Proofsource vs Profound
Pick Profound if you are an enterprise that wants up to 9 answer engines, agent analytics through your CDN and a sales-led rollout. Pick Proofsource if you want ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews from the first free scan, a published starting price, and a 95% interval on every figure. Profound's free trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews; exports and the API come with Enterprise.
Proofsource and Profound in four facts
Price to start
- Proofsource
- Free trial, then plans from $9 a month (5 questions on ChatGPT, weekly)
- Profound
- Trial free; Enterprise at a custom price through a demo[1]
Free trial
- Proofsource
- 2 days free, 4 engines, no card
- Profound
- Free: 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews[1]
Engines covered
- Proofsource
- 4 on the trial, up to 4 on a paid plan
- Profound
- Trial: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. Enterprise: up to 9, adding Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude and Exa Search[1]
Re-read cadence
- Proofsource
- Daily, weekly or monthly, you choose
- Profound
- Daily (daily for 7 days on the trial)[1]
Profound or Proofsource: which should you pick?
Profound is an enterprise AI search platform: answer engine tracking, agent analytics and an AI marketing agent that runs on credits. Proofsource is an AI intelligence platform that shows which buyer questions name your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, who gets named instead, and exactly what to fix.
Choose Profound if
- You need up to 9 engines on one contract, including Exa Search, and SSO with SOC 2 compliance (both listed on Profound's Enterprise plan).
- You want AI-sourced traffic attribution through CDN integrations such as Cloudflare, Vercel and Akamai.
- You want an AI agent that runs research and content work on credits across your team.
Choose Proofsource if
- You want Perplexity and Claude in the free trial, before any demo.
- You want to see a paid starting price before you talk to anyone.
- You want to know whether a change is real before acting on it: every percentage carries a 95% Wilson interval.
Proofsource and Profound on the 9 questions buyers ask
Every Profound cell was read from Profound's own pages on Oct 5, 2026 and is footnoted to the page it came from. Prices are theirs, as shown to us; they change, so check the source before you buy.
| Question | Proofsource | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| Price to start | Free trial; then from $9 a month (5 questions on ChatGPT, weekly) | Trial free; Enterprise at a custom price through a demo[1] |
| Free trial | 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card, no sales call | Free: 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews[1] |
| Questions tracked | 25 buyer questions in the trial; paid plans pick their questions per brand, each priced per engine. Questions above 50 per brand are 20% off. | 50 unique prompts on the trial; a tailored prompt plan on Enterprise[1] |
| Engines covered | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews on the trial; paid plans pick from those 4, each priced per question, and Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI are enabled on a call |    Google AI Overviews Google AI Mode   Trial: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. Enterprise: up to 9, adding Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude and Exa Search[1] |
| Re-read cadence | Daily or weekly, chosen per plan; answer sets move 9-27% day over day in our sampling, so daily catches the most; the trial runs 2 scans a day apart[3] | Daily (daily for 7 days on the trial)[1] |
| How you buy | Self-serve: the trial gives answers the day you sign up, and checkout takes up to 1000 brands; above that, or for Managed where our team does the work, book a demo | Trial is self-serve; Enterprise goes through a demo[1] |
| Statistical confidence | 95% Wilson interval on every percentage; alerts wait until a change clears it[2] | Not published on its pricing page[1] |
| Root cause and fix | Each gap names the pages the engines cited instead, with a draft fix held for your approval | Opportunities (limited on the trial) found by its AI marketing agent, reusable Agents and Sheets[1] |
| Getting your data out | Full history as CSV or JSON, any date range; a REST API with API keys; switched on per customer, our team delivers it into Looker Studio or your BI tool | CSV and JSON exports and an API on Enterprise; none on the trial[1] |
How do Proofsource and Profound differ in AI visibility tracking?
Profound sells a wide engine panel and an AI marketing agent to enterprises through a demo; Proofsource sells measurement you can check, starting with a free trial on four engines. Profound's Enterprise plan lists up to 9 answer engines and its trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 days on 3 of them. Proofsource asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews from the first scan, publishes a 95% Wilson interval on every percentage, and holds alerts until a change clears that interval.
Where do Proofsource and Profound differ in features?
