The best Profound alternatives for 2026, ranked by price and engines: cheaper share-of-voice monitors like Otterly, Peec, Knowatoa, AthenaHQ, and Scrunch.
Quick answer
Almost everyone searching "Profound alternatives" wants a cheaper version of the same job: a prompt-sampling monitor that tracks how often AI assistants mention your brand. The strongest cheaper picks as of June 2026 are Otterly.ai ($29/mo Lite), Knowatoa ($59/mo), and Peec AI (~€89/mo); AthenaHQ and Scrunch AI sit higher; and Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Visibility are add-ons if you already pay for the suite. Crawlytics (the publisher of this post) is not on that ranked list, because it does not do share-of-voice. It is included separately as a different option for a different problem: making your site visible, readable, and transactable to AI agents.
Profound (tryprofound.com) defined the AI-search share-of-voice category, and it is genuinely good at it. The reason people go looking for Profound alternatives is rarely that the product is bad. It is that the price moved out of reach. As of June 2026 Profound's pricing is sales-gated, with historical entry tiers around $99 and $399/mo reported on third-party reviews before the climb into enterprise contracts. If you run a small brand and just want to know whether ChatGPT recommends you, that is a heavy lift for one number.
One honest note before the list: Crawlytics published this post. Crawlytics does not do prompt-sampling share-of-voice, so I have not crowned it the #1 Profound replacement, because that would be false. The bulk of this list is the real monitors that actually compete with Profound on its own turf, compared fairly. Crawlytics shows up near the end as a different kind of option, for people whose real problem turns out not to be another mention-tracker. Hedge every price here against the vendor's own site, since this space reprices constantly.
Three reasons come up again and again, and they all point at fit rather than quality.
Enterprise pricing. Profound is built for $100M+ brands with a data team and a budget line for "AI search monitoring." The tooling depth matches that buyer. A solo founder or a five-person marketing team rarely needs hundreds of daily prompts across a dozen engines, and definitely does not need the bill that comes with it.
Sales-gated access. When the pricing page sends you to "contact sales," the evaluation gets slow. Smaller teams want to swipe a card, see their mention rate this week, and decide. A demo call to learn the cost of a starter plan is friction that pushes people toward self-serve alternatives.
Overkill for the question. Most small brands have one question: "do AI assistants mention me, and are competitors getting cited instead?" That is answerable by a focused monitor at a fraction of the price. Paying for an enterprise platform to answer a starter question is the classic mismatch this search is trying to fix.
Profound is a prompt-sampling share-of-voice platform. It runs hundreds of prompts on a schedule across roughly nine to eleven AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and others), records whether your brand gets mentioned, and charts your share of voice against named competitors over time. It adds sentiment analysis, citation-source tracking (which domains the AI cited), and executive-ready reporting. It also has first-party crawler-log analytics, called Agent Analytics, wired through CDN connectors.
That is the job a real alternative has to cover: scheduled prompts, multi-engine mention tracking, competitor comparison, and trend lines. When I call something a "Profound alternative" below, that is the bar. A tool that does a different job is not a replacement, it is a complement, and I have labeled it that way.
These are the tools that do what Profound does. Each entry lists who it is for, the model, and the entry price as of June 2026. Confirm current numbers and caps on each vendor's site before you buy.
Otterly.ai (otterly.ai) is the cheapest credible entry into proper prompt-sampling. It tracks how your brand shows up in AI search answers and which sources get cited across the major assistants, and it adds a GEO content audit plus a Crawlability Checker that looks at AI-readiness factors. Tiers as of June 2026 run roughly $29/mo Lite, then about $189 and $489.
Who it's for: a small brand or solo marketer who wants real mention tracking without an enterprise contract. Model: prompt-sampling SoV plus content audit. Price: ~$29/mo Lite (caps on prompts and engines, so check the limits).
Peec AI (peec.ai) is a Berlin-built monitor aimed squarely at marketing teams. It tracks share of voice and added Crawl Insights, which reads your server logs for AI-bot activity. Worth knowing: Peec publicly calls llms.txt "a distraction without any upside," and it frames itself as monitoring rather than action, so there is no content generation. Pricing as of June 2026 runs roughly €89/mo, then about €199 and €499+. There is a 7-day trial with no card required.
Who it's for: a marketing team that wants a polished SoV view and is fine paying in euros. Model: prompt-sampling SoV plus log-based crawl insights. Price: ~€89/mo entry.
