Key takeaways
- Profound's pricing page now lists only a free 7-day trial and custom Enterprise pricing, according to Alhena's July 2026 review. Older $99 and $399 self-serve plans are reported as gone, and third-party sources still quote them, so confirm on Profound's own site.
- The cheapest multi-engine plan with a published price is Otterly.ai Lite at $29 a month (15 prompts, 4 engines). The next step up is $189, and there is nothing in between.
- The ladder runs roughly: $20 to $29 for entry trackers, $99 for SEO-suite add-ons, $199 to $250 for dedicated platforms, then custom pricing.
- Cheap tools show you a score. They rarely tell you why AI cites someone else or help you fix it. Budget for that gap.
- Prompt count matters more than the sticker price. 15 prompts is a spot check, not a program.
Why the Profound comparison changed
For a while, "Profound alternative" meant "something cheaper than $399 a month." Now the question is different. Profound is still the enterprise leader (Alhena reports a $180M Series D in September 2026 and more than 1,000 enterprise brands), but if you are a small team you can't buy the thing off a price list.
So "cheaper than Profound" now just means "has a published price." That is a low bar, which is why this guide focuses on what you actually get at each price point, and where the cheap plans quietly run out of road.
A caveat on sourcing: the prices below come from vendor pages and third-party roundups. Only Otterly's pricing was checked live for this guide. Vendors change plans often, so confirm anything you plan to buy.
The price ladder at a glance
| Tool | Entry price | What the entry tier covers | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rankscale | $20/mo (annual billing only) | Essentials plan | Cheapest monthly plan is Pro at $99 |
| PromptRush | $19/mo | Daily AI visibility scans | Per its catalog listing; verify limits |
| Otterly.ai | $29/mo ($25 annual) | 15 prompts, 4 engines, daily tracking | Jumps to $189 for 100 prompts |
| honeyb.ai | $29/mo | 1 AI model, 10 daily prompts | Single-engine test only |
| GetIntel | $29/mo | 25 buyer questions checked daily | Light on detail |
| AIclicks | $59/mo | 30 prompts, 3 platforms | Small prompt set |
| Dageno AI | $79/mo ($67 annual) | Multi-model monitoring, 252 regions | White-label claims need checking |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99/mo per domain | 4 engines | Best if you already live in Semrush |
| Similarweb AI Brand Visibility | From $99 | 4 engines, AI referral traffic | Reporting-oriented |
| Alhena | Free tier; $199/mo annual ($239 monthly) | 5 engines on every paid plan | Ecommerce focus |
| Scrunch AI | $250/mo annual | Multi-engine, 7-day trial | Enterprise-leaning, now under Sitecore |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo | 5 engines free, 9 paid | Above the $250 line |
The $20 to $30 tier: spot checks
Otterly.ai Lite
Otterly is the default answer here, and it deserves it. Lite is $29 a month ($25 billed annually, which the pricing page lists as 15% off). You get 15 search prompts tracked daily across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons.
What surprised me is how much else is bundled: unlimited team members, brands, competitors, countries and languages, plus citation source tracking, sentiment analysis, a query fan-out tool and a GEO audit. The limits are 1 workspace and 3 recommendations a week.
The real problem is the cliff. Standard is $189 for 100 prompts, and there is no tier between 15 and 100. It adds API and MCP access, Agent Analytics and a Data Studio connector, which is nice, but if you only need 40 prompts you are paying for a lot you won't use. Extra prompts are $99 per 100. One roundup (BrandAxis) puts Standard plus a Claude add-on at $298, but I couldn't verify that on Otterly's pricing page, so treat it as unconfirmed.
The other sub-$30 options
honeyb.ai at $29 gives you one model and 10 daily prompts. That is a deliberate experiment, not monitoring. GetIntel's Monitor plan checks 25 buyer questions daily for the same money, which is a better ratio if the tool is decent. PromptRush is listed at $19 a month for daily scans. Rankscale starts at $20 but only on annual billing.
These are fine for answering one question: "Does AI mention us at all?" They are not fine for tracking trends, because small prompt sets are noisy. Promptwatch's average sources per response data shows why. ChatGPT cites about 5 sources per web-search answer, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity about 10, and Copilot's average swung from under 2 to nearly 17 within a few weeks before settling low. With 15 prompts, one Copilot swing can look like a brand collapse. Judge Copilot on monthly trends, and measure ChatGPT and AI Overviews separately, since one engine doesn't predict the other.