On the published record, three: an interval with every figure, Perplexity and Claude in the free trial, and a public starting price. Profound's pricing page publishes no confidence interval, its trial engines are ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and Enterprise is priced on a demo. Profound lists things Proofsource does not, too: SSO with SOC 2 compliance, Exa Search, and agent traffic attribution through CDN integrations.
Which tool is better for enterprise GEO and AEO strategies?
Profound, if the deciding factors are procurement and breadth: its Enterprise plan lists up to 9 engines, SSO/SAML with SOC 2 compliance, dedicated support and a 24-hour SLA option. Proofsource sells 4 engines per brand at self-serve checkout, with SSO switched on per customer; its case rests on intervals, named cited pages per gap and drafted fixes, not on a larger contract.
Where Proofsource shines: 4 things it is built to do.
Each one is a mechanism: what runs, how often, and what would catch us out if it were not true.
The free trial is the real report.
The free trial asks 25 buyer questions on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, 2 scans a day apart, and hands back what a subscriber reads: which questions name you on which engine, who is named instead, and the pages each engine cited. No card, no call. One per company domain.
Every number arrives with the interval it was measured at.
Ask an engine the same question twice and you can get two answers, so one read is a draw, not a fact. We publish a 95% Wilson interval on every percentage and hold alerts until a change clears it. A tool that treats a single run as a finding will sell you progress on a day you did nothing.[2]
Four engines from the free trial, 4 on the price card.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews run side by side from the free trial upward, each priced per question on paid plans; Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI are enabled on a call. The questions are re-asked on their own on the cadence you pick: daily or weekly. The full history leaves as CSV or JSON over any date range, or through the REST API, so the record is yours.
Each gap names the page that beat you, then drafts the answer.
A gap carries the sources the engines cited instead of you. Then a draft built on what those pages have and yours does not, held for a human to approve, because nothing should publish itself in your name.
Already using Profound?
You do not have to choose on day one. Here is how teams run Proofsource beside Profound and decide on their own data.
Keep Profound running
Nothing about trying Proofsource needs you to stop Profound. Your history and reports there stay where they are.
Bring your questions across
Export or copy the prompts you track in Profound and add them as buyer questions in Proofsource, so both tools ask the same things.
Run both side by side
Read the two for the same days on your own domain. Where the numbers differ, Proofsource shows the answers and the pages each engine cited, so you can see why.
Keep what serves your team
Many teams keep one tool for reporting and another for fixes. Pick on your own evidence, not on a comparison page.
Proofsource or Profound: what buyers ask
Is there a free trial of Profound?
Yes. Profound's pricing page lists a free trial of 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI agent credits and no exports or API.
Does Profound publish its price?
Not for paid plans. Profound lists one paid plan, Enterprise, at a custom price through a demo.
Is there a free trial of Proofsource?
Yes. 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card, no sales call. One free trial per company domain, and the report is about your own domain.
Which AI engines does Proofsource track?
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews on the trial; paid plans pick from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview and Claude, each priced per question.
How often does Proofsource re-read the answers?
On the cadence each plan picks: daily or weekly. Answer sets move 9-27% day over day in our own sampling, so daily catches the most. The free trial runs 2 scans a day apart.
Where do the Profound facts on this page come from?
From Profound's own public pages, linked in the Sources list with the date we read them. We have not run Profound on a domain of our own, so no measured number on this page is theirs. If a row is out of date, tell us and we will change it.
Where each fact on this page comes from.
- Profound pricing, read Oct 5, 2026. Profound's own page; no third-party roundup is used as a source.
- Wilson score interval. The interval we put on every visibility percentage. Introduced by E. B. Wilson in 1927 and standard for binomial proportions, because it stays honest at small sample sizes and near 0% or 100% where the naive normal approximation breaks.
- Proofsource sampling: day-over-day change in which brands get named, same question one day apart. Perplexity 27%, ChatGPT 18%, Google AI Overviews 12%, Claude 9%. How we measure.
Found a Profound row that has changed? Tell us and we will correct it here.
More sourced comparisons
A free trial settles this faster than either of us can write about it.
200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card, and the report is about your domain: which buyer questions name you, who is named instead, and the pages each engine cited.
Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Mode
