AI Visibility Platforms Compared: Profound, Scrunch, BrightEdge, Authoritas & Peec AI

Pick an AI visibility platform by how it captures answers and whether your must-have engines sit in the tier you will buy. Of Profound, Scrunch, BrightEdge AI Catalyst, Authoritas and Peec AI, capture method and engine tier decide whether the numbers you report to leadership hold up.

That rule applies when you need numbers you can defend to leadership. If you only want a rough weekly baseline, price and onboarding speed can lead instead.

Four of the five vendors do not publish how they capture answers, so each row below states what the vendor publishes and the demo questions section covers the rest.

The five platforms in one line each:

• Profound: Fits enterprise teams that want cross-team reporting at scale and a sales-led buying process. It publishes engine counts by tier and no capture method.
• Scrunch: Fits growth teams running a weekly prompt workflow. It publishes plan prices and an engine list, and no capture method.
• BrightEdge AI Catalyst: Fits organisations already on BrightEdge. It names its engines, says the list is incomplete, and publishes no capture method. Pricing on request.
• Authoritas: Fits teams that must show how answers were captured, because it lists API models and UI Crawl models separately. Pricing on request.
• Peec AI: Fits lean teams starting prompt tracking. It publishes prompt limits and an engine-choice rule for each plan, and no prices.

AI Visibility Platforms At A Glance

Every top result for this topic ranks platforms by features and price. The table below adds the two columns that decide whether a report survives a hard question from your CFO, which are how the answers were captured and which engines the vendor actually names.

Four of the five vendors publish no capture method, and only Authoritas lists its models by API and UI Crawl. Scrunch prints plan prices on its own pricing page, while the tables below show pricing on request for the others. Tier limits change which engines you get, so the engine list on a homepage tells you less than the engine list on the plan you would buy.

1. Profound: Best For Enterprise Reporting At Scale

What it does: Profound tracks how your brand appears in AI answers and which sources sit behind that visibility. Profound's homepage names ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews. It publishes no answer capture method. Pricing on request.

Who it is for: Enterprise SEO and growth teams that treat AI visibility as a standing channel with reporting across several teams. Profound is enterprise-first and sales-led. If you want a lightweight tracker you can start on this afternoon without a conversation, you are not the buyer.

Pricing: Profound lists a free trial and two further tiers.

Those rows come from Profound's pricing page. The trial covers three engines and Enterprise covers up to nine, which is the gap to test against your must-have list before you sign.

Free tier: A 7-day trial, no permanent free plan.

Strengths

• Export depth: Enterprise includes CSV, JSON and an API, which is what a reporting team needs to feed a BI tool.
• Agency structure: Agency Growth gives each client its own workspace and credit allowance.
• Engine breadth: Seven engines are named on the homepage, including Claude, DeepSeek and Microsoft Copilot.

Trade-offs

• Pricing on request: Budgeting starts with a sales conversation.
• Capture method: The vendor publishes nothing on whether answers come from API calls or recorded interfaces.
• Trial is narrow: Three engines for seven days is enough to learn the interface and too little to judge volatility.

Key capabilities

• AI answer and citation tracking across the engines the plan includes.
• Up to nine engines on Enterprise.
• CSV and JSON export with API access on Enterprise.
• Separate credit allowances per client workspace on Agency Growth.

Good fit

• Enterprise SEO and growth organisations that report AI visibility to leadership every month.
• Agencies that want each client in a separate workspace.

Not a fit

• Teams that need a published price before a first call.
• Small teams with a short prompt library who would pay for scale they do not use.

Best for: Profound suits an enterprise team that needs engine breadth, CSV and JSON export and an API, and is happy to buy through sales. The limitation that matters most is that no capture method is published, so it goes on your demo list with the price.

2. Scrunch: Best For Growth Teams Running A Weekly Prompt Workflow

What it does: Scrunch tracks brand visibility across a stated list of AI engines using a library of prompts and personas. Scrunch's pricing page lists ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Meta on its Starter and Growth plans. TRM's earlier review also noted AXP, a parallel AI-ready site layer that Scrunch offers beyond the dashboards.

Who it is for: Growth-stage SaaS marketing and SEO teams that want clear tiers and a weekly rhythm of reviewing prompts, finding gaps and shipping fixes. A team of three to five people fits the seat counts on the two published plans.

