Profound review
Best for answer-engine visibility at enterprise scale
Profound is the most credible dedicated answer-engine platform in this directory, and it does three separate jobs that are easy to conflate. Answer Engine Insights tracks how your brand appears in LLM responses. Agent Analytics reads your own CDN and server logs to show which AI crawlers actually visit and what they take. Agents, the newest layer, runs marketing workflows against that data, and the homepage now leads with them rather than with tracking.
The API is genuinely good. A documented REST interface at api.tryprofound.com, official Python and JavaScript SDKs, Tableau connectors, and endpoints that go well past dashboard exports: Answer Engine Insights, Agent Analytics, Agents, Knowledge Bases and an OpenAI Ads Partner API. The endpoint worth knowing about is POST /v2/prompts/answers, which returns raw per-execution rows with the model's response, the mentions, the citations and the search queries behind them.
And you cannot buy it. Profound's documentation states plainly that the API is available to Enterprise customers only, and the pricing table marks API access as absent on both self-serve plans. Access must be requested through support even then. If you were planning to prototype against this on a $399 subscription, stop here: that is not a route the product offers.
Our scorecard
Our editorial read across six dimensions, scored 1 to 5. This is our own assessment, not an aggregate of user reviews, and it is deliberately kept out of the page's structured data.
- Data coverage5/5
Up to nine answer engines, real crawler logs and raw per-execution rows. The deepest AI-search data here.
- Pricing2/5
$99 to start, $399 for three engines, and the API behind an Enterprise quote. Nothing about this is cheap or transparent.
- Documentation5/5
Public, thorough, with an llms.txt index, SDKs, a cookbook and worked examples. Better than most paid-for docs.
- Ease of integration4/5
Clean REST and real SDKs once you are in. Agent Analytics needs a log pipeline from your CDN, which is a project.
- Reliability4/5
No published rate limits, which is a gap. Log ingestion is well documented across nine CDN providers.
- Support3/5
Dedicated Slack on Enterprise. Everyone else has to email support just to ask for API access.
An editorial read, not an aggregate of user reviews, and deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
What you can pull
Answer Engine Insights
Enterprise only
How your brand appears across tracked LLM platforms: visibility, share of voice, sentiment and the prompts driving it
Prompt answers (POST /v2/prompts/answers)
The endpoint that justifies the API
Raw per-execution rows: the model's actual response, the mentions inside it, the citations and the search queries it ran
Agent Analytics
Needs a log integration
Which AI crawlers hit your site, what they fetched and how often, read from your own CDN or server logs rather than modelled
Agents
Metered in Agents credits
List, inspect, run and poll marketing agents, with templates such as an AEO-optimised FAQ generator and a schema markup generator
Knowledge Bases
Enterprise only
Sync your own documents into a Profound knowledge base and search them, so agents work from your material
OpenAI Ads Partner API
Partner access
Partner endpoints for OpenAI advertising, which is a surface almost nothing else in this directory touches
Organization
Enterprise only
Regions, models, domains, assets, personas, categories, topics and tags, so you can resolve the ids the report endpoints expect
Profound Pixel
Separate install, not the REST API
Client-side events tying conversions back to the AI traffic that drove them, which closes the loop visibility data cannot
Who Profound is for
Enterprises where somebody senior has asked what AI assistants say about the brand and will not accept a screenshot as the answer. The combination of tracked answer-engine visibility, real crawler logs from your own CDN and conversion attribution through the pixel is the most complete version of that story available, and the raw prompt-answer endpoint means you can audit the claim rather than trust a chart.
It is not for anyone else, and the pricing makes that explicit. A consultant or a small team wanting AI-visibility data in a spreadsheet cannot buy the API at any self-serve price, and should look at providers where an AI-visibility endpoint sits on the normal rate card.
Strengths and limits
What it does well
- The deepest answer-engine dataset in this directory, tracking up to nine engines with prompt-level detail rather than a single score.
- Agent Analytics reads your own CDN and server logs, so AI crawler traffic is measured rather than modelled. Integrations exist for Cloudflare, Vercel, AWS, Fastly, Netlify, Akamai, Google Cloud, Shopify, AEM and WordPress.
