Volume I · AEO Tools · Comparison

Peec AI vs Profound

Two AEO platforms with very different shapes inside comparable price bands. €85 against $99 at the entry tier; three of seven engines against ChatGPT-only; tracker-pure against tracker-plus-Agents. This is the buyer’s call written for the buyer who has to make it.

By Tiên Grünewald·2026-05-22·8 min read

Both tools scored against methodology v0.1 · Last verified 2026-05-22 · Commission $0 for both

#TL;DR — which to buy

Buy Peec AI if you want a tracker-only product with broader engine variety per dollar at entry and mid tiers. Starter is €85 per month and includes any three of seven engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, or Grok. Self-serve through the Advanced tier.

Buy Profound if you want bundled content generation (the Agents product), AI-crawler attribution analytics, or up to ten engines at Enterprise. Starter at $99 covers ChatGPT only; Growth at $399 covers three engines plus 6 optimized articles per month and 400 Agents credits. Self-serve through Growth.

Both products do the same core tracking — daily prompts against AI engines, brand-mention frequency, citation position, source URLs. They diverge on what else is in the box, and that divergence is the decision.

#Side-by-side

The table above is the comparison in one screen. A few rows deserve a closer look.

The entry-tier price row collapses the “Profound is enterprise-only” mythology that lived in earlier reviews of both tools. Profound now lists a $99 Starter tier that competes directly with Peec Starter at €85 (~$92). The math is comparable; the engine coverage is not.

The content generation row is the biggest non-price differentiator. Profound bundles Agents — autonomous AI workers that generate AEO-optimized articles and publish them to a CMS — at every tier. Peec ships no content-generation product. A buyer who already pays for a separate AI-content tool may save by consolidating onto Profound Growth. A buyer who has no use for AI-generated content is paying for it anyway at Growth and above.

The funding row tells you the next twelve months of each company. Profound just closed $96M Series C at a $1B valuation; expect aggressive product expansion (more Agents capabilities, ChatGPT Shopping, Prompt Volumes maturation), enterprise sales motion, and AEO platform consolidation moves^[3]. Peec at roughly $29M total raised will iterate inside its tracker-focused product surface.

#Pricing

The simple version: at the entry tier the prices are roughly equivalent in absolute dollars, and the gap widens at the mid tier — but Profound is buying more product at the mid tier.

Peec Starter is €85 per month for fifty prompts and any three of seven engines, self-serve, daily tracking, unlimited users, one project^[1]. Profound Starter is $99 per month for fifty unique prompts and 1,500 monthly responses, ChatGPT only, one seat, daily, with 100 Agents credits for content generation included^[2]. At entry, Peec wins on engine variety; Profound wins on bundled content generation. Either is a defensible $100-ish-per-month choice depending on which axis the buyer cares about.

The mid tier is where the ratio opens. Peec Pro is €205 per month for 150 prompts, three of seven engines, two projects, chats + email support^[1]. Profound Growth is $399 per month for 100 unique prompts, three fixed engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), 9,000 monthly responses, 3 seats, 400 Agents credits, 6 optimized articles per month, and an opportunities feed of 4 items per week^[2]. The roughly 80% Profound premium pays for the Agents content product and the AI-crawler attribution analytics that Peec does not ship. Buyers who use Agents and analytics get value; buyers who only want more prompts are overpaying at Growth.

A third price-related consideration applies to Peec only: at standard tiers, Peec lets a buyer pick three engines from a list of seven, and each additional engine beyond the three is an add-on — €30 per month at Starter, €70 at Pro, €140 at Advanced^[1]. A team that needs five engines on Pro is paying €205 plus €140 (€345 total) — still well under Profound Growth, but no longer five-engine-versus-three-engine parity.

At Enterprise both go custom. Peec Enterprise documents all models including Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-5 Search, with API access and SSO. Profound Enterprise documents up to ten engines (including Claude, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Grok, AI Mode), API access, SOC 2 Type II compliance, SSO/SAML, ChatGPT Shopping, and a dedicated specialist on a 24-hour Slack SLA. Both surfaces ship the controls enterprise procurement needs; the engine lists overlap but are not identical, and SOC 2 attestation is specifically documented on Profound’s pricing page.

#Engine coverage

Peec lists seven engines that any buyer at any standard tier (Starter, Pro, Advanced) can pick three of: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, and Grok. Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-5 Search are gated to the Enterprise tier.

Profound’s engine coverage is tier-bound: Starter is ChatGPT only, Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews (fixed three-engine set, no choice), and Enterprise opens up to ten — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Grok, Anthropic Claude — plus ChatGPT Shopping.

So:

• A buyer who needs Claude at non-Enterprise spend should look at Peec via the Enterprise tier or buy elsewhere.
• A buyer who needs Meta AI or DeepSeek at any tier should look at Profound; Peec does not list these.
• A buyer whose ICP discourse runs primarily on ChatGPT and one or two adjacent engines (Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews) can be served by either, and the choice collapses to bundled features and price.

#Bundled features

The hidden line on this comparison is what each platform ships besides tracking.

Profound ships an Agents content-generation product, Agent Analytics (AI-crawler attribution across your domains and how AI traffic actually lands on your site), Prompt Volumes (demand intelligence on what users are prompting), and ChatGPT Shopping at Enterprise. Agents in particular is a meaningful unbundled product — autonomous AI workers that generate AEO articles and publish to a CMS — included at 100 credits per month on Starter, 400 credits and 6 articles per month on Growth, and custom on Enterprise^[2].

Peec ships Looker Studio integration at the Advanced tier (€425/mo) and multi-country tracking from Advanced upward. It does not ship a content-generation product, an AI-crawler attribution layer, or a demand-intelligence surface at any tier^[1].

