The short verdict: Profound is the deeper dedicated answer-engine platform, built for teams treating AI visibility as its own channel, while Brand Radar is the smarter buy for anyone already living in Ahrefs, adding AI answers, YouTube and Reddit to the dashboard they check anyway.
Same young market, two different bets. Pricing below was verified from both vendors' pages this July.
| Profound | Ahrefs Brand Radar | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Standalone AEO platform | A visibility layer inside Ahrefs |
| Entry price | $99/mo billed yearly (Starter) | Base views in Ahrefs plans |
| Serious tier | $399/mo Growth, 3 engines | Brand Radar AI add-on from $199/mo |
| Engines at entry | ChatGPT only, 50 prompts | AI answers per Ahrefs' coverage |
| Beyond chat AI | No | YouTube and Reddit visibility |
| Prompt research scale | Credit-based agents | 271M+ organic prompt database |
| Prerequisite | None | An Ahrefs subscription |
| Built for | AEO as a program | SEO teams adding the AI lens |
What Profound actually is
Profound does one job: track and grow presence in AI answers. Your custom prompts run on a schedule, the answers get parsed for brand mentions and citations, and the workflows point at closing the gaps found.
The verified tiers: Starter at $99 a month billed yearly covers 50 tracked prompts on ChatGPT alone, Growth at $399 opens 3 engines and 100 prompts, Enterprise goes custom up to around ten engines. A credit-based agent system layers automation on top.
The Starter tier's ChatGPT-only scope is the honest fine print: real multi-engine coverage lives at $399, which is where Profound stops being an impulse buy and becomes a channel decision.
What Brand Radar actually is
Brand Radar answers a different buyer: you already track rankings and links in Ahrefs, and now AI share-of-voice appears beside them, plus visibility on YouTube and Reddit, the two platforms AI assistants themselves lean on heavily.
The scale card is its 271-million-prompt database for research: instead of only watching your own tracked prompts, you can explore what the prompt universe already asks about any brand. That research angle, plus custom prompt tracking, is the Brand Radar AI add-on from $199 a month.
The dependency is the trade: everything assumes an Ahrefs subscription underneath, so the true cost stacks the add-on on a plan, and the value case leans on using both layers.
Choose Profound if...
- AI visibility is becoming its own program with owned time and budget.
- You want the deepest dedicated workflows rather than another suite module.
- You are not an Ahrefs shop, so integration pulls nothing toward Brand Radar.
Choose Brand Radar if...
- You already pay for Ahrefs and want AI visibility beside your SEO data.
- YouTube and Reddit presence matter to you, since assistants cite both constantly.
- Prompt research at database scale appeals more than tracked-prompt depth.
The calibration both need
Whichever you pick, the metric stays an estimate: AI answers vary by phrasing, session and model day, so both tools sample a moving target. Read trends, compare rivals within one tool, and treat single-day changes as weather.
And run the free check first: the tracker roundup starts with a public leaderboard that answers "do assistants mention us at all" before any subscription conversation.
How we compared them
Pricing, tiers and coverage were pulled from both vendors' public pages in July 2026. Neither company sponsors this site and there are no affiliate links here.
The one-line takeaway: Profound is the specialist, $99 in and $399 for real multi-engine depth; Brand Radar is the integration play, base views in Ahrefs plans and a $199 add-on for prompt research at database scale. Buy the one that matches where AI visibility sits in your org, then trust trends, not points.