Profound alternative: AI visibility tracking without an enterprise contract
Profound and sirefs compared on 22 October 2026: plans and prices, engines, how each collects answers, agency pricing, and when Profound's enterprise platform is worth it.
The short answer
Profound sells a free seven-day trial and then Enterprise, priced on request, with up to nine answer engines, agents, prompt volumes, shopping and agent analytics; agencies pay $399 a month per client workspace. It suits larger brands that want monitoring and content agents under one contract. sirefs is the self-serve alternative: from €29 a month (€9 for the first month), eight engines on every plan including Grok, the collection method and a confidence interval on every number, and an MCP server from Pro. Choose Profound for the platform; choose sirefs to track your buyer questions without a sales call.
We make sirefs. To keep this fair, every fact about Profound comes from Profound's own pages, checked on 22 October 2026 and listed under Sources. Where we couldn't confirm a claim on Profound's pages, we say so. Where Profound is the better choice, we say that too.
Which should you choose?
- Profound if you're a larger brand or agency that wants AI visibility, content agents, prompt volumes, shopping and bot analytics under one enterprise contract, with SOC 2 Type II.
- sirefs if you want to start this week without a sales call: your buyer questions on eight engines from €29 a month, with numbers you can defend and the next steps that follow from them.
What is Profound?
Profound is an AI visibility and marketing platform for enterprise teams and agencies.2 It raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation in September 2026, led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, and says it serves over 1,000 enterprise brands.6
Plans. Two plans for brands when we checked:1
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | Free | 50 prompts daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; 1 language, 1 region; no API or exports |
| Enterprise | Custom | Up to 9 answer engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews and Exa Search |
Agencies. Agency Growth includes 10 pitch workspaces a month. A full client workspace is an add-on at $399 a month, with 100 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and five extra trial workspaces cost $199 a month. The page showed no base price for the agency plan; some third-party sites quote $99, which we couldn't confirm.1
Beyond tracking. Answer Engine Insights for visibility, Agent Analytics for how AI bots read, cite and refer to your pages, Prompt Volumes, shopping data, AI marketing agents and FactCheck.2 Prompt Volumes are estimated from double-opt-in consumer panels and statistical modelling, in ten countries, for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.4
How it collects answers. "We query the front-end experiences that normal users see", captured from the browser, with every tracked prompt run daily.3
Security. SOC 2 Type II.5
When is Profound the right call?
- You need the platform, not only the tracker: agents that write and report, prompt volumes, shopping, bot analytics.
- You buy through procurement, with SOC 2 Type II and a contract.
- You track DeepSeek or Exa, which sirefs doesn't.
- You want daily data on every engine. sirefs runs Perplexity, Claude and Grok weekly on every plan.
sirefs vs Profound, side by side
| Profound | sirefs | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Free 7-day trial, then Enterprise on request | Starter €29 a month, first month €9; no trial |
| Self-serve | Trial only | Every plan |
| Engines | Up to 9 on Enterprise; trial 3; no Grok | 8 on every plan, Grok included; no DeepSeek or Exa |
| Frequency | Daily | Weekly on Starter; daily on five engines from Pro |
| Collection method | Front-end experiences, from the browser | Labelled on every answer: ui, serp or api |
| Sample sizes and intervals | Not described on the pages we read | On every rate; alerts only on significant changes |
| Prompt volumes | Yes, panel-based estimates | No |
| Agents and content | AI marketing agents | Next steps from the cited pages; no writing agents |
| Site checks | Agent Analytics from bot traffic | 27-check GEO audit of your site |
| API and MCP | Not on the trial | MCP server and REST API on Pro and Agency |
| Agency pricing | $399 a month per client workspace | Agency, €249 a month for 25 brands and 150 prompts |
Where is Profound stronger?
- Breadth: agents, prompt volumes, shopping, agent analytics and FactCheck in one place.
- Enterprise controls and a large team behind them.
- Daily on every engine, and DeepSeek and Exa.
Where is sirefs stronger?
- No sales call. Choose a plan, enter your domain, and the first run starts at once; the first month costs €9.
- Price. sirefs Agency covers 25 brands for €249 a month; at Profound one client workspace is $399.
- Grok on every plan, and all eight engines from the €29 plan.
- The method on every number and statistics you can defend: a sample size and a 95% interval on every rate, and alerts only when a significance test says a change is real. See reading the numbers.
- A GEO audit that reads your site the way AI crawlers do, with 27 checks.
- European. A Danish company with its servers and databases in the EU, and a data processing agreement on the Danish Data Protection Agency's template.
What doesn't sirefs do yet?
- No prompt volumes, shopping data or bot-traffic analytics.
- No content-writing agents. Next steps tell you which pages to write and where to get mentioned; you write them.
- No client logins for agencies. Agency gives a read-only report link for each client, under the agency's name, with no sign-in.
- Perplexity, Claude and Grok weekly on every plan, through their APIs.
How do you try sirefs next to a Profound trial?
- Take the 20 to 30 prompts that matter most, in the market you sell in.
- Run them in both and compare only ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, the engines Profound's trial covers.
- Look at the sources, not only the rates: which pages each engine cites is what you can act on.
The free check audits your site and lists the questions sirefs would track for it, and the live demo shows the dashboard on a real project. See pricing for the plans.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Profound cost?
On 22 October 2026, Profound's pricing page showed two brand plans: a free trial and Enterprise at a custom price.1 Third-party sites still quote older self-serve plans; those weren't on Profound's page. For agencies, a full client workspace is an add-on at $399 a month; the agency plan's base price wasn't shown, and the $99 that some sites quote is unverified.
What does Profound's free trial include?
Fifty prompts run daily for seven days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, in one language and one region, without API access or exports.1 sirefs has no trial; its first month costs €9 on any monthly plan, and its GEO audit and live demo are free.
Which engines does Profound track?
Enterprise covers up to nine: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search.1 Grok isn't on the list. sirefs covers ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Bing AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok on every plan, and not Copilot, DeepSeek or Exa.
How does Profound collect answers?
Profound says it queries the front-end experiences that normal users see, captures answers directly from the browser and runs every tracked prompt daily.3 It doesn't say whether the sessions are logged in or out. sirefs labels each answer with its method: ui, serp or api.
Is Profound worth it for a small team?
If you need its agents, prompt volumes, shopping data or SOC 2 Type II under one contract, perhaps. If you need to know whether AI engines name you for your buyers' questions, and what to do about it, a self-serve tracker costs far less. Profound raised a $180 million Series D in September 2026 and says it serves over 1,000 enterprise brands.6
How we wrote this guide
sirefs wrote this guide from how our own GEO audit and monitoring work. Where we state facts about AI engines and crawlers, we cite the vendors' own documentation, checked on 22 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Write to support@sirefs.com.
Sources (checked 22 October 2026)
- Pricing (Profound) tryprofound.com
- Profound tryprofound.com
- Answer Engine Insights (Profound) tryprofound.com
- Prompt Volumes (Profound) tryprofound.com
- Enterprise (Profound) tryprofound.com
- Profound Raises $180M Series D at $1.8B Valuation to Build the AI Platform For Marketing Teams (Profound newsroom) tryprofound.com