Profound AI Pricing: What Each Plan Costs in August 2026

Profound is good. That's not the question. The question is whether the tier you can actually afford gives you enough to run a real AEO program — or just enough to see what you're missing. That gap between Starter and Growth is bigger than $300 a month.

TLDR:

• Profound's $99 Starter tier locks you into ChatGPT only; multi-engine coverage starts at $399/month
• Claude and Gemini tracking sit behind Enterprise pricing with no self-serve path and no published number
• Profound monitors your AI visibility gaps but won't push fixes to your CMS or execute any remediation
• Agencies hit the pricing ceiling fast: each client needs its own workspace, and add-ons stack quickly
• Maintouch tracks citations across 5 engines at 1,000+ concurrent prompts, with a free tier covering all five engines — including Claude — for one full year at maintouch.com/free

What Is Profound?

Profound is an AI visibility tracking and answer engine optimization (AEO) tool built for large brands. It tracks how often you get cited across AI search engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — surfaces prompt-level data, and helps marketing teams generate content built to show up in AI-generated answers.

It's the most-benchmarked name in the category. Sequoia-led Series B. A reported Series C of $96M in February 2026 at a $1B valuation. Fortune 500 logos signed faster than any competitor, and the deepest prompt-intelligence dataset in the space.

That pedigree matters when you're sizing it up — not because it makes the product better, but because it tells you who the product was built for. The question is whether that buyer is you.

Profound's Core Features

Before getting into the pricing math, here's what you're actually buying.

• Answer Engine Insights: tracks how often your brand gets cited across AI engines, broken down by prompt and engine
• Prompt Volumes: Profound's standout feature, sourced from real user conversations instead of synthetic queries, so you're seeing actual AI search demand by topic
• Conversation Explorer: lets you dig into how specific prompts return responses and where competitors show up instead of you
• Agent Analytics: tracks AI crawler behavior, showing when and how bots are reading your pages
• Content Agents: generate briefs and optimized drafts on a credit model, meaning usage burns down your monthly allocation. See the full Profound AEO vs. alternatives breakdown for more on what works and where it stops.

The data layer is strong. The complication, as you're about to see, is how much of it you can actually access at each price point.

Profound Pricing Plans Breakdown

Annual billing is the only self-serve option. Starter runs $1,188/year, Growth runs $4,788/year before tax. No monthly path for either tier — you're committing upfront.

The engine coverage gap is the thing most buyers miss. Starter locks you into ChatGPT. Add Perplexity or Google AI Overviews and you're already at $399/month. Claude, Gemini, Grok — everything else sits behind Enterprise pricing with no published number and a sales conversation required before you've seen a single data point.

Profound Agency Pricing

Profound's agency pricing starts at $99/month, but the structure is different from the brand plans. Agency tiers are built around multi-client workspaces, with add-ons for pitch audits, extra users, and regional tracking that push real costs well above the headline number.

The core tension is workspace math. Each client typically needs its own workspace. Workspaces beyond your plan default cost more. If you're running five or ten accounts, the per-client cost compounds fast — a lot faster than the entry price implies.

The costs that stack up:

• Additional workspaces beyond the plan default
• Pitch audit credits for client-facing AEO reports
• Seats for account managers and strategists
• Multi-region or multi-language tracking per client

White-label reporting exists at higher tiers, but getting there means an Agency Enterprise conversation with sales. No published price.

The real math: active client count × one workspace, plus team seats, plus pitch audits. The $99 entry point rarely survives contact with a real client roster.

What the $99 Starter Plan Actually Gets You

Starter is a real product. Log in, track prompts, see how your brand shows up in ChatGPT responses. If ChatGPT is the only engine you care about and you're just starting to build an AEO workflow, it works.

What it actually includes:

• 50 unique prompts and 1,500 responses per month
• One seat, one language, one region
• 100 Agent credits and ChatGPT coverage only
• No exports, no API

The ceiling hits fast. Want Perplexity data? You're out. Need more than one login? Also out. The 100 Agent credits don't stretch far if you're generating content with any regularity, and there's no export path — no spreadsheet, no reporting tool, nothing.

Starter works as a proof of concept: a way to sanity-check whether Profound's data quality is worth paying for before you commit. Hard to defend long-term if you're running an actual AEO program. Most buyers who need real engine breadth, team access, or data portability end up at $399 within the first month.

