Profound vs Keytomic (2026): Which AI SEO Platform Is Better?

Short answer: Keytomic is the better fit for most teams that need AI visibility and the work that moves it, in one subscription starting at $99/month. Profound is the better fit for enterprise teams that need prompt-demand data, multi-region analytics, and governance controls, and can sign an Enterprise contract to get its content Workflows.

Both platforms now pitch the same loop: see how AI engines talk about your brand, then act on it. The real difference is where the action layer lives and what it costs to reach it. In Keytomic, keyword research, a content calendar, writing, CMS publishing, indexing, technical audits and AI visibility tracking are the base product. In Profound, the measurement layer is the base product, and its Workflows automation sits on Enterprise plans.

That gap got wider in September 2026, when Profound withdrew its $99 and $399 self-serve plans. If you've read a review quoting those prices, it's out of date. We cover what changed below.

Disclosure: Keytomic publishes this comparison. Profound details come from Profound's public product pages, help center and changelog, plus third-party pricing trackers, checked in October 2026. Keytomic details come from our own pricing page and product.

If you're still mapping the category, our guides to AI visibility tools, AI search visibility tracking tools and AI tools for LLM visibility cover the wider field. A free AI visibility audit shows where your brand stands today, no sign-up needed.

Profound vs Keytomic: Quick Comparison

Keytomic covers the full research-to-publish workflow on every plan; Profound goes deeper on AI analytics but gates its automation behind Enterprise.

Pricing and plan details verified October 28, 2026.

What Changed With Profound Pricing in 2026

Profound no longer sells self-serve paid plans to brands. In mid-September 2026 it dropped the $99 Starter and $399 Growth tiers and replaced them with a single free Trial plan, leaving Enterprise as the only paid, custom-priced option.

The change landed around Profound's $180 million Series D at a reported $1.8 billion valuation. The direction is clear: the free tier is a way in, and serious usage runs through an Enterprise sales cycle.

What this means for buyers:

• Old reviews are wrong on price. Many comparison pages still quote $99 and $399. Those plans are gone for brands.

• Budget for a contract, not a card. Profound's earlier self-serve plans were already annual-only, and Enterprise contracts typically are too.

• Agencies pay per client. Agency packaging has been reported at $399 per client workspace.

Keytomic's pricing is public and monthly: a 3-day trial, then Pro at $99/month for one site and up to 3 seats. The Agency (done-for-you) plan is $999/month with a dedicated SEO manager. Full details are on the Keytomic pricing page.

What Profound Does

Profound is an answer engine optimization (AEO) platform built around measurement first. Its product spans Answer Engine Insights, Prompt Volumes, Agent Analytics, Agents and Workflows, Shopping, and project tools.

Answer Engine Insights

This is Profound's core product. You give it a set of prompts, and it runs them across AI engines on a schedule, then reports visibility, sentiment, citations and share of voice against named competitors. Reports break out by prompt, query fan-out, platform, region and persona.

Profound captures responses from the consumer browser experience rather than model APIs. Its argument is that this matches what users actually see. Conductor argues the opposite, that API collection is steadier because scraping breaks when an engine changes its interface. Both approaches have tradeoffs, and buyers should ask any vendor which one they use.

Agents and Workflows

Profound's automation layer lets teams build node-based workflows: pull visibility data, research top-cited pages, draft briefs and articles, route approvals and publish to a CMS. When Workflows launched in December 2025, the beta was available only to Enterprise customers.

That's the detail most comparison pages miss. Calling Profound "monitoring only" is wrong. The more useful statement is that Profound's execution layer sits behind an Enterprise contract, while its measurement layer is what the free Trial exposes.

Agent Analytics

Agent Analytics tracks AI crawler and agent traffic to your site, so you can see which bots visit and how often. This sits close to technical SEO but focuses on AI agents rather than a full site crawl.

Who Profound fits

Profound fits enterprise marketing teams that have in-house AEO analysts, need region and language coverage at scale, and want security controls like SSO. Teams that mainly need content shipped every week will pay Enterprise prices to reach the Workflows layer, and still need separate tools for keyword research, technical audits and backlinks. For context on where agents start and end, see our guide to AI SEO agents.

Is Profound's Prompt Volumes Data Accurate?

Profound's Prompt Volumes is a useful directional signal, not a measurement of real demand. Treat it like early keyword volume estimates: good for spotting topics, risky for forecasting traffic.

