Profound vs Otterly vs Peec: Which AI Visibility Tool Is Worth It? (2026)

Short answer: All of these are legitimate AI visibility monitors, and the "winner" is whichever matches your budget and job. Profound is the enterprise pick — deep dashboards, custom pricing that runs into five figures a year. Scrunch was the other enterprise contender until Sitecore bought it in June 2026; it now starts at $250/mo and its future is a DXP roadmap, not a standalone one. Peec is the mid-market analytics pick, roughly $95–495/mo. Otterly ($29+) and AI Peekaboo ($50+) are the accessible picks for solo marketers and agencies. But note the trap: every one of them is a recurring subscription built for teams who will act on a dashboard weekly. If you just want a one-time baseline of what AI says about you, a $29 one-shot read beats a $99–499/mo tool you may never open twice.

→ See what AI actually says about your brand

Profound, Otterly, Peec, Scrunch and AI Peekaboo all do the same core thing: they run a set of buyer questions across AI engines on a schedule, then track how often your brand shows up, where competitors beat you, and which sources the models cite. Where they differ is depth, engine coverage, prompt limits, and — most of all — price. Here's the 2026 lay of the land, cheapest first.

Two things that table hides, and both cost money. Engine add-ons: Otterly bills Google AI Mode and Gemini as extras ($9–149 depending on plan); Peec charges roughly $20–30/month each for Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek; Scrunch puts Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok and AI Mode behind Enterprise entirely. Only Profound includes broad coverage in the base platform. White-label: it's the feature agencies shop for, and it is almost never in the cheap tier — Peekaboo scopes it separately at Enterprise, not in any self-serve plan.

Profound is the name most people cite first, and it's built for large marketing organizations. Coverage is broad — it monitors the major answer engines including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews — and the analytics run deep, with agent/crawler analytics and conversation-topic breakdowns that the smaller tools don't match.

The catch is buying fit. Profound has shifted most of its motion to quote-based enterprise contracts: the official pricing page is now custom-enterprise, older public references cite $99 and $399 self-serve tiers, and a published Lite tier sits around $499/month for 3 seats and roughly 24,000 responses analyzed monthly (Trakkr). Third-party reviews put real enterprise deployments at $30,000–$100,000+ per year (Surmado). There's no free trial and no true self-serve signup. If you're a Fortune 500 team with a real budget, it's a defensible buy. If you're a founder who wants to know what ChatGPT says about you, it's wildly oversized.

Peec sits in the sensible middle. Its Starter plan is about $95/month for 50 prompts and 3 AI models with daily tracking; Pro is ~$245/month for 150 prompts; Advanced is ~$495/month for teams running several initiatives (Geoptie). Core tracking covers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek available as roughly $20–30/month add-ons each — so watch the à-la-carte engine fees, which can quietly inflate the bill.

Peec's appeal is clean analytics without enterprise pricing, unlimited team members, and a 7-day free trial with no credit card so you can see your data before committing. For an established mid-market brand that will genuinely act on a weekly dashboard, it's the best value of the three. For a one-time gut-check, you're still paying for a subscription you have to remember to cancel.

Otterly is the most affordable way onto a real monitoring platform. Lite is $29/month for 15 prompts across the core engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot) plus multi-country tracking across 50+ markets; Standard is $189/month for 100 prompts and adds API, MCP and a Looker Studio connector; Premium is $489/month for 400 prompts (That Marketing Buddy). Google AI Mode and Gemini can be paid add-ons depending on your plan.

At $29, Otterly is genuinely accessible for solo marketers and agencies tracking client brands. The trade-off is that 15 prompts is a small window, and the cheapest tier is tracking-only — API and integrations start at Standard. It's the right subscription if you want ongoing, low-cost monitoring and you'll actually log in.

Scrunch belongs in any 2026 comparison for a reason none of the others share: on 3 June 2026, Sitecore acquired it (Sitecore newsroom). Bloomberg put the price at roughly $225 million, though neither company has confirmed it (Bloomberg). Scrunch had raised a $15M Series A and served 500+ brands and agencies. It is the category's first real exit.

As a product it still sells standalone: Core is $250/month, covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot with 5 audits a month; Growth is $500/month for 8 engines and 700 prompts; Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok and Google AI Mode all sit behind Enterprise pricing. Its distinguishing feature was always crawler/agent analytics — seeing which AI bots actually fetch your pages, not just which answers name you.

Peekaboo is the smallest name here and the most honest fit for a specific buyer: an agency reporting on client brands. Founded in 2023 and operated by Think Outside The Box Ventures, LLC, it's a bootstrapped two-person company — co-founders Filipe Lins Duarte (CEO) and John Rice (CTO) — competing on price and service rather than funding. Starter is $50/month (1 brand, 40 prompts, tracking every 2 days); Peek is $100/month (same prompts, daily tracking); Grow is $200/month (100 prompts, daily). All tiers cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI. Starter and Peek include a 14-day trial (card required); Grow doesn't. There's also a free one-time report with no card, which is a fair way to see your own data first.

The agency angle is real — GSC and Looker Studio integrations, an MCP server for pulling visibility data into your own agents, and responsive founders you can actually reach. One correction worth making, because it's how the product is often pitched: white-label is not included in the self-serve plans. It's scoped separately at Enterprise, alongside volume pricing for 10+ brands. If white-label reporting is the reason you're buying, that's an Enterprise conversation, not a $50 one.