Pricing: Scrunch prints plan prices on its own page.

Extra seats cost $25 a month, according to Scrunch's pricing page. The annual discount is worth about $50 a month on Starter and $83 on Growth, so the billing choice moves the budget more than the seat add-on does.

Free tier: None is shown on the pricing page.

Strengths

• Published prices: You can put a number in a budget request before any call.
• Persona tracking: Starter and Growth both include personas, which lets you split results by buyer type.
• Engine list: Seven engine surfaces are named on both published tiers.

Trade-offs

• Capture method: Scrunch does not say whether answers come from API calls or recorded interfaces.
• Prompt discipline: A cap of 350 or 700 custom prompts rewards a tight library and punishes a sprawling one.
• Seat ceiling: Three or five licences means agencies with many analysts will buy extra seats quickly.

Key capabilities

• Custom prompts plus a bank of industry prompts on each plan.
• Personas for splitting visibility by buyer type.
• Named coverage of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta.
• AXP, the AI-ready site layer, as an option beyond tracking.

Good fit

• Growth teams that want a price they can approve in one meeting.
• Content leads who will run the same prompt set every week.

Not a fit

• Buyers who need documented capture method and raw answer export before purchase.
• Enterprise procurement teams that need a custom contract from day one.

Best for: Scrunch suits a growth team that wants published prices, personas and a clear engine list for a weekly workflow. The limitation that matters most is the unpublished capture method, so ask it first.

3. BrightEdge AI Catalyst: Best For Existing BrightEdge Customers

What it does: BrightEdge AI Catalyst brings AI visibility into the BrightEdge enterprise SEO platform. BrightEdge's AI Catalyst page names ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and other AI platforms, and says nothing to suggest that list is complete. It builds and tracks prompts mapped to buyer-journey stage and flags competitor takeovers of answers.

Who it is for: Organisations already running BrightEdge, where AI visibility sits next to existing governance and reporting. If you are not on BrightEdge, you would be buying a platform to get one feature, and that is rarely the cheapest route.

Pricing: BrightEdge is sales-led.

Free tier: None is shown.

Strengths

• Journey mapping: Prompts are mapped to buyer-journey stage, which fits a funnel report.
• Competitor flags: The platform flags when a competitor takes over an answer you held.
• One system: Existing BrightEdge customers avoid another login, another contract and another data silo.

Trade-offs

• No price and no capture method: Both are unpublished.
• Export is partial: Charts export as PNG and tables as CSV. BrightEdge's AI Catalyst page does not name raw AI answers as exportable.
• Incomplete engine list: The page says "and other" platforms, which is not a list you can test against.

Key capabilities

• Prompt research mapped to buyer-journey stage.
• Competitor takeover flags.
• PNG chart export and CSV table export.

Good fit

• Organisations already on BrightEdge that want AI visibility in the same reports.

Not a fit

• Teams outside the BrightEdge platform that only want prompt tracking.
• Buyers who need raw answers exported for audit.

Best for: BrightEdge AI Catalyst suits teams already inside BrightEdge who want AI visibility without a new vendor. Ask which engines are live today, how answers are captured and whether raw answers can leave the platform, because none of the three is published.

4. Authoritas: Best For Teams That Must Show How Answers Were Captured

What it does: Authoritas tracks AI search visibility and separates its collection methods. It lists API models and UI Crawl models separately, including ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Confirm the current list in your demo.

Who it is for: Teams that have to explain to a sceptical stakeholder where a number came from. Being able to say which engines were recorded from the interface and which came from API calls is the whole case for this platform.

Pricing: Authoritas's pricing page lists three products.

The API plan is usage-based, so cost follows how much you run. That is fair, and it also means a sprawling prompt library gets expensive without any warning from a fixed plan limit.

Free tier: None is shown on the pricing page.

Strengths

• Capture split: API models and UI Crawl models are listed separately, which makes the method visible.
• Stakeholder evidence: A recorded interface is easier to defend to a CFO than an API summary.
• Product range: AI Search, SEO and API plans sit under one vendor.

Trade-offs

• No published prices: Every plan is pricing on request.
• Prompt sprawl costs money: Usage-based API pricing rewards discipline.
• Engine list per tier: The pricing page names engines by product, not by tier, so tier limits need a direct question.

