Peec AI review 2026: you pick three engines from six, and two big ones are missing
Peec AI is a clean, well-built analytics product and the reporting is genuinely good. The limit worth understanding before you buy is engine access: every self-serve tier tracks three models chosen from a list of six, and Perplexity and Claude are not on that list. Includes Peec AI vs Profound, and how both compare with citeOS.
Peec AI is good at what it does and the catch is engine choice, not price. On Starter, Pro and Advanced you pick three models from six: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Perplexity and Claude are not among the six and arrive only on Enterprise, through the API. For a crypto brand that is a real gap, because Perplexity is the most source-transparent engine in the set and the one that shows you which pages decided the answer. citeOS runs all five of its engines, Perplexity and Claude included, on every tier.
Disclosure. citeOS is our product, built and operated by Emergence Media. This page compares it with a competitor, so read it the way you would read any vendor's comparison page. What we can offer instead of neutrality is that every figure about Peec AI below was read from its own public pages on 23 September 2026 and is dated, and that the section on where Peec AI beats us is longer than most vendors would allow.
Side by side
| Peec AI | citeOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Engines on the entry tier | Peec lets you choose 3 from: ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Naver AI | All 5: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode |
| Perplexity and Claude | Enterprise only, via API | Included on every tier, including the free scan |
| Adding a fourth engine | $30/mo on Starter, $70 on Pro, $140 on Advanced | Not sold separately, all 5 are in the price |
| Top-tier ceiling | Up to 13 models on Enterprise | 5 |
| Plans | Starter $95/mo, Pro $245, Advanced $495, Enterprise custom, 15% off annually | Free scan $0, audit $299, Concierge $749/mo, Enterprise custom |
| Prompts | 50 on Starter, 150 Pro, 350 Advanced | 20 buyer prompts × 5 engines = 100 observation points |
| Scoring weights | Not published | Published, with query-type multipliers |
| Competitor sets | You define them | Pre-built per vertical across 10 crypto verticals |
| Best for | Lean marketing teams reporting against named rivals | Crypto brands that need Perplexity and Claude measured |
Everything in the Peec AI column is quoted or summarised from its own pages on 23 September 2026. Vendor pages change without notice, so verify anything here before it decides a budget.
What the entry tier actually measures
The comparison that decides most of these purchases is not the monthly figure, it is how many engines you can watch at the tier you would realistically buy. Every vendor here gates engine access somewhere, and they gate it differently.
Two things in that chart are worth saying out loud. AthenaHQ and Trakkr both cover more engines at entry than we do, and Trakkr does it at $100 a month with no per-model fee, which is a better deal than ours on that axis alone. And engine count is not quality: a tool measuring eleven engines badly is worse than one measuring five well. What it does tell you is whether a tier can show you that the engines disagree, which in our own 100-answer exchange study they did on almost every question. For the full field see Profound alternatives.
Where Peec AI wins
- Competitive reporting. Visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice tracked daily against named competitors. If your board deck already asks whether you beat three specific rivals, this is built for that question and ours is not.
- Brand perception. Attribute scoring, objections traced back to the pages behind them, and fact-checking of claims AI makes about you against facts you set. That is a real feature set we do not match.
- Breadth of product. AI shopping with SKU-level tracking, a crawlability audit across 40+ bots, Looker Studio, an agent with custom skills, source classification. Peec is a bigger product than we are.
- Value. $95 a month for 50 prompts with unlimited users and daily tracking is fair for what it does, and we would recommend it over us to a non-crypto brand without hesitating.
A comparison page that concedes nothing is an advertisement. The useful question is not who wins, it is which of these gaps is yours.
Where citeOS wins
- Perplexity and Claude on every tier. This is the whole argument. In our own 100-answer exchange study, Perplexity returned fifteen to twenty sources per answer and read Reddit threads on 16 of 20 prompts. It is the engine that shows its working. Peec keeps it behind an enterprise contract.
- No engine arithmetic. Three of six, then $30 to $140 a month per extra model, is a shape you have to plan around. Our five are in the price at every tier.
- The crypto source layer. Peec classifies a source as editorial, reference or UGC. We score 500+ named crypto outlets on five measured signals, which is the difference between knowing what a source is and knowing whether it is worth pursuing.
- Published weights. Ours are public, including the multipliers that stop brand-name prompts inflating a score. Peec does not publish its scoring, which is the norm in this category rather than a criticism of them.
Before you pick either, get the baseline. Which engines name you today, and which pages they read instead.
Scan my brand free →The crypto question, which is the only one that decides this
Across 39,948 citation events for 72 audited crypto brands, April to August 2026, 92.22% of citations landed on pages the brand does not own. Whether an AI engine names you is settled on third-party pages, and in crypto that set is small, specific and reasonably stable: category listicles, comparison pages, a handful of community threads.
So the most valuable thing any product in this category produces is not the score. It is the ranked list of domains that were cited instead of you. Every tool here will produce that list accurately. The difference is whether anything in the product tells you which entries on it deserve your quarter. Our corpus puts Tier-1 crypto press at 0.36% of all citations against a 21-outlet mid-tier basket at 2.27%, cited 6.34 times more often, with CryptoSlate alone carrying 312 events. A tool without that view will point you at CoinDesk with total confidence.
That is the entire crypto argument, and it is worth being clear about its limits. If you are not a crypto brand, none of it applies and citeOS is the wrong purchase. We are also not the only crypto-native option: Crawlux, DABLOCK, Qvery, Visoryn and XanLens all exist and ChatGPT names them. Crawlux in particular has a token schema validator that we do not. The crypto AEO tools comparison covers that field, and the methodology page carries our weights.
