AI Search Visibility (GEO) Tools 2026: Real Cost of Profound vs Peec AI vs Otterly
Short Answer
This is one of the fastest-growing search categories in 2026 — third-party trend data shows "AI search tracking" and "AI rank tracking" queries up 175–184% — and pricing in the category is unusually unstable. Profound's official pricing page showed inconsistent information in September 2026. On September 21 it displayed only a free Trial (10 prompts, ChatGPT only, one-time) and a custom Enterprise tier, with no self-serve paid plan. Separately, multiple independent third-party trackers — including at least one dated September 4, 2026 — report a different version showing Starter $99/mo (ChatGPT-only, 50 prompts) and Growth $399/mo (3 engines, 100 prompts), both billed annually. The cited public sources do not confirm that second version. The site's differing information could reflect an A/B test, staged rollout or geography/account-state differences; only the Trial/Enterprise version was shown on the official pricing page in this snapshot. Anyone budgeting around Profound should check the live page at purchase rather than treating either set of figures as settled.
Against that, Otterly publishes full, static self-serve pricing: Lite $29/month (15 prompts, 4 engines), Standard $189/month (100 prompts), Premium $489/month (400 prompts), all confirmed directly from Otterly's own pricing page, including exact per-engine add-on costs. Peec AI also publishes three self-serve tiers (Starter/Pro/Advanced) with a confirmed feature/limit structure, though its live page does not render static dollar figures in a way this research could capture directly — the $95/$245/$495 monthly figures used here are strongly corroborated across many independent sources rather than read as digits off the primary page.
The practical takeaway: Otterly and Peec both show a single, consistent self-serve price ladder across every check performed in this research; Profound does not, so treat any Profound self-serve figure — including the $99/$399 numbers many reviews cite — as provisional until confirmed live.
1. Current Product and Pricing Map
Profound — for Variant A; for Variant B (tryprofound.com/pricing)
Profound's pricing situation is presented here in two unequal parts. This article directly fetched tryprofound.com/pricing on Sept 21, 2026 and can confirm, as primary evidence, that it showed only a free Trial and custom Enterprise. Separately, multiple third-party sources — independent of each other and of this research, including one dated Sept 4, 2026 that describes an HTTP 200 direct read of the same URL — report that the same live page has, at other times or for other visitors, shown self-serve Starter ($99/mo) and Growth ($399/mo) plans. the cited public materials do not establish that second reading, so it is not treated as direct confirmation — it is a secondary report of what other parties say they observed directly. Both are documented below, with their evidence quality kept explicitly separate.
Variant A — Trial + Enterprise only ( — this article's own direct fetch, Sept 21, 2026):
| Plan | Price | Prompts | Engines | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | Free | 10 unique prompts, run once | ChatGPT only | "Limited AI Marketer credits," unlimited seats |
| Enterprise | Custom | Tailored | Up to 9 answer engines (capability list includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Anthropic Claude, Google AI Overviews, Exa Search) | Daily tracking, SSO/SAML, SOC 2, dedicated support, full history, CSV/JSON export, API |
Profound's own FAQ text on this variant describes only "Trial" and "Enterprise" as the two options ("Should I use Trial or Enterprise?"); the pricing page does not mention a self-serve paid tier.
Variant B — Starter + Growth + Enterprise ( — reported by multiple independent third-party trackers as a direct read of tryprofound.com/pricing; not independently re-fetched by this article):
| Plan | Price (billed annually — no monthly toggle reported) | Prompts | Engines | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99/mo ($1,188/yr) | 50 | ChatGPT only | 100 Agent credits/mo, 1 seat, 1 language/region, email support, no SSO |
| Growth | $399/mo ($4,788/yr) | 100 | 3 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) | 9,000 responses/mo, 400 Agent credits/mo, 3 seats, no API/SSO |
| Enterprise | Custom | Tailored | Up to 9–10 engines | SSO/SAML, SOC 2, dedicated support |
Why this article shows both rather than picking one: Variant A is this article's own direct primary evidence and is not in doubt as what this fetch showed. Variant B rests entirely on third-party reports that describe themselves as direct reads of the same live URL, at dates close to this article's own fetch — this article has no basis to call those reports false, but it also has no independent primary confirmation of them, so per source-discipline rules Variant B cannot be presented as equally primary. The most defensible explanations for the discrepancy — an A/B pricing test, a staged rollout toward (or away from) self-serve pricing, or a geography/account-state-dependent page — remain plausible and unresolved. Do not treat either $0/custom-only or $99/$399 as Profound's confirmed 2026 price list; confirm live before budgeting, and note that only the Trial/Enterprise-only reading carries this article's own direct verification.
Profound raised a $180M Series D per its own site banner ("Profound raises a $180M in Series D to build your AI Marketer"), consistent with third-party reports of a >$1B valuation and >$155M raised historically — noted here only as context, not as evidence for either pricing variant.
