Profound raised $58.5M from Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins + NVIDIA, and Sequoia, earned G2 Winter 2026 Leader status, and counts Ramp, MongoDB, Figma, Zapier, Docusign, Indeed, LG, and Walmart among its customers. Ramp’s 7x AI visibility increase is the most-cited case study in the AEO category. If you’re evaluating Profound for your team, the question isn’t whether it works at the enterprise tier—it’s whether the $99/mo Starter justifies its limits, and whether the jump to $399/mo Growth is warranted for what it delivers.
This review covers what Profound actually does across its tiers, what users say, where the platform stops, and how it compares to a more accessible alternative like Airefs.
What is Profound?
Profound is an AI search visibility and content optimization platform built for enterprise marketing teams. It tracks your brand’s presence across 10+ AI platforms—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT Shopping—and generates AEO-optimized content to improve that presence.
Unlike monitoring-only platforms, Profound’s “Agents” feature goes beyond measurement: it generates content briefs, full article drafts, and prioritized opportunities (specific journalists to contact, Reddit threads to engage, content gaps to fill) based on what AI models are actually citing in your category.
Who’s the team behind Profound?
Profound was founded in San Francisco and has grown to become the most-funded platform in the AEO category. Its investor roster—Khosla Ventures at seed, Kleiner Perkins and NVIDIA at Series A, Sequoia at Series B—reflects confidence from some of the most consequential technology investors in the market.
Funding timeline:
- Seed — Khosla Ventures
- Series A — Kleiner Perkins + NVIDIA
- Series B — Sequoia
- Total raised: $58.5M
The enterprise customer list is the strongest proof point: Ramp, MongoDB, Figma, Zapier, Docusign, Indeed, LG, Walmart, Mercury, Zocdoc, US Bank, Chime, Clay, Mejuri, and G2. These are logos that require SOC 2 compliance, procurement processes, and genuine platform maturity—not just a slick demo.
What do users say about Profound?
Profound holds G2 Winter 2026 Leader status and has nearly 10x the number of G2 reviews of its closest funded competitor in the category. The platform is mentioned in dozens of Reddit conversations in the AEO and AI search space—unusual for a B2B SaaS tool—reflecting genuine practitioner adoption rather than just marketing-driven awareness.
The most-cited positives are the depth of data and the actionability of the output. Teams that have tried multiple AEO tools consistently cite prompt volume data—showing actual AI search demand in a topic, not just your brand’s position within it—as a capability that doesn’t exist elsewhere. The Opportunities panel is specifically praised for telling teams exactly what to do next, rather than leaving them to interpret a dashboard.
The consistent criticism is pricing structure. The $99/mo Starter is seen as a deliberate funnel toward the $399/mo Growth plan—50 prompts on ChatGPT only is enough to get oriented, but not enough to run a real AEO program. The effective entry point for meaningful functionality is $399/mo, which is a significant commitment compared to tools that cover more platforms at lower prices.
Profound features
Profound’s platform is organized around four areas: prompt tracking and volume analytics, citation and share of voice data, opportunities, and the Agents content creation engine.
Prompt volume. Profound is the only AEO platform that shows prompt volume data—the actual number of times users are querying AI platforms about topics in your category. For a topic like “content operations,” the dashboard shows total monthly prompt volume broken down by platform (ChatGPT typically accounts for the large majority of volume). You can filter by platform, region, age, and income demographics, and compare performance against a previous period. This search demand signal is what makes Profound useful for content strategy, not just brand monitoring.
Prompt execution tracking. Each tracked prompt shows a full execution log: which platforms mentioned you, at what position, alongside which competitors. A prompt like “recommended content operations platforms” shows whether you’re mentioned on ChatGPT (mentioned 3rd) but completely invisible on Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Visibility score, average position, and citation share are tracked over time so you can see whether your efforts are moving the needle.
Citation share and top domains. The citation panel shows which domains AI models are citing most frequently in responses about your category, ranked by share. Your own citation rank is shown in context against the full competitive set—so you can see exactly how far you are from the leading sources and which publishers to prioritize for coverage.
Share of voice. Profound tracks your brand’s share of voice versus named competitors across all tracked prompts in a topic. The donut chart and rank table show how your mentions compare to the category leaders, with your exact rank shown against the full field of brands being mentioned.
Opportunities. This is Profound’s most differentiated panel. Rather than leaving teams to interpret data, it generates specific, prioritized actions: create a particular piece of content for a gap in AI citations, contact a named journalist at a named publication with a specific pitch rationale, or engage in a specific subreddit thread. Each opportunity includes current performance data so you can prioritize by impact. The specificity—naming an individual journalist at a specific outlet rather than just “do outreach”—is what separates it from generic recommendations.
