Profound Pricing in 2026 and Whether It Is Worth It

To budget for Profound honestly, pick monthly or annual, then check whether your engines are in the tier (Starter is ChatGPT only), then add the Workspace and credit math if you are an agency. The sticker rarely matches the real cost.

Last year, Profound was the enterprise option you only saw on a sales call. Pricing was custom, signup was a demo, the numbers came out in a quote.

That changed.

In 2026, Profound publishes self-serve pricing for two brand tiers and an agency tier. Starter is $99/mo. Growth is $399/mo. Agency Growth is $99/mo plus per-Workspace add-ons. Enterprise is still custom.

The new picture is more honest and a lot more useful for buyers, but it surfaces some things the old "request a demo" page never had to say out loud. The Starter tier, for example, tracks one engine. Not three. Not four. One.

This guide walks every tier, every add-on, and the math for three real buyer scenarios.

The fully loaded annual cost, at a glance

The headline a brand reads first is "$99/mo for Starter." That is true. But Starter tracks ChatGPT only, so for most buyers the real entry tier is Growth at $399. Here is what Growth annual costs the day you sign, broken out by line item.

Profound pricing in 2026, the headline tiers

Profound publishes two self-serve brand tiers, a self-serve agency tier, and a custom Enterprise tier for each audience. Monthly is the default. Annual is paid up front for 10 months and you get the other 2 free.

What's included shifts more than the price suggests.

• Starter ($99/mo) tracks ChatGPT only, 50 unique prompts, 1,500 responses/mo, 100 Profound Agents credits, daily tracking, 1 language, 1 region, 1 seat, email support, no API, no SSO, no exports.
• Growth ($399/mo) tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, 100 unique prompts, 9,000 responses/mo, 400 credits, 1 language, 1 region, 3 seats, CSV and JSON exports, 4 Opportunities per week, no API, no SSO.
• Enterprise (Custom) adds Google AI Mode, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok, DeepSeek, and Anthropic Claude (10 platforms total). API, SSO with SAML, SOC 2 compliance, Prompt Volumes (Searches), dedicated Slack support, and a dedicated specialist with 24-hour SLA.

Two things to call out.

You cannot buy Gemini, Claude, Copilot, or AI Mode coverage without moving to Enterprise. There's no add-on path on Starter or Growth.

And ChatGPT Shopping is Enterprise only. If that surface matters to your category, it's gated.

The hidden costs the sticker does not show

Three places where the Profound number stretches beyond the published sticker.

1. Engine gating. Starter is ChatGPT only. Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Full coverage of the 7 other engines is Enterprise, which is sales-led and not published. So if your buyers use Gemini, Claude, Copilot, AI Mode, Meta AI, Grok, or DeepSeek, the real entry tier isn't $99 or $399. It's a quote.

2. Profound Agents credits, and why a credit isn't a prompt. Profound's content generation, Sheets, and Opportunities run on a credit system. The published allotments per tier are 100 credits/mo on Starter, 400 on Growth, and 400 per client workspace on Agency Growth. Custom on both Enterprise tiers. Agents consume credits relative to complexity, and overage is configurable (you choose between continued usage with overage billing, or pause when the allotment is reached).

3. Agency Workspace add-ons. Agency Growth starts at $99/mo and includes 10 Pitch Workspaces a month (each 7 days, with the option to extend). Real client work runs through Client Workspaces, which are an add-on at $399/mo each. Trial Workspaces are an add-on at $199/mo per five. So Agency Growth is not really $99/mo once you sign your first client.

What it costs for three real buyer scenarios

Three scenarios with the verified Profound numbers.

How billing actually works

Profound publishes the self-serve tiers and the agency stack, but not the billing-mechanics fine print. Here's what matters for budgeting.

Taxes. Profound is US-based, so US buyers pay state sales tax where the SaaS rule applies. EU buyers see the USD sticker plus local VAT at checkout, unless a valid VAT ID applies for reverse-charge. The exact tax line depends on your billing country.

Billing cycle. Monthly is recurring month to month. Annual is paid up front for the year, framed as "2 months free." So $399 × 12 = $4,788 on monthly Growth vs $3,990 on annual Growth, a $798/yr saving. There's no quarterly option, so spreading the spend across the year means monthly billing, which costs you the discount.

No published free trial. Every plan is "Get Started" (for self-serve tiers) or "Get a Demo" (for Enterprise). If you want to try the category for free first, Otterly publishes a 14-day no-card trial, and CiteTrack's crawl logging is free without a license. Profound is committal from day one.

