If you are choosing between Profound, Peec AI, and Otterly.ai in 2026, here is the short answer: pick Otterly ($29-489/mo) if you want the cheapest way to watch your AI search visibility, Peec AI (~$100-505/mo) if you want daily monitoring with a task queue, and Profound ($99-399/mo self-serve, custom Enterprise) if you want the deepest dashboards and can afford its Growth tier or above. All three are monitoring-first platforms: they are very good at showing you whether AI search engines mention you, and much weaker at doing anything about it. If your problem is that you are invisible in ChatGPT and need to fix it, none of these three is built to close that gap on its own.
That distinction matters more than the price difference, so this guide compares the three on coverage, cost, and capability, then explains where a monitoring tool stops and what it takes to actually move your visibility. For the wider field, see all AEO platforms compared. The throughline: seeing the problem and solving it are different products, and most buyers discover that after the first month.
Profound vs Peec vs Otterly at a glance
The fastest way to read these three is by what they cost and how many AI search engines they cover out of the box. As of June 2026, Otterly is the budget option, Peec AI sits in the middle, and Profound spans a cheap entry tier and an expensive real one.
| Platform | Entry price | Mid / top self-serve | Base engines | Full engine coverage | Content creation | Reddit / YouTube |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly.ai | $29 (Lite) | $189 / $489 | 4 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot) | Gemini, AI Mode are paid add-ons | No (audits and briefs only) | No |
| Peec AI | ~$100 (Starter) | ~$241 / ~$505 | 3 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews) | 6+ via per-model add-ons | No (Actions task queue) | No |
| Profound | $99 (Starter) | $399 Growth / custom Enterprise | 1 on Starter, 3 on Growth | 10+ engines on Enterprise | Yes (Agents, 3 articles/mo on Growth) | No |
| Loudmink | $99 (Starter) | $299 / $599 | 1 on Starter, 5 on Max | 5 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok) | Yes (8-40 articles/mo) | Yes (Reddit + YouTube) |
The table exposes the real pattern. The cheaper you go, the fewer engines you see, and the cost of "full coverage" is either a paid add-on per model (Peec, Otterly) or a custom Enterprise contract (Profound). And across the first three rows, the "content creation" and "Reddit / YouTube" columns are mostly empty. For a deeper look at how these platforms are built, see how AEO platforms actually work.
Otterly.ai: the cheapest way to monitor
Otterly.ai is the budget pick at $29/month for the Lite plan, which tracks 15 prompts across 4 AI search engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot. Standard ($189/mo) raises that to 100 prompts and adds API, MCP server, and a Looker Studio connector. Premium ($489/mo) covers 400 prompts with agency workspaces. As of June 2026, Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons on top of any plan, running roughly $9-149/month each, so the headline price is not the full coverage price.
What you get for the money is genuinely useful: brand mention tracking, average position, sentiment, and a content audit module that scores pages and generates briefs before you publish. Otterly also shows which URLs get cited, so you can see when ChatGPT mentions you but links to a competitor's comparison page instead of your site. That is a real, valuable signal.
What you do not get is anyone writing or publishing that content. The audit module tells you a page is weak and drafts a brief, but you still have to produce the article, place it on Reddit, or pitch the roundup yourself. What to do: treat Otterly as a low-cost dashboard if you already have a content team and just need the visibility data. If you do not have that team, the $29 buys you a clearer view of a problem you still cannot fix.
Peec AI: monitoring with a task queue
Peec AI sits in the middle at roughly $100/month (Starter), $241/month (Pro), and $505/month (Enterprise), or €89/€199/€499+ billed in euros, with unlimited user seats on every plan and a 7-day free trial. Base plans cover 3 AI search engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and others are per-model add-ons at roughly €20-30 each per month, so reaching 6+ engines pushes the real cost well above the sticker.
Peec's strength is the workflow layer. Beyond standard dashboards, prompt discovery, competitor benchmarking, and citation source analysis, it surfaces prioritized actions: a task queue that tells your team what to work on next instead of leaving you to interpret charts. It also reports cleanly, with CSV export, Looker Studio, and API access, which is why agencies tend to like it. Daily monitoring frequency keeps the data current.
The gap is the same as Otterly's, one step further along. Peec tells you what to do, but it does not do it. The Actions queue is a to-do list, not an execution engine, so the writing, the Reddit participation, and the YouTube work still land on your team. What to do: choose Peec if you have writers and want sharper prioritization. If the bottleneck is producing the content rather than knowing what to produce, the task queue does not solve your actual constraint. For more options in this category, see our Peec-adjacent monitoring roundup.
Profound: the deepest dashboards, gated by price
Profound is the most capable monitoring platform of the three, and the most expensive once you need real coverage. Its $99 Starter plan tracks ChatGPT only with 50 prompts and no content generation. The Growth plan ($399/month) adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, three engines total, plus 3 articles per month through its Agents feature. Full coverage of 10+ engines (Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and more) sits behind custom Enterprise pricing quoted on a sales call. As of June 2026, there is no free trial and no self-serve checkout.
