Profound vs Ahrefs Brand Radar, the measurement you may already be paying for against the one you have to commission

Check your existing subscriptions before you shortlist either of these. Read on 31 October 2026, ahrefs.com/pricing publishes 150 checks on AI prompts included with Lite at $129 a month, 300 with Standard at $249, 600 with Advanced at $449 and from 2,500 with Enterprise at $1,499, and ahrefs.com/brand-radar states that Prompt Tracking is free for every paid Ahrefs Lite plan and above. If your SEO team already pays one of those bills, the first month of AI visibility measurement costs nothing extra. On the same day tryprofound.com/pricing publishes a free Trial of 50 unique prompts run daily for 7 days, and then Enterprise at Custom, with no figure anywhere in the visible page.

Both vendors publish a unit. Only one of them publishes what the unit costs

Ahrefs is specific about its arithmetic. Its Brand Radar page states that each prompt is checked daily on every selected platform, gives a worked example, 5 prompts on 1 platform equals 150 checks a month, and then states that Claude consumes 8 checks per update. Its AI Visibility Index product is priced at $199 a month and described as mapping visibility across 519 million real prompts, with 83 prompts a day, 2,500 checks a month included and overage at $0.020 a check billed monthly. Its pricing page also publishes three custom prompt packages for buyers who only want to track their own questions, Basic at $50 a month with 2,500 checks and overage at $0.020, Growth at $100 with 7,000 checks and overage at $0.015, and Scale at $250 with 25,000 checks and overage at $0.010, with its own examples attached, 80 prompts daily on one platform at the Basic tier and 100 prompts daily on two platforms at Growth. The Brand Radar page prints $699 a month for all models.

Profound publishes the scope and not the cost. Its grid sets the Trial at 50 unique prompts, daily for 7 days, on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with one language and one region, and marks History, Exports, API and Support as None and SSO as No. Enterprise is where everything arrives at once: up to 9 Answer Engines tracked, all time history, CSV and JSON exports, API access, SSO and SAML with SOC 2 compliance, custom languages and regions, and support up to a dedicated specialist with a 24 hour service level.

The seat question runs the opposite way to the usual story

The specialist in this pair is the generous one on people and the suite is the one that meters them. Profound's comparison grid publishes Seats as Unlimited on both plans, free trial included, and its own FAQ repeats that both plans include unlimited seats. Ahrefs publishes 1 user included on every paid plan, then add 2 more users at $40 a month each on Lite, 5 more at $60 each on Standard and 10 more at $80 each on Advanced.

That matters because AI visibility reporting gets read by more people than SEO reporting does. A single Brand Radar dashboard that four people need to open is $129 plus three users on Lite, which is more than the plan itself. The same four people on Profound cost nothing extra at either tier. It is the clearest published difference between these two and it is easy to miss, because it sits on the plan page rather than the product page.

What each one is actually built around

Question	Profound	Ahrefs Brand Radar
Cheapest route in	Free trial, 50 prompts daily for 7 days	Bundled with a paid Ahrefs plan from $129 a month
Published unit	Prompts tracked, plus credits for agent runs	Checks, defined as one prompt on one platform on one day
Cost of one more check	Not published	$0.020, $0.015 or $0.010 by package, billed at the end of the month
Claude	Named in the Enterprise capability list	Available, and stated as consuming 8 checks per update
Prompt database	Profound Index, named on the site	AI Visibility Index, published as 519 million real prompts, $199 a month
Seats	Unlimited on both plans	1 included, then $40, $60 or $80 a month per extra user by tier
Payment routes	Not published	Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay, and wire transfer on request for Enterprise
Annual commitment	Not published	Required on the $1,499 Enterprise plan

Two different answers to the same question about your market

Ahrefs sells two distinct things and the distinction is the most useful part of its page. Prompt Tracking is you writing the questions, and the page recommends it when your niche is too specific to appear in any database. The AI Visibility Index is a database of prompts already asked, and the page says plainly that it is best once your brand already appears in AI search. That is a genuinely useful piece of guidance from a vendor about when not to buy its more expensive product.

Profound is a single path. You get a recommended prompt set on the Trial, which its FAQ states cannot be edited, and the ability to edit, disable or add prompts arrives at Enterprise. So a brand that wants to test its own exact buying questions without a sales conversation can do that on Ahrefs from $50 a month and cannot do it on Profound at all.

