Profound if you want monitoring plus agents that act on what the tracking finds, and analytics on AI-referred traffic to your own site. AirOps if visibility is the front end of a content production line; it publishes no plan prices, so budget for a conversation. Peec if you want citation and share-of-voice tracking at the cheapest published self-serve price, and you are content to decide what to do about it yourself.
Engine coverage is tier-gated on all three, and the gap between the logo row and the plan you would actually buy is the single most expensive detail on this page: Profound’s entry plan tracks ChatGPT only.
How this was checked. Prices, plan names, prompt counts and engine lists come from each vendor’s own pricing page, read on August 11, 2026 and linked in each section. This is a documentation-based comparison, not a controlled test: I have not run the same prompt set through all three and measured the results against each other, so nothing here ranks them on accuracy.
Disclosure. I take no affiliate commission and no payment from any of these companies. I sell an AI visibility audit, which competes for the same budget, so the comparison sticks to what their own pages state, and the recommendation at the end includes the case for buying none of them.
Peec, Profound and AirOps get named together constantly, which suggests they are alternatives to each other. They are not. Peec is citation and share-of-voice tracking at a published, self-serve price. Profound is monitoring plus agents that act on what the monitoring finds, plus analytics on AI-referred traffic to your own site. AirOps treats visibility as the front end of a content production line. The expensive mistake is buying the one whose shape does not match the job you actually have. Here’s what each actually does, based on independent evaluation.
I don’t have affiliate relationships with any of these tools. This comparison is based on independent research and client-side evaluation.
01: Quick comparison: Profound vs AirOps vs Peec
02: Peec: what it is and what it measures
What it tracks: Peec is an AI search analytics platform built for marketing teams and SEO agencies. It tracks how often your brand is cited when AI systems answer buyer questions: measuring citation rate and share of voice across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms. It runs automated query sets on a schedule and benchmarks your performance against named competitors.
Standout feature: Peec shows you that a competitor appears in 62% of buyer prompts in your category while you appear in 8%. That’s a clear, actionable metric that most tools don’t surface cleanly.
What it doesn’t track: Peec is strong at diagnosis. It’s explicit about not being strong at treatment: the platform tells you the gap exists, but doesn’t explain why or tell you what to change. Per multiple reviews, it shows the problem, not the fix.
Data accuracy: Solid for citation frequency tracking. The Starter plan includes 50 prompts across 3 AI models; Pro and Enterprise scale from there.
Pricing: $95/month Starter (50 prompts, 3 AI models, 1 project) → $241/month Pro → $505/month Enterprise. Mid-market pricing with direct access to the founding team as a differentiator, rare at this price tier.
Best for: Marketing teams and SEO agencies that want systematic AI share-of-voice tracking and competitor benchmarking without enterprise overhead. Good starting point for teams new to dedicated AI visibility monitoring.
Verdict: Peec is the clearest option for teams that want to understand how visible they are in AI search. If you want to understand why and what to fix: that’s a different question, and Peec doesn’t answer it.
03: Profound: what it is and what it measures
What it tracks: Profound runs a prompt set on a daily schedule and reports mentions, citations, sentiment and competitive presence. Its distinctive pieces are Agents (which draft and optimise content from what the tracking finds), Prompt Volumes, and Agent Analytics, which tracks AI-referred traffic arriving at your own domain rather than what the engines say.
A correction: this article previously said Profound covers “10+ engines” and made that its headline advantage. Profound’s own pricing page says up to nine, and only on Enterprise. The $99 Starter plan tracks ChatGPT alone; the $399 Growth plan tracks three: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. The full nine adds Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Claude. Price the tier you would actually buy against the engines you actually need.
Where the gaps are: engine coverage is tier-gated rather than complete, as above. Funding and customer-logo claims that used to sit in this paragraph have been removed: they were not sourced, and they were never a reason to buy a tool.
Data quality: I have no way to rank these three on accuracy, and neither does anyone without running the same prompt set through all three and comparing against a ground truth that does not exist. The earlier version of this page called Profound “the strongest” on accuracy; that was an impression, not a measurement, so it is gone. What is checkable is on the pricing pages: engines, prompt counts, refresh frequency.
Pricing: Starter $99/month and Growth $399/month, both billed yearly; Enterprise custom. The “48% more expensive than average” line that used to be here cited “multiple reviews” without naming one, and there is no published average for this category to be 48% above.
Best for: Enterprise brands, agencies managing multi-client AI visibility, and B2B companies with serious AI search exposure across multiple platforms and markets. If you’re a fast-growing company that can’t afford to guess where you stand in AI search, Profound is the reference-class tool.
Verdict: Profound is the most complete AI visibility platform available. The cost reflects that. For SMBs or consultants running lean operations, the price is difficult to justify. For enterprise, it’s the clearest choice.