A disclosure a reader deserves: Peekaboo's two co-founders also run Marketraa, a marketing-tool directory that describes itself as independent with "no paid placements" and which lists Peekaboo in its AI Visibility category. Both facts come from the companies' own about pages. The product may well be good — but weight Marketraa's verdicts on AI visibility tools accordingly, the same way you should weight ours (see the disclosure at the bottom of this page).

Match the tool to the job, not the hype. A quick decision guide:

• You're an enterprise with budget and a marketing team that lives in dashboards → Profound. You'll use the depth, and the price is a rounding error.
• You're already a Sitecore shop → Scrunch, and negotiate it into the platform deal. Outside that, its acquisition makes the standalone roadmap a question mark.
• You're a mid-market brand treating AI search as a real channel → Peec. Best analytics-per-dollar, honest trial, just budget for engine add-ons.
• You're an agency reporting on client brands → Peekaboo for the price and the integrations, but price white-label at Enterprise before you commit.
• You're a solo marketer who wants cheap ongoing tracking → Otterly. $29 gets you real coverage across markets.
• You just need to know where you stand right now → none of the above. A recurring subscription is the wrong shape for a one-time question.

Here's the honest version most comparison posts skip. Monitoring platforms assume you'll act on the data every week — reworking pages, chasing coverage, watching competitors. That's real work, and if you're doing it, a subscription earns its keep. But a huge share of buyers don't need a channel dashboard. They need to answer one question: what do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Grok actually say about us, and who do they recommend instead?

For that, a subscription is the wrong shape. You pay $99–499/month, get a live baseline in week one, then either grind on it or — far more often — let it renew unused. A one-time report gives you the same baseline: the verbatim answers, who AI names instead of you, the sources it cites, and a prioritized fix list — for a flat $29, with nothing to cancel. If it turns out you do want to work the channel week over week, then graduate to Peec or Otterly with your eyes open. Start with the diagnostic; don't lease it.

This isn't unique to these five tools — it's the shape of the whole category, which we map in AI Reputation Management in 2026. For the full menu of monitors and reports, see our best AI reputation tools of 2026; to sanity-check the numbers above against agencies and DIY, read what AI reputation management actually costs.

→ Run a one-time AI Reputation Report for $29 — see what all five engines say before you commit to a subscription.

Profound vs Otterly — which is better?

They serve different buyers. Profound is an enterprise platform with deep analytics and custom pricing that runs into five figures a year; Otterly starts at $29/month and is built for solo marketers and agencies. If you have a Fortune-500-sized budget and a team that works AI search daily, Profound wins. If you want affordable ongoing tracking, Otterly wins. Neither is right if you only need a one-time snapshot.

Peec AI vs Profound — what's the real difference?

Price and target buyer. Peec is a mid-market analytics tool at roughly $95–495/month with a 7-day free trial and clean dashboards; Profound is enterprise-grade with broader out-of-the-box engine coverage and quote-based contracts often $30,000–$100,000+ per year. Peec gives most teams 80% of the value at a fraction of the cost; Profound justifies its price only at real enterprise scale.

What is the best AI visibility platform in 2026?

There's no single best — it depends on scale. Enterprise: Profound, or Scrunch if you're already on Sitecore. Mid-market: Peec. Agencies: Peekaboo. Solo: Otterly. And if you only need a baseline of what AI says about you rather than an ongoing dashboard, a one-time report beats all of them on cost and commitment. Match the tool to the job instead of buying the biggest name.

Did Sitecore acquire Scrunch?

Yes. Sitecore announced the acquisition of Scrunch on 3 June 2026, folding Scrunch's AI-search visibility and Agent Experience Platform into its digital experience platform. Bloomberg reported the price at around $225 million; neither company confirmed the figure. Scrunch still sells standalone from $250/month, but buyers should ask about standalone roadmap commitments before signing a long contract.

What's the cheapest AI visibility tool for agencies?

Otterly at $29/month is the cheapest entry overall, and AI Peekaboo at $50/month is the cheapest tool built around agency workflows, with GSC and Looker Studio integrations. Watch one trap: white-label reporting — the feature most agencies are actually shopping for — is not included in Peekaboo's self-serve tiers and is scoped separately at Enterprise. Price that before you compare headline numbers.

Is there a cheaper Otterly alternative?

Yes, in two directions. For ongoing monitoring, Peec's trial and Otterly's own $29 tier are the low-cost subscription options. But if you don't actually need continuous tracking, the cheapest path is a one-time report — a flat fee for a full multi-engine baseline with nothing to renew, which is what most people buying an "Otterly alternative" actually want.

Do these tools guarantee they'll improve my AI rankings?

No legitimate tool can, and these three don't — they measure. AI engines are non-deterministic and there's no paid placement or submission form, so any service promising guaranteed AI rankings is a red flag. What moves AI answers is slow, honest work: consistent facts about you across the web, credible third-party coverage, and clear answer-shaped pages. Monitoring tells you where you stand; it doesn't do the fixing.

Disclosure: Stork runs an AI-tools directory and sells a $29 one-time AI Reputation Report (with $9/mo monitoring launching). We compete, loosely, with the subscriptions above — so we've kept this fair: Profound, Scrunch, Peec, Otterly and Peekaboo are all legitimate tools, and for teams actively working AI search they can be worth the money. No vendor paid to be in this article, and no vendor was added in exchange for a link. This article exists because most comparisons never tell you when you don't need a subscription at all.