What is the main difference between Gauge and Profound?

What each one does after the measurement. Gauge's Content Engine drafts 18 publish-ready, AI-search-optimised articles a month targeted at the gaps its tracking found, so the output is finished copy. Profound meters Agents credits instead (limited on the trial, a custom pool on Enterprise), powering Agents and its Aim weekly priority list, so the output is direction and capacity rather than delivered content. Nothing on Profound's site indicates it writes articles for customers.

Which one tracks more AI answers for the money?

Only Gauge can be compared on price: its Growth plan runs 600 prompts across 6 platforms daily for 108,000 AI answers a month at $599. Profound sets Enterprise volumes per contract and publishes no price. Read from both pricing pages on 2026-10-18.

Can a small team afford Gauge?

Only at $599 a month, because Gauge publishes no tier below its Growth plan. There is a one-week complimentary trial and then a single self-serve price. Profound offers a free 7-day trial, but its only paid plan is a custom Enterprise contract, so it is not the cheaper route.

Which one tells you what people are actually asking AI assistants?

Profound. Its Prompt Volumes product reports what people ask AI assistants across the market, and the Profound Index benchmarks positioning by industry, which is demand-side data about the category rather than about your brand. Gauge has no equivalent. Its data advantage points the other way, correlating detected AI citations against real referral traffic through GA4, Google Search Console and DataForSEO integrations. If you do not yet know which prompts to track, that is the strongest single reason to pick Profound over Gauge.

Do either offer an API or MCP access?

Gauge includes both API and MCP access on its single $599 Growth plan, along with a Slack integration. Profound's pricing page lists the API on Enterprise only (the trial has none). Profound also documents a hosted MCP server.

Which one can pass an enterprise security review?

Profound says so in writing: its Enterprise tier lists SSO/SAML and SOC 2 compliance alongside up to nine answer engines and multiple companies tracked. Gauge's pricing page names neither SOC 2 nor SSO on Growth or Enterprise, describing Enterprise in terms of custom prompt volumes, Claude and Grok coverage, custom seats and locations, and recurring strategy sessions. That is what Gauge publishes rather than a confirmed absence, so a buyer with a security review should ask Gauge directly.

Head to head

Gauge vs Profound (2026)

Pick Gauge if you already know which prompts matter and have nobody to write against the gaps.

Updated 18 October 2026

Both tools close the loop from measuring AI visibility to acting on it, and they disagree about what the acting half is. Gauge delivers 18 publish-ready articles a month against the gaps its tracking found. Profound sells metered Agents credits and an Aim priority list, which is direction and capacity rather than finished copy. They also disagree about what else is worth measuring: Profound sells market-level prompt-demand data, Gauge sells GA4 and Search Console correlation against real referral traffic.

Both checked against their own sites 5–18 October 2026 · October AI answer share: Gauge 5%, Profound 45%

Reviewed by the CitedIndex editorial team.

On this page

How Gauge and Profound compare
Who each one is for
Verdict: Gauge or Profound?
Frequently asked questions
Sources and method