Key capabilities

• AI Search tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini.
• Google and Bing tracking on the SEO plan.
• Separate API and UI Crawl model lists.
• Usage-based API access.

Good fit

• Teams that report to sceptical finance or product leaders.
• Agencies that need to show clients how each number was produced.

Not a fit

• Buyers who want a price list before a call.
• Teams with no appetite to manage prompt volume.

Best for: Authoritas suits teams whose first question is how answers were captured. The limitation that matters most is that no plan price is published, so cost has to come from the sales conversation.

5. Peec AI: Best For Lean Teams Starting Prompt Tracking

What it does: Peec AI runs your prompts on a set of AI engines and reports visibility and sources. Peec's homepage says each prompt runs once every 24 hours on every selected model, and that source usage is reported at domain or URL level with citation frequency.

Who it is for: Lean marketing teams that are starting prompt tracking and want to learn what moves before they commit budget. Unlimited users on every plan suits a team where the whole marketing group should see the numbers.

Pricing: Peec's plans scale by prompt count.

Peec's pricing page caps Starter, Pro and Advanced at three chosen engines. The six engines on the list mean you pick half of them, so decide which half before you buy.

Free tier: None is shown.

Strengths

• Clear limits: Prompt counts and the engine rule are on the pricing page.
• Unlimited users: No seat charge on any plan.
• Citation reporting: Sources show at domain or URL level, with how often each is cited.

Trade-offs

• Three-engine cap: You cannot track all six listed engines below Enterprise.
• No price shown: Budgeting needs a conversation with sales.
• Raw answers: Export of raw answers is not stated.

Key capabilities

• Daily runs, once every 24 hours per selected model.
• CSV export, an API and a Looker Studio connector.
• Domain-level and URL-level source reporting with citation frequency.
• Prompt limits of 50, 150 or 350 by plan.

Good fit

• Lean teams that want a prompt library running this month.
• Teams that report through Looker Studio.

Not a fit

• Teams that must track every major engine on a mid-tier plan.
• Buyers who need raw answer export for audit.

Best for: Peec AI suits a lean team starting prompt tracking that can live with three engines. The limitation that matters most is the three-engine cap on the three self-serve plans.

How Each Platform Captures Answers: API, UI Crawl And Hybrid

An API platform sends your prompts to a model programmatically, while a UI platform records the answer as the consumer product renders it, with visible sources. Metehan's data collection write-up finds that API collection can differ from the consumer product, notably where web search is off, and that UI collection sits closer to what users see but costs more and runs slower.

A hybrid platform mixes the two by channel. Superlines' API versus UI comparison finds that UI collection reflects one session's language, location and account settings, and that the web search setting is the key variable in API collection.

Of the five platforms here, only Authoritas lists its collection methods, with API models and UI Crawl models shown separately. Profound, Scrunch, BrightEdge AI Catalyst and Peec AI do not publish a capture method on the pages we read. That does not make their numbers wrong. It means you cannot tell how far to trust them until the vendor tells you.

You can run a check yourself without the vendor's help. A manual check of five prompts, each run five times across the consumer products, is a practical way to compare a platform's reported answers with what users see. Pick prompts your buyers really ask, run each five times to see the spread, and set the results next to the platform's report for the same prompts. If the platform reports a brand as present in all five runs and you see it in two, you have found the gap before it reached a board slide.

Which Engines You Get In Which Tier

Write your must-have engines down first, then check them against the tier you would buy, not against the brand page. A vendor homepage lists everything the company can do. The pricing page lists what you get.

Peec's pricing page shows the clearest example. If your must-have list is ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and Copilot, Starter through Advanced cannot cover it, because each plan lets you choose only three engines. Profound's pricing page runs the same logic in the other direction, with three engines on the trial and up to nine on Enterprise.

BrightEdge is the awkward one. Its list ends with "other AI platforms," so you cannot check your must-haves against it. Put each engine on your list in writing in the demo and ask for a yes or no.

Which Platform Fits Your Operating Model

Skip "best overall." The right platform depends on who reads the numbers and how often the numbers change a decision. Here are three operating models, with the question to settle first for each.

