Profound vs Peec AI: One Publishes a Price Ladder, One Doesn't

Profound versus Peec AI is often written up as two AI visibility tools that both hide their price. That's wrong, and the corrected version is more useful. Peec AI names a real number on three of its four tiers: Starter at $95 a month, Pro at $245, Advanced at $495, each with prompts, models and projects spelled out, plus separate agency plans from $245. A fair amount of third-party coverage still calls Peec AI quote-only. Profound is the vendor that earns that label. It has no base price: a free 7-day trial, a custom Enterprise quote, and, in its agency view, two published add-ons (a $399-a-month client workspace and $199 a month for 5 trial workspaces).

That asymmetry makes a better spine than "neither publishes." One vendor gives you a full ladder to budget against. The other won't tell you anything past the trial without a call. But the reader who has to hold a Profound quote now has a real benchmark in Peec AI's $95-to-$495 range.

The deeper difference is product shape. Profound spent 2026 becoming an "AI Marketer," an agent that researches, writes, reports and corrects, built on its visibility data. Peec AI is a tracker first, priced by tracking volume. Ranking them feature by feature, as if they compete for one line item, is a category error. You're choosing which problem to pay for: production or measurement. For the wider category, see our AEO tools roundup.

TL;DR

What Each Tool Actually Is Now

The easy version of this article would describe Profound the way it was reviewed a year ago: a prompt-level tracking dashboard, the benchmark other tools measured themselves against. That product has moved. Profound's homepage now leads with "Meet your AI Marketer: Research, write, report, and collaborate with a superintelligent teammate who knows your brand." The citation and mention data still exists, but it feeds an agent that does work for you. Profound's pricing even runs on AI Marketer credits, not seats. Reviewing it purely on tracking features means reviewing a product that no longer exists in that form.

Peec AI didn't move, and it finally priced itself while standing still. It's pitched to "SEO and content managers getting started" on Starter, "SEO teams that need sophisticated tracking" on Pro, and "marketing teams managing multiple projects" on Advanced. Its pricing page also lists recommended actions and a Peec agent with skills for reports and diagnostics, so it isn't blind to the agent trend. But every tier is metered on prompts, models and projects, not agent work. That's the tell.

So treat these as two kinds of purchase with two kinds of certainty. Want a dashboard your team reads and acts on? Profound is arguably no longer that product, and you'll be negotiating a number, not comparing one. Want an agent doing research and drafting? Peec AI's agent layer is a smaller part of the product, but you'll know exactly what the tracking costs before you sign up. A scorecard that ignores this makes one of them look like it's losing a contest it never entered.

Pricing, As Published

Profound's missing base price isn't a red flag by itself. Selling through a conversation instead of a checkout button is a legitimate model, the one Conductor runs in this category too. It only becomes a problem for a reader who needs a number before creating an account or taking a call. That reader can now do better than guesswork.

How to Buy Profound When It Won't Publish a Base Price

This section applies to Profound only. Peec AI tells you what you'll pay, so there's nothing to extract. For Profound, the number past the trial doesn't exist publicly except those two agency add-ons. Here's how to get a real one without walking in blind.

Step one: hold the quote against Peec AI's ladder

Peec AI's published prices are the closest thing to a market benchmark for the tracking half of Profound's job. Reduced to cost per tracked prompt, daily:

Profound's workspace includes 400 agent credits a month and 4 opportunities a week, which Peec AI's tiers don't price separately.

Profound's $3.99 is the only per-prompt number it lets you compute. It's not apples to apples, because that workspace includes agent work. But it suggests what an agent-inclusive price looks like: roughly two to three times Peec AI's brand-plan rate per prompt. A Profound quote far beyond that range, with no itemization of what the extra buys, is a specific question to ask rather than a vague sense that enterprise software is expensive.