Compare every feature →Your shortlist Jump to the verdict ↓

How Gauge and Profound compare

Gauge vs Profound comparison
Question	Gauge Yours? Claim it freeOur pick. AI visibility tracking with an agent and content engine that writes and publishes the fixes.Visit site	Profound Yours? Claim it freeenterprise comms, brand and content teams that need multi-engine depth and a sales-led Enterprise contractVisit site
The basics
Price	Gauge: from $599/month	Profound: Not stated
API	Gauge: YesGauge Chat data is reachable programmatically through the MCP endpoint with a bearer API key, while the documented REST API reference covers the separate Gauge Agents product.	Profound: YesA documented REST API with Python and JavaScript SDKs exists, but the plan table marks API No on both self-serve tiers and access is granted on request.
Category	Gauge: AI visibility monitoring, GEO tools	Profound: AI visibility monitoring
Pricing model	Gauge: subscription	Profound: subscription
Free tier	Gauge: No	Profound: No
Limitations	Gauge: No tier below $599/month. Growth is the only self-serve plan, sitting above every other visibility-monitoring tool's cheapest paid tier in this index except Evertune's $800/month Pro plan, and Cognizo's $499/month Platform plan. Claude and Grok are not on the Growth platform list. Adding them requires either your own Anthropic and xAI API keys (charged directly by the providers) or a custom-quoted Enterprise contract. Growth is single-region only. A multi-region setup (or anything beyond North America) requires a custom Enterprise quote, with no published add-on price for additional locations.	Profound: No paid plan has a published price: after the free 7-day trial (ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews), every plan is a custom Enterprise contract. The trial cannot be extended into a self-serve paid plan, so a small team has no way to buy without a sales call. The trial has no exports and no API; both come with Enterprise only.
Tags	Gauge: AI Overviews, Brand monitoring, ChatGPT, Content optimization, Copilot, Enterprise, Free trial, Gemini, Perplexity	Profound: AI Overviews, Brand monitoring, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Enterprise, Free trial, Gemini, Perplexity
What it does
Monitors AI answers	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Optimises your content	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Generates content	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Publishes to your site	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yesdocs.tryprofound.com
Technical AEO	Gauge: Partlywithgauge.com	Profound: Partlytryprofound.com
Done-for-you service	Gauge: PartlyEnterprise plan and upwithgauge.com	Profound: Notryprofound.com
Answer engines
ChatGPT	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Perplexity	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Gemini	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Google AI Overviews	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Google AI Mode	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Claude	Gauge: PartlyEnterprise, or BYOK with your own Anthropic API key add-onwithgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Microsoft Copilot	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Grok	Gauge: PartlyEnterprise, or BYOK with your own xAI API key add-onwithgauge.com	Profound: Notryprofound.com
DeepSeek	Gauge: Nodocs.withgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Meta AI	Gauge: Nodocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Notryprofound.com
Coverage in the vendor’s words	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Partlytryprofound.com
What it reports
Names the cited sources	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Competitor tracking	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Brand sentiment	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Recommendations	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
AI crawler analytics	Gauge: Partlydocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Wrong answers about you	Gauge: Partlydocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Plans and signing up
Prompt or credit allowance	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Projects or brands	Gauge: Partlydocs.withgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
Countries	Gauge: PartlyEnterprise plan and upwithgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and uptryprofound.com
How often it checks	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yestryprofound.com
Card required to start	Gauge: Nodocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Not stated
Self-serve signup	Gauge: Yeswithgauge.com	Profound: Partlytryprofound.com
Access and integrations
API	Gauge: Partlydocs.withgauge.com	Profound: PartlyEnterprise plan and updocs.tryprofound.com
MCP server	Gauge: Yesdocs.withgauge.com	Profound: Yesdocs.tryprofound.com

Gauge and Profound both measure how AI answer engines describe and cite a brand, and both have moved past reporting into doing something about it. They build that second half differently, and that is the decision. Gauge's answer is copy. Its Content Engine drafts 18 publish-ready, AI-search-optimised articles a month aimed at the specific gaps its own tracking found. Profound's answer is capacity you direct. Its plans are metered in "Agents credits", a limited allowance on the free trial and a custom pool on Enterprise, powering Agents alongside Aim, which surfaces the highest-impact work for your brand each week. Nothing on Profound's site indicates it writes or delivers articles for you. Both tools tell you where you are losing AI visibility, and only one of them hands you the thing you were going to have to write.

The pricing pages, read on 2026-08-17, split just as cleanly and in the opposite direction. Gauge publishes exactly one self-serve plan: Growth at $599 per month with a one-week complimentary trial, covering six platforms (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot), with 600 prompts run daily, 10 seats, unlimited domains and competitors, exports, GA4, Search Console and DataForSEO integrations, and Slack and MCP access. There is no cheaper tier. Enterprise is custom and adds Claude, Grok, custom volumes and recurring strategy sessions. Profound publishes no paid price: it offers a free 7-day trial (ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews, 50 prompts a day), then a custom, demo-gated Enterprise plan for up to nine engines, multiple companies, SSO/SAML and SOC 2. Gauge's API and MCP access sit on its single $599 plan, where Profound's API comes only with Enterprise.

One number is worth deriving because neither vendor states it. Both quote a monthly answer volume, and both reconcile to the same arithmetic: prompts tracked times engines covered times daily runs. Gauge's 600 prompts across 6 platforms every day is the 108,000 AI answers a month it advertises. Profound sets Enterprise volumes per contract and publishes no price, so the cost per answer cannot be compared from the pricing pages. Volume is not the same as value: 600 prompts pointed at the wrong questions is expensive noise, which is exactly what Profound's Prompt Volumes product exists to prevent by reporting what people are actually asking AI assistants in the first place. Gauge has no equivalent dataset. Profound has no equivalent article engine.

