Gumshoe vs Profound (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Profound grades higher than Gumshoe: 2.2 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
Gumshoe grades higher on value for money. Profound grades higher on features and platforms. They get the same grade on the free plan and ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Gumshoe
AI visibility audits that ask questions as your buyer personas
Profound
AI search visibility tracking with an AI marketing agent built in
Which one is for you
Pick Gumshoe if
- Fits if you sell to several kinds of buyer and want AI results split by each one
- Works for teams that want to see a sample audit of their brand before paying
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you have several product lines, as each one is its own $99 project
- Skip it if you want to see which sites AI cites or how it describes you, as those audits are on Pro at $299
- Not for you if you want an API, integrations or exports into your own reports, as none are listed
- Watch out: both plans bill monthly with no yearly option listed, and many brands or clients need a sales quote
- Tight if you want daily numbers on Starter, which gets weekly snapshots and one Visibility Audit a month
Pick Profound if
- Fits if you're a large brand that wants answers tracked on up to 9 engines and can sign a custom contract
- Works for agencies running pitch audits for prospects, at $99 a month for 10 short workspaces
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to sign up and pay without a sales call, as brands can't
- Pricey if you're an agency with several clients, at $399 a month per client workspace on top of $99
- Tight if you want to test your own questions, since the trial's prompts are fixed
- Watch out: custom prompts, the API, exports and SSO all come only with Enterprise
- Watch out: agents spend credits, and extra credits need an Enterprise package with overage billing or a pause
How we grade them
| 2.0GPAGumshoeFair | 2.2GPAProfoundFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CStarter is $99 a month per project, billed monthly, with unlimited seats. That's at the dearer quarter of this category, and a project is one product line, so three lines means three plans. Citations and sentiment need Pro at $299. | DBrands get no published price: past the trial it's a custom Enterprise quote, given only on a sales call. Agency Growth is $99 a month, but that buys 10 short pitch audits, and each real client workspace is $399 a month on top. |
| Free plan and trial | COne free sample audit with no card: 4 personas, 5 prompts each, on 4 models, and it doesn't expire. It's a one-time look, though. Tracking over time is paid. | CNo free plan, but a 7-day trial runs 50 preset prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews. You can't edit those prompts, so you see the questions Profound picks, not your own. |
| Features | CPersona-based prompts, a leaderboard against up to 30 rivals, 12 models tracked with 6 per audit, and AI readability checks per page. The listing's own gap: Starter has only the Visibility and Technical Audits, so sentiment, citations and content need Pro. | BDaily answers with citations, sentiment and competitor ranking on up to 9 engines, Claude, Copilot and DeepSeek among them, plus an AI Marketer, reusable agents, Prompt Volumes and crawler analytics across unlimited domains. It covers the whole job; the agents run on credits. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. It builds the personas and their questions for you, and there are still audits to run and read. | CNo rating on record. Brands are onboarded through sales, and custom prompts, exports and the API only arrive with Enterprise, so there's set-up before it's really yours. |
| Platforms and integrations | CWeb only, with no integrations or API listed. | BWeb only, with no desktop or phone app. It connects to Google Analytics, Search Console, Cloudflare, Vercel, WordPress, Webflow, Slack and G2, and the API comes with Enterprise. |
| Best for | AI visibility broken down by buyer persona | big brands tracking AI answers on many engines |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Gumshoe and Profound. How we grade
Price against what you get
Gumshoe starts at $99 a month and scores 2.0 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Profound starts at $99 a month and scores 2.7.
Profound scores higher for the same starting price. Of the other AI search visibility tools on the chart, 80 score higher than Gumshoe for less, and 1 scores higher than Profound for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Gumshoe also covers reports.
- Profound also covers AI agents and web analytics.
At a glance
| Gumshoe | Profound | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free trial |
| Starts at | $99 per project / month, billed monthly | $99 per month (Agency Growth, the self-serve plan for agencies) |
| Free plan | None | None |
| Free trial | One free sample audit: 4 personas, 5 prompts each, 4 models; no card, does not expire | 7-day free trial: 50 preset prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Gumshoe AI | Profound |
| Price read from | gumshoe.ai | tryprofound.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Gumshoe
- Prices are per project, so a brand tracking three product lines pays for three plans.
- Starter has only the Visibility and Technical Audits; sentiment, citation and content audits need Pro.
- Both plans bill monthly with no annual option listed; many brands or clients need a sales quote.
- There is no free plan, only a one-time sample audit; a paid plan is needed for tracking over time.
Profound
- Brands have no self-serve paid plan: after the 7-day trial, ongoing tracking needs a custom-priced Enterprise contract.
- Trial users get a recommended prompt set and cannot edit it; custom prompts, API access, exports and SSO come with Enterprise.
- On Agency Growth, each full client workspace is a $399-a-month add-on and 5 more trial workspaces cost $199 a month.
- Agent runs use credits; extra credits beyond the plan need an Enterprise package, with overage billing or a pause set by the account team.
Key features
Gumshoe
- Persona-based prompts
- Builds buyer personas for your market and the prompts each would ask, so results show how answers change with who is asking.
- Visibility Audit
- Brand leaderboard, visibility by persona, topic and model, and up to 30 competitors side by side, with change since the last audit.
- Model coverage
- Each audit uses 6 models drawn from 12 tracked, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok and Google AI Overviews.
- Sentiment and Citation Audits
- On Pro: how models describe your brand, and which domains they cite when answering questions in your category.
- Technical and Content Audits
- Scores each page on how readable it is to AI, flagging schema, JSON-LD, structure and metadata, and finds content gaps (Content Audit on Pro).
Profound
- Answer Engine Insights
- Runs set prompts daily and reports where a brand appears in the answers, which sources are cited, sentiment and how it ranks against competitors.
- Wide engine coverage
- Enterprise can track ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search.
- AI Marketer and agents
- An assistant that finds gaps in AI answers and drafts or rewrites pages, plus reusable agents for recurring work. Agents run on credits.
- Agent Analytics
- Tracks AI crawler visits and AI-referred traffic across unlimited domains by connecting to CDNs and hosts such as Cloudflare, Fastly, AWS and Vercel.
- Prompt Volumes
- Estimates what people ask AI answer engines about a topic; the trial allows 5 searches.
- Agency workspaces
- Agency plans manage short pitch workspaces for prospects and full client workspaces from one dashboard with consolidated billing.
Plans
Gumshoe
Starter$99
per project / month, billed monthly
A monthly Visibility Audit, weekly snapshot audits, 10 Technical Audit runs and 3 content generation runs. Unlimited seats.
Pro$299
per project / month, billed monthly
Adds the Sentiment, Citation and Content Audits, daily snapshots, 50 Technical Audit runs and 10 content generation runs.
Profound
Agency Growth$99
per month for up to 10 pitch workspaces a month
For agencies: 10 seven-day pitch audits a month on ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, 5 agency seats. Each full client workspace is $399 a month extra.
EnterpriseCustom
For brands: tailored prompt tracking on up to 9 answer engines, AI Marketer credits, all-time history, CSV and JSON exports, API, SSO and dedicated support.
Agency EnterpriseCustom
For large agencies and networks: tailored client and trial workspaces, a dedicated agency partner, go-to-market help and Slack support.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Gumshoe or Profound?
As of Oct 23, 2026, they start at the same price. Gumshoe starts at $99 per project / month, billed monthly, and Profound starts at $99 per month (Agency Growth, the self-serve plan for agencies).
Which has a free plan, Gumshoe or Profound?
As of Oct 23, 2026, neither Gumshoe nor Profound has a free plan. Both have a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.