Comparisons

The entry price for AI visibility collapsed. Count the engines it buys.

By Arnav Mukherjee, founder of TofuBofu · August 28, 2026

Updated 13 October 2026. Profound's pricing page no longer lists the $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans this post opens with. We last saw them on 7 September 2026, and they were gone when we read the page on 10 October 2026. On 13 October 2026 it shows a free 7-day trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan. The Peec and Otterly figures below are as read on 28 August 2026. We re-read both on 15 October 2026: the prices were unchanged, and Perplexity was no longer one of Peec's three choosable models.

We keep a comparison table on our pricing page, and one of its cells said Profound was demo-only. That was true for most of the time this company has existed. I went to re-check it against their own page on the morning of 28 August 2026, the way we are supposed to before quoting anybody, and it was not true any more. Profound listed $99 a month.

So I checked the other two. Peec lists $80 on annual billing, in dollars, not the euro figure we had. Otterly lists $29. The category that spent two years hiding behind "book a demo" was now publishing its floor, and the floor was roughly one dinner.

Then I read what the floor includes, and that is the actual story. Profound's $99 tier was described on their own page that morning as "ChatGPT tracking only". One engine. The price came down and the measurement came down with it, and the second half is not on the pricing card in a font anybody reads.

What did $99 buy at the category leader?

Read at Profound's own pricing page on 28 August 2026, with a billed-yearly toggle offering two months free:

Give them credit where it was due: publishing the number at all was a real improvement on a demo gate, and the Growth tier was a serious instrument. This is not a complaint about Profound's quality, which is settled. It is a point about what the entry tier of this category has quietly become.

Because on that ladder the jump from one engine to three engines was the jump from $99 to $399. Engine coverage is the meter now. Price is just the thing on the front of the card.

Both tiers have since come off the page. We last saw them on 7 September 2026. Read on 10 October 2026 and again on 13 October 2026, Profound's pricing page lists a free Trial, "50 prompts run daily for 7 days" on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and an Enterprise plan priced "Custom" with "Up to 9 Answer Engines tracked". No dollar figure appears anywhere on it. So the category leader listed a floor on 28 August 2026 and no longer listed it 43 days later. Peec and Otterly published theirs on 28 August 2026, and still did when we re-read them on 15 October 2026.

Is it the same shape at Peec and Otterly?

Peec, read on 28 August 2026, lists Starter at $80, Pro at $205 and Advanced at $420 on the annual view its page opened with that day; month to month those tiers read $95, $245 and $495. All three of those tiers say "Choose 3 models", from a menu of ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini. Read again on 15 October 2026, the menu was ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI, with Perplexity moved to a paid add-on.

A fourth model is an add-on: $30 a month at Starter, $70 at Pro, $140 at Advanced. Claude appears only in the Enterprise column.

Otterly, same day, lists Lite at $29, Standard at $189, Premium at $489 and Enterprise from $1,000. The base tiers cover four engines. Claude is an add-on from $29 a month at Lite up to $439 at Premium, and Google AI Mode and Gemini are add-ons from $9 up to $149 each.

On 28 August 2026 that made three vendors, three pricing philosophies and one identical decision: the cheap tier was cheap because it watched fewer engines, and Claude was the one most often missing or most expensive to add. That is not a coincidence, and it is worth asking your vendor why.

Engines included at the entry tier Read at each vendor's own pricing page, 28 August 2026. Add-on engines not counted. Profound Starter Peec Starter Otterly Lite TofuBofu Track $99/mo, no longer listed $80/mo annual $29/mo Free 1 engine 3 engines 4 engines 5 engines Profound Starter was gone by 10 October 2026. Read 13 October 2026: free 7-day trial or custom Enterprise.

You can see where you stand on all five engines before you pay anybody, including us. The scan is free and takes about a minute.

Run a free AI visibility scan

One engine is not a cheaper version of all of them

The obvious defence of a single-engine tier is that ChatGPT is the biggest, so watching it is a reasonable sample of the whole. Our own data says that defence does not hold, and the reason is sources.

We recovered every source link out of our stored AI answers last week. On the 34 buying questions where both Google AI Mode and Bing Copilot produced sources, the two engines shared no cited domain at all on 12 of them, and the mean overlap across all 34 was 0.065. Google AI Mode cited 20 distinct sources per answer. Copilot cited 2.5, with a median of 3 among the answers that cited anything.

That comparison rests on four reports across three brands, which is a small sample and I will not inflate it. What makes it worth anything is that it is a true pairing rather than two unrelated studies: the same 34 question cells, in the same scans, in the same minute. Two engines asked identical questions at the same instant, and they built their answers out of almost entirely different websites.

If that is what happens between two engines, a subscription that watches one of them is not measuring 1/6th of your visibility. It is measuring a different thing, and telling you it is the number.

