Profound pricing now has two options: a free 7-day Trial and an Enterprise plan at a custom price Profound does not publish. Its $99-a-month Starter and $399-a-month Growth plans were removed between September 14 and 21, 2026. On October 19, 2026, PricingSaaS, a site that tracks changes to software pricing pages, recorded the next change: the free Trial gained Projects, Profound's shared team spaces.
Profound is an AI visibility platform for answer engine optimization (AEO): it shows how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and other AI engines mention your brand. We read its pricing page on October 28, 2026. All prices here are US dollars from each vendor's own pricing page that day. Canadian-dollar figures use the Bank of Canada rate of 1.4038 from October 27, 2026.
Key facts
- Free Trial: 50 prompts, checked daily for 7 days, on 3 engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews), 1 region, 1 language.
- Enterprise: custom price, up to 9 engines, API, exports, all-time data history, SSO.
- Removed: Starter ($99/mo) and Growth ($399/mo), between September 14 and 21, 2026 (PricingSaaS).
- Cheapest paid alternative we found: Otterly.AI Lite at $29/mo for 15 prompts.
- Still out of date elsewhere: HubSpot's AEO cost guide, updated September 8, 2026, still lists Profound "from $99/mo".
How much does Profound cost in 2026?
Profound costs nothing for a 7-day Trial, and an undisclosed custom amount for Enterprise; there is no public paid price. To buy it, you contact sales and get a quote.
Here is what each plan includes, as listed on the pricing page on October 28, 2026:
| Trial | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Custom (contact sales) |
| Prompts tracked | 50 unique | Custom |
| How often | Daily, for 7 days | Daily |
| AI engines | 3: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews | Up to 9, adding Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude and Exa Search |
| Regions and languages | 1 each | Custom |
| Seats | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Data history | None | All time |
| Exports and API | None | CSV, JSON, API |
| Support | None | Email, dedicated Slack or a specialist with a 24-hour SLA |
| SSO | No | SSO/SAML, SOC 2 |
The page also mentions a third plan, but only in its FAQ: "The self-serve Agency Growth plan comes with 400 credits per month per client workspace." No price is shown for it. Agencies managing several client brands should ask sales for that figure in writing.
Profound's Agents feature, which runs marketing tasks inside the platform, is billed in credits on top of the plan. In the FAQ's words, "Profound Agents are priced on a credit-based model." Your account team estimates how many credits you need. When you run out, the account either keeps running and bills the overage, or pauses, depending on how it is set up.
What happened to Profound's $99 and $399 plans?
Profound took both self-serve paid plans off its pricing page between September 14 and 21, 2026, and replaced them with the free Trial. PricingSaaS, which tracks SaaS pricing pages week by week, recorded the change and classed it as "price hidden".
The same capture shows one Enterprise engine swap: Grok out, Exa Search in. A month later, PricingSaaS's October 19 diff recorded two smaller changes between October 12 and 19:
- Projects, the shared team spaces, are now included in the free Trial. Before, the Trial did not include them.
- The AI Marketer feature called "Opportunities" was renamed "Suggestions".
The practical result for a buyer: the old $99 entry point is gone. Many comparison pages and reviews written before September still quote $99 and $399, so a search for "profound pricing" returns both the old prices and the new page. Trust the vendor page. If a quote you receive cites the old tiers, ask the vendor whether that price still exists.
What the removal does not tell you is the Enterprise price. Profound does not publish it, and we found no figure from Profound itself. Numbers you see on review sites are third-party estimates, so we have left them out.
