Profound review 2026: what each tier actually tracks, and where Claude sits
Profound is the most complete AI visibility platform in the category. The thing to check before buying is engine access by tier: Starter tracks ChatGPT alone, Growth adds two more, and Claude, Gemini and Copilot need an Enterprise contract. Compared with citeOS, which runs all five of its engines on every tier.
Profound is the deepest platform here, and its engine coverage is tiered more steeply than most buyers expect. Starter tracks ChatGPT only. Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews for three. Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek all sit on Enterprise, which is custom-priced and sales-led. So the engine many teams came to track is the one above the tier they would buy. citeOS runs five engines, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews, on every tier including the free scan, and is useless to anyone outside crypto. That is the trade.
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 Profound below was read from its own public pages on 23 September 2026 and is dated, and that the section on where Profound beats us is longer than most vendors would allow.
Side by side
| Profound | citeOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Engines on the entry tier | Profound Starter: ChatGPT only | All 5: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode |
| Engines on the mid tier | Profound Growth: 3, adding Perplexity and Google AI Overviews | Same 5, no tier gates |
| Claude and Gemini | Enterprise only, sales-led | Included on every tier |
| Top-tier ceiling | Up to 10 engines on Enterprise, the widest in the category | 5, the fewest of anything here that names a number |
| Plans | Starter $99/mo, Growth $399/mo, Enterprise custom, roughly 2 months off annually | Free scan $0, audit $299, Concierge $749/mo, Enterprise custom |
| Prompts | 50 on Starter, 100 on Growth, custom on Enterprise | 20 buyer prompts × 5 engines = 100 observation points |
| Scoring weights | Not published | Published, with query-type multipliers |
| Standout capability | Prompt Volumes: real AI search demand by topic. Nothing else in the category matches it | Ranked database of 500+ crypto outlets on 5 measured signals |
| Best for | Enterprise teams with a dedicated AEO owner | Crypto brands that need all five engines measured from day one |
Everything in the Profound 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 Profound wins
- Prompt Volumes. It estimates how often people actually ask a question, not just where you rank for it. That is demand data, no direct competitor produces it at the same depth, and it turns a visibility score into a content-strategy input. We have nothing equivalent.
- Engine ceiling. Ten engines on Enterprise, including Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek, which nobody else in this set touches. If breadth is the requirement, Profound wins outright.
- Agent analytics and Opportunities. It tracks how GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot traverse your site, and the Opportunities panel names a specific publication and writer to pitch rather than telling you to improve coverage.
- Track record. A credible enterprise customer base, the deepest review base on G2 in this category, and the most-cited case studies. We are a much smaller operation and say so on our own agency comparison.
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
- Every engine on every tier. Claude and Google AI Mode are in our five at $299 for a one-off audit. On Profound they require an Enterprise contract. For a crypto brand that gap is the decision: our own 100-answer exchange study found the engines disagree constantly, so measuring three of them is measuring an opinion.
- Published scoring weights. Per-engine weights and the query-type multipliers that discount brand-name prompts, so any score we give you can be reconstructed. Of six vendors checked on 23 September, one publishes these.
- The crypto source layer. 500+ crypto outlets scored on five measured signals, with competitor sets pre-built across ten crypto verticals. Profound will tell you accurately that you are invisible; it has no view on whether CryptoSlate or CoinDesk is worth your quarter.
- A door that is not a sales call. A 60-second scan, no card, no signup. Profound's self-serve entry at $99 tracks one engine.
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 and you have a dedicated AEO owner, buy Profound. Prompt Volumes alone justifies it for a team that will use the data, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.
For a crypto brand the tier maths turns it around. Getting Claude and Gemini measured means Enterprise, and at that point you are buying ten engines plus a custom contract and still doing the crypto research yourself. Profound will not tell you that CryptoSlate carries 312 citation events against 143 for the entire Tier-1 crypto press, because that is category knowledge rather than a feature and no horizontal platform has a reason to hold it. citeOS runs all five engines from the free scan up, ranks 500+ crypto outlets on five measured signals, and publishes the weights so you can check the score. Profound is the better platform. For this specific job, in this specific category, it is not the better buy.
How this was checked
| What | How |
|---|---|
| Profound figures | Read from Profound'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 Profound'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
How much does Profound cost?
Profound runs three plans. Starter is 99 US dollars a month for 50 prompts on ChatGPT alone with a single seat. Growth is 399 a month for 100 prompts across three engines, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with three seats. Enterprise is custom-priced and adds the rest of the engine list. Annual billing takes roughly two months off Starter and Growth. Its own pricing page currently surfaces the free trial and Enterprise, so the self-serve tier figures here come from independent 2026 reviews that agree with each other; confirm at source before it decides a budget.
Does Profound track Claude?
Only on Enterprise. Claude sits on the custom-priced tier along with Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek, so tracking Claude visibility requires a sales conversation. Starter covers ChatGPT alone and Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. citeOS includes Claude on every tier, including the free scan.
Is the Profound Starter plan enough?
As an orientation rather than a programme. One engine, 50 prompts, one seat, no exports and no Opportunities panel is enough to see what the product looks like. The capabilities Profound is known for, multi-engine tracking, Opportunities, the Agents content engine and exports, begin at Growth. Treat 399 a month as the real entry price.
Is citeOS a Profound alternative?
Only if you are in crypto. Profound is horizontal and serves any industry. citeOS models crypto as its own category, with a crypto prompt library, a ranked database of 500+ crypto publications and per-vertical competitor sets across ten crypto verticals. For a SaaS or retail brand, citeOS is the wrong tool and Profound is a strong answer.
Which covers more AI engines?
Profound, at the top. Its Enterprise tier states up to ten engines against our five, and that is the widest ceiling in the category. The comparison changes lower down: on Profound's self-serve plans you get one engine at 99 dollars and three at 399, while citeOS runs five on every tier including the free scan.
Does Profound work for crypto brands?
It measures them accurately. What it does not have is a ranked view of which crypto publications decide your answer, which is the output that turns a score into a work order. Across 88,975 citation events for 81 audited crypto brands, 91.47 percent of citations landed on pages the brand does not own, and in crypto those pages are a small and specific set. A horizontal tool will name them correctly and have no opinion on which are worth pursuing.
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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Profound alternatives in 2026
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The published methodology
Every weight and formula behind the score, including the multipliers that stop brand prompts inflating it.
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