Agents credits, what happens at the cap. You configure the behavior. Either keep using Agents past the included allotment with overage billing, or pause until the next billing cycle. That's a clean choice but it means you have to actively configure your overage tolerance during setup. Default behavior on a new account is worth checking with the team.

Upgrade and downgrade. Monthly plans change at the next billing cycle. Annual plans are committed for the year, so a downgrade typically waits for renewal. There's no published partial-refund policy, so treat annual as a 12-month commitment.

Agency Workspaces stack but don't reduce. Add a Client Workspace at $399/mo and your bill goes up that month. Drop a client and the workspace stays until you remove it. Agencies should track Workspace churn against client churn, not assume the bill auto-trues-down.

SSO and API are gated on self-serve. Both are Enterprise-only. If your security team requires SSO before any new tool is approved, Starter and Growth are non-starters regardless of price.

Profound vs CiteTrack on price

The closest like-for-like at the in-house team scale is Growth annual against CiteTrack Studio. Both annual licenses, both intended for teams running serious citation tracking. The mechanics are different (Profound is a hosted analyst-grade platform, CiteTrack is a WordPress plugin with bring-your-own keys), so this is a price comparison, not a feature parity claim.

Who Profound is right for, and who should skip it

Pay for Profound if you are:

• A brand or marketing team that needs analyst-grade data on AI search and has the budget for Enterprise. Profound's Prompt Volumes data (what people actually ask AI in your category) does not have a real public equivalent.
• A team that already uses Profound's named integrations (Akamai, CloudFlare, Fastly, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Netlify, Vercel, WordPress) and wants the visibility data alongside.
• An enterprise needing SSO (SAML), SOC 2 compliance, and a dedicated specialist with 24-hour SLA. Enterprise is built around those controls.
• An agency that needs Pitch Workspaces to run real audits for prospects before they sign. The 7-day Pitch Workspace mechanic is uncommon in the category.

Skip Profound if you are:

• A solo or small team that needs multi-engine coverage on a budget. Starter is ChatGPT only, and Growth still only covers 3 engines for $3,990/yr.
• An agency with 3+ active clients where every client needs Gemini or Claude. That's an Agency Enterprise sales call, not the published $99 tier.
• Running on WordPress, where a flat-fee plugin can cover 5 engines for a fraction of Growth.
• Looking to act on findings (in-place page fixes, revenue attribution). Profound is measurement and intelligence, not a publishing fix loop.

What Profound's own customers say

Profound publishes two named-customer testimonials directly on its pricing page.

Statsig's Marketing Lead Skye Scofield says "We chose Profound because it seemed like the deepest and most complete tool in the market. We tried the others, and Profound was immediately the obvious choice."

Zeno Group's Global Head of Analytics Michael Brito says Profound "helps us see where clients show up in AI search and how their narratives are framed, providing the clarity to elevate visibility and safeguard reputation in real time."

The pricing page also lists Zapier, Clay, US Bank, Mejuri, and Statsig as brand customers, and Golin, Edelman, dentsu, WPromote, and Zeno Group as agency customers. That logo set is consistent with the "depth, budget, enterprise stack" buyer the published pricing is built for. Note both named testimonials come from larger orgs, not from solo or growth-stage brands, which tracks with the real entry price for full engine coverage.

The flat-fee alternative if you are on WordPress

If your site is on WordPress, CiteTrack AI does Profound's core citation tracking job, then adds page-level fixes and revenue attribution, on a flat annual license. The two products serve different buyers (Profound for enterprise analyst-grade data, CiteTrack for in-place WordPress optimization), so this is an alternative for one of the two main jobs Profound does, not all of them.

What it covers:

• Five engines on every plan: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot, since you bring your own API keys. Claude is on the base tier, not Enterprise-only.
• One-click AEO and GEO fixes for pages that get crawled but not cited.
• Revenue attribution that ties AI-referred visits to WooCommerce and EDD orders.
• $59/yr for one site, $129/yr for five, $249/yr for unlimited.

Honest limits.

• WordPress only. If your site is not on WordPress, this is not the right tool.
• No Prompt Volumes equivalent. Profound's analyst data on what users ask AI is unique to Profound.
• No Agents credit system. CiteTrack does not include a content-generation layer.
• BYO API keys. You pay the engines directly at cost, separate from the flat license.

Should you pay for Profound?

Here is the short version, by buyer type.

FAQ

Keep going

• Compare the alternatives, see the best Profound alternatives.
• A head to head with the cheapest in the category, Profound vs Otterly.
• A WordPress-native view, CiteTrack vs Profound.
• For agencies, Profound vs Scrunch AI.
• Switching paths, how to move from Profound to CiteTrack.

Pricing · AI Visibility, Pricing, Profound