The $50 to $100 tier: more prompts, or an add-on to what you own
Dedicated budget trackers
AIclicks at $59 gives 30 prompts across 3 platforms. Dageno AI at $79 ($67 annual) advertises monitoring across AI models and 252 regions. Others in this band: ai-visibility.io at EUR 49 (local targeting, 1 site, 100 prompts, 3 engines) and siftly.ai at $79 (1 product, 2 engines, commerce focus).
ai-visibility.io stands out on prompts per dollar, though I would test it with a trial before trusting it. These are newer vendors and their pricing was captured by one roundup on 2026-08-01.
SEO suite add-ons
If you already pay for an SEO suite, the add-on is usually the cheapest real entry point. Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 a month per domain. Similarweb starts from $99 and adds AI referral traffic for you and competitors. Ahrefs Brand Radar runs $199 a month per AI index on top of a base plan, though Tim Soulo's roundup also lists lower credit-based tiers from $50, so check which you are quoted.
The trade-off: suites tend to use fixed prompt sets and shallow AI-specific data. Fine for a report to your boss. Thin if you want to know why a competitor keeps getting cited.
The $199 to $295 tier: dedicated platforms
This is where Profound's former self-serve pricing used to sit.
- Alhena: free tier, then $199/mo billed annually ($239 monthly), with 5 engines on every paid plan. It tracks individual products and ties AI traffic to orders, so it suits ecommerce.
- Scrunch AI: $250/mo billed annually with a 7-day trial. It is now part of Sitecore, so it leans enterprise.
- AthenaHQ: $295/mo, 5 engines free and 9 on paid plans, with a free tier to start.
Peec AI is the usual agency pick at about EUR 85 a month, with unlimited seats on every plan. It is a monitoring tool, with no content or optimization layer.
What cheap tracking leaves out
Before picking on price alone, check these gaps:
- Prompts. 15 to 30 prompts covers one product line, not a market.
- Engines. Entry plans often skip Claude, Gemini and AI Mode, or charge extra.
- Crawler data. Most budget tools can't tell you whether AI bots can even read your site. If your pages aren't being fetched, no amount of dashboarding helps.
- Action. A score tells you that you're losing. It doesn't write the page that fixes it.
- Traffic. Mentions are not revenue. Few cheap tools connect AI visibility to visits and conversions.
That last point is where I'd spend extra. A tool like Promptwatch starts at $95 a month (Essential: 50 prompts, daily tracking, all AI models, Agent Chat, Brand Narrative, visitor analytics and site audits included). Its crawler logs arrive on Professional at $245, and the Content Agent on Business at $579. So it is not the cheapest number on this page, but it is a full monitor-trace-act-measure loop rather than a dashboard. Confirm current prices at promptwatch.com/pricing.
If you want to see what AI already says about you before paying anyone, the free AI visibility report scans ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity without a login. Other free starting points in our catalog include [tool:amplitude-ai-visibility] and [tool:rightchoice-ai].
A free and near-free stack
You can learn a lot before spending $29.
- Run the free AI visibility report and a free grader or two.
- Write 15 to 20 prompts your buyers actually ask, split into category, comparison and brand questions.
- Check your robots.txt and llms.txt with the Agentic Readiness Check.
- Use Google Search Console to find which questions you already get impressions for. [tool:google-search-console]
- Only then pick a paid tracker, using your own prompt count as the requirement.
How to pick by situation
| Situation | Likely best fit | Rough price |
|---|---|---|
| Solo founder, first look | Otterly Lite or a free report | $0 to $29 |
| Already on Semrush | Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | $99 per domain |
| Need 100 prompts cheaply | ai-visibility.io (test first) or Otterly Standard | EUR 49 or $189 |
| Ecommerce brand | Alhena | $199 annual |
| Agency, many clients | Peec AI or an agency plan like Promptwatch Kick-off | About EUR 85 or $199 |
| Want tracking plus fixes | Promptwatch | From $95 |
| Enterprise, SSO, procurement | Profound or Scrunch | Custom or $250+ |
For more options, browse the GEO software directory or the AI rank tracking directory.
Practical tips for buying cheap
- Annual billing saves roughly 15 to 17% at most vendors, but only commit after a month of monthly use.
- Count add-ons. An engine you need on an add-on can double the price.
- Ask how prompts are collected. Real interface capture and API calls can give different answers.
- Keep the prompt set stable for at least a month before drawing conclusions.
- Verify Profound's current plans directly. Third parties disagree, with some still quoting a $99 Starter that tracks ChatGPT only.
Bottom line
If you just need to know whether AI mentions you, $29 for Otterly Lite is hard to beat. If you need 100 prompts, expect either a $189 jump or a lesser-known tool. And if you want to improve what AI says, not only watch it, budget for something that reads crawler data and helps you publish, because that is where the cheap tier stops.
If you'd rather hand the work off, 1001 SEO Media, the agency that publishes this site, runs AI search and GEO programs for brands using Promptwatch.