What to do with this

  1. Divide the price by the engines, not by the prompts. Prompt counts are the number vendors compete on because they are cheap to raise. Engine coverage is the number that decides whether the report describes your market or one slice of it.
  2. Ask whether the ChatGPT probe searches the web. This is the single most consequential setting in the category and it appears on nobody's pricing page. An engine answering from training weights is telling you what a model remembers, not what your buyer sees. We ran ours the wrong way for months, found it, and said so.
  3. Check where Claude sits on the price list. On the three pages I read on 28 August 2026 it was behind Enterprise, or it was the most expensive add-on offered. Whether that matters depends on your buyers, and you cannot find out from a tool that does not measure it.
  4. Then ask what happens after the dashboard. Every tool on this list, ours included, can tell you that you are missing. The ones worth paying for are the ones that write the page, publish it, and re-scan to show the number moved. Measurement is commoditised now, and the collapsing entry price is the proof. Doing the work is not.

Frequently asked questions

How much do AI visibility tools cost in 2026?

Entry pricing at Peec and Otterly is public and low. Profound's moved twice. Read at each vendor's own pricing page on 28 August 2026: Otterly lists Lite at $29 a month, Standard at $189 and Premium at $489, with Enterprise starting from $1,000. Peec lists Starter at $80 a month, Pro at $205 and Advanced at $420 on annual billing, which is the view its page opened on that day; month to month the same tiers read $95, $245 and $495. Profound listed Starter at $99 a month and Growth at $399 on that date, with Enterprise custom, and had removed both by 10 October 2026, leaving a free 7-day trial and a custom Enterprise plan when we read the page on 13 October 2026. Prices in this category change on a timescale of weeks, so treat any figure including these as dated rather than current, and check the vendor's own page before you buy.

What is the cheapest AI visibility tool?

By list price, Otterly's Lite tier at $29 a month is the cheapest paid entry point among the tools we checked on 28 August 2026. The number to compare it on is not the price, though, it is what the price measures. Otterly's base tiers cover four engines, and Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons on top, with Claude running from $29 a month at Lite up to $439 at Premium. A cheaper subscription that measures fewer engines is not a discount on the same product, it is a smaller measurement.

How much does Profound cost?

Read at Profound's pricing page on 13 October 2026, there are two plans: a Trial priced "Free" and an Enterprise plan priced "Custom". No dollar figure appears anywhere on the page. On 28 August 2026 the same page listed Starter at $99 a month and Growth at $399 a month, with Enterprise on custom pricing and a billed-yearly toggle offering two months free. We last saw those two tiers on 7 September 2026 and they were gone by 10 October 2026. Profound's pricing was quote-only for much of its life, and on the 13 October 2026 page its only paid plan is a quote again.

Which engines does Profound track at each tier?

Read at Profound's pricing page on 13 October 2026, the free Trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews with 50 prompts run daily for 7 days, and Enterprise is described as "Up to 9 Answer Engines tracked". On 28 August 2026 the page also listed Starter at $99, described as "ChatGPT tracking only" with 50 prompts tracked, and Growth at $399, described as "3 Answer Engines tracked" with 100 prompts. So the $99 entry tier at the category leader measured a single engine while it was listed, and the jump to three engines was the jump to $399. Both tiers were gone by 10 October 2026.

Does Peec AI track Claude?

Only on Enterprise, according to Peec's own pricing table read on 15 October 2026. The Starter, Pro and Advanced tiers are each limited to three models chosen from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Perplexity was on that menu when we read it on 28 August 2026; on 15 October 2026 it was a paid add-on instead. Claude Sonnet 4 appears only in the Enterprise column. Additional models can be added to a lower tier for $30 a month at Starter, $70 at Pro and $140 at Advanced, billed annually.

Is tracking one AI engine enough?

Our own data says no, and the reason is that engines do not draw on the same sources. On the 34 buying questions where both Google AI Mode and Bing Copilot produced sources in our scans, the two engines shared no cited domain at all on 12 of them, and the mean overlap across all 34 was 0.065. That comparison rests on four reports across three brands, which is small, and it is a real pairing rather than two separate samples because it is the same questions in the same scans at the same minute. If two engines answering identically worded questions barely intersect on sources, a subscription that measures one of them is not a cheaper version of measuring six.

How should I compare AI visibility tools on price?

Divide by what you are actually buying, then check three things the pricing page usually buries. First, how many engines the tier includes, and whether the ones your buyers use are add-ons. Second, whether the ChatGPT probe searches the web or answers from training weights, because that single setting changes the answer completely and appears on nobody's pricing page. Third, whether the tool only measures or also produces and publishes the fix, since a dashboard nobody has time to act on is a cost with no outcome. Price is the easiest number on the page and the least informative.

Sources and further reading

A note on what these figures are. Competitor prices here are quoted from each vendor's own pricing card as a subject of comparison, not used as evidence for how AI engines behave. Pricing in this category changes on a timescale of weeks, so every figure above carries the date it was read.

Arnav Mukherjee

Founder, TofuBofu