What Prompt Volumes is

Prompt Volumes is the renamed Conversation Explorer, made public in September 2025. It estimates what people ask AI engines, drawn from a panel of real, anonymized conversations. Coverage centers on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, narrower than the engine list in Answer Engine Insights.

Refresh timing differs by product. Tracked prompts in Answer Engine Insights update daily, and new prompts take 24 to 48 hours to show data. Prompt Volumes refreshes weekly, and Profound's own pages disagree on whether latency is under one week or under two.

How big is the dataset?

There's no single answer, because Profound's published figures vary by page and date:

• 400M+ prompts in some comparison material

• 1.3B+ real user queries on Profound's Peec AI comparison

• 1.5B prompts and responses on its G2 listing

The likely explanation is growth over time plus different counting (queries vs prompt-and-response pairs). When you compare vendors, ask what is being counted, not just how many.

Why to sanity-check it against Search Console

Panel data comes from browser extensions on a subset of users. It misses mobile apps, Safari users and anyone outside the panel, so tools scale the sample up to estimate the whole market. Analysts have published examples where prompt volume for a term ran many times higher than the same term's Google Search Console impressions.

Profound's own Head of Data has recommended grounding prompt volume against GSC for this reason. That's where Keytomic's approach differs: it starts from your own Search Console data, which is first-party and specific to your site, then layers AI visibility tracking on top. Through the Keytomic MCP, you can ask Claude or ChatGPT for quick wins, decaying pages or cannibalization straight from that data.

Can Prompt Volumes replace keyword research?

Not on its own. It tells you which themes appear in AI conversations, but not how hard a topic is to rank for, which pages already compete, or what your site already earns. Pair it with real search data and AI keyword research before you plan a calendar.

What Keytomic Does

Keytomic is an AI SEO automation platform that runs the full loop, from finding topics to publishing pages to tracking whether AI engines cite them, on every plan.

1. Discover. Keytomic scans your domain, niche and competitors to find rankable, high-intent keywords with AI keyword research.

2. Plan. It builds an SEO calendar around topical authority clusters, up to 60 active topics and 150 backlog topics on Pro. You approve, edit or reject each item.

3. Create. The AI blog writer drafts SEO-scored articles in your brand voice, with internal links, schema and custom images from the AI Image Studio. Pro includes 30 articles and 50 images a month, in 20+ languages.

4. Publish. Approved drafts go straight to your CMS through 12+ direct integrations, including WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Framer, Notion, Contentful and Go High Level. Webhooks and a custom API cover everything else.

5. Index. The AI indexing tool submits new pages to Google, Bing and AI engines for faster discovery.

6. Measure. The AI Visibility Tracker runs your prompts on a schedule and records brand mentions, cited sources, sentiment and which competitors appear beside you. Search Console, GA4 and Bing Webmaster Tools data sit in the same dashboard.

Around that loop, every plan includes a technical SEO audit covering crawl errors, indexing, Core Web Vitals, schema, canonicals and llms.txt. Pro adds a backlink audit with opportunities and a daily Reddit AI agent that builds brand mentions in the communities AI engines read.

The Keytomic MCP connects all of this to the assistant you already use. Paste one URL into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or Windsurf, and you can ask for quick-win keywords, traffic decay, cannibalization or a full site crawl in plain language. It's included in paid plans.

Human review stays in the loop at every stage. Keytomic's terms state that you remain responsible for what you publish, and E-E-A-T still depends on real expertise that no tool can supply on its own.

Profound vs Keytomic: Feature-by-Feature

AI visibility measurement

Profound tracks more engines, regions and personas, and adds Prompt Volumes on top. If your job is reporting AI share of voice across 150 regions to a CMO, that depth matters.

Keytomic's tracker covers the engines most buyers use: ChatGPT and Gemini on Pro (20 prompts, run 3 times a week, about 14,400 data points a month), and ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity on the Agency plan. Pro includes citation tracking, sentiment analysis, competitor comparison, visibility trends and content and citation opportunities. The difference is what happens next: a gap in Keytomic becomes a calendar topic, a draft and a published page in the same tool. See how this works in our guide to improving brand visibility in AI answer engines.

Keyword research and content planning

Keytomic's keyword discovery and calendar are core features. Profound starts from prompts rather than keywords, and its published lineup doesn't include a traditional keyword research or topical planning workflow. Teams on Profound typically keep a separate SEO suite for this. For why the two disciplines overlap, read AEO vs SEO.