04: AirOps: what it is and what it measures
What it tracks: AirOps calls itself a “growth platform for AI search and AEO.” It combines two functions that most tools treat separately: visibility tracking (called Insights) and content operations (AI-powered content creation and publishing workflows). The Insights feature tracks how your brand appears across AI search engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) and provides page-level data combining AI citations, Search Console, and GA4 traffic.
What it doesn’t track: The catch is the tier split, not a price cliff: AirOps publishes no plan prices at all, and its FAQ says pricing is set by task volume and requirements. Solo tracks ChatGPT only, 100 prompts, one user, monthly reports. Pro unlocks 250 prompts across ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity and Google AI Studio, plus weekly opportunity reports, CMS integrations and unlimited seats. If you need Perplexity or Gemini tracking, Solo will not do it and Pro is the next step, and since neither carries a published price, you cannot size that step without talking to sales.
Pricing: Not published. The Insights tier starts at $0/month, and AirOps’ own FAQ states pricing is based on task volume and requirements. Solo includes 20,000 tasks with overage at $0.025 per task; Pro includes 75,000. The $200 and $2,000 figures this article previously quoted appear nowhere on AirOps’ site and have been removed. AirOps pricing, read 2026-08-11.
Best for: Content teams that want to track AI search visibility anduse that data to drive content production in one platform. AirOps makes the most sense when you’re already running a structured content operation and want to align it with AI search performance, not just see a dashboard.
Verdict: AirOps is the right choice if you need both tracking and content operations in one workflow. If you only need tracking, Solo is too narrow at ChatGPT alone, and Pro is hard to justify unless you are also using the content workflow: you would be paying for a production system to get a dashboard. Peec and Profound both publish what tracking costs; AirOps asks you to negotiate for it.
05: How these compare to broader AI visibility suites
BrightEdge
BrightEdge positions itself on data accuracy: it’s one of the few enterprise SEO platforms with dedicated generative search tracking built into a mature analytics suite. The claim holds: BrightEdge’s data accuracy for Google AI Overviews and generative search is among the strongest available. The honest limitation is access: BrightEdge publishes no pricing at all, so any figure you see quoted for it (including the “$2,000+/month” this page used to state) comes from someone other than BrightEdge. It is an enterprise contract, which for most teams comparing the three tools above puts it in a different category entirely.
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
This section used to say Semrush was strong for Google AI Overviews but “weak for Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Gemini.” That is no longer true and the correction matters, because it was being used to push readers toward the paid tools above. Semrush’s AI Visibility toolkit starts at $99/month and covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with share-of-voice and sentiment tracking, competitor comparison against up to four rivals, and a prompt research database. The free plan surfaces AI mentions, citations and a visibility score. Semrush’s own documentation, read 2026-08-11. The real decision point is packaging: Google and AI Overviews tracking is available on any plan including the free one, while the other engines need Semrush One or the AI Visibility toolkit.
Gaio.tech
This entry has been removed. It carried specific figures (120+ query variations per brand term, 300+ scraped industry sources, named API integrations) that I could not trace to any source. Repeating a vendor’s own numbers as if they were findings is exactly what the rest of this page is trying not to do.
06: Head to head
Profound vs AirOps: which is better?
For tracking alone, Peec gives you more engines per dollar at the bottom of the range: three engines of your choosing from $95/month billed annually, against Profound’s $99 Starter which tracks ChatGPT only. Cross-engine coverage on Profound starts at $399. At the top, Peec’s Enterprise reaches eleven models to Profound’s nine.
Profound earns its price somewhere else: Agents that draft and optimise content from what the tracking finds, and Agent Analytics, which measures AI-referred traffic arriving at your own domain. That second one is worth more than an extra engine to most businesses, because it is the only number in this whole category that connects to revenue.
Profound vs AirOps: monitoring platform or content operation?
Both go beyond reporting, in opposite directions. Profound starts from monitoring and adds agents that produce content. AirOps starts from a content production system and adds visibility insights to point it. If you already have a content team and want to know what to brief them on, Profound fits. If your bottleneck is producing the content at all, AirOps is built for that and Profound is not.
Practical difference when you go to buy: Profound publishes its prices, AirOps does not. Budgeting for AirOps means a sales conversation about task volume.
Peec vs AirOps: tracking only, or tracking plus execution?
This is the cleanest comparison of the three, because the tools barely overlap. Peec tells you where you stand across up to three engines on a self-serve plan and stops there, deliberately. AirOps tracks a narrower set on its entry tier (ChatGPT only on Solo) and spends the rest of the product on producing and publishing content.
