Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit: AEO Monitoring Compared
The short answer
Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit: Profound sells a free trial plus a custom-priced Enterprise plan after pulling its $99 Starter tier, while Semrush AI Toolkit sells a standalone AI Visibility Toolkit at $99/mo per domain or bundles AI visibility into Semrush One tiers from $199/mo.
Profound pairs answer-engine tracking with an AI Marketer that drafts and stages AEO content; Semrush pairs AI visibility with its SEO databases and a 180M+ answer AI Visibility Index. Neither vendor publishes a flat per-competitor price with unlimited seats.
Quick comparison
| Profound | Semrush AI Toolkit | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary value | Tracks brand representation across answer engines and generates AEO-optimized content through its AI Marketer | Measures brand presence in AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews alongside Semrush SEO data |
| Target market | Enterprise and mid-market marketing teams, including roughly 10% of the Fortune 500 | SEO and marketing teams already in or evaluating the Semrush stack, plus Adobe-centric enterprises |
| Pricing model | Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model | Subscription tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons |
| Key differentiator | Read/write loop: monitors answer engines then autonomously generates and stages AEO-optimized content | Unified SEO and AI visibility data built on Semrush keyword and backlink databases |
| Best for | Teams that want AI visibility insight and content execution from one platform | Teams that want AI visibility measured next to existing SEO workflows |
| Customer sentiment | No review data available in this dataset | 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews |
| Starting price | Free (Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model) [1] | $0/mo (subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons) [1] |
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Semrush AI Toolkit carries a 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews, while Profound has no review data in this dataset.
At a glance
| Profound | Semrush AI Toolkit | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary value | Tracks brand representation across answer engines and generates AEO-optimized content through its AI Marketer | Measures brand presence in AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews alongside Semrush SEO data |
| Target market | Enterprise and mid-market marketing teams, including roughly 10% of the Fortune 500 | SEO and marketing teams already in or evaluating the Semrush stack, plus Adobe-centric enterprises |
| Pricing model | Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model | Subscription tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons |
| Key differentiator | Read/write loop: monitors answer engines then autonomously generates and stages AEO-optimized content | Unified SEO and AI visibility data built on Semrush keyword and backlink databases |
| Best for | Teams that want AI visibility insight and content execution from one platform | Teams that want AI visibility measured next to existing SEO workflows |
| Customer sentiment | No review data available in this dataset | 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews |
Prices as published by each vendor, checked 7 October 2026; estimates are marked est.
Pricing breakdown
Profound
- TrialFree · Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model
- Limited AI Marketer credits
- 50 prompts run daily for 7 days
- ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews tracked
- 50 unique prompts
- EnterpriseCustom · Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model
- AI Marketer credits for the whole team
- Tailored prompt tracking plan
- Up to 9 answer engines tracked
- Daily prompt frequency
Semrush AI Toolkit
- Free$0/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 1 demo project
- 10 reports per day across all vital tools
- Help Center & Basic Onboarding
- AI Visibility features
- AI Visibility Toolkit$99/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 1 project
- 1 domain for Brand Performance
- 300 daily queries in AI Analysis
- 1,000 daily queries in Prompt Research
- SEO (Semrush One)$139/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 5 websites
- 500 keywords/day
- Position Tracking
- Site Audit
- Starter (Semrush One)$199/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 5 websites
- 500 keywords/day
- 50 prompts/day
- 1 domain for AI brand performance
- Pro+ (Semrush One)$299/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 15 websites
- 1,500 keywords/day
- 100 prompts/day
- Historical SEO data
- Advanced (Semrush One)$549/mo · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- 40 websites
- 5,000 keywords/day
- 200 prompts/day
- SEO share of voice
- Enterprise (Semrush Enterprise)Custom · subscription, tiered per domain/website plus per-user and per-domain add-ons
- Unlimited projects and custom limits
- Custom large-scale AI prompt tracking
- Advanced AI workflows
- Custom integrations and API
Profound publishes no list price above the trial; its FAQ says teams over three people are better suited to a custom enterprise plan and additional credit thresholds require an Enterprise package. Semrush annual billing saves up to 17%, additional domains run $99 each and additional users $45/mo, and the standalone AI Visibility Toolkit has no free trial. Local Toolkit is priced per location ($30 Base, $60 Pro, custom Business). IndustryLens pricing is per competitor tracked with unlimited seats on every plan, from £149/mo for 10 companies tracked.
