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Same five engines tracked. Same buyer-intent prompts. But instead of a dashboard, you get the work shipped — schema, content, earned mentions, weekly Score deltas. No annual contract, no platform spend before any work happens.
No card on the Score · Audit refundable in 14 days · Retainer cancel any time after the 3-month minimum
Profound is a good tool. We've evaluated it on three client engagements and it does what it says — clean dashboard, reliable citation tracking, decent recommendations. The question isn't whether Profound works. It's whether you have someone on your team who can take the recommendations and ship them. If yes, buy Profound. If no, Authority is the cheaper outcome.
| Dimension | Profound | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Type | AI visibility monitoring tool | Productized service (audit + retainer) |
| Starting price | $499/mo on annual ($5,988/yr commit) | $1,490 one-time audit · $2,490/mo retainer |
| Contract length | Annual commitment standard | Audit one-time · retainer 3-month minimum |
| Engines tracked | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, AI Overviews | Same five engines |
| Citation tracking | Yes (dashboard) | Yes (built into deliverable + dashboard) |
| Schema implementation | Recommendations only | Implemented on top 10 pages (retainer) |
| Content optimization | Recommendations only | 4–16 pages/month written + shipped (retainer) |
| Earned mention placement | Not included | 2–5 placements/month (retainer) |
| Pipeline attribution | Not included | Wired into your CRM (Growth + Authority tier) |
| Reporting | Self-serve dashboard | Monthly Loom + dashboard + async Slack/email |
| Setup time | Login + configure prompts | 5 business days for audit; 1 week onboarding for retainer |
| Best fit | Internal team that wants to track citation rate themselves | B2B SaaS, $1–10M ARR, no internal capacity to ship the work |
Profound pricing reflects published rates as of May 2026; verify with their team for current pricing.
Verify Authority's measurement against what your Profound dashboard shows. They should match within 5–10 points (different sample sizes). If the numbers are wildly different, don't move forward.
Get the 90-day roadmap. This is the deliverable Profound's recommendations engine isn't generating — prioritized, sequenced, and impact-scored. Bring it to your next planning cycle.
If you have an internal marketer who can execute, run the roadmap yourself and keep Profound for tracking. If not, sign the retainer — 50% of audit credits to month one if you sign within 14 days.
Authority's retainer includes monitoring built in. Most clients drop their tool spend entirely; some keep a dashboard tier for self-serve. Save $5–10k/year either way.