Profound alternatives for agencies: naming it to an assistant pulls two rivals in and pushes the two big suites out, and its agency route is a credit allowance per client workspace
In the readings that name Profound, Peec is named 1.90 times more often than its own base rate and Ahrefs 0.82 times as often, so the incumbent you mention reshapes the shortlist before your reason does.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 21 October 2026
An agency leaving Profound is deciding two things at once: which vendor holds client work better, and which vendor an assistant will name when its own clients go looking. Those have different answers and this page measures both. Read on 21 October 2026, Profound's own agency route is published in its FAQ rather than on a card: a self serve Agency Growth plan carrying 400 credits a month per client workspace. So the unit an agency is buying from Profound is a credit pool attached to each client, which is a different shape from the project counts and dashboard slots the rest of this category sells.
We sell a tracker and we run an agency plan, so our own published terms are in the table below on the same criterion, including the row where every vendor here beats us.
The measurement nobody in this vein has published: who gets named beside Profound
Our standing dataset is 1,260 assistant readings from ChatGPT and Gemini across the United States, the United Kingdom and India. Within it, 718 readings name at least one vendor we track, a vendor counted once per reading in which it appears in the answer prose. The usual way to read that set is by the reason in the question. The reading nobody has published is by the incumbent: when an assistant names Profound, who else does it name in the same answer, and is that different from who it names generally?
| named in the same reading as Profound | share of the 203 Profound readings | share of all 718 naming readings | ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otterly | 48.8% | 29.9% | 1.63 |
| Peec | 47.8% | 25.2% | 1.90 |
| Semrush, an Adobe company | 45.8% | 55.3% | 0.83 |
| Ahrefs | 25.6% | 31.1% | 0.82 |
| Scrunch | 4.4% | 2.5% | 1.77 |
Read that as a set rather than as five numbers. Mentioning Profound to an assistant raises the chance it also reaches for Otterly or Peec by roughly two thirds to nine tenths, and lowers the chance it reaches for Semrush or Ahrefs. Profound, Otterly and Peec behave as one answer in this data, and the two largest search suites sit outside that answer rather than inside it. For an agency that is directly useful: the vendors your client is being shown alongside Profound are the other two specialists, so those are the two whose client handling you have to be able to speak about on a call.
The agency framing then narrows it further. Thirty five of the 1,260 readings name Profound in a question that also names an agency, agencies or clients. Inside those 35, Peec is co named 19 times, Otterly 17, Semrush 15 and Ahrefs 4. Six of the 35 produced a numbered shortlist, and first place went to Otterly twice, Profound twice, Brandlight once and Semrush once. Our own name appeared in none of the 1,260, which is why this page counts rather than quotes.
The criterion: what pools across clients, and what does not
One criterion, stated so an agency can check it in half an hour: what is the per client unit, does any allowance move between clients once bought, and can a report carry your own name. All read from vendor pricing pages on 21 October 2026, two agents each, bodies saved.
| read 21 Oct 2026 | the per client unit | does it pool across clients | your own branding on a report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | a client workspace, with 400 credits a month each on its self serve agency plan | no, the allowance is published per workspace | not stated on the pricing page |
| Depra AI | a client project, 5 of them on its agency tier | yes, 120 prompt slots pooled across the 5, and it publishes that prompts move between clients freely | yes, your logo, colours and footer on client reports |
| Rankscale | a brand dashboard slot, 10, 25, 50 and 100 across its four plans | no, slots are counted, and extra slots are bought in the app | yes, white label options, published on its third plan up |
| Peec AI | a project, 1, 2 and 5 on the monthly tiers and unlimited on the annual one | not stated on the pricing page | not stated on the pricing page |
| AI Knows Us, ours | a client brand, with its own calculator on our pricing page | yes, questions and pages are set per brand inside one agency plan | not published |
On that criterion Depra AI is first and it wins on the pooling line specifically: it is the only vendor in this set that publishes both a pooled allowance and the sentence saying the allowance moves between clients, which is the thing that actually happens in an agency when one client's quarter gets busy. Rankscale is first on branding, and it is one of two vendors here publishing branding control at all.
Where we lose is branding and it is the line an agency cares most about. Depra publishes your logo, your colours and your footer on a client report. Rankscale publishes white label options. We publish neither, and our published position is that the agency plan is sold per client brand with one login and an export, which is a reasonable thing to sell and is not the same thing as a dashboard with your name on it. If a client facing report under your own brand is what you are reselling, those two are ahead of us and the honest answer is to look there first. The question of what an agency keeps when it stops paying a vendor is worked through separately, and that page is one of the 1,068 pages of ours, 53.7% of the 1,987 in our inventory, that no stored body on this site links to.
Which alternative answers which agency complaint
- The allowance is stranded in the wrong client. Depra AI pools 120 prompt slots across 5 client projects and publishes that they move freely. Peec sells projects rather than a pool on its brand ladder, and publishes a separate agency ladder at peec.ai/pricing-agencies metered in credits, with four tiers from 10,000 to unlimited credits a month, read 21 October 2026. CORRECTED the same day: this sentence previously said that link did not resolve, which was wrong. The url had been constructed from the words on the button instead of read from the page, and the real agency pages answer 200.
- The report has somebody else's name on it. Rankscale publishes white label options from its third plan and Depra publishes logo, colour and footer control on its agency tier.
- Every client needs a different market. Depra publishes any market per client from a list of 40. Peec publishes multi country from its third tier only, so a two country client is a tier decision rather than a setting.
- The team cannot all get in. Profound publishes unlimited seats on both of its plans and Peec unlimited users on all four. We publish one login with full access and an export, and on this line they are ahead of us.
What an agency should ask before it moves off Profound
Does Profound sell an agency plan?
Its pricing page carries a For brands and For agencies toggle, and the agency terms appear in its FAQ rather than on a plan card: a self serve Agency Growth plan with 400 credits a month per client workspace, with anything above that requiring an Enterprise package. Ask what one credit buys, because credits there are consumed by agent runs of varying complexity rather than by a fixed check.
Will my clients be shown Profound's rivals or mine?
In the 203 readings that named Profound, Otterly was named in 48.8% and Peec in 47.8%, against base rates of 29.9% and 25.2%. So a client researching Profound is very likely being shown those two as well, and much less likely being shown Semrush or Ahrefs than the overall figures would suggest.
How many client containers does each vendor publish?
Profound publishes a workspace per client with its own credit allowance. Depra publishes 5 client projects on its agency tier and 10 on the one above. Rankscale publishes 10, 25, 50 and 100 brand dashboard slots across four plans. Peec publishes 1, 2 and 5 projects on its monthly tiers.
Is the engine coverage the same for every client?
On Profound it is a tier question: its trial covers three engines and its Enterprise tier publishes up to nine. On Depra all four published engines are on every plan, with the rest as Enterprise add ons. On Peec it is three chosen models on every monthly tier, so a client who cares about a fourth assistant needs the annual plan.
Which number should an agency price its retainer against?
Clients, multiplied by questions each, multiplied by engines each client genuinely cares about, multiplied by the readings a month the retainer promised. That product is the thing every vendor in this set is really metering, whatever it calls the unit, and it decides whether a second tier of a cheaper vendor beats the entry tier of a dearer one.
The part of this an agency can check tonight
Take the three questions your best client would type into ChatGPT, put them in, and write down every vendor the answer names. Then do it on Gemini. If Profound, Otterly and Peec arrive together, you have reproduced the finding at the top of this page on your own client's category, which is the only version of it that matters to your next call. AI Knows Us exists because that exercise is tedious at scale and worth doing anyway, and the figures on this page come from running it 1,260 times.