Who each one is for

Profound

enterprise comms, brand and content teams that need multi-engine depth and a sales-led Enterprise contract

Watch for: The full 9-engine breadth and SSO/SAML stay behind a sales-led Enterprise contract and cannot be evaluated self-serve.

Verdict: Gauge or Profound?

Pick Gauge if you already know which prompts matter and have nobody to write against the gaps. That is a narrow buyer and it is deliberately narrow: a funded B2B SaaS or dev-tools marketing team, a handful of people, a $599 monthly budget, a clear sense of the questions its customers ask, and no writer with spare capacity. For that team Gauge is the better buy on both halves at once: a published price for six engines and 108,000 analysed answers a month, and eighteen finished articles instead of a credit balance. Every case study Gauge publishes is that company, PostHog at 41x LLM-referred traffic and Vellum AI from 1.4% to 40.3% visibility in seven months.

Pick Profound in four specific cases, and the first one is not a preference. First, if you want to test with real data before talking price: Profound's free 7-day trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews, where Gauge offers a one-week trial of its $599 plan. Second, if you do not yet know which prompts are worth tracking: Prompt Volumes and the Profound Index are market data Gauge does not sell and cannot infer from your own site, and tracking the wrong 600 prompts daily is worse than tracking the right 100. Third, if your content is already staffed by an in-house team or an agency, in which case Gauge's article engine, the thing you are paying the premium for, is the half you will not run. Fourth, if you need nine engines, several brands under one account, or named SSO/SAML and SOC 2 for a security review: Profound lists all of those on Enterprise, and Gauge's pricing page names none of them.

Stated as the two mistakes: buying Gauge when you already have writers means paying $599 a month for a tracker whose distinguishing half sits idle. Buying Profound when your actual problem is "we can see the gaps and nobody writes" means arriving in month three with an unspent credit balance and the same articles still unwritten.

Visit Gauge ↗Visit Profound ↗

The digest

Who's winning AI citations. The AI visibility tools we add and the guides we write, by email, at most once a week.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main difference between Gauge and Profound?: What each one does after the measurement. Gauge's Content Engine drafts 18 publish-ready, AI-search-optimised articles a month targeted at the gaps its tracking found, so the output is finished copy. Profound meters Agents credits instead (limited on the trial, a custom pool on Enterprise), powering Agents and its Aim weekly priority list, so the output is direction and capacity rather than delivered content. Nothing on Profound's site indicates it writes articles for customers.
Which one tracks more AI answers for the money?: Only Gauge can be compared on price: its Growth plan runs 600 prompts across 6 platforms daily for 108,000 AI answers a month at $599. Profound sets Enterprise volumes per contract and publishes no price. Read from both pricing pages on 2026-10-18.
Can a small team afford Gauge?: Only at $599 a month, because Gauge publishes no tier below its Growth plan. There is a one-week complimentary trial and then a single self-serve price. Profound offers a free 7-day trial, but its only paid plan is a custom Enterprise contract, so it is not the cheaper route.
Which one tells you what people are actually asking AI assistants?: Profound. Its Prompt Volumes product reports what people ask AI assistants across the market, and the Profound Index benchmarks positioning by industry, which is demand-side data about the category rather than about your brand. Gauge has no equivalent. Its data advantage points the other way, correlating detected AI citations against real referral traffic through GA4, Google Search Console and DataForSEO integrations. If you do not yet know which prompts to track, that is the strongest single reason to pick Profound over Gauge.
Do either offer an API or MCP access?: Gauge includes both API and MCP access on its single $599 Growth plan, along with a Slack integration. Profound's pricing page lists the API on Enterprise only (the trial has none). Profound also documents a hosted MCP server.
Which one can pass an enterprise security review?: Profound says so in writing: its Enterprise tier lists SSO/SAML and SOC 2 compliance alongside up to nine answer engines and multiple companies tracked. Gauge's pricing page names neither SOC 2 nor SSO on Growth or Enterprise, describing Enterprise in terms of custom prompt volumes, Claude and Grok coverage, custom seats and locations, and recurring strategy sessions. That is what Gauge publishes rather than a confirmed absence, so a buyer with a security review should ask Gauge directly.