5 Best Profound Alternatives in 2026

What are the best Profound alternatives in 2026?

The best Profound alternatives in 2026 are Listable Labs, Peec AI, Promptwatch, AthenaHQ and Cognizo. Listable Labs is our top pick for teams that want a published price (from $89/month), tracking plus content actions, and an MCP connection. Peec AI and Promptwatch win on engine count, AthenaHQ on enterprise-style action, and Cognizo on automated content. Profound itself has no public price beyond a free trial.

Profound is a strong platform. It covers up to nine answer engines, adds "AI Marketer" agents and sells to enterprise teams. The catch is that you cannot see a price without a sales conversation, which is why "profound alternatives" is now one of the fastest-growing searches in the category.

This guide ranks five alternatives, then lists eight more worth knowing. We are Listable Labs, so we rank ourselves first and tell you where we are weaker.

How we evaluated these Profound alternatives

We scored each tool on five points:

• Published pricing: can you see the cost before you talk to sales?
• Engine coverage: how many AI engines are included at the entry price, not on the top plan?
• Prompts per dollar: how many tracked prompts you get at the starting tier.
• Actions, not just monitoring: does it tell you what to publish or fix, and can it publish?
• Reporting: white-label and agency features, plus links to analytics data.

Prices and engine lists were checked on vendor pricing pages in October 2026. Prices change often, so confirm on the vendor page before you buy.

Profound alternatives compared: price and engines

What does Profound cost, and what do you give up by leaving?

Profound's pricing page shows a free Trial and an Enterprise plan. The Trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and the prompts cannot be customised. Enterprise is a tailored plan with up to nine answer engines, daily tracking, all-time history, CSV and JSON export, an API, SSO and SOC 2. An agency plan is mentioned in the FAQ with 400 agent credits a month per client workspace, but no price is shown.

So what do you give up by switching? Mainly breadth and compliance: nine engines instead of three or four, Agent Analytics through CDN and log integrations, and the enterprise security stack. What you gain is a visible price, self-serve signup and a faster start. If your team only needs to know where you appear in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode and what to publish next, the extra depth is often unused.

Teams also move because of budget cycles. A quote-based tool needs procurement, while an $89 to $99 self-serve plan can be approved on a card and tested in a week.

1. Listable Labs: best Profound alternative for most teams

Verdict: the best mix of a public price, tracking and content execution for brands and agencies.

Listable Labs is an AI search visibility and AEO platform built in Bengaluru for India, US and global brands. It follows an Insights, Actions, Impact loop. Insights covers visibility, mentions, citations, share of voice and competitor benchmarking. Actions covers the Prompt Explorer, a knowledge base, AI-optimised article generation with review steps, and social content for Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram, with auto-publish. Impact connects Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Cloudflare so you can tie AI visibility to traffic.

Growth costs $89/month for 1 project, 50 prompts, 4,500 AI answers analysed per month, 10 articles and 2 seats. Scale is $249/month for 5 projects, 200 prompts and white-label reports. Max is $400/month with 400 prompts and unlimited seats. You can start free with no credit card. The Listable Labs MCP also lets you query visibility, mentions, citations and competitors from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients.

The honest limits: Listable tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode on every plan, which is three models. Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot are add-ons, and Claude, Grok, Meta AI and DeepSeek are not tracked. If you need nine engines and SOC 2-style enterprise controls, Profound is deeper. For a head-to-head, read our Listable Labs vs Profound comparison.

Best for: brands and agencies that want tracking, actions and reporting at a published price. Starting at: $89/month.

2. Peec AI: best for engine breadth and clean reporting

Verdict: a polished tracker for SEO teams and GEO agencies, with a wide engine list.

Peec AI starts at $95/month for 50 prompts, a choice of 3 models, 1 project, daily tracking and unlimited users. Its wider list includes ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral and Meta, and Enterprise reaches up to 13 models. Pro is $245/month for 150 prompts and Advanced is $495/month for 350 prompts and multi-country tracking.

The limit is that self-serve plans keep you at three models, and each extra model is a paid add-on ($30/month on Starter). It is mainly a monitoring tool, so content work happens elsewhere.

Best for: SEO teams and agencies that want daily tracking and many seats. Starting at: $95/month.

3. Promptwatch: best for tracking plus content agents

Verdict: broad engine coverage with MCP and API access from the entry plan.

