Profound vs Otterly

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. Otterly monitors AI search on four base engines with audits and recommendations: mentions, sentiment, citations, a crawlability checker and prompt research. 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.

Otterly is an AI search monitoring tool with real credentials: a Gartner Cool Vendor for AI in Marketing in 2025, a 4.8 rating badge, and 30,000+ marketing professionals by its own count, with Roche, Opera and BenQ among the logos on its pricing page. The surface covers brand mentions, sentiment and citations tracked daily, a Brand Visibility Index, domain citation tracking updated weekly, AI prompt research, a crawlability checker, content audits with specific improvement recommendations, and ChatGPT Ads and Shopping tracking.

Pricing model. Lite $29, Standard $189 and Premium $489 a month with 15% off annually and four engines included on every tier; Claude costs $29 to $439 a month extra by tier, Gemini and Google AI Mode $9 to $149 each, and Enterprise starts from $1,000 a month.

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.

Otterly. Four engines are included on every tier, verbatim from the pricing cards: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are sold as add-ons, with Claude at $29, $109 or $439 a month by tier and Gemini and AI Mode at $9, $59 or $149 each; Grok and DeepSeek appear on neither list.

Summarized: Profound reads 1 on $99, 3 on $399, up to 9 on Enterprise; Otterly reads 4 included (ChatGPT, AIO, Perplexity, Copilot); Claude, Gemini, AI Mode as add-ons. On Claude specifically, Profound: enterprise only; Otterly: add-on, $29 to $439/mo.

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.

Otterly. Prompt runs are daily on every tier, 15 prompts on Lite up to 400 on Premium, with extra prompts at $99 per 100 on the upper tiers. Domain Citation Tracking refreshes weekly per the features page, and sentiment classification tags mentions as enthusiastic, with caveats, or dismissed.

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.

Otterly. The optimization surface is audit and advice: a content audit that produces specific improvements, a crawlability checker, prompt research and recommendations. There is no long-form writer and no CMS publishing anywhere on the public pages, so the output is a to-do list for your team.

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.

Otterly. There is no Google organic rank tracker and no local surface of any kind on the public pages; the product's scope is AI search.

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.

Otterly. API and MCP access ship from the $189 Standard tier, metered at 2,000 requests a month each (5,000 on Premium), with a Google Looker Studio connector on the same tiers and CSV exports on every 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.