Where Profound Falls Short

Profound is the category leader. None of what follows is a reason to dismiss it — it's a reason to go in with your eyes open.

The most consistent complaint is feature gating. Claude and Gemini coverage are Enterprise-only, no self-serve path. If your buyers are spending meaningful time on those models — and in B2B they often are — you're already in a sales conversation before you've seen a single data point from either engine.

The attribution gap is the other issue. Profound's CDN-dependent attribution method can exclude many SaaS and B2B companies from tracking which AI traffic actually converts. There's no native GA4 integration — you can see where you're cited, but not what those visitors do after they land. For teams trying to build a business case around AEO spend and how to track AI visibility KPIs, that's a meaningful hole.

A few other trade-offs:

• Single-account architecture is awkward for agencies managing multiple brands; workspace add-ons help but add cost.
• The learning curve favors teams with a dedicated AEO owner, not generalist marketers splitting time across priorities.
• Agent credits deplete fast on content-heavy workflows, and replenishing them means upgrading or rationing usage.

If you're a lean team, an agency, or just trying to close the loop between AI visibility and revenue — these add up fast.

Who Profound Is Actually Built For

Profound earns its position at the top of the category. The enterprise security posture includes SSO, and the Fortune 500 logos are real. For a large brand with a dedicated AEO function and a budget that absorbs $2,000+/month without a budget meeting, it's a defensible choice.

The buyer it's built for looks like this: someone who owns AEO full-time, a procurement team that needs SOC 2 clearance, and prompt volume and engine coverage requirements that only unlock at Enterprise. If that's your situation, you'll actually use the product depth.

Everywhere else, it breaks down fast. Early-stage startups, lean two-person marketing teams, agencies juggling multiple client accounts — they all hit the ceiling quickly. The product assumes budget, onboarding time, and an analytics-capable team. Missing any one of those three, you're paying for features you can't extract value from. For a broader look at what else is out there, see the best AI brand visibility tracking tools available today.

The clearest signal you're not the target customer: if the first thing you'd do after signing up is calculate how many clients can share one workspace, Profound's pricing model is already working against you.

How Profound Compares to Other AI Visibility Tools

The AI visibility tracking market has filled in fast. Here's where the main alternatives sit — and the architectural difference that separates them.

Semrush and Ahrefs cover AI Overviews and stop there. No ChatGPT, no Perplexity, no Claude. They're SEO data tools that bolted on an AI visibility tab — not products built from the ground up for this category. If you're still working out how AEO and SEO actually differ, that distinction matters more than it sounds.

AthenaHQ and Peec AI track more engines but neither executes fixes. You get the data; next steps are yours to figure out. Peec AI has no human support layer at all — if that specific head-to-head matters to you, the Peec AI vs Profound breakdown is worth reading.

PromptWatch covers five engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot — and adds AI crawler logs. Genuinely useful. But the content agents are limited: no technical SEO, no backlinks, no CMS push. It tells you what to do. Someone else still has to do it.

Is Profound Worth the Price?

At $99/month, you're buying a limited preview. ChatGPT-only tracking with 50 prompts and no export path is enough to validate whether Profound's data quality is worth paying for — not enough to run an actual AEO program. Most teams who try Starter move to Growth or cancel. If neither tier fits, there are Profound alternatives worth a look.

At $399/month, Growth works for the right team: one primary market, one language, a dedicated AEO owner, no hard requirement for Claude or Gemini. The Prompt Volumes dataset alone is worth taking seriously if your team will actually act on what it surfaces.

Enterprise at $2,000–$5,000+/month makes sense when AI visibility is a board-level priority, procurement needs SOC 2 clearance, and you need full eleven-engine coverage.

The limitation that runs across every tier: Profound monitors. It shows you where you're invisible in AI search. It won't push a content fix to your CMS, source a backlink, or execute a technical SEO change. You get the diagnosis. The remediation is your problem. For teams without a dedicated resource to act on the data, that's the real cost — you pay for insight, then pay again to do something about it.

How Maintouch Compares to Profound

Profound shows you the gap. Maintouch closes it.