Profound's own "AI Marketer" agent runs on a separate credit system (vendor-listed, consistent across both variants): credits are consumed per Agent run, scaled by complexity; the self-serve Agency Growth plan includes 400 credits/month per client workspace — this figure is consistent across sources and is not part of the disputed Starter/Growth/Trial structure above.
Peec AI — vendor-listed for structure (peec.ai/pricing, fetched), reported for dollar figures
| Plan | Prompts | Models (choose) | Projects | Monthly AI answers | Confirmed limits (vendor-listed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 50 | 3 | 1 | 4,500 | Daily tracking, unlimited users |
| Pro | 150 | 3 | 2 | 13,500 | Daily tracking, unlimited users, monthly reporting |
| Advanced | 350 | 3 | 5 | 31,500 | Daily/weekly tracking, multi-country, Looker Studio |
| Enterprise | Custom | Up to 13 LLM models | Unlimited | Custom | Weekly/daily, API, SSO, dedicated support |
Every plan below Enterprise caps engine choice at 3 of 6 standard models (ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity) — Claude, DeepSeek, Grok, Qwen, Mistral, GPT-5 Search, Meta Spark and Naver AI are Enterprise/API-only, per the fetched page's model-availability table. Additional models beyond the chosen 3 are sold as paid add-ons "based on the prompts included in this plan" (vendor-listed wording), with the actual add-on dollar price not rendered as static text in this fetch.
Dollar prices ( — highly convergent across many independent trackers, not read as digits from the primary page itself): Starter $95/month, Pro $245/month, Advanced $495/month, with 15% off on annual billing (this 15% figure is confirmed on the primary FAQ: "We offer a 15% discount for customers who choose annual billing"). Some sources report EUR-denominated prices (€70–€420) for EU-region visitors — the vendor does not clearly publish which regions receive these prices.
Otterly pricing (otterly.ai/pricing, September 21, 2026)
| Plan | Price/mo | Prompts | Engines included | GEO audits/mo | API/MCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $29 | 15 | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, MS Copilot | 1,000 | No |
| Standard | $189 | 100 | Same 4 | 5,000 | Yes (2,000 req/mo) |
| Premium | $489 | 400 | Same 4 | 10,000 | Yes (5,000 req/mo) |
| Enterprise | Custom, starting from $1,000/month | Custom | All, customizable | Custom | Custom |
Every plan includes unlimited team members and daily tracking frequency (vendor-listed). Add-on engines (vendor-listed, exact prices confirmed):
| Engine add-on | Lite | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Mode | $9/mo | $59/mo | $149/mo |
| Google Gemini | $9/mo | $59/mo | $149/mo |
| Claude | $29/mo | $109/mo | $439/mo |
Claude tracking costs roughly 3× the price of Google AI Mode or Gemini tracking at every tier on Otterly — a striking, precisely quantifiable asymmetry that no other source in this category publishes this clearly. Extra prompt batches: +100 prompts for $99/month (Standard and Premium only; Standard is capped at adding up to 300 extra prompts before being forced onto Premium, per the FAQ).
2. Normalized Cost at Comparable Prompt Volumes (CALCULATION)
Using each vendor's own confirmed base-tier pricing, cost per tracked prompt per month on core (non-add-on) engines:
| Tool / Plan | $/month | Prompts | $/prompt/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly Lite | $29 | 15 | $1.93 |
| Otterly Standard | $189 | 100 | $1.89 |
| Otterly Premium | $489 | 400 | $1.22 |
| Peec Starter | $95 (secondary) | 50 | $1.90 (secondary) |
| Peec Pro | $245 (secondary) | 150 | $1.63 (secondary) |
| Peec Advanced | $495 (secondary) | 350 | $1.41 (secondary) |
At comparable tiers, Otterly and Peec land within a few cents of each other per prompt. The real cost differentiator between them is not the base rate but which engines are included by default (Otterly bundles 4 including Perplexity and Copilot; Peec's "choose 3 of 6" model may force a trade-off) and what add-ons cost when you need a 5th engine or Claude/DeepSeek specifically.
3. What "Tracking a Brand" Actually Costs at Real-World Scope
MODELING ASSUMPTION: a mid-market brand wants to track 50 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude — a realistic ask given Claude's rapidly rising AI-referral share (documented separately in NotCheapAI's broader AI-search-traffic research).
| Route | Base plan | Claude add-on | Total/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly Lite (50 prompts exceeds Lite's 15-prompt cap — need Standard) | Standard $189 | +$109 | $298 |
| Otterly Lite, if 15 prompts is enough | Lite $29 | +$29 | $58 |
| Peec Starter (50 prompts fits exactly, but Claude is Enterprise-only on Peec) | $95 | Not available below Enterprise | Custom quote required |
| Profound | Variant-dependent: no self-serve tier on one official variant; on the other, Growth $399/mo covers 3 engines but Claude still requires Enterprise | N/A | Enterprise demo required either way for Claude |
This table is the clearest illustration of why "cost per GEO tool" is not a single number: Peec structurally excludes Claude below its Enterprise tier, Otterly prices Claude as a specific, expensive add-on, and Profound's own pricing surface does not even consistently agree on whether a self-serve price exists at all. A brand that specifically needs Claude visibility data — increasingly relevant given Claude's referral-share growth — has meaningfully different real costs across these three tools, not just different sticker prices.