Enterprise SEO Or Growth Organisation

If you are running AI visibility across several teams, markets or brands, shortlist Profound, BrightEdge AI Catalyst and Authoritas. Governance, reporting and security matter more here than speed. Settle capture method first, because the numbers will be questioned. If SSO, roles and audit logs decide the purchase, read our guide to tools with team permissions and governance.

Growth-Stage SaaS Team

If you are a growth-stage SaaS team that needs speed and clear tiers, shortlist Peec AI, Scrunch and Authoritas. Peec AI and Scrunch publish plan limits, and Scrunch publishes prices. Settle the engine tier first, because the three-engine cap at Peec and the seven-engine list at Scrunch lead to different shortlists for the same buyer.

Agency

If you are an agency reporting to several clients, shortlist Authoritas, Peec AI and Profound Agency Growth. Multi-client reporting and exports are the jobs. Settle export first, then check the guide to multi-brand and multi-client AI visibility tools. Peec's unlimited users help when many people need to see a client's numbers, and Profound's Agency Growth tier gives each client its own workspace.

Do You Need A Dedicated Platform Or Will Your SEO Suite Cover It?

A team already working in an SEO suite can start there. A team that needs a documented capture method, a defined engine tier and exports it can hand to finance usually needs a dedicated platform. Those are the two tests. If your suite passes both, you may not need anything else.

If your team already runs keyword research and site audits in Semrush, its AI Visibility Toolkit is the lowest-effort place to start, because prompt tracking sits in the same account as your rankings. Semrush's pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 a month, Starter (SEO + AI Search) at $165.17 a month billed annually or $199 monthly with 50 prompts tracked daily, Pro+ at $248.17 billed annually or $299 monthly with 100 prompts tracked daily, and an Advanced plan with custom pricing and unlimited prompts tracked daily.

The Starter plan also gives you 1 domain for AI brand performance and 300 AI visibility reports a day. That is plenty to learn on. It does not settle the capture and engine questions above, so run the same demo questions on Semrush that you run on the other five.

What To Export And How To Report Share Of Voice

Export decides whether AI visibility data ever leaves the platform and reaches a report a leadership team reads. The five vendors differ more here than on almost anything else.

• Profound: Enterprise includes CSV and JSON export and an API, per Profound's pricing page.
• Peec AI: Peec's homepage lists CSV export, an API and a Looker Studio connector. Raw answers are not stated as included.
• BrightEdge AI Catalyst: BrightEdge exports charts as PNG and tables as CSV, and does not name raw AI answers as exportable.
• Scrunch: Extra seats cost $25 a month on Scrunch's pricing page, which matters when more people need access to the numbers.
• Authoritas: The API plan is usage-based, so ask which export formats and raw-answer access each plan includes.

For the buying checklist, read our guide to AI visibility tools with CSV and API export. If you plan to chart the data, Looker Studio dashboards for AI visibility shows the build, and it pairs with Peec's connector.

AI share of voice is the percent of tracked prompts where a brand is mentioned or cited compared with competitors. Four supporting measures explain why the number moves.

• Presence: Whether the brand appears in the answer at all.
• Position: Whether the brand comes first or is buried further down.
• Citation share: How often the brand's domain is cited against competitors' domains.
• Framing: Whether the answer describes the brand correctly and favourably.

Report share of voice by persona, journey stage and engine, because one blended number hides the engine where you are losing. For a weighted formula and a scorecard, read share of answer and share of voice tools.

How We Compared These Platforms

We compared the five platforms on four criteria, and each criterion maps to a question you can put to a vendor.

1. Engine coverage: Which engines does the vendor name, and which are in the tier you would buy?
2. Capture method and defensibility: Does the vendor publish whether answers come from API calls, recorded interfaces or a hybrid?
3. Workflow and export: Can your team run the platform weekly and get the data out to a report?
4. Price scaling: What does cost do as prompts, seats and clients grow?

Prices come only from each vendor's own pricing page. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the table says so rather than filling the gap from a review site. TRM may have partnerships with tools, applies the same rubric to each of them, and discloses affiliate links at the end of the page.

This page stays on the named five. For the general framework on picking any platform, read the AI visibility platform buyer guide.

Demo Questions That Make Vendors Answer

Put these to every vendor in the same order, and write the answers down. A vague answer is an answer.