For a marketing team that already pays for a separate AI-content tool, Profound Growth consolidates that spend at $399 per month. For a team that has no use for AI-generated content, the same $399 Growth is paid-for capacity that Peec Pro at €205 does not charge for.

#For agencies

Both vendors publish a separate set of agency tiers, distinct from the brand tiers above. The structures are very different.

Peec for agencies runs four flat tiers: Essential €205 monthly (10,000 credits, 3 projects, 3 client seats, 3 pitch workspaces), Growth €425 monthly (25,000 credits, 10 projects, 5 client seats, 5 pitch workspaces, multi-country), Scale €675 monthly (65,000 credits, 25 projects, 7 client seats, 7 pitch workspaces, daily or weekly tracking), and Comprehensive custom. Every tier includes daily tracking, unlimited users, and the same seven-engine choice as the brand tiers — Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-5 Search remain gated to the Comprehensive (Enterprise-equivalent) tier^[1].

Profound for agencies runs two tiers built on a wrapper + add-on model: Agency Growth $99 monthly is a wrapper layer (Agency mode, consolidated billing, 5 agency seats, 10 pitch workspaces per month for prospecting), with real client work happening via add-ons — $399 per month per Client Workspace, $199 per month for 5 Trial Workspaces. Agency Enterprise is custom-quoted with a dedicated agency partner, premium Slack support, SSO/SAML, and API access^[2].

The economics diverge sharply at multi-client scale. A boutique agency managing five active client retainers pays roughly $99 + 5 × $399 = $2,094 per month on Profound. The same agency on Peec Scale pays €675 per month (~$731) — comparable feature surface (7 client seats, 65,000 credits, multi-country), at roughly one-third the cost. At ten clients, the Profound side reaches $99 + 10 × $399 = $4,089 monthly, while Peec Scale's seven client seats means the agency would need to upgrade to Comprehensive (custom) but at a price band still well below the Profound add-on stack.

Two caveats. First, Profound's Agency Growth wrapper includes 10 pitch workspaces per month — a meaningful new-business tool that Peec does not match at the same scale (Peec ships 3 pitch projects on Essential, scaling to 7 on Scale). Second, Profound's Client Workspaces include Agents content generation at 400 credits per workspace, plus 4 opportunities per week — the content-generation bundle that doesn't exist on Peec at any tier.

Bottom line for agencies: Peec wins at multi-client tracking economics; Profound wins when the agency's deliverable explicitly includes content generation or when pitch-workspace volume matters more than per-client unit cost.

#Who each is for

Peec AI is for:

• In-house marketing teams treating AI search as a measurable channel adjacent to SEO who want tracker-pure tooling.
• Teams that want self-serve sign-up at every tier through Advanced.
• Buyers whose ICP discourse runs across more than three engines and who want to pick the three that matter most to them.
• Teams that need Looker Studio integration or multi-country tracking at a published price point (Advanced €425).
• Buyers who need a CFO-briefable number for annual procurement.

Peec AI is not for:

• Teams that want bundled AI-content generation or AI-crawler attribution analytics with their tracker.
• Teams whose audience meaningfully uses Meta AI or DeepSeek; those engines are not listed.
• Enterprises whose procurement requires SOC 2 attestation explicitly documented on the vendor pricing page.

Profound is for:

• Teams that want a tracker plus a content-generation product (Agents) in one bundle.
• Teams that value AI-crawler attribution analytics across their owned properties.
• Enterprises that need up to ten engines, SOC 2 Type II compliance, SSO/SAML, API access, and a dedicated specialist on a 24-hour Slack SLA.
• Agencies that bill AEO as a discrete deliverable across at least five clients, where Agents content generation is part of the offering^[5].

Profound is not for:

• Teams that want engine variety at the entry tier — Starter is ChatGPT only.
• Buyers who only want tracking and do not need Agents content generation or crawler analytics; Profound Growth premium over Peec Pro pays for features that go unused in that scenario.
• Teams that need engine choice (Peec lets a buyer pick three of seven; Profound Growth’s three engines are fixed).

#The honest call

Profound and Peec are not the same shape of product anymore. The first-published version of this comparison framed them as “Peec is the SMB tracker, Profound is the enterprise tracker.” That framing was based on stale pricing data and an incorrect read of Profound’s engine coverage. The current shape is different and more interesting.

Profound is now an AEO platform with a tracking layer at the entry point and content generation, crawler attribution, and demand intelligence bundled into the upper tiers. Peec is a focused AEO tracker with broader engine variety at standard tiers and clean self-serve pricing through Advanced. Both compete at SMB. They part ways on what the buyer wants beyond tracking.

A buyer who already pays for separate AI-content tooling and would consolidate it should look hard at Profound Growth. A buyer who only wants tracking and prefers more engine choice should look hard at Peec Pro. A buyer at Enterprise scale should run both procurement processes and compare the engine list, the SOC 2 paperwork, and the strategist-support promise — the answer there depends on the specifics of the buying committee.

The cheap version of the call: pick by what you want besides tracking. If the answer is “nothing,” Peec is the cheaper good answer. If the answer is “content generation and crawler analytics,” Profound at Growth is the cheaper good answer than buying both separately. The most expensive AEO tool is the one you bought for capabilities you will never use.

#Want the full reviews

Each tool gets a fully-cited standalone review under gtmcanon’s methodology version v0.1:

• Peec AI Review — six sources cited, vendor pricing page verified, four-tier breakdown, structural limits, do-not-buy framing.
• Profound Review — five sources cited, vendor pricing page verified, $155M funding history, Cadwallader founder quotes from the Series C coverage, agency-fit math.

The methodology applied to both reviews is published at /methodology. Editorial standards live at /editorial-standards.