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Pricing comparison
Profound pricing in 2026: what it really costs
Profound (tryprofound.com) is the enterprise category leader in AI-visibility tracking. Here is what its plans actually cost as of August 2026, who they genuinely fit — and where a much smaller (or free) stack does the job.
Hatchloop is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Profound. Pricing below is as of August 2026 and may change — always confirm on the vendor's site.
The plans
Profound’s pricing at a glance
Profound’s own pricing page is demo-led and does not publish a full price ladder. The figures below come from independent third-party pricing teardowns by Trakkr and Geoptie, current as of August 2026.
| Plan | Price | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | ~$99/mo | ChatGPT tracking only, 50 prompts | Billed yearly only — roughly $1,188 up front |
| Growth | ~$399/mo | Adds Perplexity + Google AI Overviews, 100 prompts | 7-day trial; ~$4,788/year if kept |
| Enterprise | Custom | API + SSO, up to 9–11 AI engines | Demo-only; sales-led contract |
No free plan is advertised. The realistic minimum commitment is the annual Starter payment — about $1,188 — for tracking a single AI engine.
Credit where due
What you’re actually paying for
Profound is not overpriced for what it is — it is priced for who it serves. The company went from a $3.5M seed round in August 2024 to a $96M Series C at a $1B valuation (led by Lightspeed, February 2026) in about 18 months, with Sequoia backing the Series B along the way. Its customer list includes Target, Walmart, Figma, Ramp, MongoDB, Chime, U.S. Bank, DocuSign, Zapier, Samsung, and L’Oréal.
Its real moat is data: the public Profound Index is built on roughly 12 billion AI citations and 1.5 billion real user prompts. If you are an enterprise brand, comms, or SEO team that needs continuous share-of-voice monitoring across many AI engines — with API access, SSO, and a vendor your procurement team can call — Profound is a genuinely strong choice, and the enterprise tier is where its product is clearly built to live.
The honest fit test
Where Profound is overkill
The math changes completely for a small business or Shopify store:
- The entry point is ~$1,188/year, paid up front, and it only watches ChatGPT. Multi-engine tracking starts at ~$4,788/year on Growth.
- Monitoring is not your first problem. Dashboards tell you how often AI engines mention you. If your store is missing product schema, an llms.txt file, and quotable product content, the dashboard will just report zero every week. Fixing readability comes before measuring share of voice.
- 50–100 prompts is an enterprise allowance. It is designed for brand teams tracking a category, not a merchant who mostly needs to know “can ChatGPT read and recommend my store?” — a question a one-off free check answers.
None of that is a knock on Profound. It is the same reason a five-person store does not buy enterprise Salesforce.
Alternatives
Cheaper Profound alternatives, by budget
All prices as of August 2026, from vendor pricing pages and independent teardowns (linked). Every tool below is a legitimate product with its own strengths — the right pick depends on your size and whether you need monitoring (dashboards) or fixing (changes to your site).
| Tool | Entry price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Profound | ~$99/mo (billed yearly) | Enterprise brand & SEO teams; deepest data (custom enterprise tier) |
| RankScale | $20/mo | Budget monitoring — 17+ engines included, no per-engine add-ons (pricing source) |
| Otterly.ai | $29/mo (15 prompts) | Prosumer/SMB monitoring; per-engine add-ons cost extra (pricing source) |
| Peec AI | €85/mo (~$95) | Agencies and mid-market teams; 7-day trial, no credit card |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | $99/mo per domain | Teams already inside Semrush (pricing source) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/mo per AI platform | Ahrefs users; $699/mo for all six engines, on top of a $129 base plan |
| Scrunch AI | $250/mo (annual) | Mid-market teams wanting personas + page audits |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo | Premium self-serve, 8 engines; ex-Google Search founders (pricing source) |
| Hatchloop | Free checker · $12/mo app Starter | Shopify merchants who want the gaps fixed, not just charted |
Worth knowing: the free one-off-check layer is getting crowded — Ahrefs now offers a free AI visibility checker and HubSpot runs a free AI Search Grader. That is good news for you: a snapshot of where you stand should cost nothing. You pay when you want continuous monitoring (the tools above) or automated fixing (below).
Where Hatchloop fits
The fix-first option for SMBs and Shopify stores
Full disclosure: Hatchloop is a new entrant, and we are not trying to be Profound. We do not have a 12-billion-citation index, and if you are an enterprise team that needs one, use Profound. What we build is AI-visibility-first tooling for stores that need to become readable and recommendable to AI engines in the first place:
Free llms.txt generator
Generate the llms.txt file that tells AI crawlers what your site is and which pages matter — free, in about a minute.
Shopify app — launching
AI product descriptions, one-click schema, and llms.txt inside your Shopify admin. Free plan, $12/mo Starter. Launching on the Shopify App Store — currently in review.
FAQ
Profound pricing: frequently asked questions
How much does Profound cost?
As of August 2026, third-party teardowns report a self-serve floor of roughly $99/mo (Starter: ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, billed yearly) and roughly $399/mo (Growth: adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, 100 prompts). Enterprise is custom and demo-only. Profound’s own site does not publish a full ladder, so confirm with their sales team.
Does Profound have a free plan or free trial?
No free plan is advertised. Teardowns report a 7-day trial on Growth, while Starter is billed yearly only — so the realistic minimum commitment is about $1,188 paid up front.
Is Profound worth it for a small business or Shopify store?
Usually not. It is built for enterprise brand and SEO teams — think Target, Walmart, DocuSign — that need continuous multi-engine share-of-voice monitoring. A small store’s first job is becoming readable and recommendable to AI engines at all: schema, llms.txt, and product content. Free checkers and low-cost fix-it tools cover that.
What are the cheapest Profound alternatives?
For monitoring, as of August 2026: RankScale from $20/mo, Otterly.ai from $29/mo, Peec AI from €85/mo. For a free one-off read: Hatchloop’s 0–100 checker, Ahrefs’ free AI visibility checker, or HubSpot’s AI Search Grader. For fixing rather than watching, Hatchloop’s Shopify app (free plan, $12/mo Starter) is launching on the Shopify App Store.
Find out where you stand — free, before you pay anyone
Run the free 0–100 AI-visibility check on your store first. If the score is fine, you may not need a $1,188/year dashboard at all. If it is not, you will know exactly what to fix.