Profound vs HubSpot AEO vs Scrunch vs Otterly vs Peec vs AthenaHQ

AI visibility platforms measure how often, how prominently, and how positively your brand appears inside answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Copilot and similar engines. Profound is the enterprise data-scale leader with a research arm and content agents. Ahrefs Brand Radar layers AI-answer tracking onto Ahrefs' search index, with YouTube, TikTok and Reddit coverage in beta, and sells two published bundles. Rankscale and Rankshift are credit-based trackers that cover more engines per dollar and add page audits, sentiment and competitor benchmarking. HubSpot AEO is the cheapest way to start inside a HubSpot workflow. OtterlyAI has the clearest self-serve price ladder. Scrunch bundles site audits with monitoring. Peec AI and AthenaHQ fit teams whose operating model is projects-and-countries or forecastable credit budgets, respectively.

There is no single winner: the products charge different units (prompts, responses, credits, audits, workspaces, projects), cover different engine sets, and suit different team shapes. Write down the engines, markets, access and follow-through you need first, then reject any plan that misses a non-negotiable. DataDab is the implementation lane: we run the diagnostic and ship the citation-ready content, whichever tool you measure with.

Choose Profound for higher-volume, multi-engine monitoring that can feed content agents. Choose HubSpot AEO when your team wants monitoring and recommendations inside its HubSpot operation. Choose Scrunch for a bounded one-brand package with audits. Choose OtterlyAI for a low-cost daily pilot or flexible agency workspaces. Choose Peec AI when its project-and-country structure matches how you work and the commercial terms check out. Choose AthenaHQ when you can budget in AI responses and want a broader action layer. Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar when you already run Ahrefs and want AI-answer, YouTube, TikTok and Reddit visibility in one place. Choose Rankscale or Rankshift when you want the widest engine coverage per dollar, credit-based budgeting, and page-audit and sentiment features in a self-serve tool.

There is no honest overall winner. For the Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison specifically, see the three-way measurement bake-off. The products sell different units: prompts, responses, credits, projects, audits, workspaces and engines. Comparing the cheapest cards is like comparing office rents without asking whether one is a desk in Swindon. Write down the engines, markets, access and follow-through you need first. Then reject any plan that misses a non-negotiable.

Add the weights and reject anything missing a two-point item. If several products survive, run the smallest reversible trial against the same prompt inventory and review cadence. Do not give one tool 20 high-intent prompts and another 100 vanity questions, then admire the "results".

For a Series B CRM vendor, 25 prompts may cover the buying committee's hardest questions in one market. Add three industries, comparison queries, implementation objections and UK/US variations, and 25 disappears before lunch. A cybersecurity firm selling to cautious CISOs may care less about prompt volume than Copilot coverage, security review and an export that sales engineers can actually use. The requirement changes the sensible purchase.

Profound suits a team that expects monitoring to feed content agents, sheets and broader reporting as the programme grows. Profound's pricing table puts Starter at $99 per month billed yearly for 50 ChatGPT prompts, one seat, daily tracking and 100 Agent credits. Growth is $399 per month billed yearly for 100 prompts, three answer engines, three seats, 400 Agent credits and CSV/JSON exports. Custom Enterprise lists up to nine engines, multiple companies, API access and SSO/SAML.

Choose Profound when: you have a planned route from finding to content work, need Growth-level exports, or expect multi-company, API or identity-management requirements.

Do not choose Profound Starter when: multi-engine measurement, several markets, exports or more than one seat are immediate requirements. That is a Growth or Enterprise purchase wearing a $99 hat. It is also a poor first buy if nobody can approve and publish what an Agent produces. Automated drafts waiting six weeks for legal are merely a more efficient queue.

HubSpot AEO is a beta product for teams that want visibility, citation analysis and recommendations near their existing HubSpot work. The HubSpot AEO product details publish a price of $50 per month, or $45 per month annually, for 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, with no additional HubSpot subscription required. The listed workflow covers brand visibility and sentiment, competitor share of voice, citation analysis, prompt suggestions and prioritised recommendations.

