Looking for Profound alternatives? 8 AI visibility tools worth considering in 2026

The shift to AI search has created a new category of tools that help companies understand how they appear in AI-generated answers. Profound is one of the early leaders here. It tracks brand mentions across major AI engines, shows which sources AI systems trust, reveals trending prompts, and analyzes how AI crawlers interact with your site.

But as helpful as Profound can be, it isn’t the perfect match for every team. If you’ve been wondering whether there are simpler, cheaper, or more action-oriented alternatives, you’re not alone.

Why would people look for alternatives to Profound?

Reviews paint a consistent picture: Profound is powerful, but it can feel heavy, pricey, and occasionally frustrating to use. Here are the reasons users most often mention when they start exploring other options.

1. It can feel overwhelming to learn and navigate

Profound delivers a lot of data. For some users, that’s a blessing; for others, it quickly becomes too much. One reviewer even said there’s“almost too much good data,” adding that it’s hard to figure out “the one most impactful thing we should do next.” Others mention that the interface isn’t always intuitive, especially for teams without technical or analytical backgrounds.

2. Costs rise quickly as your needs grow

The Starter plan is affordable, but it’s also very limited (ChatGPT-only and a low prompt allowance). To get the multi-engine tracking or deeper analytics most teams actually need, users must move to much higher-priced tiers.

3. Occasional bugs and performance issues

A handful of reviews describe problems that interrupt day-to-day workflows: duplicate prompts, slow dashboards, export limitations, and even billing issues. One user reported: “The same technical bug appeared three times in one month … billing problems froze our account.” Others mention integrations that don’t work as expected.

4. Insights require external tools

Profound excels at monitoring, but when it comes to acting on the insights, the tool’s offering is limited. Workflow, Profound’s one and only execution tool, allows you to generate content specifically for getting cited in AI search. Yet, with only 3 articles per month in the Pro plan, the tool can hardly cover all your content needs. Most likely, you’ll need separate tools for content updates, SEO improvements, and publishing workflows. This can slow teams down or add extra software costs.

Altogether, these issues push many teams to look for alternatives that offer clearer insights and a smoother workflow.

The best Profound alternatives and why they excel

I went through powerful AI search tools and picked the best. Here are the most worthy Profound competitors:

Ratings, pricing, limits, and AI features are current as of December 2025 and may change.

1. SE Visible

Functionality

SE Visible by SE Ranking is built to give you a high-level view of how your brand appears, performs, and compares in AI search without the complexity and overload. It focuses on clarity, prioritization, and fast insight delivery across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini. 

The platforms’ core functionality includes:

• AI search visibility tracking: Monitor how often and where your brand appears in AI answers with weekly updates to capture meaningful shifts over time.
• Sentiment analysis: See whether your brand is presented positively, negatively, or neutrally in AI responses. This helps manage brand perception and spot reputational risks early.
• Competitor benchmarking: Compare your AI visibility directly against competitors to understand relative performance, uncover gaps, and identify opportunities to gain share in AI answers.
• Prompt and query insights: Discover the types of prompts and questions AI engines associate with your brand and industry to better understand demand and audience intent.
• Source and citation analysis: Identify which domains and URLs AI engines rely on when mentioning your brand. Use this data to prioritize content, partnerships, and optimization efforts.

SE Visible supports multiple languages on top of English, including French, German, Dutch, and Spanish. The selected language will be used for topic selection and prompt generation. Users can also choose different locations for collecting data: Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Finally, it lets you export data in CSV format for further analysis.

While SE Visible focuses on strategy, it connects naturally with SE Ranking, which serves a tactical execution role.

SE Ranking is built for hands-on optimization and measurable improvements. It provides tools for keyword research, AI content creation, link-building, website and page diagnostics, position tracking, and more. Its AI Search add-on helps track your progress and analyze competitors, and provides clear recommendations on where to focus, so your efforts have the biggest impact.

Together, the platforms form a practical workflow: SE Visible defines the AI search strategy, while SE Ranking provides the tools to execute it.

