choice	UI scraping, daily	Not documented	CSV; API Enterprise only
Otterly.AI	US$29/mo (Lite)	ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot; 3 engines paid separately	Neutral user; per-platform interface/API path not documented	Not documented	CSV; API and MCP from Standard

When the enterprise contract is justified and when it is overkill

The decision depends less on what the platform does and more on what your team can turn into action every week. Four questions separate the cases.

First: will someone open the demand panel weekly to decide on content? If yes, Prompt Volumes, EverPanel or the Semrush database belong in the calculation; if the data would only feed a quarterly presentation, a monitor of your own prompts with solid export may be enough for the narrower task of tracking a fixed question set, but it does not replace demand data.

Second: does the brand sell in more than three markets with different languages, and do AI answers in those markets change the purchase decision? Coverage of 150 regions becomes valuable when regional teams consume the data. A brand that sells in one language in one country needs that language, that country and the platforms relevant to its buyers.

Third: does procurement require SSO, an API and a contract with security terms? If so, the list includes, among others, Profound Enterprise, Conductor, seoClarity, Evertune Enterprise and the Enterprise tiers of Peec (which documents API access, SSO and up to 13 models), Scrunch and Otterly; compare collection method and what each one integrates, because the price will be negotiated either way.

Fourth is the simplest: how many people will read the report? A nine-engine dashboard with one part-time reader becomes a fixed cost with no audience.

With those answers, the path by profile is short:

• Operation that requires the data on its own infrastructure: Lastfind is the only open source option in this comparison; the cost becomes DataForSEO and Cloudflare, and the operation is yours.
• Brand or agency that needs a reversible entry point: Lastfind, if raw evidence and an explicit method matter more than sentiment grading and recommendations, since the Free Cloud account and the license-free installation (provider and infrastructure costs aside) cost nothing to start; or Otterly on Standard, with the add-ons included.
• Marketing team already paying for Semrush or Ahrefs: the toolkit or Brand Radar deliver demand data without a new contract; accept the smaller prompt quota and the export limits.
• Mid-sized company that only wants monitoring: Scrunch publishes its price (US$250 for four platforms, 125 prompts and 5,000 responses a month, with a 72-hour cadence after the first two weeks); Peec is the focused alternative, with three models of your choice and a price to confirm with the vendor.
• Enterprise with a data team and several markets: Profound remains the reference; compare it with Conductor and seoClarity if you want integrated SEO, and with Evertune if the statistical defense of the number matters more than engine breadth.

Before switching, run the same test on any vendor: ask in writing for the platform list of the plan you will actually sign, the collection method and the export limit. If the answer is a marketing list, you still do not know what you are buying.

Prices and limits checked on official vendor pages in October 2026; the Ahrefs dollar amounts are from September 2026.