Profound vs Otterly vs AthenaHQ vs Semrush pricing
Otterly.AI is the cheapest of the paid tools at $29 a month, Semrush and Ahrefs sit in the middle, and Profound is the only one that publishes no paid price at all. The table compares list prices on each vendor's own page, checked October 28, 2026. None of these pages shows a date the prices took effect.
| Tool | Entry paid price (USD/mo) | About CAD/mo | What the entry price gets you | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | Not published (Enterprise, custom) | n/a | Up to 9 engines, API, SSO | 7-day Trial, 50 prompts |
| Otterly.AI | $29 Lite | $40.71 | 15 prompts on ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot | Not checked |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99 | $138.98 | AI visibility tracking inside Semrush | No free trial |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | From $199 add-on | $279.36 | AI add-on to an Ahrefs plan (Lite from $129/mo, annual) | Not checked |
| AthenaHQ | $295 Starter | $414.12 | 3,600 credits; 1 credit = 1 AI response | Essential: 300 credits free |
Otterly's higher plans run $189 a month for 100 prompts (Standard) and $489 for 400 (Premium), before tax. Its add-ons are priced by plan: Google AI Mode plus Gemini costs $9, $59 or $149 a month, and Claude costs $29, $109 or $439. AthenaHQ also has a custom-priced Enterprise plan.
The Ahrefs figure needs care. Brand Radar is an add-on, so the real monthly cost is the add-on plus an Ahrefs subscription. Semrush lists the AI Visibility Toolkit at $99 a month with no free trial.
The five tools do not measure the same things the same way. A prompt at Otterly, a credit at AthenaHQ and a prompt at Profound are different units, so compare the number of questions you can track on the engines your customers use, not the sticker price alone.
Do you need a paid AI visibility tool at all?
Most small businesses do not need a paid AI visibility tool yet, because AI engines still send far less traffic than Google. Across 100 sites and 145 million-plus sessions, Marie Haynes found ChatGPT sessions equal to 0.62% of Google organic sessions, published October 21, 2026. The SEO Works measured organic search sending 39 times more traffic than AI assistants across 95 sites.
AI visitors can convert well. Haynes measured 13.8% for ChatGPT against 3.02% for organic. But the volume is small, and a tool that tracks 15 prompts tells you how a brand shows up, not how many sales follow.
You can get most of that picture for free:
- Write the 10 to 20 questions a customer would ask before hiring you, such as "best accountant in Mississauga for a small business".
- Ask each one in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity once a month, and check Google's AI Overview for the same query.
- Record whether you are named, which competitors are named and which pages are cited.
- Check your analytics for referral visits from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai.
Our guide on how to measure AI search visibility covers the method in more detail. A paid tool starts to pay for itself when the list of questions passes what one person can check by hand in a morning, or when you need several regions, languages or engines tracked daily.
Is Profound worth it for a small business?
For most small businesses, no: Profound's paid product is now sold only through a custom Enterprise contract, and its features are built for teams with procurement, security reviews and many brands to track. That is a fit problem, not a quality problem.
Profound does several things the cheaper tools on the table do not list at their entry prices. It covers up to 9 engines, including DeepSeek, Claude and Exa Search. It keeps all-time data history, exports CSV and JSON, offers an API, supports SSO/SAML and lists SOC 2 compliance. It tracks ChatGPT Shopping, which matters to ecommerce brands. Support can include a dedicated Slack channel or a specialist with a 24-hour SLA, and every plan has unlimited seats.
A small business can still use the free Trial well. Load the 50 questions that matter most and run them for 7 days. The Trial has no exports and keeps no data history, so write down what you see as you go. That week gives you a baseline at no cost, and it tells you whether AI engines mention your business at all.
Profound makes more sense when:
- you track a brand across several countries or languages,
- your security team requires SSO and SOC 2 from vendors,
- you need the data in your own reporting through an API,
- you are an agency running many client workspaces.
If none of those apply, Otterly at $29 or the free manual check above covers the same question for a local business: do AI engines name us, and who do they name instead?
Where we fit
Space & Story includes AEO work in every monthly plan, from Local at CA$300 a month to Authority at CA$2,000 a month and up, in Canadian dollars plus HST; see pricing. Our free 24-page audit is delivered within 24 hours. For the wider budget question, start with our pillar on whether you need extra budget for AEO, then affordable AEO services for what each price level buys, and our AEO cost comparison for agency rates.