Interface

The interface is designed around clarity and speed. It’s built so non-technical users can immediately understand the data without digging through layers of charts or filters. This stands in contrast to Profound reviews describing a steeper learning curve and difficulty prioritizing insights.

User reviews

User sentiment around SE Ranking’s ecosystem is consistently strong. Many describe it as “intuitive,” and “full-service,” noting that it includes “everything an agency needs.” SE Ranking’s AI-search features are also well-received—one reviewer calls the AI search rankings feature “very insightful,” and others highlight the value of having both AI visibility and SEO data in one place.

SE Visible separately builds on this reputation by offering a cleaner, more brand-focused interface specifically for AI visibility, which many teams find easier to interpret day-to-day.

Omi Sido

Senior Technical SEO at Canon Europe

The dashboard is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. I particularly like how key metrics (visibility score, rank, average position, and net sentiment) are clearly highlighted at the top. The competitor comparison and sentiment analysis also give a quick, at-a-glance understanding of performance. Overall, I think SE Visible has strong potential as a lightweight but insightful AI SEO and brand monitoring solution.

Price

SE Visible starts at $189/month for 450 prompts and 5 brands. Higher tiers expand prompt limits and brand capacity. The Plus plan is $355/month for 1,000 prompts and 10 brands, while the Max plan is $519/month for 1,500 prompts and 15 brands.

Users can test the platform with a 10-day free trial. Its pricing is predictable and transparent, especially compared to platforms that heavily gate features behind enterprise tiers.

To cover the full cycle of website optimization, you can subscribe to SE Ranking (starting at $65/month) and add the AI Search add-on (from $89/month) to gain full access to SE Visible, along with all the core SEO tools.

2. OtterlyAI

Functionality

At Otterly’s foundation is comprehensive AI search monitoring, which tracks brand mentions and website citations on key generative search platforms including Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. This cross-platform visibility allows teams to see not only where their brand is mentioned, but also which specific content and links are referenced by AI answers.

Otterly also includes an AI Keyword Research Tool that helps users convert keywords, brand names, or URLs into natural-language search prompts that reflect real user questions in AI search contexts.

For deeper analysis at the content level, the Link Citations Analysis feature enables users to drill into how individual domains and URLs are cited by AI search engines. Otterly also supports GEO Audits, which help assess how well a brand’s content, on-page elements, and broader digital footprint align with the factors that influence AI citation likelihood.

Additional functionality for team collaboration includes Workspaces for managing multiple brands or clients under one subscription and integration options like the Google Looker Studio Connector for building custom dashboards and reports.

Interface

Otterly’s interface is clean and modern, with dashboards that surface AI mentions, citations, prompts, and trends in a way that is easy to scan. Most core actions, such as adding prompts or checking citation history, are accessible without deep configuration. 

User reviews

User reviews consistently highlight Otterly’s ease of use and the clarity of its AI-visibility insights. One user writes that Otterly is a“really simple and user friendly AI search monitoring tool” and adds that it is“great to monitor and optimize brand visibility on ChatGPT,” noting that implementation was quick and required little friction. Others highlight Otterly’s value for real-time reporting and client communication.

However, there are some drawbacks. Users report that the dashboard can become cluttered when tracking a large number of prompts or projects, and that sentiment analysis is not always fully accurate.

Price

Otterly offers tiered pricing based on prompt volume and audit capacity. The Lite plan starts at $29 per month and includes 15 search prompts, AI search monitoring across major platforms, daily tracking, AI keyword and prompt research, citation analysis, and limited GEO audits. The Standard plan, priced at $189 per month, increases the prompt limit to 100 and adds unlimited workspaces, while the Premium plan at $489 per month offers up to 400 search prompts with more generous limits overall. Custom enterprise pricing is also available for organizations that need higher limits or tailored setups.

You can test the platform for free for 14 days.

3. Peec AI

Functionality

Peec AI is designed to monitor and analyze brand visibility across AI-powered answer engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, and Grok. The platform shows how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses, how prominently it is positioned, and how it is framed within those answers.

