Head to head
Gauge vs Profound
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.
On this page
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", 100 a month on Starter and 400 on Growth, 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 a ladder instead: Starter at $99 a month tracks ChatGPT alone with 50 prompts, Growth at $399 tracks three engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews) with 100 prompts, and Enterprise is custom and demo-gated for up to nine engines, multiple companies, SSO/SAML and SOC 2. Both Profound self-serve tiers display only "Billed yearly" with "2 months free", and no month-to-month rate is shown. Gauge's API and MCP access sit on its single $599 plan, where Profound's pricing page marks API as "No" on Growth and does not mention MCP at all.
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 Growth's 100 prompts across 3 engines every day is the 9,000 responses a month it advertises. They are therefore the same measurement, and Gauge's Growth plan analyses twelve times as many AI answers as Profound's Growth plan for one and a half times the price, roughly an eighth of the cost per answer. 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.
How Gauge and Profound compare
Scroll across to compare every side. Feature names stay in view.One card per question, with every side answering it in turn.
| Feature | Gauge★ Our pickVisit Gauge ↗ | ProfoundVisit Profound ↗ |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Daily prompt tracking across six AI engines, with a content engine that publishes to your CMS. | AI answer engine visibility platform with content agents and AI crawler analytics. |
| Category | AI visibility monitoring, GEO & content optimization | AI visibility monitoring |
| Pricing | from $599/month | from $99/month |
| Pricing model | subscription | subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Done-for-you service | Partly | No |
| Perplexity | Yes | Partly (Growth, available higher) |
| Gemini | Yes | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Google AI Overviews | Yes | Partly (Growth, available higher) |
| Google AI Mode | Yes | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Claude | Partly | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Microsoft Copilot | Yes | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Grok | Partly | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| DeepSeek | No | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Coverage in the vendor’s words | Yes | Partly |
| Wrong answers about you | Partly | Yes |
| Projects or brands | Yes | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Countries | Partly | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| Card required to start | No | - |
| API | Yes | Partly (Enterprise, available higher) |
| BI export | Yes | Partly (Growth (file exports); Enterprise (API-based connectors), available higher) |
| Limitations |
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Who each one is for
Profound
enterprise comms, brand and content teams that need multi-engine depth and a sales-led Enterprise contract
From $99/month
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: six engines and 108,000 analysed answers a month instead of three engines and 9,000, 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 your budget is under $599 a month, because Gauge publishes no rung below it at all. Profound's $99 Starter and $399 Growth are the only way to buy from either vendor in that range, and no argument about answers-per-dollar survives not being able to buy the thing. 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 Growth when your actual problem is "we can see the gaps and nobody writes" means arriving in month three with 9,000 analysed answers, an unspent credit balance, and the same articles still unwritten.
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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 (100 a month on Starter, 400 on Growth), 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?
- Gauge, by a wide margin at the entry tier. Both vendors advertise a monthly answer volume that reconciles to prompts times engines times daily runs: Gauge's Growth plan runs 600 prompts across 6 platforms daily for 108,000 AI answers a month at $599, and Profound's Growth plan runs 100 prompts across 3 engines daily for 9,000 responses a month at $399. That is twelve times the answers for one and a half times the price, about an eighth of the cost per answer analysed. Figures read from both pricing pages on 2026-08-17.
- 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 is the one of the two that sells below that line, at $99 a month for ChatGPT tracking alone with 50 prompts, or $399 for three engines. Both Profound self-serve tiers display only "Billed yearly" with "2 months free", so Growth is advertised at $399 per month but requires annual billing.
- 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 marks API as "No" on Growth and available on Enterprise only, and does not mention MCP anywhere, which is what that page lists, not proof that no MCP server exists. Read live 2026-08-17.
- 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.
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At a glance
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.