Profound has answered the "monitoring-only" critique more than Peec or Otterly. Its Agents feature drafts content briefs and full articles, and can publish directly to WordPress, Sanity, and Contentful, flag Reddit threads to engage, and identify content gaps. That is a real execution layer. The catch is volume and access: meaningful content generation only appears on Growth and above, and even there it is capped at 3 articles per month, which works out to about $133 per article. The Starter plan most price-sensitive buyers land on includes no content at all.
There is also the channel gap. Profound's Agents can draft a blog post and surface Reddit threads, but the platform does not create and post Reddit or YouTube content for you. In a market where Reddit is a top citation source for ChatGPT, Grok, and now Perplexity, blog-only execution leaves a channel on the table. What to do: choose Profound if you need the broadest engine dashboards and your budget clears Growth or Enterprise. If you want execution across channels rather than three articles a month, look past it.
The honest throughline: all three help you see, not act
The shared limitation across Profound, Peec, and Otterly is that they are built to measure AI visibility, not to build it. They tell you whether you appear in AI search engines, where you rank, what sources get cited, and where your competitors beat you. That is the diagnosis. None of them, on their self-serve tiers, reliably delivers the cure: the steady stream of content, across the channels AI search engines actually pull from, that moves you from invisible to recommended.
This matters because of how AI search engines decide what to recommend. They do not rank your homepage. They search Google and Bing, read the third-party sources they trust, and build a recommendation from what other people say about you. Most brand mentions in AI answers, around 85% as of June 2026, come from third-party pages rather than your own domain. A dashboard showing you that gap does not close it. Closing it requires publishing comparison content, participating on Reddit, and earning coverage on the sources these engines read, repeatedly, and then verifying it worked.
How to fix this: pair monitoring with execution. You can do it manually with a content team, hire an agency at $3,000-5,000/month, or use an AEO platform that creates the content as well as tracks it. The monitoring-only tools above are a fine first purchase if you already have the execution side covered. If you do not, you will be paying monthly to watch a number that does not move.
Where Loudmink fits
Loudmink is the execution alternative to a monitoring-only purchase: an AEO platform that tracks AI search engines and then creates the content to improve your standing, with human review on by default. Plans run $99-599/month as of June 2026. The Starter plan ($99) covers ChatGPT and includes 8 optimized articles per month. Pro ($299) tracks 3 engines with 20 articles and 20 Reddit opportunities. Max ($599) covers 5 engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok) with 40 articles, 40 Reddit opportunities, and 10 YouTube scripts per month.
The difference from the three platforms above is the second half of the workflow. Profound, Peec, and Otterly stop at the dashboard or, in Profound's case, a few blog drafts. Loudmink creates content across blog, Reddit, and YouTube, the channels AI search engines cite most, then rechecks the engines after publication to verify your brand is actually getting picked up. Nothing publishes without your approval. It is not the cheapest monitor on this page, but it is the only option here that acts on what the monitoring finds.
To compare prices across the category before deciding, see AEO platform pricing for 2026, or run a free AI visibility scan to see what AI search engines say about your brand today. You can also review Loudmink pricing directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is cheapest: Profound, Peec, or Otterly?
Otterly.ai is the cheapest, starting at $29/month for its Lite plan with 4 AI search engines and 15 prompts. Peec AI starts around $100/month and Profound at $99/month, but Profound's $99 Starter covers only ChatGPT, and Peec's cheapest tier covers 3 engines. As of June 2026, the lowest real cost for multi-engine monitoring is Otterly, with Gemini and AI Mode as paid add-ons.
Do Profound, Peec, or Otterly create content for you?
Only Profound, and only on its higher tiers. Profound's Agents feature drafts articles and publishes to WordPress, Sanity, and Contentful, but Growth ($399/month) caps this at 3 articles per month and Starter includes none. Peec AI and Otterly do not generate content; Peec offers an Actions task queue and Otterly offers content briefs, but your team writes and publishes the actual content.
Which platform covers the most AI search engines?
Profound covers the most, with 10+ engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and more), but only on its custom Enterprise tier. Peec AI reaches 6+ engines through per-model add-ons, and Otterly covers 4 base engines with Gemini and AI Mode as paid add-ons. On their entry plans, all three cover far fewer than their headline numbers suggest.
Can any of these three post on Reddit or YouTube?
No. As of June 2026, none of Profound, Peec, or Otterly creates and posts Reddit or YouTube content. Profound can flag Reddit threads to engage, but it does not write or publish the posts. Among AEO platforms, the Loudmink AEO platform creates Reddit content (Pro at $299/month, Max at $599/month) and YouTube scripts (Max), which matters because AI search engines cite both sources heavily.
Should I buy a monitoring tool if I can't act on the data?
A monitoring tool is worth buying if you already have a content team or agency handling execution and just need visibility data. If you do not have that execution side, a monitoring-only platform shows you a gap you cannot close, so a platform that creates content as well as tracks it (from $99/month) usually delivers more for the same budget.