Profound alternative: ShownInAI vs Profound

The short answer

Choose Profound if you are a larger brand or an enterprise marketing team with budget for a custom contract, and you want daily tracking across many AI engines, all-time history, exports, an API, single sign-on and AI agents that help your team research and write. Its pricing page, checked on 21 October 2026, offers brands two options: a free Trial (50 prompts run daily for 7 days on 3 engines) and Enterprise at a custom price.

Choose ShownInAI if you are a founder, a small SaaS team or an agency with small clients, and you want to buy today without a demo. For $9 in the first month we check 10 real buyer questions, show which competitors AI names instead of you and which sources it trusts, and write the 3 pages most likely to get you named. After that it is $29 a month, with 3 new pages every month. If AI answers still do not name you within 60 days, you get everything you paid back.

So the real question is not which tool has more features. Profound clearly has more. The question is whether you need an enterprise platform, or whether you need the right pages written this month for the price of a software subscription.

What Profound costs in 2026

Profound's pricing page has two tabs. For brands, it lists a free Trial with limited AI Marketer credits, 50 unique prompts run daily for 7 days, 1 language, 1 region and unlimited seats, but no history, exports, API or support. The only paid brand plan is Enterprise, shown as custom with tailored packages. Enterprise adds daily tracking on a tailored prompt plan, up to 9 answer engines, custom languages and regions, AI shopping data, all-time history, CSV and JSON exports, an API, single sign-on and SOC 2, and dedicated support. Profound's FAQ adds that Trial users get a recommended prompt set for their industry and cannot customise it.

Third-party reviews note that Profound previously listed self-serve brand plans with public prices, and that those disappeared from the pricing page in September 2026, when the product was repositioned around its AI Marketer. If you see older articles quoting a self-serve brand price, check the live page before you plan around it.

For agencies, Profound's own announcement of its Agency Growth plan lists each client workspace as an add-on at $399 a month, covering 100 custom prompts plus visibility, sentiment and citations on three AI engines and 6 articles optimised for AI search each month. Extra pitch workspaces cost $199 a month for 5 more. Its pricing FAQ says each client workspace comes with 400 agent credits a month. Independent reviews of the pricing page report the Agency Growth base fee as $99 a month, which puts one client at about $498 a month and five clients at about $2,094 a month.

ShownInAI has one plan for a single brand. Starter is $9 for the first month, then $29 a month, and includes the scan, 3 written pages, 3 new pages every month and tracking every 14 days. The Agency plan is $99 a month for up to 10 client sites with white-label PDF reports. The $49 AI Visibility Report is a one-time purchase if you only want to see where you stand.

What Profound does better

• Scale and depth. Enterprise covers tailored prompt sets, up to 9 answer engines, many languages and regions, and daily tracking, with all-time history and exports.
• AI agents for the whole marketing team. Its AI Marketer researches, writes and reports using your brand knowledge, with reusable agent workflows and spreadsheets that run agents at scale.
• Traffic attribution. Agent Analytics tracks AI-sourced visits across unlimited domains, with integrations for common CDNs, hosting platforms, WordPress and Google Analytics.
• Prompt volume data, which shows what people actually ask AI answer engines in your space.
• Enterprise requirements: single sign-on, SOC 2 compliance, an API and dedicated support with service levels.
• A free trial with no payment, so you can see the platform before talking to sales.

What ShownInAI does better

• You can buy it today. No demo, no quote, no contract. Enter your website address, pay $9 and the scan runs in about a minute.
• The pages are included, not metered. 3 publish-ready pages straight after payment, with FAQ schema, and 3 new pages every month, without counting credits.
• It costs a fraction as much. $29 a month after the first month for one brand, against a custom Enterprise contract on Profound. Agencies pay $99 a month for 10 client sites, about $10 a client, against $399 a month per client workspace on Profound's Agency Growth plan.
• It puts money on the result. If AI answers still do not name you within 60 days, we refund everything you have paid. If the first month is not useful, email us within 7 days and we refund the $9.
• It asks for questions buyers actually type. We check unbranded buyer questions such as "best [category]", "[competitor] alternatives" and "X vs Y" for your category, rather than a generic industry prompt set.

Why the written pages matter more than the dashboard

We ran unbranded buyer questions through AI search for 50 software brands. 39 of the 50 were never named in any answer to their own category's buyer questions, and all 30 brands that had launched in the previous month scored 0.

The sources explain why. In 33 of the 50 cases, the most cited source was a competitor's own website: its comparison pages, docs and help centre. Review sites were the top source for only 6 of 50 brands. The pages that decide who gets recommended are mostly pages companies wrote about themselves and their rivals.

For a small brand at zero, that means the fix is not more tracking. It is a short list of pages of your own: a comparison page against the tool AI names instead of you, an alternatives page, and clear answer pages for the questions buyers ask. Profound can help a large team produce that kind of content at scale. ShownInAI simply writes those pages for you every month, which is all most small brands need.

Which one fits you

1. 01Solo founder or small SaaS team with no content person: ShownInAI Starter. $9 to start, pages written for you, and a 60-day guarantee if it does not work.
2. 02Enterprise brand with many markets, products and engines to track, and a team to act on the data: Profound Enterprise. ShownInAI does not try to compete at that scale.
3. 03Agency serving a few large clients who will pay for deep, daily data: Profound Agency Growth at $399 a month per client workspace.
4. 04Agency serving many small clients: ShownInAI Agency at $99 a month for 10 sites, white-labelled, with the pages written for each client.
5. 05Not sure yet: start Profound's free 7-day trial, or buy the $49 ShownInAI report, and see what your own buyer questions return before committing.

Can you use both?

Yes. Nothing in either tool locks you in. A large company might run Profound for enterprise-wide monitoring and use ShownInAI to get pages written for a smaller product line or a new market. Most small companies only need one, and the deciding question is budget: if a custom enterprise contract is not on the table, ShownInAI gets you the pages for $29 a month.

Moving from a Profound trial to ShownInAI

1. 01Before your 7-day trial ends, note the competitors and cited sources Profound showed for your brand, since the Trial plan keeps no history and has no exports.
2. 02Start ShownInAI for $9 with your website address. The scan runs straight after payment and takes about a minute.
3. 03Compare our competitors and sources with what you saw in the trial. They are usually similar, because both tools read real AI answers.
4. 04Publish the 3 pages we write on your own site, then link to them from your pricing page, docs or blog so they are easy to find.
5. 05Check your next 14-day report to see which buyer questions now name you, and use the next month's 3 pages on the ones that still do not.

How we checked these facts

Profound's brand plans, Trial limits and Enterprise features come from Profound's own public pricing page, checked on 21 October 2026. The $399 client workspace and $199 pitch workspace prices come from Profound's own blog post announcing the Agency Growth plan, and the 400 credits per client workspace come from its pricing FAQ. The $99 Agency Growth base fee and the history of withdrawn brand plans come from independent reviews of Profound's pricing (linked below), because we could not read the base fee directly from the agency tab of the pricing page. Prices change, so check the source before you buy. ShownInAI's numbers come from our own pricing page. If anything here about Profound is wrong or out of date, email [email protected] and we will correct it.