AI visibility tools such as Profound, Peec AI and Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit measure how AI engines mention and cite your brand. They do not change it. A GEO agency uses that measurement to fix entity problems, build content and earn third-party coverage. Choose a tool if you have a team ready to act on the data, and an agency if you need the work done.
Most buyers frame this as a choice between two products, but the real question is who will do the fixing. This guide compares the main Profound alternatives, explains where Semrush’s tools fit, and sets out when a tool alone is enough for a B2B software company.
Key takeaways
- Tools measure visibility, sentiment and sources by prompt and engine. They do not write pages, earn coverage or fix a confused entity
- Profound is sold through a demo and publishes no prices for brands. Peec AI, Otterly AI, Ahrefs Brand Radar, SE Ranking and Semrush publish self-serve prices
- Entry plans track between 5 and 100 prompts. A full strategy phase for a B2B software company maps 150 or more prompts across the funnel
- Most UK GEO agencies run a tool like these underneath, so ask which one, who holds the data and whether you get access
- A tool alone is enough if you have in-house capacity and want a baseline. An agency adds judgement, execution and third-party work
What an AI visibility tool does and does not do
An AI visibility tool runs a set of prompts across AI engines on a schedule and records the results. Typically that means whether your brand is mentioned, where it appears, how it is described, which competitors appear alongside it, and which sources the engine cites. Good tools turn that into trends such as share of voice by engine.
What a tool does not do is act on any of it. It will tell you that a competitor is named in 40% of answers and you are not. It will not tell you why, write the comparison page that closes the gap, or earn the placement on the list the engines trust. That work is where visibility is actually won, and it is the difference between measuring and optimising.
Profound alternatives: how the main tools compare
Teams look for Profound alternatives for three reasons: budget, fit and access. Profound’s pricing page lists a free trial and custom Enterprise packages arranged through a demo, with no published prices for brands. The tools below publish self-serve prices, so you can compare them before you talk to anyone.
| Tool | Best for | Published pricing | Engines and limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | Enterprise teams needing the broadest engine coverage | Free trial, then custom Enterprise packages via a demo | Enterprise tracks up to 9 engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude. The trial runs 50 prompts for 7 days on 3 engines |
| Peec AI | Marketing and SEO teams, and agencies tracking several brands | Starter €85 a month, Pro €205, Advanced €425, Enterprise custom | 50, 150 and 350 prompts. Self-serve plans choose 3 engines. Unlimited users |
| Otterly AI | Smaller teams starting out | Lite $29 a month, Standard $189, Premium $489, Enterprise custom. Lower on annual billing. Free trial | 15, 100 and 400 prompts. Four engines included. Claude, Gemini and AI Mode are paid add-ons |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Teams already on Ahrefs | An add-on. AI Visibility Index from £159 a month, custom prompt packages from £40 a month | Covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Claude is available |
| SE Ranking AI Search | Smaller teams combining SEO and AI tracking | An add-on at £69 a month, or £55.20 on annual billing. 14-day free trial | AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and ChatGPT. Copilot is listed as coming soon |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Teams already using Semrush for SEO | From £80.22 a month per domain, billed annually | 25 custom prompts, 1 domain, ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity |
Prices are taken from each vendor’s own pricing page on 28 October 2026, in the currency shown there, and change often. Check each page, and whether the price includes VAT, before you buy.
When you compare them, use the same questions every time:
- Engines covered. Check for ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, not just the first two or three
- Prompt allowance. Prompt limits per plan decide how much of your buyer journey you can track
- Your own prompt set. A fixed set that you control gives meaningful trends. A tool that picks prompts for you may not
- Source and sentiment data. Seeing which sources are cited, and how you are described, is where the useful detail sits
- Export and access. Can you export the data, and can an agency work in your workspace?
Semrush’s AI tools: where they fit
Semrush sells an AI Visibility Toolkit as its own plan, from £80.22 a month per domain billed annually. The base plan tracks 25 custom prompts for one domain across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity. AI features also sit inside its bundled SEO plus AI plans, which include 50 prompts on Starter and 100 on Pro+. If you already use Semrush for rankings and traffic, adding AI tracking next to that data is convenient, and it is a reasonable way to take a first baseline.
The things to check are the same as for any tool: how many prompts your plan includes, which engines are covered, whether you can set your own prompt set, and how deep the source and sentiment data goes. An SEO suite is built around keywords and pages. AI answers are built around prompts and brands, so test whether the reporting fits the way you will actually use it.
Tool or agency: the comparison
| Tool only | GEO agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Your team | The agency |
| What you get | A dashboard and data | Data, a prioritised roadmap and the execution |
| Typical cost shape | A subscription, from tens of pounds to a few hundred a month on the entry plans above | A fixed-scope strategy phase, then a retainer. Ours start from £5,995 (+VAT) and £3,500 (+VAT) a month |
| Best when | You have in-house SEO and content capacity and want a baseline | You lack capacity, or the gap is third-party coverage and entity problems |
| Main limit | Data without fixes | Quality varies, so check what you get access to |
The cost gap is not a like-for-like comparison. A subscription pays for software. An agency fee pays for people doing the work. In a full strategy phase we map 150 or more prompts across the funnel, which is more than the entry plan of any tool in the table above includes, so a tool on its own usually covers a narrow slice of the buyer journey.
The two are not rivals. Many teams use a tool for their own monitoring and an agency for the programme.
How UK GEO agencies compare with a tool on its own
Most UK GEO agencies run one of the tools above underneath their reporting. So the useful comparison is not an agency’s dashboard against a tool’s. It is whether you need execution on top of the measurement.
If you are evaluating an agency, ask:
- Which tools do you use, and do I get access to the data?
- Whose account holds the data if we stop working together?
- How is the prompt set chosen, and is it fixed so trends mean something?
- Is the report benchmarked against named competitors, and tied to leads and pipeline?
- How many times do you run each prompt, and how do you identify the recurring sources that influence the prompts that matter commercially?
- Once you have found an opportunity, what work do you actually carry out?
- Can you show brands you moved from no AI mentions to consistent citations, with the prompt-level data behind it?
Our own approach is a fixed prompt set tracked repeatedly across the engines, benchmarked against named competitors, with a live dashboard and pipeline reporting. The full method is on our methodology page, and our guide to how to evaluate a GEO agency for B2B SaaS covers the wider checklist.
The tools we use
We use Peec AI and Profound, alongside Ahrefs and Google Search Console, as listed on our methodology page. We choose a tool by client and category, and we will work with the one you already have.
When a tool alone is enough
- You have in-house SEO and content people with time to act on what the data shows
- You want a baseline across several brands before deciding where to invest, which is common for investors running a portfolio
- You need a quick check on how AI describes you today
When you need an agency as well
- AI describes your firm wrongly or confuses it with another company, and the cause sits in third-party sources
- Your competitors are named and you are not, and the gap is off-site coverage you have no team to build
- You want senior judgement on which prompts matter and how to connect visibility to pipeline