Profound alternatives for GEO, compared by published price, engine coverage, prompt limits and rival tracking, plus what to check besides the price.
A marketing lead, halfway through an enterprise pricing call, opens a new tab to see whether a cheaper plan can cover the work. They type: “best Profound alternatives for GEO.”
The useful comparison is not a feature parade. It is what each plan measures, what it leaves out and what you pay for it.
Profound’s public pricing page no longer lists a self-serve plan for brands. On 2 Oct 2026 it offered a free Trial, with 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and a custom Enterprise plan with a tailored prompt tracking plan, up to 9 Answer Engines tracked, dedicated support and SSO/SAML plus SOC 2 compliance. Its published prices are for agencies: Agency Growth at $99 a month plus add-ons, with each full client workspace (100 prompts a day on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and 400 Agent credits a month) at $399 a month.
That creates the first useful split. A cheaper alternative may match part of the job while losing engine coverage, prompt volume, content production, account controls or support.
“Additional credit thresholds require an Enterprise package and our accounts teams partner with customers to determine the right package based on an organization's marketing goals.”
Profound pricing page, tryprofound.com/pricing.
This line matters if you are leaving an enterprise quote. The only self-serve paid plan is the agency one, with 400 credits a month for each client workspace. Beyond that, the page gives no fixed price. The comparison moves into an enterprise package and a sales conversation.
The CiteGraph pricing page publishes monthly prices of $19, $29 and $69 for ChatGPT Only, Starter and Growth; the $19 plan asks ChatGPT only. Its pricing details also state that each plan is paid from the day it starts and can be cancelled at any time.
For a brand, Profound’s entry point is now the free Trial: 50 prompts run daily for 7 days, with no exports, API or history. After that, a brand moves to a custom Enterprise quote. CiteGraph’s $19 ChatGPT Only price and $29 Starter price above are both billed monthly. Profound publishes no project, rival or written-page limit for either of its brand plans.
The difference is the unit being metered.
The $19 plan from CiteGraph lists 1 project and 20 questions, asked on ChatGPT only. Its $29 plan lists 2 projects, 10 questions each, 3 runs per question on 4 engines, 6 tracked rivals and 30 written pages a month, according to its pricing page. Profound’s Trial lists 50 prompts on 3 engines for 7 days, according to Profound’s pricing page.
Those allowances do not map cleanly. A prompt is not a project, a credit is not a run and a written page is not an audit. Write down the unit that will run out first.
The AI search visibility and AEO tools leaderboard adds market context. The week of 2026-08-24 used 80 answers to 10 buyer questions across 4 engines. Profound was named in 48% of answers, with an interval of 37 to 58, and its own site was cited in 20%. This sample of answers is not a census of every buyer or engine.
If you are a brand that wants a published price to budget with, Profound no longer offers one, so every self-serve alternative below is easier to budget. Otterly lists Lite at $29 a month billed monthly for solo marketers and small teams, with 15 search prompts, on its pricing page. Standard is listed at $189 a month with 100 search prompts, and Premium at $489 a month with 400 search prompts, both billed monthly.
Otterly Lite is the closest price comparison, but not the closest unit comparison.
The same Otterly page lists unlimited brand reports, unlimited team members, 1 workspace, 3 recommendations per week, multi-country support, link citation analysis and a GEO audit for Lite. Standard and Premium add higher audit, workspace, API and MCP allowances. Billed annually, the three plans are $25, $160 and $422 a month (checked 2 Oct 2026).
Peec AI now shows prices on its pricing page: Starter €85, Pro €205 and Advanced €425 a month billed monthly, or €70, €180 and €360 a month billed annually, for 50, 150 and 350 prompts on 3 models of your choice, with Enterprise custom (checked 2 Oct 2026). Its public pricing information also lists daily tracking, unlimited projects on Enterprise and up to 13 LLM models tracked. It also describes robots.txt visibility across 40+ bots.
Peec’s prices are in euros, so convert them on the day before you put them beside a dollar price.
The leaderboard named Otterly in 60% of sampled answers, Peec AI in 53%, Profound in 48%, Semrush in 33% and Ahrefs in 18%. Those figures describe the sampled answers, not product quality.
Suppose your team needs 3 projects, 10 questions for each project, repeated runs across several engines, 10 tracked rivals and written output for lost questions. The figures below come from the Growth plan’s published details and Profound’s public pricing page, checked on 2 Oct 2026.
First, price. Growth is $69 a month, billed monthly. Profound publishes no price for a brand with three projects: that would be an Enterprise quote. An agency could use Agency Growth, at $99 a month plus $399 a month for each full client workspace, or $1,296 a month for three. Where a price is published, the gap is large.