Choose HubSpot AEO when: the team already runs marketing and content in HubSpot, 25 prompts can cover a disciplined first phase, and three-engine monitoring is enough. Recommendations sitting near the CRM can help a demand-generation lead connect a weak comparison answer to the pages and pipeline stages the team already manages. Validate any entitlement described for Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise before counting it as included cost.

Do not choose HubSpot AEO when: your prompt inventory is larger, a required engine falls outside the published three, or you need a large multi-brand reporting estate. Multiple instances may work. Discovering that after the pilot is less elegant.

Scrunch Core gives a compact team explicit allowances for monitoring, audits and optimisation rather than asking it to interpret a credit economy. Scrunch's official plan comparison lists Core at $250 per month for 125 unique prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. It covers one country, three personas, two languages, five competitors, five site audits per month, one brand workspace and five user licences. Citations and sources, sentiment analysis, recommendations and one page optimisation per month are also listed.

Choose Scrunch when: one brand and a bounded geography match the plan, and recurring site-audit capacity matters alongside monitoring. A SaaS team refreshing 40 decision-stage pages could use those audits to choose the next repair instead of producing another spreadsheet called final_priorities_v7.

Do not choose Scrunch Core when: you need broader model coverage, custom workspaces, API access, several countries or enterprise identity controls immediately. Those sit in the custom Enterprise package. A tidy dashboard does not confer enterprise readiness by osmosis.

OtterlyAI has the clearest graduated self-serve prompt ladder here. The OtterlyAI pricing and add-on table lists Lite at $29 per month for 15 prompts, Standard at $189 for 100 and Premium at $489 for 400. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot form the base engine set, with daily tracking and unlimited members. Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude cost extra. Standard and Premium list API, MCP, Agent Analytics and unlimited workspaces.

Choose OtterlyAI when: you want a defined daily-monitoring pilot, a low published entry price or multiple workspaces. This is especially practical for an agency testing one client's 15 commercially useful questions before asking six clients to fund a grand visibility command centre. The public add-on table also lets you estimate extra-engine costs before meeting sales.

Do not choose OtterlyAI Lite when: 15 prompts cannot represent the buying journey, or you need API access or multiple client environments. And do not describe the four base engines as "all engines". The vendor separates additional coverage as add-ons, so the budget should too.

Peec AI frames the purchase around models, projects and countries, but its accessible public page did not expose numerical self-serve prices on the verification date. The Peec AI pricing page published July 22, 2026 lists Starter with three models selected during onboarding, one project and daily tracking. Pro lists three models, two projects and three countries per project; Advanced lists three models, five projects and three countries per project. API access, MCP integration and SSO appear in the plan comparison, while Enterprise is custom.

Choose Peec AI when: your programme maps neatly to projects and countries, and you can confirm the selected models, price, data access and support in checkout or a proposal. This favours a team that has decided which markets matter, rather than one whose brief says "do AI visibility" and leaves the geography cell blank.

Do not choose Peec AI when: procurement requires a published price before a trial, or the vendor will not confirm models, projects, countries and access terms in writing. Quoting an old price from elsewhere would add false precision, which procurement already receives in ample supply.

AthenaHQ makes sense when the team can forecast AI responses and wants action capabilities beside monitoring. According to AthenaHQ's published plans, Essential is free with 300 credits and covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude. Starter is $295 per month for 3,600 credits and visibility across nine models, plus API access, integrations, CSV export, on-page and off-page actions, and a content-optimisation agent. One credit equals one AI response.

Choose AthenaHQ when: you can estimate prompt frequency and response use, want broader published Starter coverage, or prefer one monitoring, citation and action workflow. Enterprise adds multi-region and multi-language support, SAML/OIDC SSO, audit logs, BI support and custom credits.

Do not choose AthenaHQ when: nobody can estimate monthly responses, or procurement insists on a fixed-prompt allowance. Credits are not dark arts. They do, however, punish teams that skip the ten-minute run-rate calculation and buy by logo recognition.