AthenaHQ (athenahq.ai) is a share-of-voice monitor with optimization recommendations on top, pitched at mid-market and enterprise. Its LLM-traffic analysis is enterprise-only, and it offers a free one-time audit that measures brand mentions (not site readiness). Pricing as of June 2026 starts around $295/mo and climbs into enterprise territory (reported around $2k+).
Who it's for: a mid-market brand that wants recommendations bundled with the monitoring and can spend more than the entry tier crowd. Model: prompt-sampling SoV plus optimization recs. Price: ~$295/mo entry.
Knowatoa (knowatoa.com) is the cheapest pure monitor with a useful twist. Its standout is an AI Search Console that actively probes whether 24 AI user-agents can access your site (checking robots.txt and config blocks) and gives fix guidance. That is an accessibility audit, not log-based traffic attribution, so reviewers note it lacks traffic attribution. There is a free one-off audit. Pricing as of June 2026 runs roughly $59/mo, then about $199, then enterprise.
Who it's for: SMBs and agencies that want budget mention-tracking plus a crawler-access check. Model: prompt-sampling SoV plus AI-bot access probing. Price: ~$59/mo entry.
Scrunch AI (scrunchai.com) is the most feature-complete tool on this list: share of voice, Agent Traffic (bot logs), an Agent Experience Platform that serves clean HTML to agents at the edge (newer and limited), and page audits. One catch matters for buyers: Scrunch was acquired by Sitecore around June 2026 (reported ~$225M) and is moving enterprise and rebranding, which means the affordable self-serve lane is being vacated. Pricing as of June 2026 starts around $250/mo Core, then about $417, then enterprise, with a 7-day trial that requires a card.
Who it's for: mid-market or enterprise teams that want SoV plus agent-traffic analytics in one platform, with eyes open about the Sitecore-driven move upmarket. Model: SoV plus bot logs plus edge clean-HTML. Price: ~$250/mo entry. I wrote a deeper Crawlytics vs Scrunch AI breakdown if you want the head-to-head, since that is the one tool with real overlap on the technical side.
If you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, the cheapest path to share-of-voice may be an add-on rather than a new subscription, because you reuse the base plan.
Ahrefs Brand Radar (ahrefs.com) adds search-backed SoV prompts to the Ahrefs suite. It has no sentiment and no AI-shopping view, and reviewers report its data skews to Google surfaces with weaker ChatGPT and Perplexity accuracy. It needs a base plan plus an add-on (reported around $398 and $699 as of June 2026), and there is a free AI Visibility Checker with no signup. Ahrefs is also publicly skeptical of llms.txt.
Semrush AI Visibility (semrush.com) is a SoV bolt-on: an AI Visibility Toolkit add-on around $99/mo on top of a base plan, plus an Enterprise AIO tier that is sales-only, and a free checker. Its AI Traffic Dashboard uses third-party referral estimates rather than your own logs, and Semrush has publicly argued llms.txt is ineffective. Both suites fit existing customers better than newcomers. If you are weighing the bigger suite question, see our roundup of GEO tools.
Entry pricing, engine coverage, and free options as of June 2026. Prices move, so treat these as a starting point and verify on each vendor's site.
| Tool | Entry price (≈, Jun 2026) | Engines / coverage | Free option | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | ~$99–$399/mo, then enterprise (sales-gated) | ~9–11 engines, deep | No | $100M+ brands |
| Otterly.ai | ~$29/mo Lite | Major assistants (caps on Lite) | Trial / checker | Solo / small brand |
| Peec AI | ~€89/mo | Major assistants | 7-day trial, no card | Marketing teams |
| AthenaHQ | ~$295/mo | Major assistants | Free one-time audit | Mid-market |
| Knowatoa | ~$59/mo | SoV + 24 UA access probe | Free one-off audit | SMB / agency |
| Scrunch AI | ~$250/mo Core | SoV + bot logs + edge HTML | 7-day trial (card) | Mid / enterprise |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Base plan + ~$398/$699 add-on | Search-backed, Google-skewed | Free checker | Ahrefs users |
| Semrush AI Visibility | ~$99/mo add-on + base | Major + referral estimates | Free checker | Semrush users |
If your only goal is cheaper mention-tracking, the shortlist is short: Otterly for the lowest entry, Knowatoa for budget plus a crawler-access check, Peec for a marketing-team view. Everything above $200/mo is a step up in capability, not just price.
Here is the honest part. Some people who type "Profound alternatives" do not actually want another mention-tracker. They want their site to show up and work when an AI agent arrives, and they assumed a monitor would get them there. A monitor will not. It measures the symptom; it does not change what the agent sees on your pages. That is a different job.
