Profound vs Scrunch AI for scoring AI visibility against category benchmarks: which is better?
Profound is the better choice for scoring AI visibility against a whole category: the Profound Index ranks brands in 50+ industries on prompts drawn from 1.5+ billion real user conversations, run weekly, for customers. Scrunch benchmarks you against the competitive set you track (5 competitors on Core), with a published entry price and a 7-day trial, which suits teams that care about named rivals more than the whole market. Neither publishes an error figure for its scores.
Profound vs Scrunch vs Proofsource: how do they compare?
Nine criteria, the same for all three. "Not published" means the vendor's own pages did not say, not that the feature is missing.
| Criterion | Profound | Scrunch | Proofsource |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price to start | Free trial, then Enterprise at a custom price through a demo[1] | $250/mo Core (125 prompts, 5,000 responses a month); Enterprise custom[2] | Free trial, then Custom from $64 per brand per month (final price discussed on demo call), or Managed, where our team runs it for you, priced on a demo call |
| Free trial | Free: 50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Trial prompts are a recommended set Profound chooses[1] | 7-day free trial on Core[2] | 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card |
| AI engines tracked | Up to 9 on Enterprise: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search[1] | Core: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Enterprise: 9, adding Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode and Grok[2] | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews on the trial; Custom covers all 10, adding Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI |
| How often answers are re-read | Daily on Enterprise; daily for 7 days on the trial[1] | Not published; Core collects 5,000 responses a month[2] | Every question on every engine, daily on Custom by default, or hourly or any frequency you choose; the trial asks today and tomorrow |
| Contract and billing | Custom Enterprise packages; contract length and billing terms are not published. Unlimited seats on both plans[1] | Core priced per month with 1 brand workspace and 5 user licenses; Enterprise custom. Contract terms not published on the pricing page[2] | Custom is agreed on a demo call, billed monthly or yearly, and cancels from the billing page. Unlimited seats on Custom |
| Prompts and phrasings | Tailored prompt plan on Enterprise. Prompt Volumes: a licensed dataset of real prompts from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, with bulk keyword analysis and an intent breakdown[1][3] | Prompt management, funnel stages and personas (1 on Core); query fan-out is limited on Core[2] | Buyer questions grouped by topic, proposed from your site, generated per topic or written by you: 25 on the trial, more on Custom, each with an AI search volume estimate. Questions can be asked from the market they target. The searches each engine ran for a question (query fan-outs) are kept |
| Benchmarking and share of voice | Profound Index: industry leaderboards built from 1.5+ billion real user conversations, 50+ industries, run weekly, for customers. Six metrics including share of voice and citation share[4] | Share of mentions or citations across your tracked competitive set (5 competitors on Core), filterable by topic, prompt, platform, persona, funnel stage and country[2][5] | Share of voice against the brands you track, every vendor the answers name, or the top 10 named, with the pages each engine cited |
| Reporting, exports and integrations | Enterprise: all-time history, CSV and JSON exports, API. Trial: no history, exports or API. Traffic integrations include Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Analytics, Netlify, Vercel and WordPress[1] | Reporting dashboard on both plans; Looker Studio, Query API and advanced API on Enterprise[2] | CSV or JSON export of any range, a REST API, white-label scheduled reports, Slack, Teams and webhook alerts; on Custom our team delivers data into Looker Studio or your BI tool |
| Published intervals or error figures | Not published[1] | Not published[2] | A 95% Wilson interval on every percentage, so a day-to-day move can be told from noise |
How do Profound and Scrunch compare on category-level benchmark accuracy?
Neither Profound nor Scrunch publishes an accuracy or error figure for its benchmark, so public evidence does not rank them on accuracy; what differs is what each benchmark is built on.
The Profound Index uses a prompt set per industry drawn from real user conversations, filtered toward open-ended questions that name no brand, and run every week across major engines. It ranks brands on six metrics: visibility score, share of voice, mention position, citation share, co-citation share and co-mention share.