Peec AI also reveals which external sources and citations influence your visibility in AI search, helping you understand where AI engines pull information from when referencing your brand. You can create, analyze, and organize relevant prompts that reflect how users ask AI about topics connected to your business.

The tool supports competitor analysis, allowing you to compare your AI visibility against other brands that matter in your market. Peec AI also surfaces built-in recommendations that highlight potential opportunities to strengthen visibility and improve performance in AI search.

For reporting and analysis, you can export data in clean CSV files, build custom dashboards using the Looker Studio connector, or connect via API to integrate Peec AI into your existing reporting and analytics workflows.

Compared to Profound, Peec AI takes a lighter, more accessible approach. While Profound focuses on enterprise-grade depth such as crawler-level analytics, traffic attribution, and large-scale AI search intelligence, Peec AI concentrates on prompt-level visibility, competitor comparisons, and faster insight delivery.

Interface

Peec AI’s interface emphasizes simplicity and accessibility. Dashboards are structured around prompts, visibility metrics, competitors, and trends, making it easy to understand performance at a glance. The trade-off is limited customization, but the interface supports fast onboarding and routine monitoring.

User reviews

Users consistently praise the platform’s ease of use and fast onboarding. One person noted that, “It’s easy to use, setup is extremely fast, you get immediate insights and you finally get some data to better understand where and how your brand is mentioned in LLMs,” adding that seeing cited URLs is “super helpful to understand how to optimize for this prompt”.

On the downside, several reviewers point out that Peec AI is primarily a monitoring tool. Community discussions echo this view, describing Peec AI as strong for discovery and research, but less helpful for diagnosing issues or executing fixes.

Price

Peec AI offers transparent, tiered monthly pricing. The Starter plan is priced at €89 per month and supports tracking up to 25 prompts with daily monitoring across supported AI platforms, along with unlimited seats and country coverage. The Pro plan costs €199 per month and increases the prompt limit to 100 and the monthly volume of analyzed AI answers to up to 9,000, with expanded support options. The Enterprise plan starts at approximately €499 per month and includes 300 tracked prompts, higher AI answer analysis volume (up to 27,000), broader market coverage, and dedicated support. 

There is no free plan, but the tool offers a 7-day free trial.

4. ZipTie.dev

Functionality

ZipTie.dev tracks visibility on key generative engines, including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. It presents in-depth analytics that show where your brand is mentioned, how frequently it shows up, and how those mentions are framed within AI answers. ZipTie.dev goes beyond simple tracking by combining visibility data with actionable insights, such as content optimization guidance and strategic recommendations that help teams focus on the most impactful improvements. 

The platform uses an AI-powered query generator to suggest relevant prompts to test and measure brand appearance, and it calculates an AI Success Score for each prompt to prioritize efforts based on visibility, sentiment, and citation strength. 

You can analyze performance at multiple levels: from overall project dashboards to individual queries. You can benefit from features such as sentiment analysis, competitive benchmarking, regional tracking across multiple countries, and detailed trend reporting. 

ZipTie.dev also offers tools to organize data with tags and categories, helping teams see which topics and intents are driving AI search success.

Beyond visibility tracking, ZipTie.dev includes content-oriented analysis designed to improve AI search performance. The platform evaluates existing pages to identify gaps, structural issues, and relevance signals that may prevent AI engines from citing the content. 

Interface

ZipTie.dev’s interface is generally clean and approachable, with dashboards organized around prompts, visibility trends, and competitor comparisons. Navigation emphasizes clarity, making it easy to move between tracked queries, AI answers, and optimization insights without heavy configuration.

User reviews

Several well-known SEO professionals praise ZipTie.dev for accuracy and practicality. 

Lily Ray

Vice President at Amsive

ZipTie has become my go to tool to monitor my sites, clients and competitors inclusion in AI Overviews, effectively assess the impact over traffic and identify the best way to optimize for them. I can highly recommend it!

