Cheaper Profound alternatives: published prices, full coverage
Profound's brand plans are now a free one-off Trial or a custom Enterprise quote. Agencies pay $99/month plus $399/month per client. Compare lower-cost options.
Founder, Trakkr
Quick answer
What is the cheapest Profound alternative?
For basic monitoring, Otterly (around $29/month) is the cheapest credible option. For a complete workflow with a published price, Trakkr is $100/month flat. The honest reason this search exists: Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026. Brands now get a free one-off Trial on ChatGPT or a custom Enterprise quote, and agencies pay $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace.
Trakkr tracks all 8 major AI engines on every plan with a 14-day trial, so coverage does not move with price. There is no free tier: it is a flat paid plan. If you only want to look first, run the free AI rank tracker with no account.
Cheapest monitoring
Cheapest complete tool
Profound brand plans
Verified
Cheap should not mean blind. In AI visibility the real question is not the sticker price, it is how many engines, prompts, citations, and exports the entry tier actually gives you. A free trial that runs once on one engine tells you less than a flat plan that watches all of them every day.
This page is part of the Profound buyer-intent cluster. For the full shortlist, start with the main Profound alternatives guide. To compare two products directly, read Profound vs Trakkr. For the full pricing breakdown, see the Profound pricing review.
What Profound charges now
Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026. A brand now gets a free one-off Trial or a custom Enterprise quote, with nothing published in between. The only published paid price is for agencies. Here is the ladder, read from the pricing page.
Brand Trial, free
A one-off look, not tracking
The Trial runs 10 prompts once on ChatGPT only, with limited AI Marketer credits. There is no history, no exports, and no API, so it cannot show change over time.
1 engine, run onceBrand Enterprise, custom quote
Ongoing brand tracking is custom
Up to 9 answer engines, SSO/SAML, SOC 2, and dedicated support sit in a custom quote. Profound does not publish an Enterprise price.
Up to 9 enginesAgency Growth, $99 + $399/client
The only published paid price
A $99/month base plus $399/month per client workspace. Each workspace gets 100 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, 400 Agent credits, and CSV/JSON exports. One client costs $498/month.
3 engines per clientThe pricing page does not state billing terms for Agency Growth. Enterprise remains a custom quote. Verify current inclusions on the Profound pricing page.
The cost-per-engine math
The cleanest way to compare AI visibility tools on price is per engine tracked, because coverage is the thing you are actually buying. Profound publishes no brand plan price, so the only figure to work from is Agency Growth: $99 plus $399 for one client is $498 for three engines, or $166 per engine. A flat plan changes the shape of the bill.
| Plan | Engines | Per engine | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profound Agency Growth, one client ($498) | 3 | $166.00 | agency plan, one client workspace |
| Profound Brand Enterprise | Up to 9 | Custom | no published price |
| Trakkr Growth, $100/mo | 8 | $12.50 | every major engine, flat |
The flat-rate anchor: Trakkr Growth is $100/mo for all 8 major AI engines, about $12.50 per engine, with citations, competitor share, perception, Reddit signal, and crawler analytics in the same workflow. There are no per-engine, per-seat, or per-export add-ons stacked on top, so the number you see is the number you pay. That is the difference between a low headline price and a low real price.
Lower-cost Profound alternatives compared
Entry price, engines covered at that tier, exports, and trial access for the budget shortlist. Trakkr is our product and the bias is named, so it sits in the table on the same footing as everyone else. Pricing in this category moves quickly; sources were checked in July 2026.
| Tool | Entry price | AI engines | Exports | Trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $29/mo Lite | Limited core set | Limited | 7-day trial | Cheapest credible pulse check on whether AI engines mention you. | |
| $204/year Essentials | Multi-engine | Basic | 7-day Pro trial | Low-cost rank-style monitoring for a single brand. | |
| $99/mo add-on | AI add-on layer | Yes (Semrush) | Semrush trial | A light AI layer if you already pay for Semrush. | |
| $100/mo flat | All 8, every plan | Yes, all plans | 14-day trial | Cheapest option that is actually complete: citations, competitors, Reddit, crawler logs, fixes. | |
| $295/mo Self-Serve | Broad | Yes | Demo-led | Action-center workflow if credit billing is fine. | |
| $250/mo Core | 4 at Core | Yes | 7-day trial | Strong if AI-ready page audits matter more than price. | |
| Free Trial; Enterprise custom | Trial: ChatGPT; Enterprise: up to 9 | None on Trial | Free one-off Trial | Enterprise research: Prompt Volumes, Shopping, procurement clearance. |
Otterly, Rankscale, Semrush, AthenaHQ, and Scrunch pricing reflect each vendor's published entry tier. Profound's brand plans are a free Trial and a custom Enterprise quote. Verify current plans before you buy.