Recent moves
Profound
- Profound removed its USD 99 a month Starter tier, leaving the public pricing page with only a free Trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan, which routes buyers above the trial into a sales conversation.
- Profound is extending from AEO monitoring into a full AI marketing platform, pairing partnerships like Bazaarvoice and Moz-powered SEO data with a conversational agent builder.
- Profound is described as a fast-shipping, well-funded AEO category leader scaling an enterprise post-sales team and pushing buyers above its free trial into sales.
- Profound pulled its $99/month Starter tier off the public pricing page, leaving only a free Trial and a custom-quoted Enterprise plan with credit-based AI Marketer usage.
- Profound is broadening from AEO visibility into a full AI marketing platform anchored on its AI Marketer, with enterprise customer success hiring and a first agency partner kickoff pointing upmarket.
- Profound's AEO guide, 41% commercial intent research and Zero Click World Tour reinforce its role as the category standard-setter for AI search visibility budgets.
- Profound's Gartner recognition and new automation features like FactCheck and Citation Decay are positioning it as the default enterprise choice for AI search visibility.
- Profound is scaling from AI visibility monitoring into autonomous execution and enterprise channel partnerships, creating a closed-loop platform aimed at Fortune 500 brands.
Semrush AI Toolkit
- Semrush keeps expanding its AI Visibility Index benchmark, now built on 180M+ AI answers across 22 industries with a first UK benchmark.
- Semrush is combining a paid search push of about 200 active Google ads skewed toward the US and Ireland with a steady flow of AI-visibility videos for top-of-funnel reach.
- Semrush is bundling AI visibility tracking into Semrush One tiers at $199 to $549 a month and framing it on its homepage as the standard way to be found in AI answers.
- Semrush rolled out Semrush One tiers at $199, $299 and $549 a month, bundling SEO with AI visibility and scaling by website count and daily prompt limits, with about 17% annual discount.
- Semrush's bundling of AI visibility into paid Semrush One tiers and removal of the free tier raises the cost of AI search monitoring for teams already using its SEO suite.
- Semrush restructured its bundles around Semrush One at $199, $299 and $549 a month, keeping the standalone AI Visibility Toolkit at $99/mo per domain plus add-ons, and discontinued the free tier.
- Semrush's AI Visibility Index and certification risk becoming the default benchmark for AI search, pushing teams into its per-domain pricing model.
- Semrush removed its $0/mo tier in early August, making Semrush One Starter at $165.17/mo billed annually the entry point with AI Visibility bundled into core plans.
What reviewers say
Profound
No reviews captured for Profound yet.
Semrush AI Toolkit
What users love
- Semrush gives us the data to identify search opportunities, understand our competitors and measure whether our SEO/AEO investment is improving our visibility.
- The best part about Semrush is its UX – I work with Semrush's engine primarily outside of its interface. I use chat screen, Claude Skills, scheduled workers triggering Semrush's…
- – Well-thought interface – all things are logically located; it's easy to find stuff, and everything loads super fast.
Common gripes
- Can be overwhelming without training for new users. There is a huge amount of data and functionality, and it can take time to understand which tools and metrics are genuinely useful.
- The pricing fill a bit too expensive for all the monitoring parts. I truly hope the competition that has been intensifying recently will force Semrush or Adobe to include more tracking prompts into their current plans.