Choose Peec if you have the content capability and need measurement. Choose AirOps if measurement is not the constraint and output is.
07: Which tool should you choose?
The clearest decision framework:
- You primarily need Google AI Overviews tracking → Semrush, if you’re already a subscriber
- You need multi-platform citation tracking at SMB budget → Peec
- You need full enterprise AI visibility with the deepest data → Profound
- You need citation tracking AND a content production workflow → AirOps Pro, once you have a quote and can weigh it against the content-operations value
- You have enterprise budget and want the most data-accurate option → BrightEdge or Profound
- You don’t yet know which platforms matter for your business → skip the tool subscription for now
That last point is worth expanding. Buying a tracking platform before you understand your AI visibility baseline is like buying a gym membership before you’ve had a health assessment. The tool will give you numbers. Without context, you won’t know which numbers matter or what to do about them.
For a full ranked review of AI visibility platforms including pricing, platform coverage, and use case, see the full AI visibility tools rankings.
08: What none of these tools tell you
Every tool in this comparison has the same fundamental gap: some are more honest about it than others.
None tell you why you’re missing. Peec shows you your citation rate is 8% versus a competitor at 62%. Profound shows you you’re absent from 14 of your 20 tracked queries. AirOps flags an opportunity in your content gap report. None of them explain whether the problem is technical (your pages aren’t crawlable), structural (your content isn’t extraction-ready), or authority-based (your domain doesn’t have third-party citation support).
None show you exactly what to change. Profound Agents will draft content based on citation gaps. AirOps will generate optimization opportunities. But neither replaces a human diagnosis of what’s actually causing the visibility gap, and that diagnosis is where most of the leverage is.
What they recommend doesn’t know your constraints. Profound Agents and AirOps opportunity reports both produce recommendations, so “tools only show you data” is no longer true and this page used to overstate it. The narrower and still-true version: a list of forty suggested changes is not a plan until someone knows which three you can actually ship this quarter, with the team and budget you have.
Which is also the honest case for buying one of these instead of hiring anyone. If you know what your gap is and just need to watch it move, buy the tool. The diagnosis is what is worth paying a person for.
Need direction, not just data?
Still deciding between tools and an audit? See AI visibility tools vs. a professional audit for a direct comparison, or book an audit to get a prioritized fix plan first.
Book an AI Visibility Audit →09: Frequently asked questions
Is Peec or Profound better for AI visibility tracking?
On engine coverage per dollar, Peec. Every Peec self-serve tier lets you track three engines of your choosing, starting at $95/month billed annually; Profound's $99 Starter tracks ChatGPT and nothing else, and cross-engine coverage begins at the $399 Growth tier with three engines. Profound's advantages sit elsewhere: agents that draft content from citation gaps, and Agent Analytics for AI-referred traffic to your own domain. Peec's Enterprise tier reaches up to 11 models against Profound's nine. Figures read from both pricing pages on August 11, 2026.
Does AirOps track AI citations?
Yes, through Insights, but the split matters. Solo tracks 100 prompts on ChatGPT only, with monthly opportunity reports. Pro tracks 250 prompts across ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity and Google AI Studio, with weekly reports. AirOps does not publish a price for either: its FAQ states pricing is based on task volume and requirements, so the $200 and $2,000 figures this article previously quoted had no source and have been removed. If tracking is all you need, Peec and Profound publish their numbers and you can compare them.
What's the cheapest AI visibility tool?
Of the three here, AirOps has a $0 Insights entry point and Peec starts at $95/month billed annually for three engines. Outside this comparison, Semrush's free plan shows AI mentions, citations and a visibility score, and its AI Visibility toolkit starts at $99/month. Cheapest and sufficient are different questions: check the engine list and prompt count on the specific tier you would buy, not the headline price.
Is Semrush good for tracking AI visibility?
Better than this article used to say. It previously described Semrush as strong for Google AI Overviews but weak for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini; that is out of date. Semrush's AI Visibility toolkit starts at $99/month and covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, with share-of-voice and sentiment tracking and competitor comparison. What decides it is packaging: Google and AI Overviews tracking is on any plan including the free one, while the other engines require Semrush One or the AI Visibility toolkit.
Do I need a tool or a consultant for AI visibility?
Most businesses need both, in sequence. An audit first: to establish baseline, diagnose the problem, and build a prioritized fix plan. Then a tracking tool: to measure progress after you've implemented changes. Buying a tool before doing an audit gives you data without context; you'll watch a dashboard for months without knowing which numbers to act on.
For the full ranked list of AI visibility tools including broader category options, see the best AI visibility tools in 2026.
For the comparison of tools vs. a professional audit, see AI visibility tools vs. a professional audit.
Hami Tahm is an AI visibility consultant based in Toronto.