Content creation and publishing

Both platforms can draft and publish. In Keytomic, writing, images and CMS publishing are the base product on Pro. In Profound, the same work runs through Agents and Workflows, which you build node by node, and Workflows launched for Enterprise customers. Neither replaces editorial judgment.

Technical SEO, indexing and backlinks

Keytomic includes a technical audit, multi-engine indexing and backlink opportunities. Profound's Agent Analytics tracks AI bot traffic, which is useful, but it isn't a site crawl. If you need canonicals, broken links, schema markup and Core Web Vitals checked, that's a separate tool on Profound. Indexing speeds up discovery but never guarantees inclusion, as Google's guidance on AI features makes clear.

Integrations and AI assistant access

Keytomic connects to 12+ CMSs plus GSC, GA4 and Bing Webmaster Tools, and exposes your data to AI assistants through its MCP. Profound offers CSV exports and API-based reporting, and has announced CMS connections such as Webflow for Agents.

Reporting

Profound reports on visibility scores, citation share, sentiment shifts and agent traffic. Keytomic reports on rankings, Search Console performance, content output and AI visibility in one dashboard, and the Agency plan adds a monthly performance report with a next-step plan from a dedicated SEO manager.

Profound Pricing vs Keytomic Pricing

Keytomic's paid plans start at $99/month, billed monthly; Profound's paid access is Enterprise-only and quoted per contract.

The cost that isn't on the price page

The subscription is rarely the whole bill. Before you compare, add up:

• Tools you'd still need. On Profound: keyword research, a technical crawler, a writing tool and a backlink tool. On Keytomic: possibly a dedicated enterprise AEO analytics tool if you need 150-region reporting.

• Production time. Hours per article that aren't automated, multiplied by your team's rate.

• Editorial review. Fact, legal and brand checks per published piece, on either platform.

• Setup. Building Agents and Workflows in Profound vs connecting a CMS in Keytomic.

• Contract terms. Annual Enterprise commitments vs monthly billing you can cancel.

For a fuller checklist, see our guide to choosing SEO automation software.

How Profound Compares to Cognizo, Gauge, Conductor and Peec AI

Most Profound alternatives either match its tracking at a lower price or add content tools, but few combine tracking with a full SEO workflow.

Is Cognizo better than Profound? Cognizo is the closer match for teams that want monitoring and content workflows in one tool at a published price. Profound has the larger dataset and enterprise controls.

Profound vs Gauge: Gauge leans toward execution, pulling search and analytics data into its recommendations. Profound leans toward analysis depth. Gauge's prompt-volume comparisons are its own claims, so test them on your prompts.

Profound vs Conductor: Conductor is an enterprise SEO platform that added AEO; Profound is AEO-native. The main technical debate is data collection, APIs (Conductor) vs browser capture (Profound).

Profound vs Peec AI: Peec is the budget tracker. It's cheaper but doesn't generate content, so it pairs with a separate writing and publishing stack.

If what you want from any of these is AI visibility plus the pages that earn it, compare them against our breakdown of Keytomic vs Peec AI and our full AI SEO platform comparisons.

The best Profound alternative for automated content workflows

If your bottleneck is shipping content, not reading dashboards, look for a tool where research, writing, publishing and indexing come on the base plan. That's the gap Keytomic fills: Profound's Workflows require an Enterprise contract, while Keytomic's autoblog publishing starts at $99/month. For agencies running several clients, see our guide to SEO automation software for agencies.

Which Platform Should You Choose?

Choose based on where your team loses the most time: reading the data or acting on it.

Choose Keytomic if

• You need AI visibility and the content that improves it, in one tool.

• You want public, monthly pricing without an Enterprise sales cycle.

• You publish to WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Framer or another supported CMS, and want drafts to go live without copy-pasting.

• You'd rather not run separate tools for keyword research, technical audits, indexing and backlinks.

• You want to work from your own Search Console data, including inside Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP.

Choose Profound if

• You report AI share of voice across many regions, languages or personas.

• Prompt-demand estimates are a core input to your strategy.

• You need enterprise security controls and have budget for an annual contract.

• You already have a full SEO and content stack and only need the AEO analytics layer.

Five questions to answer before you decide

1. Is your bottleneck data or output? If you know what to fix but can't ship fast enough, you need execution on the base plan.