Looking for a "free" Profound alternative?
Be straight with yourself first: running prompts across AI engines costs real money on every run, so no serious tracker is free forever, and Trakkr does not have a free tier. Trakkr is a flat paid plan with a 14-day trial that needs a card. What is genuinely free, with no account and no card, are two standalone tools you can use right now to validate the problem:
Free AI rank tracker
See where you stand in ChatGPT today. No account, no card.
Profound pricing calculator
Estimate what a Profound quote would cost your team before you call sales.
Use those to confirm AI search matters for you, then start a 14-day Trakkr trial when you are ready to track it continuously across all 8 engines.
When Profound is still worth paying for
We sell Trakkr, so it is worth saying plainly: sometimes Profound is the right buy and a cheaper tool will leave you frustrated. If any of these is your situation, pay Profound and do not look back.
You need Prompt Volumes panel data, the demographic demand research that is genuinely distinctive and has no equivalent in a budget tool.
You are a retail brand betting on ChatGPT Shopping visibility and tracking how products surface in conversational commerce.
Enterprise procurement requires SOC 2 Type II today and will not move on it.
Budget is not the constraint and a custom enterprise quote is already approved.
Outside those cases, the budget question usually answers itself: a flat plan that covers every engine beats a low entry price that covers one. For the full feature-by-feature view, read Profound vs Trakkr.
What a cheap tool should still do
Cover every engine
ChatGPT alone misses Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and Google AI Overviews. Coverage should not be a paywall.
Hold one price
Watch for add-ons for engines, seats, domains, and exports. A flat plan is cheaper than a low tier you keep topping up.
Tell you what to fix
A mention count is not a decision. The tool should show the citations, competitors, and fixes worth shipping this week.
How this was researched: Pricing was checked against each vendor's public pricing page and product documentation in July 2026. Profound's brand plans are a free one-off Trial and custom Enterprise; Agency Growth is $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace. Trakkr is our product and that bias is named on the page. Where Profound legitimately wins, we have said so. Cost-per-engine math is reproducible from the tables above.
A buyer who switched
Frequently asked questions
Yes. For basic monitoring, Otterly starts at $29/month and Rankscale Essentials is $204/year. For a complete workflow with a published price, Trakkr is $100/month flat and tracks all 8 major AI engines on every plan, with a 14-day trial. Profound no longer publishes a paid brand plan: brands get a free one-off Trial or a custom Enterprise quote, and agencies pay $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace.
Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth brand plans in mid-September 2026. Brands now get a free Trial (10 prompts run once on ChatGPT) or a custom Enterprise quote with up to 9 answer engines, SSO/SAML, and SOC 2. Agencies can buy Agency Growth at $99/month plus $399/month per client workspace, so one client costs $498/month for 100 daily prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Yes. Profound offers a free Brand Trial with limited AI Marketer credits and 10 prompts run once on ChatGPT. It is a one-off look rather than ongoing tracking, with no history, exports, or API. Ongoing brand tracking needs a custom Enterprise quote.
Running prompts across AI engines costs money, so no serious tracker is free forever, and Trakkr has no free tier. Trakkr is a flat paid plan with a 14-day trial that needs a card. What is genuinely free, with no account, is the standalone Trakkr AI rank tracker (see where you stand in ChatGPT today) and the Profound pricing calculator (estimate a Profound quote for your team). Use those to validate the problem, then move to a paid plan when AI search is a real channel.
A brand that wants ongoing tracking has to ask for a custom Enterprise quote, because the free Trial runs once on ChatGPT only. The only published paid price is for agencies: $99/month plus $399/month per client, or $498/month for one client on three engines. That is $166 per engine, while a flat plan like Trakkr Growth works out to about $12.50 per engine across all 8.
Keep the parts that drive decisions: which AI engines mention your brand, which competitors they recommend instead, which URLs they cite, how they describe you, and whether AI crawlers can reach the pages you want cited. A complete budget tool should cover all of those plus give you a clear next action, not just a single mention count.
See your AI visibility before you pay anyone
Run a Trakkr scan across all 8 AI engines and see how they describe, cite, and compare your brand. 14-day trial, flat pricing, no demo call.