Second, projects. Growth includes 3 projects, which matches the requirement. Profound’s agency plan counts client workspaces, each with 100 prompts a day on 3 Answer Engines and 400 Agent credits a month; its brand plans publish no project limit.
Third, questions and runs. Growth includes 10 questions each, asked 3 times in every weekly scan and 5 times in a scan you start. A Profound client workspace runs 100 prompts daily, but the page does not state whether each prompt is asked more than once.
Fourth, engine coverage. Growth lists 4 engines. A Profound client workspace lists 3 Answer Engines. For this example, the former has one more published engine in the plan, although that number does not establish which engine set is more useful.
Fifth, rivals and output. Growth lists 10 tracked rivals and 60 written pages a month. Profound’s pricing page does not publish rival tracking or written-page limits.
The difference is the published workload shape: one plan maps directly to the example, while the other publishes engine, prompt and credit limits but leaves several workload units unspecified.
A price tells you what a plan costs, not whether its report will help you win an answer back. Before you switch, run the same buyer question through each tool you are considering and apply four tests.
Then repeat the question. One answer is a single draw; a result that holds across repeated runs, with a margin of error beside the rate, is evidence. CiteGraph’s weekly scans ask each question 3 times on each engine a plan covers (all 4 on Starter and Growth), and a scan you start on Growth asks it 5 times.
Check how each tool treats sources, too. A page an engine used while building an answer is not the same as a page it linked in the answer, and neither is the same as your domain appearing somewhere. Peec AI’s own pricing page, for example, lists retrievals and citation share as separate source measures. Ask each vendor for the source list from a real prompt, and check whether the exact URL is visible and what it contributed.
A useful gap report passes this checklist:
In CiteGraph, Lost answers covers the first five: every buyer question where an engine recommended someone else, with the verbatim answer, the rival that won, the cited page and the sentence missing from yours. Each loss links to the Action plan for the change itself. Sources AI trusts lists the pages the engines cite, graded, and flags the ones that answer the questions you lose. None of this guarantees that fixing a sentence changes the next answer, which is why the next scan matters.
The plans also increase capacity in different ways. ChatGPT Only lists 1 project and 20 questions, asked on ChatGPT only. Starter lists 2 projects, 6 rivals and 30 written pages a month. Growth lists 3 projects, 10 rivals and 60 written pages. Starter and Growth both list 10 questions each and 4 engines, according to the pricing page. Weekly scans ask each question 3 times on every plan; a scan you start on Growth asks it 5 times.
The documented step up is capacity, especially projects and written pages.
Profound’s ladder changes shape more sharply. For brands, the free Trial tracks 3 Answer Engines for 7 days, and Enterprise tracks up to 9, with a tailored prompt plan, dedicated support and SSO/SAML plus SOC 2 compliance, at a custom price. For agencies, each client workspace tracks 3 engines with 100 prompts a day and 400 credits a month.
The missing number moves with the tier. The Trial ends after 7 days, the agency plan leaves larger credit thresholds to an Enterprise package, and Enterprise leaves price open.
The free AI readiness check runs 15 checks without an account and shows the fix for each. The MCP documentation also states that Claude, Cursor or VS Code can read a scan and apply readiness fixes in a repository.
Those features do not replace every enterprise control.
The most important caveat is simple: these are vendor-published limits, not a workload test. We measure samples, we print margins and we do not know what we have not measured.
CiteGraph ChatGPT Only is listed at $19 a month and asks ChatGPT alone. Otterly Lite and CiteGraph Starter are both listed at $29 a month billed monthly on their respective pricing pages (Otterly Lite is $25 a month billed annually; checked 2 Oct 2026). Their units differ, with Otterly publishing search prompts and CiteGraph publishing projects, questions, runs, engines, rivals and written pages, so the lower bill alone does not identify the better fit.
You may lose engine coverage, prompt or credit capacity, projects, rival tracking, written-page output or enterprise controls. The exact loss depends on the plan, and the vendors publish those limits in different units.
Only partly. Peec AI now lists Starter at €85 a month billed monthly, or €70 billed annually, for 50 prompts, but Profound lists no self-serve price for brands, only a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan. Both pages were checked on 2 Oct 2026.
Compare whether each tool shows the full assistant answer, the exact cited source page, the rival that won and a fix tied to that evidence. A mention rate alone cannot show why an engine chose another product, or whether the result held across repeated runs.
It can identify the question, the rival, the cited page and the content gap, then suggest a page or wording change. No tool can guarantee that publishing a fix will change a future AI answer, so the next scan still matters.
Cite this: CiteGraph, “Best Profound alternatives for GEO”, 13 Sept 2026, https://www.citegraph.app/blog/best-profound-alternatives