Comparison · Profound
Profound AI vs Cited: tool or team?
Profound AI is an AI visibility platform for marketing teams: it tracks how answer engines mention your brand and gives you agents to act on it. Cited is a done-for-you service: the same kind of tracking, plus strategists and copywriters who ship the content and listings, and report what moved.
Updated · By the Cited team · Facts about other vendors checked
The short answer
Profound and Cited both track how AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews talk about your brand. They differ in who does the work afterwards. Profound gives an in-house team a platform, with AI agents that draft content inside it. Cited gives you a team: our strategists and copywriters act on the data, ship the work, and report every week on what moved.
Profound AI and Cited side by side
| Profound | Cited | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A software platform, used by your team | A service: the platform plus strategists and copywriters |
| Engines | ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on the trial; up to 9 on Enterprise, including Perplexity, AI Mode, Copilot, Claude, DeepSeek and Exa | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Claude, plus Google Search |
| Price | Free trial (50 prompts, 7 days), then Enterprise at a custom price, sold through a demo | Quoted for your business on a Strategy Call; three months to start, then month to month |
| Content | Agents that create and optimise content in the platform | Copywriters write and publish content; we also fix listings and technical SEO |
| Measuring results | Benchmarking and citation analytics | Weekly report from your strategist; lift measured against untouched control prompts |
| API and exports | CSV and JSON exports and an API on Enterprise | No public API or exports |
| Free start | A 7-day free trial | A free AI visibility audit |
What Profound does well
Profound is one of the best-funded companies in AI visibility: it announced a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation on 15 September 2026, co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Its home page names customers such as Plaid, MongoDB, Ramp and Zoom.
- Engine coverage. Up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise, more than we track.
- Product depth. Prompt volumes, agent analytics for AI crawler visits, shopping, FactCheck and citation analytics, all in one platform.
- Data access. Enterprise includes all-time history, CSV and JSON exports, an API, SSO and SOC 2.
- A free trial. 50 prompts on three engines for 7 days, with unlimited seats.
Where Cited is different
Profound sells software to people who will act on it. Cited sells the acting. Our team picks the prompts with you, finds the sources each engine cites, writes the pages and articles that answer the prompt, fixes your profiles and listings, and earns placements on the sites the engines read. Every week your strategist sends a report: what moved, what changed and what we do next.
We also measure the work. Some of your prompts get new content and some, the controls, don’t. Comparing the two shows what the work changed, apart from the market. That is the core of how we close the loop.
The trade-off is plain: Cited has no self-serve plan, no public API and no exports, and you pay for a team, not a software seat. If your team already has writers and SEO specialists with time to spare, a platform like Profound can be the better buy.
What is inside the Profound platform
Profound’s home and pricing pages list a broad set of modules. Answer Engine Insights and Citation Analytics show how engines describe you and which sources they use. Prompt Volumes estimates how often questions are asked. Agent Analytics reports AI crawler visits through integrations with Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Analytics, Google Cloud, Netlify, Vercel and WordPress. FactCheck, Sentiment, Benchmarking and a Command Center round it out, with more than 200 integrations.
For agencies, Profound’s agencies page promises centralised client management, a dedicated agency team and go-to-market support. Its pricing FAQ also names a self-serve Agency Growth plan with credits for each client workspace, without a published price. Cited serves agencies differently: one organization with a workspace per client, brand or location, read-only access for each client, and our team doing the content and SEO work behind it.
Which should you choose?
Choose Profound if
- You are a large brand with an in-house content and SEO team ready to act on the data.
- You need many engines, an API, exports or SSO for your own reporting stack.
- You want to try the platform yourself first, with a free trial.
Choose Cited if
- You want to be cited in AI answers but don’t have the people to write and ship the work.
- You want listings, content and technical SEO handled together, by one team.
- You want to see whether the work, not the market, moved your numbers.
Still deciding? Our roundup of the best AI visibility tools and our list of Profound alternatives cover the rest of the field.
Questions
How much does Profound AI cost?
Profound’s pricing page shows a free trial (50 prompts on three engines for 7 days) and an Enterprise plan with a custom price. Lower monthly tiers quoted elsewhere come from third-party pages, not Profound’s own.
Does Profound write content?
Profound offers agents for content creation and optimisation inside its platform. We found no Profound-branded done-for-you writing service; a partner agency sells a managed programme built on Profound.
Is Cited cheaper than Profound?
It depends on what you compare. Cited’s price is quoted for your business and includes the team that does the work. Profound’s Enterprise price is custom, and the content and SEO work would still need people of your own.
Which engines does Cited track?
ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Claude, plus Google Search. Our team runs the prompts and reads the answers for you.