Verified Tools and Profound both track how AI engines talk about a brand, at very different scales. As of 2026-09-29 Profound publishes no self-serve price at all — a free 7-day trial, then custom Enterprise pricing — while Verified Tools' entry plan is $39 per quarter (≈$13/month) for 15 prompts across five engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews.
Disclosure: we make Verified Tools. Everything stated about Profound comes from its public pricing and product pages on the date shown; we have not used its paid product, and we make no claims about its data quality.
⚠️ Correction, 2026-09-29. An earlier version of this page (checked 2026-09-12) described a $99/month Starter tier covering ChatGPT only, and a $399/month Growth tier. Both are gone from Profound's pricing page as of today. We are leaving this note rather than quietly swapping the numbers, because a comparison page that changes its facts without saying so is not worth reading. If you find another article quoting $99/month for Profound, check the date on it.
What Profound is (per its pricing page, 2026-09-29)
Profound is an enterprise answer-engine-optimization platform:
| Plan | Price | Engines | Prompts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | Free, 7 days | 3 — ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews | 50, not editable |
| Enterprise | Custom | 9 — adds Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Exa Search | Custom |
Enterprise adds editable prompts, custom languages and regions, and daily tracking. The trial runs a recommended prompt set you cannot change, in one language and one region.
The structural difference is no longer price, it is whether you can buy it at all. A solo maker or small SaaS can sign up for the trial but cannot convert to a paid plan without a sales conversation. That is a reasonable way to run an enterprise product; it just means the two tools no longer overlap for a self-serve buyer.
What Verified Tools is
Verified Tools is an AI-visibility monitor built into a hand-reviewed tools directory:
| Plan | Price | Engines | Prompts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $39 / quarter (≈$13/mo) | 5 — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews | 15 |
| Standard | $199 / quarter (≈$66/mo) | same 5 | 60 |
| Premium | $599 / quarter (≈$200/mo) | same 5 | 200 |
Scans run weekly, and every plan reads the same five engines — Claude and Google AI Overviews are not add-ons or enterprise gates. The monitor lives inside a hand-reviewed directory where any tool can get a free listing with a dofollow link.
The comparison that matters: engine coverage per dollar
On Profound, tracking Claude requires the custom-priced Enterprise tier; the free trial covers three engines and cannot be edited. Our measurement logs show why multi-engine coverage changes conclusions: on 2026-09-11, across our own frozen 53-prompt set, ChatGPT cited our tracked domain 0 times in 53 answers while Perplexity cited it 8 times in the same week. A one-engine view of that week would have read "invisible"; the five-engine view read "invisible on ChatGPT, established on Perplexity — go fix the ChatGPT side." Single-engine sampling isn't a smaller version of the answer. It can be the opposite answer.
When each is the right choice
- Choose Profound if you're an enterprise or agency that needs nine engines, custom regions, and daily tracking — and has budget and procurement time for custom pricing.
- Choose Verified Tools if you're a maker or small SaaS that wants all five mainstream engines watched weekly for the price of a couple of coffees a month, with a directory listing included.
- Either way, start free: our checker runs live prompts for any domain without signup, which is also a fair way to sanity-check whether AI engines mention you at all before paying anyone.