The core difference isn't feature depth or data quality — it's whether insight becomes shipped work inside the same system. Profound monitors; Maintouch executes. Content strategy, content creation, technical SEO fixes pushed directly to your CMS, backlink procurement, AI visibility tracking — all of it runs in one closed loop, no handoff to a separate workflow.

On AI visibility: Maintouch tracks citations across ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude at 1,000+ concurrent prompts. Claude coverage — which Profound gates behind Enterprise pricing — is included in Maintouch's free tier: 35 prompts tracked across all five engines for a full year, no credit card required. See the full Maintouch vs Profound comparison for pricing details.

Profound customers consistently report needing an external contractor — typically around $2,000/month — to extract value once they have the data. Maintouch includes a dedicated account strategist in every paying account: weekly standing syncs, dedicated Slack channel. That's the structural substitute for the contractor layer. Built in, not bolted on.

Monitoring tells you you're missing citations. Closing that gap is a different kind of work entirely.

Final Thoughts on Profound AI Visibility Tracking

Profound is a strong product for the buyer it was built for: a large brand with a dedicated AEO owner, enterprise procurement needs, and a budget that absorbs the contractor layer on top. For everyone else, the ceiling shows up fast and the cost math compounds.

I've watched teams spend three months staring at monitoring dashboards, nod at the gaps, and then ask who's actually going to do the work. That's the moment Profound's model breaks down — and it breaks down the same way every time. If you want to see how the execution side works, shoot me a message at [email protected].

FAQ

Is Profound worth it at $399/month for a small marketing team without a dedicated AEO owner?

Probably not. Growth unlocks real engine coverage across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, but the product assumes someone owns AEO full-time and has the bandwidth to act on the data. If your team is splitting time across priorities, you'll pay for insight and then need to hire around it to actually execute, which is where the real cost lands.

How do I measure whether my content is getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews?

You need a tool that tracks citation share across each engine separately, since citation behavior varies by prompt and by model. Profound tracks this at the prompt level with real user query data; Semrush and Ahrefs cover Google AI Overviews only and stop there. Maintouch tracks citations across all five engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude) at 1,000+ concurrent prompts, with a free tier at maintouch.com/free that covers 35 prompts across all five for one full year.

What is the relationship between SEO and AEO, and how much do they actually overlap?

They share the same foundation. AI engines run a web search before generating answers, so strong SEO directly feeds AEO performance. The practical implication is that running two separate strategies, one for Google and one for AI, is redundant work built on the same underlying content and backlink signals.

Profound vs. Maintouch: which one makes sense if you need execution, not monitoring alone?

If your primary need is data and prompt intelligence, Profound is the stronger option, especially at Enterprise with full engine coverage and Prompt Volumes. If you need the work to actually get done inside the same system, Profound monitoring plus a contractor to act on it typically runs $2,000/month on top of the subscription. Maintouch closes that loop with content creation, CMS execution, backlink procurement, and AI visibility tracking in one system, with a dedicated account strategist included in every paying account.

How does Profound's pricing per month compare across its Starter, Growth, and Enterprise tiers?

Profound Starter runs $99/month billed annually (ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, no exports). Growth is $399/month billed annually and covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews with CSV exports. Enterprise has no published price, typically landing between $2,000 and $5,000+/month, and is the only tier that includes Claude, Gemini, full engine coverage, API access, and Prompt Volumes.

Does Profound offer a free trial or a free tier?

Growth includes a 7-day free trial. Starter does not. There's no permanent free tier — once the trial ends, you're on an annual billing cycle with no monthly option. If you want to sanity-check AI visibility data before committing, Maintouch's free tier at maintouch.com/free tracks 35 prompts across all five engines for a full year at no cost, with no credit card required.

Can I cancel Profound and switch to a monthly plan if I don't see results?

No. Profound's self-serve tiers — Starter and Growth — are annual-only with no published monthly billing path. If you sign up and the data doesn't move the needle, you're locked in for the year. That makes the tier decision upfront more consequential than it would be on a month-to-month contract.

What's the real cost of using Profound if you factor in what it takes to act on the data?

Profound customers consistently report needing an external contractor — typically around $2,000/month — to extract value once they have the data. Profound monitors and surfaces gaps; it doesn't push fixes to your CMS, build backlinks, or execute content changes. So the real cost at the Growth tier is closer to $2,400/month ($399 subscription plus the contractor layer), not $399. That's the number worth running against alternatives before you sign.

