Tonecast vs Profound: which AI visibility tool fits you?
Profound is an enterprise AI visibility platform: its pricing page lists a free 7-day trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan covering nine answer engines. Tonecast is self-serve from $34 (€29) a month, covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, and adds confidence intervals, formative sources, claim checking and early signals. Profound fits large organisations with procurement. Tonecast fits teams that buy a plan online.
How this comparison was made. Tonecast wrote this page, so read it as a vendor's comparison. Every figure about Profound comes from its own public pages on the date above, linked in the sources below; where a page did not state something, the table says so rather than guessing. No test account was used. If a figure is out of date, write to support@tonecast.io and it will be corrected.
What is Profound?
Profound describes itself as an AI visibility platform "engineered for marketers with higher standards" and states enterprise capabilities "trusted by a third of the Fortune 100". Its site names Answer Engine Insights, Citation Analytics, Sentiment, Prompt Volumes built on "billions of real user conversations", Shopping (visibility in ChatGPT Shopping at SKU level), Agent Analytics with benchmarking and fact-checking of crawler traffic, an AI Marketer with agents and a context manager, 200+ integrations, and security features such as RBAC, SCIM and SOC 2.
What is Tonecast?
Tonecast is a SaaS platform that shows what AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity) say about a brand, product, person or topic, and which web pages shaped those answers. Tonecast (tonecast.io) samples the engines every week through their official APIs, reports every rate with a 95% confidence interval, builds a source graph of the pages behind the answers in three tiers (Cited, Formative, Owned), checks the factual claims in the answers against your fact sheet, and tests whether the sources move before the answers do (Early signals). It is not to be confused with other products that share the name.
How do prices compare?
Profound does not publish plan prices. On 10 November 2026 its pricing page showed two columns, a free trial and an Enterprise plan on custom annual terms; its FAQ also mentions a self-serve "Agency Growth" plan with 400 AI Marketer credits per client workspace, without a price. Third-party reviews report self-serve tiers that were not on the pricing page when we checked, so only the vendor's own page is reproduced here.
Profound plans, 10 November 2026
| Plan | Price | Prompts | AI engines | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | free, 7 days | 50, run daily | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews | 1 language, 1 region, unlimited seats, limited AI Marketer credits, no projects |
| Agency Growth | not published | not published | not published | self-serve; 400 AI Marketer credits per client workspace |
| Enterprise | custom, annual | custom, tracked daily | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews, Exa Search, Muse Spark | custom languages and regions, ChatGPT Shopping, API, CSV and JSON exports, SSO/SAML, SOC 2, dedicated support |
Tonecast's four plans are listed above with their limits. There is no trial: a free check shows what ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answer about your own brand, and the public demo shows every Tonecast view on fictitious brands, both with no account and no card.
Tonecast plans, 10 November 2026
| Plan | Price | Tracked prompts | AI engines per campaign | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | $34 / €29 / month | 20 per language | 3 | 1 campaign, 1 workspace, 300 source pages, 6 months of source history |
| Starter | $91 / €79 / month | 40 per language | 3 | 3 campaigns, alerts, early warnings, gap & action list, Launch Mode |
| Pro | $284 / €249 / month | 80 per language | 4 | 10 campaigns, Compare, PowerPoint export, shared views, Gemini as an engine |
| Agency | $627 / €549 / month | 200 per language | 4 | 30 campaigns, 10 workspaces (one per client), white label, public API |
Tonecast prices are in US dollars, or in euros for companies in Europe, taxes excluded; yearly billing is 20% less, and a pack of 25 extra prompts costs $45 (€39) a month on any plan. Engines are ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity on every plan and Gemini on Pro and Agency; Google AI Overviews is on the way. Full limits are on the pricing page.
Like for like
There is no like-for-like plan. Profound's trial gives 50 prompts run daily for a week on three engines; after that, the published route is a sales conversation. Tonecast Essential ($34, or €29 in Europe) gives 20 prompts per language on three engines, sampled weekly with six runs per prompt and engine a month, and can be bought online in a few minutes. If your organisation needs SSO, SCIM and a security questionnaire, Profound is built for that procurement; Tonecast offers a DPA and EU hosting but no SSO today.
Which AI engines does each cover?
Profound's Enterprise plan lists ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search; the trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Tonecast covers ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity on every plan and Gemini on Pro and Agency, through the engines' official APIs with web search or grounding; Google AI Overviews is on the way, and AI Mode, DeepSeek, Exa Search and Muse Spark are not covered.
What does each one measure?