- I like Semrush academy much, though – when it comes to 3rd party platforms like LinkedIn, I'd like to see more thought leadership on X or LinkedIn from Semrush's C-levels with…
Positioning
Profound
How they describe themselves
“Profound positions itself as an AI marketing platform built around its AI Marketer, designed around topics and prompts rather than keywords, and says it tracks all 10 major answer engines out of the box.”
What we see them doing
Profound is widening beyond AEO monitoring: it partnered with Bazaarvoice to pair AI-visibility data with review and user-generated-content execution, and launched a Pages view that fuses Moz SEO authority and keyword data with its own citation data. It also lists 50 open roles across sales, engineering and recruiting in the US, UK, Singapore and Argentina.
Semrush AI Toolkit
How they describe themselves
“Semrush reframed its homepage around 'Be found and chosen', pulling the pitch toward search results and AI answers, and presents the AI Visibility Index as a benchmark for AI brand visibility.”
What we see them doing
Semrush bundles AI visibility into Semrush One tiers, shipped a free AI Visibility Checker as a top-of-funnel hook for the $99/mo AI Visibility Toolkit, and released Adobe Brand Visibility as its first major integration after becoming an Adobe company in April 2026.
Sources: Profound Adds Moz SEO Data — October 2026 · Profound Ships 4 Features — October 2026 · Competitive Trends: October 2026: How 31 B2B SaaS Companies Reposition Around AI · Profound and AthenaHQ Race to Automate AI — September 2026
What our monitoring sees
Profound pulled its $99/month Starter tier off the public pricing page this period, leaving only a free Trial and a custom-quoted Enterprise plan.
IndustryLens analysis, based on Profound Pulls $99 Starter — October 2026Profound launched a Pages view that fuses Moz SEO authority and keyword data with its own citation data, moving it into combined SEO and AEO workflows.
IndustryLens analysis, based on Profound Adds Moz SEO Data — October 2026The newest move is a next-generation conversational agent builder that lets teams create agents by describing a job to the AI Marketer rather than configuring them by hand.
IndustryLens analysis, based on Profound Ships 4 Features — October 2026Semrush launched a free AI Visibility Checker in early August, giving users a baseline 0-100 AI Visibility Score across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews.
IndustryLens analysis, based on Competitive Trends: October 2026: How 31 B2B SaaS Companies Reposition Around AIWhen to choose which
When to choose Profound
Choose Profound when the team wants AI answer visibility and content execution in one place: it tracks up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise, captures responses from the consumer-facing browser experience, and its AI Marketer drafts and stages AEO-optimized content. Budget for a sales conversation, since the public page lists only a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan.
When to choose Semrush AI Toolkit
Choose Semrush AI Toolkit when AI visibility needs to sit next to existing SEO work: the standalone AI Visibility Toolkit is $99/mo for one domain, Semrush One tiers bundle SEO with AI visibility from $199/mo, and the platform carries a 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews. Expect per-domain and per-user add-ons.
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- Profound
- AthenaHQ
- Otterly.AI
- Brandi AI
- Semrush
- Goodie
Our take
The two vendors are converging on the same buyer from opposite directions. Profound pulled its $99 Starter tier and now sells a free trial plus custom Enterprise, pairing answer-engine tracking with an AI Marketer that publishes content, while Semrush keeps AI visibility inside a per-domain SEO stack at $99/mo standalone or $199 to $549/mo in Semrush One. Both leave the buyer without a published flat price above entry, which is the gap IndustryLens fills at £149/mo for 10 companies tracked with unlimited seats.
Sources: Profound Pulls $99 Starter — October 2026 · Profound Adds Moz SEO Data — October 2026 · Profound Ships 4 Features — October 2026 · Competitive Trends: October 2026: How 31 B2B SaaS Companies Reposition Around AI
Sources
The facts on this page come from these sources: vendor pricing and product pages, review sites, press and public posts, each checked on the date shown.