Ahrefs Brand Radar attaches AI-answer visibility tracking to the Ahrefs search index. According to Ahrefs' Brand Radar page, accessed August 4, 2026, it tracks brand visibility across AI answers, YouTube and Reddit, and reports a 476M+ monthly prompt database that is "search-backed", not synthetic. The published bundles are Select platforms at $398 per month and All platforms at $699 per month; All platforms includes 2,500 checks per month for custom prompts. Engine coverage spans AI Overviews & AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok. YouTube, TikTok and Reddit coverage, search demand and web visibility are listed as bonus items free while in beta, and projects are unlimited.

Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar when: your team already pays for Ahrefs and wants AI-answer, social and search visibility in one workflow, or you want a dataset big enough that the AI answers you inspect come from real user prompts rather than synthetic question lists.

Do not choose Ahrefs Brand Radar when: you want a self-serve price below $398 per month, or you need content-authoring agents inside the monitoring tool. It is a monitoring and discovery layer; the publishing work still needs an owner.

Rankscale is a credit-based AI visibility tracker built around engine breadth. According to Rankscale's pricing page, accessed August 4, 2026, plans run from Essentials (starting at $20/month) through Pro ($99/month), Growth ($385/month) and Enterprise ($780/month). The product tracks 17+ engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot and Mistral, across all regions and languages, with page audits, sentiment analysis, citation analysis and competitor benchmarking. Monitoring is credit-based - each engine query typically costs 0.25 credits - with unused credits rolling over up to 2-3x your monthly allocation. Growth adds REST API and white-label dashboards; Enterprise adds custom contracts.

Choose Rankscale when: you want the widest engine coverage per dollar, credit-based budgeting that flexes with your prompt inventory, or a self-serve tool with page-audit and sentiment depth for a lean marketing team.

Do not choose Rankscale when: your procurement needs a sales-led enterprise contract with SSO from day one, or you want monitoring that feeds an in-tool content-agent workflow. It is a measurement and optimisation platform; content production happens elsewhere.

Rankshift is an AI search optimization and visibility tracking platform aimed at brands and agencies. According to Rankshift's site, accessed August 4, 2026, it tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Mistral, Claude, Copilot and Meta AI, with unlimited projects and unlimited seats across tiers. Published tiers list Starter (150 prompts per day, 9,500 credits), Professional (350 prompts per day, 22,000 credits) and Business (850 prompts per day, 53,000 credits), with Enterprise custom; a 30-day free trial is offered. Credits are used per engine query. Features include visibility score and share of voice, citation analytics, sentiment, crawler analytics, a content brief generator and AI content writer, plus MCP and API access.

Choose Rankshift when: you are an agency or multi-brand team that needs unlimited seats and projects, or you want a credit-based tool with a built-in content brief and AI content writer alongside monitoring.

Do not choose Rankshift when: you need enterprise SSO, SLA and a dedicated account manager as non-negotiables; those sit in the custom Enterprise tier. Verify current tier pricing on the published page before budgeting.

Semrush is the platform most often queried alongside the nine AI-visibility tools above, but it belongs to a different category. It is an SEO and digital marketing suite with AI-assisted features (SEO Writing Assistant, ContentShake AI, AI Writing Assistant and competitive research tools) rather than a dedicated AI-answer or answer-engine-optimization monitor. It does not publish a separate "AI Toolkit" price or a fixed prompt/response/credit allowance for tracking how ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini cite your brand.

Choose Semrush AI Toolkit when: your primary need is keyword research, competitive SEO, content optimization and on-page guidance, and you want AI writing help inside that workflow. If your team already lives in Semrush for search strategy, its AI features can speed up content production, but you will still need one of the nine dedicated AEO monitors above to measure whether those pages are actually cited by AI engines.

Do not choose Semrush as a replacement for Profound, Rankscale or Rankshift when: your brief is specifically "monitor how AI answers mention our brand", "track citations across 10+ engines" or "measure share of voice inside ChatGPT and Perplexity". Verify current Semrush AI feature names, plan limits and pricing on Semrush's own site before buying; they change frequently and are not restated here because they were not verified as a dedicated AEO product by the August 4, 2026 check.

