Profound vs Semrush: a point product against an Adobe company, and what the acquisition changed about the buy

Choose Semrush if AI answer reporting needs to sit beside the keyword, site audit and backlink work your team already does, and if a large vendor relationship is an advantage in your organisation rather than an obstacle. Choose Profound if AI answers are the whole job, because its enterprise tier publishes nine named answer engines, all time history, CSV and JSON exports, an API and a named integration list for the CDNs and hosts AI traffic arrives through. The thing to know before you compare quotes is that one of these two is no longer an independent company.

What Semrush's own newsroom says, read 20 October 2026

semrush.com/news returned HTTP 200 and carries these entries, each with its own date on the page:

• "Adobe Completes Semrush Acquisition, Strengthening CX Enterprise with Enhanced Brand Visibility Capabilities", dated 28 April 2026.
• "Introducing Adobe Brand Visibility: A Unified Solution for the AI Search Era", dated 17 June 2026, described on the page as bringing together "Semrush's AI visibility intelligence with Adobe's agentic content optimization capabilities".
• "Semrush, an Adobe Company, Named in Gartner Market Guide for Answer Engine Visibility Tools", dated 7 July 2026.
• "Semrush Releases Expanded 2026 AI Visibility Index, Analyzing 126 Million AI Search Prompts", dated 26 June 2026, and a further index release with a first UK benchmark dated 13 October 2026.

The page's own boilerplate now reads "Semrush, an Adobe company, is the leading brand visibility platform" and states over 28 million users globally. That is the company describing itself, quoted rather than paraphrased.

One practical consequence showed up in the same reading. semrush.com/ai-toolkit returned HTTP 404 to both a Chrome on Windows request and a Safari on macOS request, with the document title "Page not found | Semrush", while semrush.com/pricing and semrush.com/news both returned 200 in the same session. The AI product pages its own newsroom links to today are semrush.com/features/ai-visibility/, semrush.com/features/prompt-research/ and semrush.com/one/. If you are working from a comparison written earlier in the year, check the URL before you check the feature list.

What our own readings say about the two names

On 16 October 2026 we put 630 buying questions to ChatGPT and Gemini across three markets, took 1,260 readings and saved the answer text. Counting one naming per reading, Semrush appeared in the answer text of 443 readings and Profound in 219. Semrush is the most named vendor in our whole run.

556 readings named at least one. 106 named both in the same answer. 337 named Semrush without Profound and 113 named Profound without Semrush. Gemini drove most of the joint appearances, 71 against ChatGPT's 35.

Read the asymmetry carefully. Semrush being named twice as often as the specialist is a fact about how much of the web discusses a platform with 28 million users, and it is not a statement about which tool reports AI answers better. A name in answer text is also a different event from a domain in a source list, and we never combine the two.

The criterion this page uses

We sell a competing product, we have tested neither of these, and nothing here is scored. What is readable and dateable is each company's own published description of what the AI work covers and where it sits: a module inside a platform, or a platform of its own. For a buyer comparing these two that is the decision, because it determines what you are really buying and who else in your company has to agree to it.

The two shapes of purchase

Field	Semrush, an Adobe company	Profound
What the AI work is	A set of features inside a wider marketing platform, named on its own site as AI visibility, prompt research and AI brand sentiment	The entire product, named on its own site as monitor, answer engine insights, prompt volumes, agent analytics and AI marketer
Ownership	Acquired by Adobe, completed 28 April 2026 per its own newsroom	Independent, per its own site
Published route to buy	A pricing page with a free seven day trial offered on its newsroom footer	A free seven day trial, then Enterprise marked Custom
Entry engine coverage	Its AI visibility feature page describes ChatGPT, AI Overviews and other LLMs. Read the current feature page for the enumerated list	Trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews
Top tier engine coverage	Read the current feature and solutions pages, which its newsroom links	Up to nine answer engines, enumerated on the pricing page
Published research	An AI visibility index at its own subdomain, with a stated prompt volume behind it	An index and an AEO report on its own resources menu
Data out	Reporting and an API are long standing parts of the platform. Confirm on the current pricing page	CSV and JSON exports, an API and all time history on enterprise; none on the trial

No price figures from either company appear here. Both publish their own, and a copy on our page would be a claim about somebody else's business that we had stopped checking.

The question the acquisition actually changes

It is not about product quality. It is about where the AI reporting ends up being sold from. The June 2026 Adobe Brand Visibility announcement describes Semrush's AI visibility intelligence being combined with Adobe's content optimisation under a single solution aimed at enterprises. If your company already runs Adobe products, that is a route worth asking about, because it may be a conversation with an existing supplier rather than a new procurement. If your company does not, a mid market Semrush subscription and an enterprise Adobe solution are two different purchases wearing related names, and the first question for the sales call is which one you are being quoted.

Either way, ask where the AI data leaves the platform, because most teams end up joining it to analytics and to the rest of their reporting. The joining problem is the same on both sides of this comparison, and the 22 documents from 12 companies we read on integrations sets out which vendors publish the connection and which leave it to the call.

Who each one suits

• You already pay for Semrush. Read the current AI visibility feature page and find out what your existing subscription covers before buying a second product. Procurement time has a cost too.
• AI answers are the only thing you are measuring. A specialist's pricing page enumerates engines, exports and history in one table. That is a shorter evaluation.
• You are an Adobe customer. Ask your Adobe account team about Brand Visibility by name, and ask how it relates to the Semrush subscription tiers, because the newsroom describes them as connected rather than identical.
• You need the raw answer text. Profound lists CSV, JSON and an API on enterprise. For Semrush, confirm the export format and whether it includes answer text rather than only scores.
• You report to a board every month. Both companies publish research with stated prompt volumes. A vendor that publishes its own method is easier to defend in a board paper than one that publishes only a score.

Questions buyers ask when choosing between Profound and Semrush

Is Semrush still Semrush after the Adobe acquisition?

Its own newsroom records the acquisition as completing on 28 April 2026 and its boilerplate now reads "Semrush, an Adobe company". The brand, the pricing page and the product names are all still in place, and a separate Adobe branded solution was announced on 17 June 2026. Ask which of the two you are being quoted.

Why did the old AI Toolkit URL stop working?

semrush.com/ai-toolkit returned HTTP 404 on 20 October 2026 to two different browser agents, while other pages on the same host returned 200. Its newsroom links to AI visibility and prompt research feature pages instead. Product pages get reorganised, which is why any comparison you read in this category needs the date it was written attached to it.

Which one do the assistants recommend more?

In our 1,260 readings on 16 October 2026, Semrush was named in 443 and Profound in 219, with both in the same answer 106 times. Mention counts follow how much of the web discusses a name. Use them to decide who belongs on a shortlist, not to rank the shortlist.

Can a platform module be as good as a specialist?

It depends on what you need out of it, and the honest test is the same for both: the enumerated engine list on the tier you are quoted, the refresh cadence, and whether you get the answer text. Ask for those three in writing and the question answers itself for your own case.

Why does this page carry no prices?

We record prices and do not restate them, including competitors'. Both companies publish figures that are current on their own pages, and a restated price goes stale into a false statement.

The one thing worth doing before either call

Ask an assistant the questions your own buyers ask, with your company name left out of the prompt, and read who it names. That reading costs nothing and it tells you whether your problem is measurement or absence. We ran exactly that exercise on our own category in October 2026, found our own name in none of 1,260 readings, and published the count rather than the conclusion we would have preferred.