AI visibility tools compared, with prices

What each tool costs, which assistants it watches, whether anyone does the work afterwards — and which of them publish how they count.

Prices checked 22 September 2026 from each vendor’s own pricing page · we sell a competing service, so read the last section before trusting us

The main alternatives to Profound are Peec AI, Otterly.ai, Athena, Goodie AI, Evertune, and the AI modules bundled into Semrush and Ahrefs. They range from $29 to $800 a month self-serve. All of them measure. None of them publish their sample size or run counts, and none of them do the work the measurement calls for.

The table

ToolFromAssistants watchedDoes the fix workPublishes its method
Profound$99ChatGPT only at $99; 3 engines at $399Content suggestionsNot published
Peec AI~$80MultipleNo — monitoring onlyNot published
Otterly.ai$294 enginesLight recommendationsNot published
Athena$2958 models, credit-basedAgentic content workflowsNot published
Goodie AI$39912 models“Presence optimization actions”Not published
Evertune$80011 modelsContent studio, servicesNot published
Semrush AI Toolkit$99MultipleNo — add-on to a subscription you also pay forNot published
Ahrefs Brand Radar$129MultipleNo — bundled into SEO tiersNot published
Forty Questions$1,5004 counted, 1 reported besideYes — included in the priceYes, in full

“Not published” means we could not find a public statement of sample size, number of runs per question, or counting rules on the vendor’s own site as of 22 September 2026. It is not a claim that they have no method. If any vendor publishes one, write to us and this page gets corrected.

Which one you should actually buy

If you want a number and nothing else, buy Otterly at $29. It is the cheapest honest way to find out whether you appear at all. Most companies asking this question for the first time should start there, not here.

If you have a marketing team with spare hands, Profound or Evertune. They are built for organisations that can act on a dashboard. Profound raised $154.5M at a $1B valuation in February 2026 and serves 700+ enterprise customers; that is not a company you beat on features.

If you already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs, use their module first. Paying twice to learn the same thing is not a strategy.

Buy what we sell only if the problem is that nobody will do the work. That is the gap: below $1,500 a month, every tool listed hands you a chart and leaves. If you have read a report like that already and nothing changed afterwards, the missing piece was never the measurement.

Why measurement without action is the common complaint

It recurs in nearly every public review of this category, and our own data suggests why. Across 1,053 citations in 80 recorded answers about one category, 48% went to just ten domains, and eight of those ten belong to companies selling in that category. The assistants were not reading neutral reviews. They were reading whoever had published.

Knowing that does not change anything on its own. Somebody has to write and place the missing page. That is labour, and it is priced like labour — which is why the tools that only measure can charge $29 and the ones that do the work cannot.

Where this page is biased, stated plainly

We sell a competing service and our row is in the table, so treat this the way you would treat any vendor’s comparison page.

What we can offer against that: every price above comes from the vendor’s own public pricing page on the date stamped at the top, we take no affiliate revenue from anything listed, and we have told you above which competitor to buy instead of us in three of four cases.

And the thing a competitor’s page would not tell you.Forty Questions launched in September 2026. It has no customers yet, no case study, and no testimonial. The measurement method is proven and running; the fix work has been performed once — on this website, starting the day it launched, with the before-numbers being collected now and the after-numbers due in October. When there is a result we will publish it with its sample size whether or not it flatters us.

Questions people ask

What are the best alternatives to Profound for a small B2B SaaS company?
Otterly at $29 and Peec at roughly $80 are the closest like-for-like at a smaller scale, and Semrush’s $99 add-on if you already pay for Semrush. All three measure and leave the acting to you.
Profound vs Otterly: which is better for a small B2B SaaS company?
Otterly, for most small companies. Profound’s $99 tier watches ChatGPT only and 50 prompts; reaching three engines costs $399. Otterly covers four engines at $189. Profound is built for enterprises and prices accordingly above that.
Can any of these guarantee an assistant will recommend us?
No, and none of them claim to in writing. Nobody controls what an assistant says. A tool can show you the number and do work known to influence it.
How many times should a question be asked before the number means anything?
More than once, always. AI answers are non-deterministic — the same question can return different lists minutes apart. We use three runs on three separate days and publish the sample size beside every figure.