At the same time, some reviewers mention limitations such as the need to manually implement optimization recommendations, which may require additional tools or effort.

Price

ZipTie.dev offers tiered monthly pricing. Plans start with a Basic tier priced at $69 per month, followed by Standard at $99 per month and Pro at $159 per month, each increasing the number of AI search checks, summaries, and content optimization credits available. Custom or enterprise pricing is available for higher-volume or agency use cases, but exact costs depend on requirements.

ZipTie.dev also offers a 14-day free trial, allowing teams to test the platform before committing to a paid plan. 

5. Brandlight

Functionality

Brandlight delivers a suite of capabilities designed to help brands understand, influence, and amplify how they are represented across AI search and generative platforms. The tool continuously monitors how 11 AI systems, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI, and Perplexity, talk about a brand by tracking mentions, citations, and visibility signals.

Complementing visibility tracking, AI brand monitoring helps brands maintain control over their narrative by surfacing how AI models represent them, including sentiment analysis, share of voice, citation patterns, and competitor benchmarks. 

Brandlight’s сontent сreation and distribution capabilities extend beyond analysis into execution. The platform allows businesses to distribute brand-approved content directly to AI platforms and key aggregator sites automatically.

Finally, the Partnerships Builder feature helps brands measure the true impact of publishers and partners on their AI visibility.

Interface

Brandlight uses a neutral color palette with light backgrounds and subtle accent colors that highlight key metrics without overwhelming the screen. Navigation is straightforward, with logically grouped sections for monitoring, analysis, and execution. Everyday tasks feel intuitive, while tooltips and contextual hints help users interpret AI-focused data. More advanced governance and partnership features add some complexity, but overall the interface prioritizes clarity, readability, and confident decision-making over visual flash.

User reviews

One user describes Brandlight as “intuitive, fast and reliable, making complex tasks effortless,” adding that “its insights are precise, helping in smarter decision-making”.

Another reviewer notes that Brandlight is “a very good platform designed for brands to manage, monitor and optimize how to appear in AI-generated responses across platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini,” emphasizing its cross-engine coverage. 

On the downside, some users mention accessibility issues, a lack of transparent pricing, and that advanced features take time to learn.

Price

Brandlight does not publish a fully transparent pricing page. Pricing appears to be custom and enterprise-oriented. Different sources indicate an entry-level paid tier starting around $199 per month, with more comprehensive enterprise deployments reported to reach approximately $750 per month or higher, depending on scale, number of brands, regions, and governance requirements. 

Because pricing is negotiated and feature availability varies by tier, prospective users should expect to contact the vendor directly for exact costs and inclusions. By contrast, Profound’s pricing typically aligns to standard SEO platform tiers with clearer published options, making initial evaluation more straightforward for many buyers.

6. Am I On AI

Functionality

Am I On AI is a lightweight AI visibility tool. Its strongest advantages are its straightforward setup, clear visibility metrics, and guided recommendations.

The platform continuously scans AI responses to determine brand mentions for relevant prompts, translating this data into a clear AI visibility score that shows the percentage of prompts where the brand appears and how that changes week over week.

Am I On AI places strong emphasis on prompt tracking, generating long-tail, conversational prompts that reflect how people actually ask questions in AI tools. For each prompt, Am I On AI shows whether the brand was mentioned, which competitors appeared, and the full context of the AI response.

Another core capability is citation and source analysis, where the platform identifies the specific websites and URLs that AI models cite when referencing a brand. Am I On AI also includes competitive benchmarking through its competitor rank feature, enabling you to compare AI visibility directly against peers and monitor shifts in rankings across different prompt groups. The growth tracking feature shows visibility trends and attribute changes to specific queries or sources.

To help translate insights into action, the platform provides AEO recommendations with practical on-site and off-site action tips based on your performance.

Interface

Dashboards present visibility scores, prompt coverage, and competitor comparisons in a clean layout that is easy to interpret, even for users new to AI visibility tracking. Setup is minimal, typically requiring only a domain or product URL to begin scans. Navigation is straightforward, with most insights accessible within a few clicks.