- POST /v2/prompts/answers returns raw per-execution rows with responses, mentions, citations and search queries, which is what makes independent analysis possible.
- The Profound Pixel ties conversions back to AI-referred traffic, closing a loop that visibility tracking alone leaves open.
- Public, genuinely excellent documentation with an llms.txt index, a cookbook, worked examples and official Python and JavaScript SDKs.
- Tableau Web Data Connector support, which matters in exactly the enterprises this is sold to.
- An OpenAI Ads Partner API, which is a commercial surface almost nothing else here can reach.
Where it falls short
- THE API IS ENTERPRISE-ONLY. Both self-serve plans explicitly exclude it, so there is no way to evaluate the API before a sales process.
- Even on Enterprise, API access has to be requested through support rather than switched on in settings.
- No pricing is published for Enterprise, so the real cost of API access is unknowable from the outside.
- Starter at $99 tracks ChatGPT only, which makes it a single-engine tool at a price where competitors cover several.
- Prompt allowances are small: 50 on Starter and 100 on Growth. Practitioners specifically cite prompt batch size as a limiting factor.
- No rate limits are published anywhere in the documentation, so you cannot design a pipeline against a stated ceiling.
- Agent Analytics requires shipping CDN or server logs to a third party, which is a security review before it is an integration.
- The product is moving quickly toward agents, so what you buy today may not be what the roadmap prioritises.
Profound pricing
There are two self-serve plans and neither includes the API. Starter is $99 a month and tracks ChatGPT only, with 50 prompts, 100 Agents credits and a single seat. Growth is $399 a month for three answer engines, 100 prompts, 400 Agents credits and three seats. Both are marked as having no API access in Profound's own pricing table.
Enterprise is the only tier with the API, and it is quote-only. It adds up to nine answer engines, multiple tracked companies, a tailored prompt plan, SSO and SAML, SOC 2 and dedicated Slack support. Even there, API access is requested through support rather than enabled by default.
So the honest answer to what the Profound API costs is that nobody outside a sales conversation knows, and we are not going to estimate it. What can be said is the shape: this is priced as enterprise software, the entry tiers exist to demonstrate the product rather than to serve developers, and the prompt allowances on both are small enough that practitioners raise them as a limitation.
Budget separately for Agent Analytics. It is the most interesting half of the product and it needs a log pipeline out of your CDN, which means engineering time and a security review before it produces a single number.
Starter
$99 / mo
ChatGPT only, 1 seat
- 50 prompts tracked, 100 Agents credits a month
- One answer engine, so no cross-platform comparison
- Email support
- NO API access
Growth
$399 / mo
3 answer engines, 3 seats
- 100 prompts tracked, 400 Agents credits a month
- The realistic self-serve tier for an in-house team
- Email support
- STILL no API access
Enterprise
Quote only
The only tier with the API
- Up to 9 answer engines and multiple companies tracked
- Tailored prompt tracking, SSO/SAML and SOC 2
- Dedicated Slack support
- API access still has to be requested through support
Request example
A minimal call against the live endpoint, with credentials read from the environment rather than pasted inline.
curl -s -X POST "https://api.tryprofound.com/v2/prompts/answers" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PROFOUND_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"start_date": "2026-08-01",
"end_date": "2026-08-31",
"filters": { "model": ["chatgpt", "perplexity"] }
}'
# This returns per-execution rows rather than a rolled-up report:
# the model's answer, the brand mentions inside it, the citations
# and the search queries it ran. That is the reason to want the
# API rather than the dashboard export.
#
# Requires an Enterprise plan AND an access request to support.Rate limits and quotas
- The API is available to Enterprise plan customers only, per Profound's own documentation.
- API access must additionally be requested through support before keys can be created.
- API keys carry an expiry date and cannot be retrieved after creation, only replaced.
- Each key is scoped to its organisation and sees only that organisation's data.
- Answer engines tracked: 1 on Starter, 3 on Growth, up to 9 on Enterprise.
- Prompts tracked: 50 on Starter, 100 on Growth, tailored on Enterprise.
- Agents credits: 100 a month on Starter, 400 on Growth.
- No request rate limits are published in the documentation.