Agents (content briefs and final drafts). Profound’s Agents feature generates AEO-optimized content briefs and full article drafts based on what’s actually being cited in AI responses. A brief includes the title, target topic, target prompts, target platforms, and top-cited pages to reference. The final draft is generated from the brief and can be exported or revised. This is the feature that justifies the Growth plan—it turns citation data into production-ready content without a separate writing tool.
Agent analytics. Profound integrates with Google Analytics to show how AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot) are accessing your site and how human visitors arriving from AI search are converting. This closes the loop between AI visibility and business impact in a way that pure monitoring platforms can’t.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- G2 Winter 2026 Leader with the deepest G2 review base in the AEO category
- Prompt volume data is unique—no other AEO platform shows AI search demand by topic and demographics
- Opportunities panel generates specific, named actions: journalist contacts, subreddit threads, content gaps
- Agents feature creates AEO-optimized content briefs and full article drafts
- 10+ AI platform coverage on Enterprise including ChatGPT Shopping
- SOC 2 Type II compliance—enterprise-ready for procurement requirements
- Cloud or on-premises deployment options
- Google Analytics integration for AI crawler tracking and human visitor attribution
- Integrations with Vercel, Cloudflare, AWS, Netlify, Fastly, and Akamai
- Backed by Khosla, Kleiner Perkins + NVIDIA, Sequoia—long-term platform viability is not a concern
- Customer base (Ramp, Docusign, Indeed, Walmart) validates genuine enterprise-grade maturity
Cons:
- Starter plan ($99/mo) is deliberately limited: ChatGPT only, 50 prompts—not enough for a real AEO program
- Real functionality starts at $399/mo Growth—the effective price is 4x the entry price
- Growth plan covers only 3 AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews); Claude, Gemini, Grok, and others require Enterprise
- No Reddit monitoring—the platform surfaces Reddit opportunities but doesn’t proactively alert on new threads
- No done-for-you service tier—all content creation is self-serve through Agents
- Enterprise pricing is not publicly listed; requires a sales conversation
- No free trial on paid plans; offers a free AEO report instead
How much does Profound cost?
| Plan | Price | Prompts | AI Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99/mo | 50 | ChatGPT only |
| Growth | $399/mo | 100 | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | 10+ platforms |
The pricing gap is the most important thing to understand before signing up. The $99/mo Starter is enough to see what Profound does—but not enough to run a meaningful AEO program. The features that justify the platform (Agents content generation, multi-platform tracking, the Opportunities panel) only unlock at $399/mo. Teams comparing Profound against alternatives should use $399/mo as the real comparison price, not $99/mo.
Enterprise adds all 10+ platforms, API access, SSO (SAML/OIDC), SOC 2 Type II compliance, custom data handling, and on-premises deployment.
How does it compare with Airefs?
Profound and Airefs target different stages of the AEO journey. Profound is built for teams that are ready to invest in the full stack—measurement, content creation, and prioritized opportunity identification at enterprise scale. Airefs is built for teams that want to start tracking and acting on AI visibility without the enterprise price point.
| Profound | Airefs | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $99/mo (Starter) / $399/mo (full functionality) | $24/mo |
| AI platforms | 3 (Growth), 10+ (Enterprise) | ChatGPT default (+ others on request) |
| Prompt volume data | Yes (unique to Profound) | No |
| Reddit monitoring | Opportunities only (no proactive alerts) | Yes (up to 30 keywords) |
| Content creation | Yes (Agents, Growth+) | Done-for-you at $249/mo |
| SOC 2 compliance | Yes (Enterprise) | — |
| Free trial | Free AEO report | 7 days (Pro) |
Profound’s prompt volume data, Opportunities panel specificity, and Agents content engine are genuine advantages for enterprise teams whose budget matches their ambition. Airefs’ Reddit monitoring and done-for-you option are genuine advantages for teams that need to build AI visibility—not just measure it—at a price that doesn’t require a procurement process.
The price difference is significant. At $24/mo, Airefs Lite costs less than 6% of Profound’s Growth plan. Airefs’ done-for-you option at $249/mo still costs 37% less than Profound’s tracking-only Growth tier—and includes the content creation and community engagement work that Profound leaves to your team to execute.
Conclusion
Profound is the category leader for enterprise AEO: the deepest platform, the most credible customer base, the best-funded team, and the only tool with prompt volume data. If you’re a growth-stage or enterprise team with budget, it’s the default choice in the category. Ramp’s 7x visibility increase and Walmart-level customer validation are the real thing.
The real question is whether your team is at the stage where $399/mo is the right investment. If you’re still building your AEO motion—identifying the Reddit threads and content gaps that drive AI visibility before they’re established, and getting content created around them—Airefs provides that workflow starting at $24/mo, with a done-for-you service at $249/mo.
Want to compare Profound to other options? See all Profound alternatives or try Airefs free for 7 days — $24/mo with Reddit monitoring and prompt-based tracking.