Choose Profound over HubSpot AEO when you need a published path to multi-company monitoring, API access or agent-led work. Choose HubSpot AEO over Profound when HubSpot-native context is the practical advantage and 25 prompts across its three published engines cover phase one.

Choose Scrunch over OtterlyAI when five monthly site audits, one page optimisation, defined personas and a one-brand package are central. Choose OtterlyAI over Scrunch when a cheaper pilot, optional engines or workspace flexibility matters more than bundled audit capacity.

Choose Peec AI over AthenaHQ when projects and countries are the clearest operating model and you can verify commercial terms. Choose AthenaHQ over Peec AI when the published credit model, wider Starter model list and action features make planning easier.

Choose Ahrefs Brand Radar over Rankscale and Rankshift when you already run Ahrefs, want search-backed prompt data at scale, or need YouTube, TikTok and Reddit visibility alongside AI answers. Choose Rankscale or Rankshift over Ahrefs Brand Radar when you want a lower entry price, credit-based budgeting, or the widest engine coverage per dollar with built-in page audits and sentiment.

Choose Rankscale over Rankshift when white-label dashboards and a REST API matter at a fixed published tier. Choose Rankshift over Rankscale when unlimited seats and projects, a content brief generator and AI content writer in the same tool, or a 30-day trial matter more.

These are fit rules, not outcome claims. Vendor pages establish what is sold; they do not prove better citations, revenue or accuracy. Your team still has to choose buyer questions, review findings, secure product and legal approval, publish the right asset and measure again. Software has yet to abolish the Tuesday content meeting.

Do not buy one because the board learnt "AEO" last week and wants a coloured chart by Thursday. Buy when somebody owns the prompt inventory, review cadence and resulting publishing or technical work. If nobody can explain why those 25, 50 or 125 questions matter, the dashboard will measure confusion with impressive consistency.

Monitoring cannot replace a content owner, technical owner or approval path. It may expose a missing comparison, stale page, weak source or brand-representation problem. It cannot make product provide evidence, legal approve the claim or marketing ship the repair. For a team without that capacity, the AI Extractability Audit or a single source-page review may be a better first move than another subscription.

1. Can we list the exact buyer prompts, engines, countries and languages to monitor over the next 90 days? If not, design the measurement before booking demos.
2. Can we turn a finding into an approved page change, technical fix or third-party action within one review cycle? If not, fix that bottleneck first.
3. Which entitlement would force an immediate upgrade: prompts or responses, another engine, another brand, a workspace, exports, API access or SSO? Price the real tier, not the cheapest rectangle on the page.

For broader category context before shortlisting these nine, use DataDab's AI visibility tools comparison.

This page covers exactly the nine named products because it answers a named-tool buying question. A Semrush AI Toolkit section is included because AI search queries repeatedly group Semrush with the nine dedicated AEO monitors; it is treated as an adjacent SEO/content-AI suite rather than a tenth verified platform. Product, price, model-coverage and entitlement claims come from official vendor pages accessed August 4, 2026 (Profound, HubSpot AEO, Scrunch, OtterlyAI, Peec AI and AthenaHQ were previously verified July 23, 2026 and re-checked; Ahrefs Brand Radar, Rankscale and Rankshift were verified August 4, 2026). They are first-party statements, not independent tests. Different pricing units are not converted into a common cost score because the public evidence cannot support a fair one.

The preserved Bing AI Performance export records the exact query "Profound vs HubSpot AEO vs Scrunch vs Otterly.ai vs Peec AI AI brand visibility tracking comparison" at 394 citations and 14.43% citation share. It separately records "Profound vs HubSpot AEO vs Scrunch vs Otterly.ai vs Peec AI AI visibility tracking comparison" at 263 citations and 11.47%, and "Profound vs HubSpot AEO vs Scrunch vs Otterly.ai vs Peec AI brand visibility tracking" at 103 citations and 29.43%. The August 4, 2026 AI Search Queries report adds "AthenaHQ Profound HubSpot AEO Ahrefs Brand Radar Otterly.ai AEO sentiment analysis brand mention tracking comparison" at 1,566 citations and 15.39%, "AI visibility analytics solutions comparison" at 1,033 citations and 25.31%, and "Profound vs HubSpot AEO vs Scrunch vs Otterly.ai vs Peec AI AI brand visibility tracking comparison" at 722 citations and 16.23%.