- Unknown pricing pageSupports: Pricing: Trial Free Free trial plus custom-priced enterprise subscription; AI Marketer runs on a credit-based model Limited AI Marketer credits 50 prompts run daily for 7 days ChatGPT, Gemini, and Goo
- Unknown pageSupports: Profound's AEO guide, 41% commercial intent research and Zero Click World Tour reinforce its role as the category standard-setter for AI search visibility budgets.
- Unknown pageSupports: Semrush reframed its homepage around 'Be found and chosen', pulling the pitch toward search results and AI answers, and presents the AI Visibility Index as a benchmark for AI brand visibility.
- Unknown pageSupports: Profound positions itself as an AI marketing platform built around its AI Marketer, designed around topics and prompts rather than keywords, and says it tracks all 10 major answer engines out of the b
- Unknown postSupports: Profound is widening beyond AEO monitoring: it partnered with Bazaarvoice to pair AI-visibility data with review and user-generated-content execution, and launched a Pages view that fuses Moz SEO auth
- Unknown postSupports: Profound's AEO guide, 41% commercial intent research and Zero Click World Tour reinforce its role as the category standard-setter for AI search visibility budgets.
- Unknown postSupports: Semrush reframed its homepage around 'Be found and chosen', pulling the pitch toward search results and AI answers, and presents the AI Visibility Index as a benchmark for AI brand visibility.
- Unknown postSupports: Profound is broadening from AEO visibility into a full AI marketing platform anchored on its AI Marketer, with enterprise customer success hiring and a first agency partner kickoff pointing upmarket.
Why a vendor comparison goes stale — and how fast
A like-for-like snapshot is true the week it’s written. It dates because the competitors themselves keep moving. Across the B2B SaaS competitors we monitor: we re-diff their public footprint every week, and across 3,239 weekly comparisons (December 2025 – October 2026):
- 69.5% changed their pricing page at least once.
- In a typical week, about 4 in 10 had a pricing change and 50.2% changed their messaging.
Method: a “change” is a detected week-over-week diff on the monitored public page, excluding first-baseline records. Pooled across 213 competitors; computed live from IndustryLens monitoring and refreshed daily.
Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit: common questions
When should you choose Profound?
Choose Profound when the team wants AI answer visibility and content execution in one place: it tracks up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise, captures responses from the consumer-facing browser experience, and its AI Marketer drafts and stages AEO-optimized content. Budget for a sales conversation, since the public page lists only a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan.
When should you choose Semrush AI Toolkit?
Choose Semrush AI Toolkit when AI visibility needs to sit next to existing SEO work: the standalone AI Visibility Toolkit is $99/mo for one domain, Semrush One tiers bundle SEO with AI visibility from $199/mo, and the platform carries a 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews. Expect per-domain and per-user add-ons.
Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit: what's the verdict?
The two vendors are converging on the same buyer from opposite directions. Profound pulled its $99 Starter tier and now sells a free trial plus custom Enterprise, pairing answer-engine tracking with an AI Marketer that publishes content, while Semrush keeps AI visibility inside a per-domain SEO stack at $99/mo standalone or $199 to $549/mo in Semrush One. Both leave the buyer without a published flat price above entry, which is the gap IndustryLens fills at £149/mo for 10 companies tracked with unlimited seats.
Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit — the short version?
Profound bundles AEO tracking with content agents, while Semrush AI Toolkit bundles AI visibility with SEO data at $99/mo per domain.
Which is better, Profound or Semrush AI Toolkit?
Profound vs Semrush AI Toolkit: Profound sells a free trial plus a custom-priced Enterprise plan after pulling its $99 Starter tier, while Semrush AI Toolkit sells a standalone AI Visibility Toolkit at $99/mo per domain or bundles AI visibility into Semrush One tiers from $199/mo.
Do Profound and Semrush AI Toolkit publish pricing?
Profound and Semrush AI Toolkit both publish their pricing — compare the tiers above before you talk to either sales team.
What's the headline difference between Profound and Semrush AI Toolkit?
Semrush AI Toolkit carries a 4.43 average rating across 418 reviews, while Profound has no review data in this dataset.
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