Last updated · reviewed by the Essentras editorial team
AI visibility tools / Head to head
Profound vs Scrunch
Two AI-visibility platforms, one independent and quote-only, one Sitecore-owned with published pricing. Here is how they differ.
Pick Profound for the deepest AI-engine coverage (up to 9) if you already run content and PR in-house and can budget an annual quote, since pricing isn't published past the trial. Pick Scrunch for a published monthly price today, especially inside a Sitecore stack, though it covers fewer engines and is now Sitecore-owned, not independent.
Profound
Enterprise AI-answer-engine monitoring platform tracking brand visibility, citations, and prompt volume across up to 9 AI engines, plus workflow agents that draft content for human approval.
Scrunch
A software platform that tracks and scores brand visibility across AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude) and publishes machine-readable content for AI agents; acquired by Sitecore in June 2026.
Essentras
Earned-media and entity execution with its own measured corpus of AI answers, priced per item rather than per seat.
Why Profound and Scrunch buyers end up looking at a third option
If the real job is changing what AI engines say about a brand, not just measuring it, neither platform does that on its own: Profound and Scrunch report and stage drafts, but a human or a separate vendor still has to execute the placements, Wikipedia or entity work that shifts the signal. Essentras sells that execution, priced per outlet, though it cannot guarantee a ranking or an AI citation, because nobody can.
The destination is named before you pay
You pick the outlet from the catalog, see its price, turnaround and link policy, and receive that URL. No blind retainer, no placeholder list.
We publish how we measure
The /ai-check corpus is real answers from six models, updated and open to read. The method is checkable rather than a proprietary score.
You can buy one unit
No seats, no prompt allowance, no annual prepay and no notice window. One placement is a complete purchase with nothing to cancel.
Profound vs Scrunch, side by side
| Profound | Scrunch | Essentras | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Quote-only, no list price | $250/mo (annual) | Per placement, item priced |
| Pricing published | No | Yes | Yes |
| Month-to-month available | No | Yes ($300/mo) | N/A, no subscription |
| Contract term | Annual, auto-renews | Monthly or annual | Per order |
| Cancellation notice | 30 days before renewal | 30 days written notice | N/A |
| Ownership | Independent | Owned by Sitecore | Independent |
| AI engines covered | Up to 9 | 5 named engines | 6 engines (/ai-check) |
| Free trial | 7 days, 50 prompts/day | 7 days, no card | No trial needed |
| Core deliverable | Monitoring + draft agents | Monitoring + crawler publishing | Confirmed placement URL |
| Built for | Enterprise brand/agency teams | Mid-market to enterprise | Buyers wanting named placements |
Published list pricing, checked 4 October 2026 on each vendor's own site. Vendors change pricing and add-ons without notice, and quote-only vendors negotiate per deal, so confirm at the source before you buy. Anything we could not verify is marked, not estimated.
The decision, in three lines
Pick Profound if
Choose Profound when you need the broadest answer-engine coverage, up to 9 engines at Enterprise tier, plus workflow agents that draft and fact-check content, and your team already has the budget and procurement process for an annual contract.
Pick Scrunch if
Choose Scrunch when you want a published self-serve price today rather than a sales call, or when your organisation already runs on Sitecore's CMS and DAM, since Scrunch's visibility data now feeds directly into those tools.
Pick Essentras if
If the real job is changing what AI engines say about a brand, not just measuring it, neither platform does that on its own: Profound and Scrunch report and stage drafts, but a human or a separate vendor still has to execute the placements, Wikipedia or entity work that shifts the signal. Essentras sells that execution, priced per outlet, though it cannot guarantee a ranking or an AI citation, because nobody can.
Where Profound genuinely wins
An enterprise brand or agency that already has its own content, PR and entity-management muscle and just needs best-in-class, continuously-updated measurement, exact prompt volumes, sentiment and citation tracking across the widest set of answer engines, SOC 2/SSO for a security-conscious buying committee, and API access to pipe the data into its own BI stack, should genuinely pick Profound. Its workflow agents (FactCheck, Context Manager) also give a large marketing org a way to keep brand facts current across many SKUs/markets at a scale a smaller earned-media engagement isn't built to monitor.
Where Scrunch genuinely wins
If a team already has in-house content/SEO capacity and specifically wants recurring, prompt-level monitoring across 5+ LLMs with competitive benchmarking and citation analysis, plus a way to continuously publish agent-readable versions of its own pages at scale, Scrunch's AXP is a real, defensible choice, and for an enterprise already standardized on SitecoreAI, the post-acquisition integration (visibility data flowing straight into CMS/DAM/Content Marketing tools with no separate integration project) is a genuine, software-native advantage Essentras does not attempt to replicate. Scrunch is the right pick for a team buying a monitoring-and-publishing system, not an execution partner.