2. Which engines and regions must you track? Match each vendor's engine list per plan to your market.

3. How many pages must ship each month? Map that to articles per plan, not just prompts per plan.

4. Which integrations are non-negotiable? Check your CMS, analytics and approval tools against each vendor's documented list.

5. What's the total cost after other tools and labor? The subscription is the starting point, not the full bill.

Limitations and Tradeoffs

Neither platform guarantees rankings, AI citations, traffic or conversions, and both need human review before anything publishes.

Profound tradeoffs

• Execution is Enterprise-gated. Workflows launched for Enterprise customers, so the insight-to-action loop costs an Enterprise contract.

• Pricing is opaque again. After the September 2026 change, paid pricing is quoted per deal.

• Prompt Volumes is an estimate. It's panel-based and scaled up, so validate it against your own search data.

• Learning curve. Some users report that Profound takes time to set up and deploy well.

• Narrow scope beyond AEO. Keyword research, technical audits, backlinks and indexing need other tools.

Keytomic tradeoffs

• Fewer engines on Pro. Pro tracks ChatGPT and Gemini; Claude and Perplexity come with the Agency plan.

• Smaller prompt sets. Pro tracks 20 prompts, built for focused category tracking rather than thousands of prompts.

• No prompt-demand dataset. Keytomic works from your Search Console data and tracked prompts, not a market-wide panel.

• One site per plan. Multi-site teams need a plan per site.

• Not built for heavily regulated publishing. Teams whose legal review makes fast publishing impractical will use the drafting side more than auto-publishing.

Frequently Asked Questions About Profound and Keytomic

Is Keytomic a Profound alternative?

Yes. Keytomic tracks brand mentions, citations and sentiment in AI engines, and adds the keyword research, content, publishing, indexing and technical audits that Profound's base offer doesn't include. It's the stronger alternative for teams that need output; Profound keeps the edge on prompt-demand data and enterprise-scale analytics.

How much does Profound cost in 2026?

Profound offers a free Trial plan with 50 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Paid access is Enterprise-only and custom-priced. The $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans were withdrawn for brands in September 2026.

Does Profound have a free plan?

Yes. Since September 2026, its free Trial plan is the only self-serve option for brands. Keytomic offers a 3-day trial with full Pro access, then $99/month.

How many prompts are included in Profound?

The free Trial includes 50 prompts. Enterprise prompt limits are set per contract.

Is Profound's prompt volume data accurate?

It's directional. Prompt Volumes comes from a panel of real conversations scaled up to estimate the market, so check it against your Google Search Console data before using it to forecast traffic.

What is the size of Profound's Prompt Volumes dataset?

Profound's published figures range from 400M+ to 1.5B depending on the page and date, and they count different things (queries vs prompts and responses). Prompt Volumes was previously called Conversation Explorer.

Can Profound replace keyword research?

Not on its own. Prompt Volumes shows themes in AI conversations but not ranking difficulty, competing pages or your site's existing performance.

Can Profound track AI visibility by region and language?

Yes. Profound reports coverage of 30+ languages and 150+ regions, with region and persona breakdowns in Answer Engine Insights.

Does Profound generate and publish SEO content?

It can, through Agents and Workflows that you configure node by node. Workflows launched as an Enterprise-only beta, so check your plan before counting on it.

How good is Profound at schema markup?

Schema isn't a core Profound feature; its focus is AI visibility analytics. Keytomic's technical audit validates structured data, and our free FAQ schema generator and article schema generator help you fix it.

Is Profound good for B2B SaaS marketers?

For enterprise SaaS teams with analysts and budget, yes. Smaller SaaS teams usually get more from a tool that ships content too. See our guide to AI visibility tools for B2B SaaS.

Does Keytomic track ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Keytomic tracks ChatGPT and Gemini on Pro, and ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity on the Agency plan.

Can either platform guarantee rankings or AI citations?

No. No platform controls how Google or AI engines respond to your content, and Keytomic's terms state this explicitly.

Should I use both?

Only if you need Profound's enterprise analytics for strategy and Keytomic's workflow for output, and have budget for both. Most teams pick the one that matches their bottleneck.

Next Steps

If your team knows what AI engines say about you but can't ship the pages to change it, start with the workflow, not another dashboard. Run a free AI visibility audit to see where you stand, then start a 3-day Keytomic trial or book a demo to see research, publishing and AI tracking run on your own site.

If enterprise AEO analytics across many regions is the priority, request Profound's Enterprise terms and test its Prompt Volumes against your own Search Console data before you sign.