User reviews

Users highlight the ease of onboarding and emphasize the clarity of insights, while also noting that the depth of data may feel basic for advanced teams and that scans are not real-time, requiring patience between updates.

On Reddit, users also mention that the platform provides great “source impact breakdowns with trends.”

Price

Am I On AI positions itself as an affordable entry point into AI visibility monitoring. Pricing starts with a Single plan at around $100 per month, which includes weekly scans, tracking for one product, and monitoring of approximately 100 prompts. A higher-tier Multiple plan, priced at roughly $250 per month, expands coverage to 3 products and 300 prompts. 

The platform also offers agency-oriented plans with scalable client tracking and a 7-days free trial period.

7. AthenaHQ

Functionality

AthenaHQ is positioned as a premium generative-engine optimization platform.

Through its Monitoring module, AthenaHQ tracks AI-generated answers to identify brand mentions, citations, and competitor visibility, while also showing how these signals change by region and over time.

AthenaHQ’s Prompt Volume capability estimates how frequently real users ask specific natural-language questions across AI platforms, giving teams visibility into emerging topics, rising prompt patterns, and shifts in user intent.

Action Center analyzes monitoring and prompt data to surface concrete recommendations, such as identifying knowledge gaps in AI answers, highlighting patterns from high-performing competitors, and suggesting improvements to content structure and coverage. The platform also supports the creation of AI-optimized content drafts.

For ecommerce-focused teams, AthenaHQ extends these capabilities into product and revenue workflows. Its ecommerce functionality connects AI visibility efforts with online retail performance, supports integrations with platforms such as Shopify, and enables GEO-ready content publishing.

Interface

Users often note AthenaHQ’s low learning curve and efficient day-to-day navigation. That said, some reviewers mention that high-level executive summaries could be more prominent, as the interface favors detailed analysis over quick, at-a-glance reporting.

User reviews

AthenaHQ has received highly positive feedback from users on leading software review platforms. Customers praise its intuitive interface, deep AI visibility insights, and responsive customer support. Reviewers highlight that AthenaHQ is easy to use, delivers actionable recommendations quickly, and has helped teams drive measurable results from AI-driven search strategies.

Users also note some areas for improvement, such as the platform’s premium pricing and the occasional minor feature setup complexity.

Price

AthenaHQ uses a credit-based pricing model. Its Self-serve plan starts at approximately $295 per month and includes a set number of credits (3,600), where each analyzed AI response consumes credits depending on the number of engines checked. Its Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and expands access to advanced optimization features, broader engine coverage, and deeper integrations. 

AthenaHQ does not offer a free trial. 

8. Cognizo

Functionality

Cognizo’s Answer Engine Insights helps brands understand and improve how they appear in AI-generated answers across leading platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Claude, Meta AI, Grok and more. The feature tracks where and how a brand is mentioned, measuring visibility, sentiment, and narrative context over time. It also reveals which external sources AI models rely on when referencing a brand. With built-in competitive benchmarking, Answer Engine Insights shows how your AI presence compares to competitors.

Content Optimization helps brands turn AI visibility insights into concrete improvements. The feature analyzes how answer engines source and use content, then provides clear recommendations on what to create, update, or restructure. With AI-assisted briefs, outlines, and drafts, plus checks for technical readiness, it enables you to produce AI-ready content that is more likely to be cited and used in generative answers.

AI Traffic Analytics shows how AI crawlers and answer engines interact with your site and how that activity translates into real user traffic. The feature tracks AI bot visits, identifies which pages are being accessed or referenced, and connects these signals to human sessions and conversions. This makes it easier to measure the true impact of AI-driven discovery and optimize content that influences downstream traffic.

Prompt Volumes helps you discover what questions your audience is asking AI so you can optimize for real conversational demand. It tracks trending topics, rising questions, and audience intent across major AI platforms based on billions of real-world signals, showing how conversations shift over time. 