Measured, not asserted
The numbers behind this page
Every comparison on this site rests on two things we recompute rather than claim: the live catalog of what we actually sell, and a running study of what answer engines actually say. Both are linked below so you can check them.
Corpus figures recomputed 5 October 2026. Catalog figures are live.
How we compared
Both sides were compared on the same 10 dimensions, using published list pricing read off each vendor's own site on 4 October 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so rather than carrying an estimate.
- 01Is the price published on the vendor's own pricing page today, or does learning it require a demo call? Profound, and the Enterprise tier of almost every other vendor here, is quote-only.
- 02How many AI engines are covered on the cheapest tier you can actually buy, and what the rest cost as add-ons. Peec caps self-serve at 3 of 6 models; Otterly's base tiers cover 4 and charge separately for Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude.
- 03How many prompts or credits the plan includes per period, what an extra block costs, and how many user seats are included before per-seat fees apply. Semrush and Ahrefs ship one seat and charge $40 to $100/mo for each additional user.
- 04Exit terms in writing: monthly cancellation versus a prepaid annual term, the notice window before auto-renewal, and whether unused time is refunded. Peec, Otterly, Writesonic and HubSpot all state that prepaid fees are not refunded.
- 05Whether the product changes anything outside your own domain, or only reports on it. Measurement tells you a competitor was cited instead; it does not place the article, build the entity, or fix the review profile that caused it.
Deliberately excluded. Features neither side documents publicly, and any claim that rests only on a single review or a vendor's own case study.
Essentras sells services in this category, so this page is not a neutral review. Every competitor figure is published list pricing you can check on the vendor's own site, and the case for choosing a competitor over us is stated on every entry rather than left out.
FAQ
Profound vs Scrunch, FAQ
What is the core difference between Profound and Scrunch?▾
Profound is an independent platform that tracks up to 9 AI answer engines at its Enterprise tier and adds workflow agents that draft content and fact-check corrections for human approval. Scrunch tracks 5 named engines, publishes a machine-readable layer of a brand's own site for AI crawlers, and has operated as a Sitecore company since the acquisition closed on 3 June 2026.
Is Scrunch cheaper than Profound?▾
On published numbers, yes. Scrunch lists a Starter plan at $250/mo billed annually ($300/mo month-to-month) and a Growth plan at $417/mo. Profound's pricing page shows only a 7-day free trial and a custom Enterprise quote, as of 2026-10-04, with no self-serve monthly price listed, so there is no public figure to compare it against directly.
Does the Sitecore acquisition change what Scrunch does?▾
Sitecore acquired Scrunch on 3 June 2026; Sitecore's own press release disclosed no financial terms. Scrunch's CEO continues leading it as a Sitecore company, and its Agent Experience Platform is being wired into SitecoreAI's Content Management, Content Marketing and Digital Asset Management tools. For a buyer not already on Sitecore's stack, that is a real reason to ask about roadmap and support continuity before signing.
How many AI engines does each platform track?▾
Profound's Enterprise tier covers up to 9 answer engines; its own materials name ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and DeepSeek among them. Scrunch names 5: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude. Coverage depends on the plan in both cases: Profound's free trial only tracks ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and Scrunch does not break engine coverage out by tier on its pricing page.
Can I cancel Profound or Scrunch at any time?▾
No. Profound's Master Subscription Agreement requires 30 days' written notice before a renewal date to stop the next annual term, and fees are generally non-refundable. Scrunch's Terms of Service require 30 days' written notice to cancel a commercial subscription, and annual billing is paid upfront with no published refund policy for early termination.
Which is a better fit, an agency or a single in-house brand team?▾
Profound publishes an agency track: extra client workspaces at $399/mo each and extra pitch workspaces at $199/mo per 5, aimed at firms managing multiple accounts. Scrunch's published tiers, Starter and Growth, are seat-based for a single organisation, with extra seats at $25/mo and a 5-seat cap on Starter. Scrunch has no published multi-client agency tier to compare against Profound's.
Do Profound or Scrunch actually change how AI describes a brand?▾
Not by themselves. Both are measurement platforms: Profound reports visibility and stages agent-drafted content and corrections for a human to approve; Scrunch scores visibility and publishes a machine-readable version of a brand's own pages for AI crawlers to read. Neither one secures third-party publication placements, Wikipedia changes or Google Knowledge Panel work; that execution is a separate motion a buyer still has to run or buy elsewhere.
Other comparisons in this category
Same decision, different pairings. Each page carries the published price for both sides.
Head to head
Alternatives
From measurement to placement
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