1. Engines today versus planned: Ask which engines run in production now and which are on a roadmap. A good answer lists the engines by name for your tier. A red flag is "all major engines."
2. Capture method per engine: Ask whether each engine is API, UI crawl or hybrid. A good answer is a table. A red flag is "we use the best method for each."
3. Volatility: Ask whether you can re-run a prompt and see how the answer changes. A good answer shows run-to-run history. A red flag is one score with no history.
4. Source URLs and citation share: Ask for the exact source URLs behind each answer and the citation share by domain. For a comparison of tools that go to URL level, see page-level citation attribution tools. A red flag is domain-only reporting.
5. Raw answer export: Ask whether you can export raw answers with metadata. A good answer is yes, with fields listed. A red flag is charts only.
6. Tier coverage: Ask what happens to engine coverage on the tier you are buying. A good answer matches your must-have list. A red flag is a surprise at renewal.
7. Prompt sprawl: Ask how prompt counts are capped and what happens at the cap. A good answer names the limit and the overage price.
8. Refresh schedule: Ask how often each prompt runs on each engine. Peec publishes a 24-hour cadence, so ask the others to match that clarity.
9. Seats and permissions: Ask who can see what, and what extra seats cost.

A 30-Day Evaluation Plan

A demo shows what the vendor wants you to see. A 30-day test shows what your team can do with the product. Run the same four weeks on every platform on your shortlist.

1. Week 1, build the prompt library: By the end of week 1 you have a library of 50 to 150 prompts, mapped to the buyer journey. TRM recommends this range and growing only after a weekly workflow is proven. Split the library into five groups.
   • Category prompts, such as "what is X" and "best X tools."
   • Alternatives prompts, such as "X alternatives" and "X vs Y."
   • Pricing prompts, such as "X pricing" and "cost of X."
   • Integration prompts, such as "does X integrate with Y."
   • Use-case prompts, such as "best X for mid-market."
2. Week 2, benchmark and tag: By the end of week 2 every prompt is tagged by persona, journey stage and competitor set. Use three to eight competitors. For the benchmark protocol, see competitor benchmarking tools for AI visibility.
3. Week 3, validate accuracy: By the end of week 3 you know how far each platform's numbers match what users see. Run the five-prompts-five-runs check by hand, then put the capture questions from the demo list to each vendor. Confirm that your must-have engines sit inside the tier you are buying.
4. Week 4, run the weekly workflow test: By the end of week 4 you know whether your team can act on the data. Spot five to ten prompt drops, find the cause (a changed citation, a competitor that gained sources, or a page that lost retrieval) and turn each into an action. If your team lacks the time, our Answer Engine Optimization service takes the fixes on.

If you cannot spare 30 days, run an AI visibility audit first to get a baseline.

Common Buying Mistakes

Five mistakes cost teams the most, and each has a plain fix.

• Buying on feature count. Fix it by ranking platforms on capture method and engine tier first, and features second.
• Testing with a handful of prompts. Fix it by loading at least 50 prompts, so a single odd answer cannot decide the result.
• Ignoring the engine cap on the tier. Fix it by checking your must-have engines against the plan, as the Peec three-engine cap shows.
• Treating one run as the answer. Responses vary by session, so run each prompt several times and read the spread.
• Buying with no owner for the weekly workflow. Fix it by naming one person before you sign. If nobody on your team has the hours, an ongoing GEO and SEO programme can carry it.

Why The Shortlist Matters Now

Buyers now start in AI engines, and the decision to shortlist you can be made before your site gets a visit. DemandGen Report's coverage of a G2 survey found that 51% of B2B software buyers start purchasing research in an AI chatbot, in a March 2026 survey of 1,076 buyers.

Search itself is also giving fewer clicks. Techwyse's report on SparkToro's analysis of Similarweb data says 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024.

If the answer is where the decision gets made, you need to see that answer. Start with the metrics and KPIs that matter before you choose a platform to measure them.

The Bottom Line

Choose on capture method and engine tier first, and only then on features and price. A platform whose numbers you cannot explain is worth less than a simpler one whose numbers you can.

• Enterprise: Demo Profound or BrightEdge AI Catalyst first, and ask both how answers are captured.
• Growth-stage team: Demo Peec AI or Scrunch first, and check your engines against the tier.
• Agency: Demo Authoritas first, then Peec AI, and settle export before price.