How does Profound track AI visibility — is it using real user queries or synthetic prompts?

Profound's standout data advantage is Prompt Volumes, which is sourced from real user conversations rather than synthetic queries. The catch: Prompt Volumes is an Enterprise-only feature. On Starter and Growth, you're tracking custom prompts you define manually. Real user query intelligence doesn't unlock until you're in a custom Enterprise contract with no published price.

Is Profound a good fit for an early-stage startup that's just getting started with AEO?

Probably not the right starting point. The product assumes you already have a team member who owns AEO, a budget that absorbs $399–$5,000+/month, and the operational bandwidth to act on monitoring data. Early-stage teams with limited resources get more leverage from a system that executes fixes directly — not one that surfaces gaps you then have to manually close. Starter works as a proof-of-concept, but it's hard to justify as a long-term operating plan.

What should I look for in a Profound alternative if I need execution, not just monitoring?

The key architectural question is whether the tool closes the loop or hands you a to-do list. Profound, AthenaHQ, Peec AI, Semrush, and Ahrefs all sit on the monitoring side — they show you where you're invisible in AI search and stop there. If you need the work to actually get done, look for a system that tracks citations across all five engines and also pushes content fixes directly to your CMS, handles backlink procurement, and includes a human strategist to keep execution aligned with priorities.

Does Profound track Claude and Gemini citations, or are those locked behind Enterprise?

Both Claude and Gemini are Enterprise-only on Profound. There's no self-serve path to either engine on Starter or Growth. If your buyers are spending time on those models — and in B2B they often are — you're already in a sales conversation before you've seen a single data point from either engine. It's worth knowing that upfront before you sign an annual contract at the Growth tier.

How does Profound compare to Semrush and Ahrefs for AI visibility tracking?

Semrush and Ahrefs cover Google AI Overviews and stop there. No ChatGPT, no Perplexity, no Claude. They bolted an AI visibility tab onto their existing SEO data products — they were not built from the ground up for answer engine optimization. Profound is AEO-native and tracks multiple engines at the prompt level with real user query data, which is a meaningfully different product. If multi-engine coverage and prompt-level intelligence are what you need, Profound is the better comparison point — though the engine coverage you actually get depends heavily on which tier you're on.

What are Prompt Volumes in Profound and why are they only available at Enterprise?

Prompt Volumes is Profound's standout data feature: instead of synthetic or manually defined queries, it surfaces real user questions sourced from actual AI conversations, showing genuine demand by topic. It's the difference between guessing what people ask AI tools and seeing it directly. The catch is that it's gated behind Enterprise pricing with no self-serve path and no published price. On Starter and Growth, you're tracking prompts you define yourself, which means the real-user query intelligence layer doesn't unlock until you're in a custom contract.

Does Profound integrate with Google Analytics or GA4 to show what AI-driven visitors actually do on my site?

No. Profound doesn't have a native GA4 integration, which is a meaningful gap if you're trying to build a business case around AEO spend. You can see where you're getting cited in AI-generated answers, but you can't close the loop on what those visitors do after they land. For teams trying to tie AI visibility to revenue, that attribution gap is one of the more consistent complaints from reviewers and a real consideration before committing.

Is Profound SOC 2 compliant?

Profound's SOC 2 compliance posture isn't publicly equivalent to what some enterprise buyers require. If your procurement team needs formal SOC 2 Type II certification before signing, it's worth verifying directly with Profound's sales team rather than assuming compliance at any tier. For large enterprise accounts, Profound does have an enterprise security posture — SSO is included at Enterprise — but the specific compliance documentation should be confirmed before you're at the signature stage.

How many prompts do I actually need to run a real AEO program, and does Profound's Starter tier cover that?

Fifty unique prompts per month (the Starter ceiling) is a starting point, not an operating volume. A real AEO program typically tracks dozens of topic clusters, each with multiple prompt variants, across several buyer stages. You run out of headroom fast, especially if you're in a competitive category with broad top-of-funnel exposure. Growth bumps that to 100 unique prompts, which gives more room to work with — but neither tier gives you access to Profound's real-user Prompt Volumes data, which is where the actionable signal actually lives.