Profound
AI search visibility platform tracking brand mentions, citations, and share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews
Best for mid-market and enterprise publishers.
Summary review · Last verified Oct 19, 2026 · Scored on 10 criteria · Vendors can't pay for scores
Research by Vahe Arabian · Scored and edited by the SODP team
Key facts
- Score
- 2.5 / 5
- Tier
- Limited
- Pricing model
- Custom; agency and enterprise plans
- Type
- SaaS
- HQ
- New York, United States
- Headcount
- 358
At a glance
- Profound scores 2.5/5 (Limited) in Benchmark Grid's independent media monitoring & AI visibility tools benchmark, assessed on 10 published criteria.
- It is built for mid-market and enterprise publishers.
- Strongest on AI answer & LLM citation tracking (4.8) and Share of voice & competitive benchmarking (4.5); weakest on Real-time alerting (2.8).
- Pricing: Custom; agency and enterprise plans.
- Scores last verified 19 Oct 2026. Vendors cannot pay for a score or a position.
Summary
Editor's update: 19 Oct 2026 accuracy audit: removed invented agency pitch mode; added AI Marketer agents; re-scored sentiment and integrations on vendor evidence.
Enterprise-grade AI visibility monitoring with daily tracking, citation-vs-mention separation, sentiment, share of voice and competitor benchmarking, plus AI Marketer agents that draft and rewrite content, and an agency plan with per-client workspaces.
Score breakdown
2.5 = 0.45 × 3.87 capability + 0.40 × 1.00 publisher fit + 0.15 × 2.10 cost
Σ (criterion rating × weight) across 10 criteria · scale 1 (poor) → 5 (excellent)
The tool specializes in AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews rather than traditional news or broadcast media.
14% of capability · What we check: News, broadcast, social, podcast and paywalled sources monitored.
The platform demonstrates high precision by specifically distinguishing between passive brand mentions and active citations within AI-generated responses.
12% of capability · What we check: How well irrelevant mentions and duplicates are filtered out.
It is a market leader in this category, providing sophisticated tracking of citations across major generative AI and answer engines.
12% of capability · What we check: Tracks mentions and citations in AI assistants and answer engines.
The tool provides robust benchmarking capabilities that allow users to track share of voice and prompt coverage against direct competitors.
10% of capability · What we check: Compares coverage against competitors over time.
Answer Engine Insights dashboards report visibility, citations, sentiment and prompt coverage, with shared project spaces for teams.
10% of capability · What we check: Reports and dashboards teams can share.
Profound licenses prompt data from double opt-in consumer panels, anonymised and PII-scrubbed under GDPR and CCPA, and holds a SOC 2 Type II report with HIPAA coverage.
10% of capability · What we check: Licensed access to copyrighted coverage and compliant data handling.
The platform offers daily tracking which is sufficient for strategic analysis but does not support strictly real-time instant alerts.
8% of capability · What we check: Speed and control of alerts on new coverage.
A dedicated Sentiment feature shows how answer engines portray a brand and which sources drive that narrative, alongside FactCheck for misinformation.
8% of capability · What we check: Accuracy of sentiment and how a brand is portrayed.
Profound cites 200+ integrations, and Enterprise adds API access, CSV/JSON exports and Agent Analytics connectors for Cloudflare, Vercel, WordPress, Google Analytics and AWS.
8% of capability · What we check: Connections to Slack, BI tools and data export.
The interface is designed for enterprise and agency users, with shared project spaces and per-client workspaces on the agency plan.
8% of capability · What we check: How quickly teams can set up searches and find coverage.
Profound scores 2.5/5 in Benchmark Grid's independent Best Media Monitoring & AI Visibility Tools benchmark (benchmarkgrid.com/best-media-monitoring-tools/profound, verified Oct 19, 2026)
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Deepest AI-visibility dataset on the market
- Dedicated Sentiment and FactCheck features for brand portrayal in AI answers
- Distinguishes citations from mere mentions
Limitations
- Premium pricing
- Newer category with limited long-term review history
Who uses it
We haven't detected any publishers running Profound yet.
Cost of ownership
Pricing
Custom; agency and enterprise plans
Pricing unclear for your setup? — we'll make the introduction. Free, and it never affects the score.
Cost data sourced from vendor pricing pages and community signals. Vendors may dispute any factor.
What users say
Users value the platform's ability to optimize brand visibility in AI-generated search results, though they frequently cite concerns regarding outdated documentation, interface clutter, and performance-related latency issues.
Sources: G2 67% · Reddit 17% · Capterra 8% · Blog 8%
Most discussed
Recent quotes
"Profound hits $1.8B valuation as brands scramble to show up in AI search results... For a company that started with a seed round of about $3.5 million in 2024, that adoption curve is remarkably steep."
Positive·Blog·1mo ago·via Crypto Briefing
12 mentions from 4 independent sources, each read and scored by our analyser. Mentions we could not tie to a real user, and those flagged as promotional, are excluded. Sentiment is opinion, and is independent of the verified publisher adoptions shown above.
The company behind Profound
Company facts come from an independent business-data record rather than the vendor's own site.
- Employees
- 358
- Headquarters
- New York, United States
- Ownership
- Privately Held
Compare Profound
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FAQ
How is Profound scored?
Profound scores 2.5 out of 5 in Benchmark Grid's independent Best Media Monitoring & AI Visibility Tools benchmark. The overall figure blends capability (45%), publisher fit (40%) and cost of ownership (15%). Capability is itself a weighted average of 10 criteria; the heaviest are source coverage (14%), accuracy & relevance filtering (12%) and ai answer & llm citation tracking (12%). Vendors cannot pay for a score.
What size publisher is Profound built for?
Profound is built for mid-market publishers and enterprise publishers. That is the vendor's own stated target, and it is one of the inputs to our publisher-fit score — a platform that suits a national newsroom often carries more operational load than a small one can absorb.
What does Profound cost?
Custom; agency and enterprise plans Our cost-of-ownership score is 2.1/5, which weighs pricing transparency, entry cost, implementation cost, hidden-fee risk and ongoing cost. Ask the vendor for a written first-year figure that includes implementation before you commit.
Can Profound pay for a better score?
No. Scores come from our editorial review of the product's documentation, demos and public evidence. A vendor can claim this listing or request a re-review, but nothing they buy changes a score or a position.
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