Promptwatch Essential is $95/month for 1 project, 4 models, 50 prompts and 6,000 responses, with country-level tracking and MCP plus API access. Its engine list is one of the widest: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Claude, Gemini, Meta (Llama), DeepSeek, Grok, and even the coding agents OpenCode and Claude Code. Professional is $245/month and Business is $579/month for 5 projects.

It collects data by scraping the AI interfaces rather than calling APIs, which some teams prefer because it mirrors what users see. The trade-off is four models per plan and a denser interface.

Best for: marketers who want wide engine coverage and content tooling. Starting at: $95/month.

4. AthenaHQ: best for action-focused teams with a bigger budget

Verdict: a credit-based platform with a citation engine, aimed at teams that want recommendations.

AthenaHQ starts at $295/month for 3,600 credits (one credit per AI response), five models and unlimited members. Enterprise reaches 11 models, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI, with SSO and audit logs. Its Athena Citation Engine and content-optimisation agent focus on what to change, not only what the numbers are.

The limit is price: it costs more than three times Listable Growth, and the API is a paid add-on. It suits teams with a budget that want guided action.

Best for: SMBs and enterprises that want action recommendations. Starting at: $295/month.

5. Cognizo: best for AEO content on autopilot

Verdict: pricing built around articles as much as prompts.

Cognizo Growth is $499/month for 150 prompts, 5 platforms, 22,500 responses and 8 AI-optimised articles per month with auto-publishing. It includes MCP and API access and unlimited seats. Pro is $999/month for 350 prompts and 20 articles.

Claude and Meta AI sit on the Enterprise tier. For most small teams the entry price is steep, but it can replace a content tool as well as a tracker.

Best for: brands that want a content engine bundled with tracking. Starting at: $499/month.

What are more Profound alternatives worth knowing?

If none of the five fit, these are also verified as live in October 2026:

• Otterly.ai (pricing): from $29/month for 15 prompts and four engines. Gemini, Claude and AI Mode are paid add-ons.
• Rankscale AI (pricing): from $99/month for 1,200 credits, with ten engines and a 7-day trial.
• Trakkr (pricing): $100/month for 50 prompts and all eight models, with MCP and a 14-day trial.
• LLMrefs: $79/month for 500 prompts across 11+ engines, refreshed weekly, with keyword-based tracking.
• Ahrefs Brand Radar: from $50/month on check-based pricing, best if you already use Ahrefs.
• Semrush AI Visibility: $199/month Starter with 50 prompts daily, best for Semrush users.
• Scrunch AI: $250/month for 125 prompts and 4 LLMs, aimed at mid-market teams.
• Goodie AI: $399/month Core with 120 prompts, strong on revenue attribution.

If you are on a tight budget, see our guide to the best affordable alternative to Profound.

Should you pay for tracking alone, or for tracking plus actions?

Tracking tells you where you stand: your mention rate, your position in the answer and which competitors appear beside you. That is necessary, but it does not move the score on its own. The gap between a tracker and an AEO platform is whether the tool shows the sources the engines cite and helps you act on them.

In practice, the work that lifts visibility is the same everywhere: publish answer-first pages that match the prompts buyers use, earn mentions on the third-party pages engines already cite, and fix technical issues that block AI crawlers. Tools like Listable Labs, Cognizo, AthenaHQ and Promptwatch bundle part of that work. Peec AI, Otterly.ai and LLMrefs focus on measurement, which is fine if you already have a content team and only need a scoreboard.

If you have no in-house capacity, a managed route can be cheaper than hiring. Listable Labs offers a managed AEO service that starts with a free discovery audit, prompt by prompt.

How to choose a Profound alternative

• Count engines at your price tier. Many tools advertise ten engines but include three on the entry plan.
• Divide price by prompts. Listable Growth is $89 for 50 prompts, Peec and Promptwatch are $95 for 50, and AthenaHQ is credit-based.
• Decide if you need actions. A pure tracker tells you the score. A platform with articles and citation data helps you move it.
• Check reporting needs. Agencies need white-label reports and multiple workspaces.
• Test your own site first. Run the free AI Crawlability Checker to confirm AI bots can read your pages before you pay for tracking.
• Use the trial. Run the same 20 prompts in two tools and compare which answers and citations they surface.

Which Profound alternative should you pick?

Pick Listable Labs if you want a published price, three core engines, content actions and analytics integrations from $89/month. Pick Peec AI or Promptwatch if wider engine coverage matters more, and AthenaHQ or Cognizo if you have budget and want guided action or content volume. Stay with Profound if you need nine engines, SSO and enterprise controls.

Start free on Listable Labs, no credit card, or for done-for-you work, request a free discovery audit.