Interface

When you first log into Cognizo, the interface immediately feels intuitive. The central dashboard gives you a clear snapshot of your key metrics, so you can see what’s happening at a glance without digging through menus. Each module, like AI Traffic Analytics, Content Optimization, and Prompt Analysis, is laid out in its own space, with a consistent design that makes switching between them effortless. You’ll find data presented in interactive charts, tables, and trend lines, and applying filters for time range, source, or query type is straightforward.

User reviews

User sentiment on Cognizo is strongly positive overall. One reviewer noted that within a few months their visibility increased significantly, praising the helpful content recommendations and responsive support team, indicating strong functionality and customer service.But some noted concerns include the platform being in a new, evolving category, which may make onboarding less predictable.

Price

Cognizo offers tiered subscription plans to suit different organization sizes. The entry-level Monitor plan starts at around $89 per month and includes basic prompt tracking across major AI platforms and 50 prompts. The Optimize plan is priced at about $499 per month and adds deeper insights, tailored actions, and a higher prompt limit (up to 200). For larger enterprises with extensive needs, a custom Enterprise plan is available via demo request, offering advanced capabilities, 500+ prompts and support. All plans include unlimited seats and daily tracking. The downside is that there’s no free trial, just like with Profound.

FAQs

Is Profound AI the best?

Profound AI is one of the best tools for enterprise-level AI visibility and analytics, especially for large teams that need advanced reporting, security, and multi-model tracking. However, it may be too complex or expensive for smaller businesses, which often find simpler alternatives more suitable.

Are there free alternatives to Profound?

No, automated AI search monitoring is very resource-demanding, so no businesses are giving out this kind of data for free. Some alternatives come with a lower entry price and/or better cost-value ratio. Some of the alternatives, such as SE Visible and OtterlyAI, offer free trials with basic AI visibility or brand-mention tracking. This allows you to check how well the tool matches your needs before committing.

What should I consider when choosing a Profound alternative?

When evaluating alternatives to Profound, consider the following factors:

1. Features and scope: What you actually need—simple brand mentions, full AI visibility analytics, automated prompt tracking, or content creation tools. Different alternatives specialize in different areas.
2. Budget and pricing: Profound’s enterprise pricing can be high; many alternatives offer transparent pricing, free tiers, or cheaper plans that may better fit smaller teams.
3. Ease of use: Some tools are designed for quick setup and minimal learning curve, while Profound may be more complex to configure.
4. Platform coverage: Check how many AI platforms and models the tool tracks. More coverage can mean better visibility insights.
5. Customization and integration: If you need custom dashboards, API access, or integration with existing workflows, make sure the alternative supports those.
6. Support and documentation: Enterprise tools come with dedicated support; alternatives might rely more on community or self-serve resources.

Summary: Which Profound alternative is the best choice?

When choosing the best alternative to Profound, the right option really depends on your team size, budget, and goals. Here’s a quick guide to help you decide among some popular tools:

• SE Visible: Best if you want a clear, strategic overview of your AI search visibility without data overload.
• OtterlyAI: Ideal for affordable, fast brand monitoring across major AI engines.
• Am I On AI: Useful for quick visibility checks, but limited for long-term tracking.
• Peec AI: A strong mid-range option for brand visibility, sentiment, and share-of-voice analytics.
• ZipTie.dev: Great for AI search insights plus content optimization suggestions.
• Brandlight: Best for enterprise governance and no-code workflows across multiple markets.
• AthenaHQ: Suited for teams needing collaborative GEO workflows and analytics.
• Cognizo: Closest to Profound in depth, built for large enterprises and advanced reporting.

Ultimately, the right Profound alternative is the one that best aligns with your goals, budget, and the level of AI visibility insight your team truly needs.

Written by

Daria Chetvertak

Daria is an SEO and Content Marketing Expert at SE Ranking. Her interests span across SEO and digital marketing. She likes to describe complicated things in plain words. In her free time, Daria enjoys traveling around the world, studying the art of photography, and visiting art galleries.