4. Hidden Costs
- Profound's pricing surface disagreement is itself a hidden cost of planning around this tool. Depending on which live variant an account or region sees, the effective entry price is $0 (Trial only, Enterprise required for anything real) or $99–$399/month self-serve. Third-party reports of Enterprise deals (not confirmed by the cited public pricing information) cite $2,000–$5,000+/month — treat as indicative only regardless of which self-serve variant applies.
- Peec's "choose 3 models" structure is a hidden constraint, not just a feature gate. A brand needing 4+ engines pays a per-model add-on "based on prompts included in this plan" — meaning the add-on price scales with your prompt tier, not a flat fee, and the exact figure requires checking your specific tier at checkout.
- Otterly's Standard-to-Premium prompt ceiling is hard-capped at +300 add-on prompts. Beyond that, Standard customers are forced onto Premium regardless of whether they need Premium's other features.
- "Monthly AI answers" (Peec's internal unit) is not prompts. Peec's FAQ defines it as prompts × models × tracking days — e.g., 25 prompts × 3 models × 30 days = 2,250 answers. Comparing "prompts" across vendors without accounting for models-tracked-per-prompt undercounts the real query volume being billed.
- Annual billing discounts are inconsistent in size and are not always clearly disclosed as the default view. Otterly and Peec both offer roughly 15% off annually; whether a given screenshot or third-party price is monthly or annual is a common source of the wide $/mo figures you'll see reported for these tools online.
- Agency/multi-client pricing is a separate track on all three vendors (Peec has a distinct agency page; Otterly has Agency Partner status requiring a Standard/Premium subscription first; Profound has an "Agency Growth" self-serve credit plan) — the published information cited here does not provide complete prices for these agency tracks.
5. International and Access Considerations
Peec AI is Berlin-based, and its pricing may display in USD or EUR depending on region. Reports disagree about which regions see which currency ($95 vs €70 for Starter). Otterly's pricing page states prices in USD ("displayed prices are US Dollar (excluding tax)"). The cited materials do not specify blocked countries or regions for any of the three tools.
6. BUILD & EARN Scenario: An Agency Reselling GEO Monitoring
MODELING ASSUMPTION: an agency charges clients $400/month per client for AI-visibility monitoring and reporting, managing 10 clients = $4,000 revenue. Metric: platform-cost share of revenue (excludes analyst labor, report-writing, strategy calls — not profit).
| Route | Platform cost (10 clients) | Share of $4,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly Standard × 10 (if each client fits inside one $189 Standard workspace) | $1,890 | 47.3% |
| Otterly Agency Partner (Standard/Premium base + partner benefits, exact multi-client pricing not itemized) | Not fully computable | — |
| Peec Agency bundles (Essential/Growth/Scale; exact multi-client prices are not itemized) | Not computable | — |
| Profound Agency Growth (400 credits/client/mo, base fee unconfirmed; and it is unclear whether the base plan itself is $0/Trial or $99+/Starter given the pricing-surface ambiguity above) | Not computable | — |
Only Otterly's published numbers are complete enough to compute a direct margin — and even there, running each client as a separate Standard subscription rather than using a proper agency bundle is almost certainly the wrong (more expensive) way to scale past a handful of clients. This is exactly the kind of decision where a live vendor quote, not a public price page, becomes necessary — consistent with the pattern seen in FLUX and enterprise pricing: the moment "agency" or "enterprise" appears, public pricing tends to disappear.
FAQ
Does Profound still have a $99 or $399 plan? The official pricing page showed only a free Trial and custom Enterprise in the September 21, 2026 snapshot. Multiple third-party sources, including one dated September 4, report $99 Starter and $399 Growth self-serve plans on the same URL, but the cited public sources do not confirm that version. Check Profound's page directly rather than treating either figure as settled.
Which tool is cheapest for tracking Claude specifically? Otterly publishes an exact add-on price ($29–$439 depending on tier); Peec does not offer Claude below Enterprise; Profound requires an Enterprise conversation for any engine beyond ChatGPT.
What's the cheapest way to start tracking AI visibility? Otterly's Lite plan at $29/month (15 prompts, 4 engines) is the lowest confirmed self-serve entry point found in this research.
Is "prompts tracked" comparable across vendors? Not directly — Peec's own unit, "monthly AI answers," multiplies prompts by models by tracking days, so a like-for-like comparison requires normalizing to that combined unit, not just the headline prompt count.