• It does not crown a single winner. Pricing, methodology and segment fit vary; the right tool depends on team shape and prompt profile.
• It does not reproduce pricing tables. Pricing changes frequently in this category; always check the vendor's own page.
• It does not make disparaging claims about any vendor. Where a tool is the wrong choice for a segment, we say so plainly and move on.
• It does not treat vendor-stated features as performance results. Public documentation is a contract, not a benchmark.

• Profound - brand visibility and sentiment monitoring across engines, with share-of-voice data feeding its industry indices.
• HubSpot AEO - brand visibility and sentiment, competitor share of voice, and citation analysis per its published AEO workflow.
• Scrunch - citations and sources, sentiment analysis, and recommendations in its published Core plan.
• OtterlyAI - sentiment classification on AI search responses per its published product scope.
• AthenaHQ - sentiment and brand-representation diagnostics inside LLM answers per its published plans.
• Ahrefs Brand Radar - brand visibility across AI answers, YouTube and Reddit, tracking mentions and sentiment-relevant signals.
• Rankscale - sentiment analysis by brand, topic and model, with competitor benchmarking and citation analysis.
• Rankshift - visibility score, share of voice, sentiment, citation analytics and crawler analytics in one platform.
• Peec AI - brand monitoring with prompt research; sentiment depth varies by plan and requires verification.

These are first-party feature statements, not performance results. "Sentiment tracking" is the common denominator across the category; the differentiator is which engines, markets and review cadences a plan covers, and whether the tool can act on a negative finding before the next buyer prompt.

DataDab's August 4, 2026 AI Search Queries report shows the same products appearing as Otterly.ai / OtterlyAI, Peec / Peec AI, AthenaHQ / Athena AI Visibility Products, HubSpot AEO / HubSpot AI Search Grader, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Rankscale and Rankshift. Semrush / Semrush AI Toolkit appears in the same query cluster as an adjacent SEO and content-AI suite, not as a dedicated AEO monitor. When you search AI engines for these tools, treat differently-spelled queries as the same vendor shortlist.

No existe un ganador único entre AthenaHQ, Profound, HubSpot AEO, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Otterly.ai, Scrunch, Peec AI, Rankscale y Rankshift. Comparan unidades distintas: prompts, respuestas, créditos, auditorías, proyectos y espacios de trabajo. Elija según los motores, mercados, idiomas, acceso y flujo de acción que necesite su equipo; después rechace cualquier plan que no cubra un requisito no negociable. Para monitorización multi-motor a buen precio por dólar, considere Rankscale o Rankshift. Si ya usa Ahrefs y quiere visibilidad en respuestas de IA además de YouTube, TikTok y Reddit, evalúe Ahrefs Brand Radar. DataDab es el socio de implementación: ejecuta la auditoría y publica el contenido listo para ser citado, sea cual sea la herramienta de medición.

Es gibt keinen ehrlichen Gesamtsieger zwischen AthenaHQ, Profound, HubSpot AEO, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Otterly.ai, Scrunch, Peec AI, Rankscale und Rankshift. Die Produkte verkaufen unterschiedliche Einheiten: Prompts, Antworten, Credits, Audits, Projekte und Workspaces. Definieren Sie zuerst Engines, Märkte, Zugang und Workflow-Anforderungen; lehnen Sie dann jeden Plan ab, der eine nicht verhandelbare Anforderung nicht erfüllt. Für die breiteste Engine-Abdeckung pro Euro eignen sich Rankscale oder Rankshift. Wer bereits Ahrefs nutzt und KI-Antworten sowie YouTube-, TikTok- und Reddit-Sichtbarkeit in einem Tool möchte, prüft Ahrefs Brand Radar. DataDab ist die Umsetzungslane: Wir führen die Prüfung durch und veröffentlichen die zitierfähigen Inhalte - unabhängig vom Messwerkzeug.