Profound vs Ahrefs

Profound is an enterprise answer engine optimization platform: AI visibility tracking, Agent Analytics for AI bot traffic, and marketing Agents that generate and publish AEO content into CMSs. Ahrefs is the research index: backlinks, keywords and Brand Radar's 475M-prompt AI visibility database across seven AI platforms, powered by the web's second-most active crawler. They compete only where the categories overlap, and the chapters below walk every dimension a buyer would price: which AI engines each can see, how the tracking actually meters, what each produces on the content side, what surrounds the core product, and the full published tier lists.

Profound is the enterprise name in answer engine optimization, with customer stories from MongoDB, WHOOP, Statsig, Ramp and Airbyte, and logos like US Bank and Mejuri on its pricing page. The platform tracks brand visibility in AI answers, attributes AI bot traffic across unlimited domains through CDN integrations (Cloudflare, Vercel, Akamai, Fastly), and runs marketing Agents that generate AEO content in a node-based workflow builder. Its free public surface is the Profound Index, a weekly leaderboard across 50+ industries built on 1.5B+ real user prompts.

Pricing model. Starter $99 a month tracks ChatGPT only with 50 prompts and no exports; Growth $399 tracks three engines with 100 prompts and CSV/JSON exports; Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Copilot, AI Mode, the API and SSO require a custom Enterprise package. Yearly billing gives two months free.

Ahrefs is one of the great research platforms in search, powered by the web's second-most active crawler and 10+ years of web-scale data. Alongside Site Explorer's backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit and Rank Tracker, it now runs Brand Radar: an AI visibility database of 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts spanning AI Overviews (323M), ChatGPT (31M), Gemini (31M), Copilot (30M), Perplexity (30M), AI Mode (21M) and Grok (6M), with YouTube, TikTok and Reddit source tracking in beta. Their FAQ is blunt about discounts: they never run them.

Pricing model. Lite $129, Standard $249 and Advanced $449 a month (annual saves up to 17%), plus a $29 Starter and a free tier for site owners; full Brand Radar runs $398 (selected platforms) to $699 (all platforms), custom prompt packs start at $50 for 2,500 checks, and Enterprise is $1,499 a month with an annual commitment.

Profound. Engine access is the tier ladder: the $99 Starter is ChatGPT tracking only, the $399 Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews for three total, and the Enterprise capability list reads ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Anthropic Claude and Google AI Overviews, up to nine. Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek coverage all require the Enterprise conversation.

Ahrefs. Brand Radar's index covers seven platforms: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, an index built from 475M+ monthly search-backed prompts. Claude and DeepSeek appear nowhere on the pricing or Brand Radar pages, and the $398 platform picker lists five options that do not include Grok.

Summarized: Profound reads 1 on $99, 3 on $399, up to 9 on Enterprise; Ahrefs reads index across AIO, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok. On Claude specifically, Profound: enterprise only; Ahrefs: not listed anywhere.

Profound. Tracking is prompt-based: 50 prompts on Starter, 100 on Growth with 9,000 responses monthly, custom above. Agent Analytics is the standout surface, attributing AI bot and agent traffic on your own domains through CDN integrations, on every tier with unlimited domains.

Ahrefs. Tracking your own prompts is metered three ways: 5 to 20 tracked AI prompts with 150 to 600 monthly checks on the core plans (updated daily), custom prompt packages from $50 a month for 2,500 checks with per-check overage, or full Brand Radar at $398 to $699. The Google Rank Tracker updates weekly on every tier including Enterprise, with 750 to 5,000 tracked keywords.

Profound. Content runs through Agents: workflow templates like blogpost generation, AEO-optimized FAQ generation and schema markup, metered in credits consumed each time an Agent runs, 100 a month on Starter and 400 on Growth. Output publishes through CMS integrations covering Webflow, WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, Framer, Payload, Basehub and Directus.

Ahrefs. The Content Kit add-on, from $99 a month, is an AI Content Helper and Grader that aligns drafts with search intent and scores them, with an AI Content Inventory marked Soon. Nothing on the pricing page writes full articles or publishes to a CMS.

Profound. There is no Google rank tracker and no local surface: no Maps or Local Pack tracking, no geo-grid, no GBP monitoring on any public page. Google Search Console integrates for traditional-search reporting beside the AI data.

Ahrefs. Classic SEO research is the backbone: the backlink index, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit with 100K to 1.5M crawl credits by tier, and Web Analytics plus Bot Analytics. A GBP Monitor ships in beta; no geo-grid or map-pack tracking appears on the pricing page.

Profound. The API is Enterprise-only per the pricing matrix, exports are locked out of Starter (CSV/JSON from Growth up), SSO is Enterprise, and a hosted MCP server is documented at docs.tryprofound.com. Looker and G2 integrations appear on the integrations page.

Ahrefs. API access and an MCP server ship on all tiers with rows metered by plan (100 to 500 rows per request, uncapped on Enterprise), plus a Looker Studio integration from Advanced and Report Builder as an add-on. Export rows run 500K to 4M a month by tier.

Every cell below was read from the vendors’ own rendered pages as of August 2026. Where a vendor’s public pages neither confirm nor deny a capability, the cell says so.