Step two: nine questions to ask on the Profound call

Step three: itemize, and use the anchor

Ask for the quote itemized, not bundled. A single annual figure hides whether engine count, seat count, prompt volume or the agent's own output is driving the cost. Ask specifically whether AI Marketer's drafting and reporting work draws on your credit allowance separately from tracking. Then compare the tracking portion with Peec AI's range, so you know how much of the quote is tracking and how much is the agent on top.

That comparison is leverage. Profound's sales team knows you could run a focused tracker today for under $500 a month, an anchor that didn't exist in earlier coverage of this pair. Ask for a pilot window written into the contract, not a verbal assurance. A vendor unwilling to itemize is telling you how firm the number really is.

Comparing What You Can Actually Verify

For a framework on what "verify" means in this category, our guide to measuring AI visibility covers the metrics that matter regardless of vendor.

Engines and coverage

Prompt volume, cadence and cost per prompt

Seats, exports and security

FactCheck Agent vs. Find Key Sources

Peec AI's pricing page also lists fact-checking of tracked prompts against facts you set, so it can flag a wrong claim. The difference is the drafted correction. Our LLM citation tracking tools comparison and AI brand monitoring roundup cover the citation and accuracy angles across the category.

The Alternatives That Do Publish a Price

Peec AI isn't the only vendor with a number on the page. Only Profound and Conductor genuinely publish no base price.

Confirm current rates before you buy.

Conductor is the other no-base-price vendor: three named tiers, all routed to a trial, demo or sales call. For full side-by-sides see our Profound alternatives comparison and Peec AI alternatives comparison, priced per tracked prompt. If you're being pitched paid placement into third-party articles, that's a different purchase: see Noble vs Anchorial and the AI citation placement services comparison.

When Profound Is the Right Call

Profound fits a team that has decided it wants an agent doing research, drafting and correction against its AI visibility data, and has the budget and patience for an Enterprise negotiation. The FactCheck Agent is a genuinely different tool for a brand being misrepresented today. It also states SOC 2 Type II and says it raised a $180M Series D on 15 September 2026 (a company statement), which matters to an enterprise buyer weighing vendor risk. The honest limitation is that there's no flat entry past the trial, and the two numbers it does publish only apply if you're buying through an agency. Everything else is negotiated, though Peec AI's ladder now gives you something to negotiate against.

When Peec AI Is the Right Call

Peec AI fits an agency or team managing several brands that wants unlimited users and centralized billing from the first tier, at a published price with a live signup button on three of four plans. It also fits a buyer who wants to know which third-party domains already drive their AI mentions. The honest limitation is coverage: you choose 3 of 6 models on self-serve, Perplexity costs extra, and Claude sits behind Enterprise. A buyer who needs Claude on a self-serve budget should look at Trakkr or AthenaHQ Starter instead.

Decision Framework

What to Do Next

Before you book a Profound demo, write down your real workload: how many prompts you'd track, which engines matter, how many brands you're managing, and whether SSO is a requirement. Take that list into the call with Peec AI's $95-to-$495 range as your anchor, and run the nine questions above before Profound quotes you a number with nothing to compare it against. If Peec AI's tracking already covers what you need, skip the call and sign up on the page.

If you're still sorting out why a tracking subscription and a paid placement service solve different problems, our guide to paying for AI citations walks through that distinction. And if the terminology is still unsettled for your team, AEO vs SEO is a useful next read.

This page is the two-way version. If your shortlist has a different third name, pick the head-to-head that matches it rather than reading them all: AthenaHQ vs Profound vs Peec AI adds AthenaHQ's free, credit-based tier, Profound vs Scrunch vs Goodie holds Profound against two vendors that publish prices and finds Goodie the closer match to its agent, and Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit vs Profound vs HubSpot AEO compares it with a per-domain toolkit from Semrush (now part of Adobe) and HubSpot's standalone beta. If Peec AI is the real contender and Profound isn't, Peec AI vs Otterly vs Rankscale compares it with two other self-serve trackers at equal engine coverage.