That different job is where Crawlytics fits, and I am the publisher saying so plainly. Crawlytics does not do prompt-sampling share-of-voice. It does not run scheduled prompts across engines, it does not chart your brand's mention rate against competitors, and it will not replace Profound for that. If mention-tracking is your need, pick a tool from the list above and stop reading here.
What Crawlytics does instead is the readability-and-access side. It tracks AI bots from your real server logs (so you see which crawlers fetched which pages), it generates and serves your llms.txt plus clean HTML to AI fetchers, and it runs a free agent-readiness grader. None of the eight monitors above generate and serve llms.txt, and that is a structural difference: a pure prompt-monitor reads model outputs, not your pages, so it cannot serve a machine-readable version of your site. Pricing as of June 2026 is flat: $29.99/mo Visibility and $49.99/mo Commerce, no per-event fees, no sales call.
The genuine cons, since this is a disclosure: Crawlytics is the wrong tool if you want share-of-voice math, it does not produce a competitor mention-rate deck, and it is lighter than any dedicated monitor on multi-prompt sampling because it does not do that category at all. If you want both jobs, the honest move is to run a cheap monitor for mentions and Crawlytics for readability and bot access. For the full contrast, I wrote a Crawlytics vs Profound breakdown and a three-way Otterly vs Peec vs Crawlytics piece.
Match the tool to who you are, not to the longest feature list.
Solo founder or small brand, tight budget. Start with Otterly.ai at ~$29/mo for mention-tracking, or Knowatoa at ~$59/mo if you also want a crawler-access check. Run the free checkers first. You do not need an enterprise platform to answer "am I showing up at all."
Marketing team that reports to leadership. Peec AI for a clean SoV view, or AthenaHQ if you want recommendations bundled in. If share-of-voice is a number your org has standardized on, buy the tool built for it, but know that AI share of voice is a shakier metric than vendors admit.
Existing Ahrefs or Semrush customer. Try the suite add-on before buying a separate tool. You already pay for the base, and the marginal cost of Brand Radar or AI Visibility is lower than a new subscription, with the caveat that both lean toward Google surfaces.
You need agent-traffic analytics plus SoV in one place. Scrunch AI is the most complete, with the asterisk that Sitecore is steering it upmarket. Watch the pricing and roadmap before committing for the long term.
Your real problem is that agents cannot read or act on your site. No monitor fixes that. Run the free agent-readiness grader, and if the score is low, you need the readability-and-access layer, not another dashboard. See our broader AI brand monitoring roundup if you are still mapping the landscape, or current Crawlytics pricing for the fix side.
Written by Crawlytics Team. Crawlytics tracks AI bots, generates llms.txt, and powers WebMCP commerce, all from one snippet on any stack. See how it works →
For most teams the best Profound alternative is a cheaper prompt-sampling share-of-voice monitor: Otterly.ai (around $29/mo Lite), Peec AI (around €89/mo), or Knowatoa (around $59/mo) as of June 2026. Pick by budget, engine coverage, and whether you want a marketing-team view (Peec) or the cheapest entry (Otterly, Knowatoa). Verify current pricing on each vendor site, since this market moves fast.
Yes. Profound moved to sales-gated enterprise pricing in 2026, with entry tiers around $99 to $399/mo reported on third-party reviews. Cheaper monitors as of June 2026 include Otterly.ai at roughly $29/mo, Knowatoa at roughly $59/mo, and Peec AI at roughly €89/mo. If you already pay for Ahrefs or Semrush, their AI-visibility add-ons can be cheaper than a separate tool because you reuse the base plan.
Profound pricing is sales-gated as of June 2026, so there is no fully public self-serve number. Third-party reviews report historical tiers around $99/mo and $399/mo before the climb into enterprise contracts aimed at $100M+ brands. Expect to talk to sales for anything resembling a real seat. That gating is the main reason smaller brands look for an alternative.
There is no free continuous share-of-voice monitor that matches Profound, but several tools offer free one-time checks: Knowatoa, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, and Semrush each have a free AI-visibility checker as of June 2026. For a free, repeatable scan of whether AI agents can actually reach and read your site (a different question from mention tracking), Crawlytics runs a free agent-readiness grader at /agent-ready.
No. Crawlytics does not do prompt-sampling share-of-voice, so it does not replace Profound for brand-mention tracking. They do different jobs. Profound measures how often AI assistants mention you across many prompts and engines; Crawlytics tracks AI bots in your server logs, generates and serves llms.txt and clean HTML to those bots, and runs an agent-readiness grader. If your need is mention-tracking, pick a monitor. If your need is making your site visible and usable to AI agents, that is where Crawlytics fits.
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