What practitioners say on Reddit
There is not enough archived practitioner discussion to call a sentiment, and Profound is young enough that this is expected rather than suspicious. A sweep of the AI-search threads in r/SEO and r/TechSEO produced two on-topic comments, both quoted below in full.
Both are about price, and both come from the same thread comparing AI-visibility tools. One describes Profound as premium and notes the gap between its plans; the other calls it a really premium service and raises prompt batch size as a constraint, which lines up with the 50 and 100 prompt allowances on the published tiers.
Two comments is a data point, not a finding. Treat this section as confirmation that the pricing complaint is real rather than as a verdict on the product.
“yeah, I saw the pricing and there's a wide gap between their pricing plans like damn. I get that Profound's built for bigger groups, but all these AI visibility servcies are priceeyyy”
r/TechSEO on Reddit“Also tested Profound, a really premium AI visibility service, but also much more expensive. the prompt batch size can be a limiting factor”
r/TechSEO on Reddit
Verdict
The best answer-engine dataset here, sold to a buyer most readers of this page are not. If your organisation needs to measure AI visibility rigorously, prove it with crawler logs from your own CDN and attribute conversions back to it, Profound does that more completely than anything else in this directory, and the raw prompt-answer endpoint means the numbers can be audited rather than believed.
The API being Enterprise-only is the whole decision. There is no evaluation path, no self-serve key and no published price, so the first step is a sales call rather than a curl request. That is a legitimate way to sell enterprise software and a poor fit for anyone who wanted to try it on a Tuesday afternoon.
If you want AI-search data programmatically without an enterprise commitment, look at the providers here that expose an AI-visibility endpoint on their standard rate card. You will get less depth, and you will get it today, with a card.
Profound FAQ
Can I get the Profound API on a self-serve plan?
No. Profound's documentation states that the API is available to Enterprise plan customers only, and the pricing table marks API access as absent on both Starter at $99 and Growth at $399. Even on Enterprise, access has to be requested through support rather than enabled in settings.How much does Profound cost?
Starter is $99 a month for ChatGPT tracking with 50 prompts and one seat. Growth is $399 a month for three answer engines, 100 prompts and three seats. Enterprise, the only tier with API access, is quote-only, so the real cost of the API is not knowable from outside a sales conversation.What does the Profound API actually return?
More than a dashboard export. Alongside Answer Engine Insights and Agent Analytics reports, POST /v2/prompts/answers returns raw per-execution rows containing the model's actual response, the brand mentions inside it, the citations and the search queries it ran. That is what makes independent analysis possible.What is the difference between Answer Engine Insights and Agent Analytics?
Insights tracks what LLMs say about you, by running prompts and reading the answers. Agent Analytics tracks what AI crawlers do on your site, by reading your own CDN or server logs. The first is modelled from sampling, the second is measured from real requests, and most teams want both.How does Profound authenticate API requests?
With an API key sent as a bearer token against api.tryprofound.com. Keys are created in settings with a name and an expiry date, are scoped to your organisation, and cannot be retrieved after creation, so store them at the point of generation or generate a replacement.Does Profound publish rate limits?
No, and that is a genuine gap. The documentation covers authentication, date ranges, response formats and a changelog, but states no request ceiling, so you cannot design a pipeline against a published number. Ask during the sales process and get it in writing.Is Profound still an AI visibility tracker?
Partly. The visibility data is still the spine, but the homepage now leads with marketing agents and the API carries Agents, Knowledge Bases and an OpenAI Ads Partner surface. Anyone evaluating it on a year-old description of the product will be surprised by how much of it is now about acting on the data rather than reporting it.What are the alternatives if I cannot buy the API?
Several general SEO providers now expose AI-visibility endpoints on their normal rate cards, so answer-engine data comes with the rest of your SEO data and no enterprise commitment. You get less depth than Profound's prompt-level rows, and you get it self-serve. For crawler-level analytics, your own CDN logs are the same raw material Profound reads.
Other providers worth a look
This is an independent review. We have no affiliate relationship with Profound, earn nothing if you sign up, and no provider pays for placement in the directory. Prices were read from the vendor's own pages in September 2026 and change without notice. One thing to weigh: busyless runs its own LLM visibility tracker for clients. It is not sold on its own, but it does the same job as Profound, so read this review with that in mind.