The left column reproduces what Profound's pages state; the right column is what Tonecast does today. "Not stated" means the vendor's pages checked on 10 November 2026 did not describe it, not that the product lacks it.
| Question | Profound | Tonecast |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility in AI answers | "Visibility Score by Platform" and an AI Brand Visibility ranking with a category-wide baseline | AI visibility rate per engine, prompt, category, language and country, with a 95% confidence interval |
| Position in the answer | Not stated on the pages checked | Not reported as a rank; Tonecast reports presence, tone, recommendation rate and share of voice instead |
| Tone or sentiment | Sentiment: "understand the narrative and the sources driving it" | Tone in AI, from −100 to +100, measured towards the subject rather than on the whole answer |
| Share of voice | Not stated on the pages checked | Share of voice in AI answers against the competitors you declare |
| Cited sources | Citation Analytics: "sources cited across answers" | Cited pages per engine, language and country, kept in full with each answer |
| Sources beyond the citations | Not described | Yes: a source graph in three tiers (Cited, Formative, Owned), each page with an influence weight per engine and the reason it was included |
| Fact-check of what AI says | FactCheck is named under Agent Analytics (crawler traffic), not as a check of what AI says about the brand | Claim check on every plan: each factual claim in an answer is classified as consistent, incorrect, outdated or unverifiable against your fact sheet, with the pages that carry it |
| Early warning before answers change | Not stated on the pages checked | Early signals: a lead indicator that tests whether the sources moved before the answers, switched on only when the pattern is statistically significant after correction for multiple testing |
| Uncertainty reported | Not stated on the pages checked | Every rate carries a 95% confidence interval, and each campaign has a methodology card |
| Tracking frequency | Daily (trial and Enterprise) | Weekly sampling through official APIs with web search or grounding; 6 runs per prompt and engine a month on Essential, 8 on the other plans |
| Prompt demand or volume data | Prompt Volumes: demand estimated from "billions of real user conversations"; history, exports and API on Enterprise | No prompt-volume or demand data |
| AI crawler and referral analytics | Agent Analytics with benchmarking, integrations with Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Analytics, Google Cloud, Netlify, Vercel and WordPress | No log-based AI crawler analytics |
| Recommendations and actions | AI Marketer, Agents and a Context Manager that generate work from the data | Gap & action list (Starter and up): prompts where only competitors appear, wrong claims and the pages carrying them, information gaps. Tonecast never writes content for you |
| Languages and countries | 1 language and 1 region on the trial; custom on Enterprise | Any language and country; a prompt is counted once per language |
| Users | Unlimited seats | No per-user pricing; members and roles per workspace |
| Exports and integrations | CSV and JSON exports and API on Enterprise; 200+ integrations | CSV exports, PDF report (all plans), PowerPoint export and shared views (Pro and Agency), read-only public API (Agency) |
| Data hosting and compliance stated | SOC 2, SSO/SAML, RBAC and SCIM stated; hosting location not stated | Data hosted in the European Union (Germany), with a DPA and a published sub-processor list |
| Free trial | Free 7-day trial | No free trial; a free check of your own brand on ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity (one answer per question, no account) and a public demo on fictitious brands |
When is Profound the better choice?
- You are an enterprise that needs SSO, SCIM, SOC 2 and a dedicated specialist.
- You need nine answer engines, including AI Mode, DeepSeek and Exa Search.
- You sell products and want ChatGPT Shopping visibility at SKU level.
- You want prompt volume estimates and an AI agent that drafts the work.
When is Tonecast the better choice?
- You want a published price and a plan you can buy online, from $34 (€29) a month.
- You need confidence intervals and a methodology card you can show in a meeting.
- You want to know which formative pages shaped the answers, not only the cited ones.
- You want claim checking of what AI says against your own fact sheet.
- You need EU hosting with a DPA.
Tonecast has limits of its own: it samples weekly rather than daily, covers four engines, has no prompt-volume data, no log-based crawler analytics and no content generation, and offers no free trial beyond the one-off free check. The methodology page lists them in full.
Questions people ask
How much does Profound cost?
Profound does not publish prices. On 10 November 2026 its pricing page listed a free 7-day trial and a custom-priced Enterprise plan; a self-serve Agency Growth plan is mentioned without a price. Tonecast publishes four plans from $34 (€29) a month.
Does Tonecast have a free trial like Profound?
No. Every sampled answer is a paid API call, so Tonecast offers a one-off free check of your own brand (ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, one answer per question) and a public demo of every view on fictitious brands, both with no account. Profound offers a 7-day trial with 50 prompts on three engines.
Which tool covers more AI engines?
Profound's Enterprise plan lists nine answer engines. Tonecast covers four (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini), each through its official API with web search or grounding enabled.
Sources and verification
Read on 10 November 2026. Vendors change prices and features often: check the linked pages before deciding.
- Profound pricing, read on 10 November 2026.
- Profound home page, read on 10 November 2026.
- Tonecast pricing, as published on 10 November 2026.
- Tonecast features, as published on 10 November 2026.
- Tonecast plan catalogue (JSON), as published on 10 November 2026.
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