Resources / Comparison
Profound alternatives
Profound alternatives if Starter is ChatGPT-only at $99/mo billed monthly. What CompeteScan, Otterly, and Peec publish on their pricing pages.
What Profound Starter actually is
Profound Starter is $99 a month, billed monthly. You get 50 prompts, one seat, and ChatGPT. That is the whole engine list. Perplexity and Google AI Overviews live on Growth at $399 a month, billed yearly, with 100 prompts and three seats. Enterprise is a sales call, up to nine engines.
A lot of roundups stop at “Profound starts at $99.” They skip the part where $99 is a ChatGPT monitor.
Profound vs the alternatives
| Capability | Profound | CompeteScan | Otterly | Peec |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $99/mo Starter, billed monthly | Free, then $49/mo Starter | $29/mo Lite | $95/mo Starter, billed monthly |
| Billing note | Starter is billed monthly. Growth is $399/mo billed yearly. | Free is one scan. Starter and Pro are monthly. | Monthly list price. Annual Lite shows $25/mo on their page. | 50 prompts. Choose 3 models. |
| Engines on entry | ChatGPT only on Starter. Growth adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity on Free and Starter | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot. Gemini, Claude, and AI Mode are add-ons ($9–$439/mo by plan). | Choose 3 models |
| Prompt cap | 50 unique prompts on Starter, 100 on Growth ($399/mo billed yearly) | 5 on Free, 20 on Starter, 50 on Pro | 15 on Lite, 100 on Standard ($189), 400 on Premium ($489) | 50 |
| Cadence | Daily | One-shot on Free, weekly on Starter, daily on Pro | Daily | Not listed on their public pricing page |
| Playbook | Agents and content tools. Dashboard-first on the public plans. | Ranked playbook of on-site, content, and citation fixes. Shareable report included. | Recommendations and GEO audit. Not a ranked CompeteScan-style playbook. | Recommended actions and gap analysis are listed as product areas |
| Free path | Not listed on their public pricing page | First scan free, no credit card | Free trial listed on their pricing page | Not listed on their public pricing page |
Gemini on Starter is the CompeteScan wedge. Otterly Lite does not include it. Profound Starter does not include it. That is what their pricing pages list.
CompeteScan’s playbook is a prioritized to-do list. We do not write the posts, build the backlinks, or make the on-site fixes. That is deliberate. The list is for professionals who will do that work at a quality a model cannot match.
Profound was built to take the action: agents and content tools that write and ship. That is faster. It is also how you get AI slop. If you want set-and-forget output, Profound is the better fit. If you want better results because a real person is handling the writing, backlinks, and on-site work, use CompeteScan.
Where Peec fits as a Profound alternative
People search Peec AI alternative and Profound competitors together. Peec Starter is $95/mo billed monthly, 50 prompts, 3 models. Same Starter name, different product. Profound Starter is ChatGPT only at $99/mo billed monthly.
How we know this
We compared each product on what it offers and what it leaves out. That is the same process we used to decide CompeteScan’s feature set. First-party proof of our own scan is the Linear report and the Coinbase report.