The four things only citeOS publishes
Across the six AI visibility vendors checked on 23 September 2026, these are the things exactly one of them makes public. We are listing them because they are checkable, not because they make us the better product for everyone.
- The scoring weights. Per-engine weights and the query-type multipliers that discount brand-name prompts, so any score we give you can be reconstructed. One vendor of six publishes these. A tool that scores “what is Acme” alongside “best crypto exchange” will flatter almost any brand, and without the weights you cannot tell whether yours does.
- A ranked database of the publications that decide crypto answers. 500+ crypto outlets scored on five measured signals: domain rating, reach, Google News carousel presence, homepage time-to-live and vertical fit. Rivals classify a source as editorial or community. This tells you whether it is worth a quarter of your budget.
- The corpus the advice is built on. 39,948 citation events across 72 audited crypto brands, 17,276 pages and 4,395 source domains, April to August 2026, published with its limitations. Tier-1 crypto press is 0.36% of it; a 21-outlet mid-tier basket is 2.27%, cited 6.34 times more often.
- Whether the last set of recommendations worked. Each re-audit grades the previous audit's recommended queries as landed, held or regressed, and that attribution feeds the next set. Recommendations get marked rather than reissued.
The honest counterweight, in the same breath: citeOS runs five engines, the fewest of anything here that states a number, and it is of no use whatsoever outside crypto. Both are deliberate trades rather than oversights, and both are stated on every page we publish.
The verdict
If you are not in crypto, Peec is very likely the better buy. It is a better-rounded product than ours and fairly priced for what it does.
For a crypto brand the three-of-six limit is not a detail, it is the product. Crypto buyers research on Perplexity more than almost any other category, and Perplexity is the engine that hands you the source list. Peec cannot show you any of that below an enterprise contract, and it has no ranked view of which crypto publications carry weight even when it does surface them. citeOS measures all five engines from the free scan up, ranks 500+ crypto outlets on five signals, and publishes the weights. Peec wins on breadth, reporting and value. On the specific job of finding out why a crypto brand is missing from AI answers, it is working with three engines and no category map.
How this was checked
| What | How |
|---|---|
| Peec AI figures | Read from Peec AI's own public pages on 23 September 2026, with JavaScript rendered. Only what the vendor states, with one exception noted below. |
| Where a vendor page is thin | Profound's own pricing page surfaces its free trial and Enterprise tier. Its Starter and Growth figures here come from independent 2026 reviews that agree with one another, including annual rates that are exactly the monthly ones less the stated discount. Treat them as reported rather than published, and confirm at source before they decide a budget. |
| Corpus figures | 39,948 citation events across 72 audited crypto brands, 17,276 pages and 4,395 source domains, April to August 2026. Weights and formulas on the methodology page. |
| What is not measured here | Client results. We have not seen Peec AI's and neither have you, so this page compares what each vendor publishes and what each product does, not how well either performs for a given brand. |
| Conflict of interest | citeOS is operated by Emergence Media, who publish this page. Treat the verdict accordingly and check the dated figures, which are the part you can verify yourself. |
Common questions
Which AI engines does Peec AI track?
On the self-serve tiers you choose three from six: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Enterprise unlocks up to thirteen models and adds Claude Sonnet 4, GPT-5 Search, Grok, DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, Meta Spark and Perplexity through the API. So Perplexity and Claude are not reachable on any self-serve plan, and a fourth engine costs 30 to 140 US dollars a month depending on tier.
How much does Peec AI cost?
Read from its pricing page on 23 September 2026: Starter 95 US dollars a month for 50 prompts and one project, Pro 245 for 150 prompts and two projects, Advanced 495 for 350 prompts with five projects, multi-country and a Looker Studio integration, then Enterprise at custom annual pricing. Annual billing takes 15 per cent off and every self-serve tier includes unlimited users and daily tracking.
Peec AI vs Profound: which should I pick?
They answer different questions and both gate engines by tier. Profound is the deeper platform: conversation-level analytics, agent analytics, Prompt Volumes demand data, and up to ten engines at the top. Peec is lighter and framed around named competitors, which suits a team already reporting that way. On engine access the two fail differently: Peec gives you three of six on self-serve with Perplexity and Claude locked away, Profound gives you one engine at 99 dollars and three at 399 with Claude and Gemini on Enterprise. Pick Profound for depth, Peec if the comparative frame matches how you already report.
Is citeOS cheaper than Peec AI?
No, and it is worth being plain about that. Peec starts at 95 US dollars a month and our cheapest recurring tier is 749. What sits below that is a free 60-second scan with no card and a one-off 299 audit, which is a different shape of purchase rather than a cheaper subscription. What you get for the difference is five engines instead of three, the crypto outlet database and the published weights.
Which is better for a crypto brand?
citeOS, on two specific grounds and only those two. It measures Perplexity and Claude on every tier where Peec reserves both for Enterprise, and it carries a ranked database of 500+ crypto publications plus pre-built competitor sets across ten crypto verticals. On price, breadth of features and competitive reporting, Peec wins.
Can I use both?
Yes, and for a well-funded crypto brand that is a reasonable stack: Peec for daily competitive share of voice, citeOS for the crypto source layer and the two engines Peec keeps behind Enterprise. Just do not compare the two scores to each other. They sample different engines on different schedules and will disagree.
For the wider field rather than a head-to-head, see Profound alternatives and Peec AI alternatives. For the crypto-specific shortlist, crypto AEO tools in 2026. Every comparison we publish is listed on the comparisons hub.
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