Which one to pick

• You already pay for Ahrefs. Start there this week. 150 checks and 5 AI prompts on Lite is a small prompt set, and it is enough to find out whether the engines name you at all before anybody signs anything new.
• You want to know what is being asked, not just how you score on what you guessed. Brand Radar AI from $199 a month is the only published route in this pair to a prompt database with a price on it. If you only want your own questions watched, the $50, $100 and $250 packages are cheaper and the page says so itself.
• You are briefing an agency or an enterprise programme. Profound, because the governance set, SSO, SAML, SOC 2, API and all time history, is published as one tier rather than assembled from add ons.
• You need many readers on the same report. Profound, on its published unlimited seats, and it is the one line in this comparison where the free tier of the specialist beats the paid tier of the suite.

What we publish against the same two columns

We are a vendor in this category, so here is the comparable set from our own pricing page, read 31 October 2026. GEO Growth is $299 a month for 100 buyer questions, 1,200 scheduled answers a month and all five engines including Claude, with a Claude check priced at 3 credits against 1 for a standard check. GEO Scale is $599 and adds a Visibility API. Both tiers also include pages written and published, 20 a month on Growth and 40 on Scale, which is work neither vendor on this page sells.

Where Ahrefs is simply ahead of us, and it is not close: it publishes a web index, backlink data, rank tracking and site audit in the same bill, and we publish none of those. If your shortlist exists because one subscription has to cover search and AI search together, that is an argument for Ahrefs and nothing on our page answers it. We also publish one login with full access, where Profound publishes unlimited seats, and our checks run weekly on priority questions where both vendors here publish daily.

On the evidence side, our own second audit recorded six citations in 1,260 readings, none of them in the United States, and we publish that rather than a satisfaction score. If you want to see how the published record of a vendor in this category can be read before buying, our page on Profound reviews compared with what it publishes instead works through exactly that for the other half of this pair.

Questions about choosing between Profound and Ahrefs

Is Brand Radar a separate purchase from Ahrefs

Prompt Tracking is not. The Brand Radar page states it is free for every paid Ahrefs Lite plan and above, and the plan pages publish the included check counts, 150, 300, 600 and from 2,500. Beyond the bundle, the pricing page publishes three custom prompt packages, $50 for 2,500 checks, $100 for 7,000 and $250 for 25,000, and a Brand Radar AI product from $199 a month that adds the 519 million prompt index.

How many AI prompts do 150 checks actually buy

Ahrefs answers this on its own page: 5 prompts on 1 platform equals 150 checks a month, because each prompt is checked daily on every selected platform. Add a second platform and the same five prompts consume 300. Add Claude and each update of a prompt consumes 8 checks rather than 1.

Can I use my own buying questions on Profound's free trial

No. Its FAQ states that Trial users receive a recommended prompt set based on their industry and cannot customise their prompts, and that editing, disabling or adding prompts is an Enterprise capability.

Which one is cheaper for a small team

Ahrefs, if the team already holds a plan, because the AI checks are included. If nothing is held yet, compare $129 a month for Lite with one seat against Profound's free week, and then against what Profound quotes, which is not published.

Does either publish an index size

Ahrefs does, as 519 million real prompts on its Brand Radar page read on 31 October 2026. Profound names a Profound Index in its navigation and publishes no size on the pricing page. An index figure changes as the index grows, so a number without a date beside it is worth re reading before you quote it.

What does an enterprise contract actually unlock at each one

At Profound, governance and coverage together: SSO, SAML, SOC 2, API, all time history, exports, and up to 9 engines against the trial's 3. At Ahrefs, mostly governance and limits: uncapped API, custom endpoints, SSO, access management and audit log, unlimited historical data, and from 2,500 AI checks, on a plan published at $1,499 a month with an annual commitment required.

How we know this

We read the assistants rather than guessing what they do. In our own audit of 1,260 saved answers from ChatGPT and Gemini across the United States, the United Kingdom and India, 82.0% of every citation landed on a site the business itself owned, and review directories took 0.7%. Counted as one domain per reading, 16,516 of 20,143.

That is the whole asymmetry: the pages you own are the pages an assistant quotes back to a buyer. See the dated readings and the method on our proof page.

Find out whether assistants name your business, on your own domain and your own buying questions.

By Aditya Goel, Founder, AI Knows Us. Reviewed 1 November 2026.