Scrunch measures your share of mentions or citations across the competitors you track, on your own prompts, and lets you filter by topic, prompt, platform, persona, funnel stage and country. That is a benchmark against your chosen set, not the whole category, and Core caps it at 5 competitors and 1 persona.
A benchmark is as steady as its sample. A weekly run gives fewer data points than a daily one, and an interval beside a score shows whether a rank change is real. Proofsource shows a 95% Wilson interval on every share it reports.
Sources, read 5 Oct 2026: Profound blog: Introducing the Profound Index, Scrunch FAQ: How does Scrunch measure AI share of voice?, Scrunch pricing.
Which platform offers better competitor and share-of-voice analysis?
Profound offers wider competitor context, because its Index adds co-mention and co-citation share across a whole industry, while Scrunch offers finer slicing of share of voice inside your tracked set.
Scrunch's share of voice can be cut by persona, funnel stage, country and custom tag, which is useful once Enterprise lifts the Core limits of 5 competitors, 1 persona and 1 country. Profound's competitive presence tracking runs daily on Enterprise, and the Index adds the market view.
Proofsource computes share of voice on three bases: the brands you track, every vendor the answers name, or the top 10 vendors named. The open base catches the rival you did not think to list.
Sources, read 5 Oct 2026: Profound blog: Introducing the Profound Index, Profound pricing, Scrunch FAQ: How does Scrunch measure AI share of voice?, Scrunch pricing.
How do their pricing and plan limits compare for growing teams?
Scrunch publishes an entry plan and Profound does not: Scrunch lists $250/mo Core (125 prompts, 5,000 responses a month); Enterprise custom, with a 7-day free trial, 1 brand workspace, 5 user licenses and 4 engines on Core.
Profound offers a free trial of 50 fixed prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, then a custom Enterprise package with unlimited seats and up to 9 engines. Scrunch's Enterprise is also custom and lifts prompts, responses, workspaces and licenses.
For a growing team the practical gap is the step up: Scrunch has a visible first rung, Profound starts at a demo. Proofsource lists Custom from $64 per brand per month (final price discussed on demo call) after its free trial.
Sources, read 5 Oct 2026: Scrunch pricing, Profound pricing.
Which tool provides more reliable AI citation and mention tracking?
Neither publishes reliability statistics, so the honest answer is that public evidence does not separate them; both track citations and mentions.
Profound tracks citations, sentiment and ranking daily on Enterprise, and its Index reports citation share by industry. Scrunch tracks citations and sources on both plans, but limits query fan-out on Core, which hides some of the searches engines ran before answering.
Reliability comes from repeated sampling and stated uncertainty. Proofsource keeps the pages each engine cited and the searches it ran for every question, and puts an interval on every rate.
Sources, read 5 Oct 2026: Profound pricing, Profound blog: Introducing the Profound Index, Scrunch pricing.
Which platform integrates better with existing SEO and analytics workflows?
Profound integrates more broadly, with CSV and JSON exports, an API and traffic integrations on Enterprise, while Scrunch keeps Looker Studio, its Query API and advanced API for Enterprise.
Profound lists Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, Google Analytics, Google Cloud Platform, Netlify, Vercel and WordPress for AI-sourced traffic. Scrunch's Core plan has its reporting dashboard and Google sign-on, with MCP access custom on Enterprise.
Proofsource exports any date range as CSV or JSON, has a REST API with API keys and an MCP server for AI agents, and on Custom our team delivers your data into Looker Studio or your BI tool.
Sources, read 5 Oct 2026: Profound pricing, Scrunch pricing.
Where does Proofsource fit?
Proofsource is the third column on purpose: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews answer the same buyer questions every day on Custom (which covers all 10 engines on the pricing page), every percentage carries a 95% Wilson interval, and each lost question comes with the pages that won it and a drafted fix you review before anything is published.
Proofsource does not run an industry-wide index from licensed conversations. It benchmarks you against the vendors AI actually names for your buyer questions, which is the market as your buyers see it.
Where Proofsource is weaker, plainly: four engines on the trial (all 10 come with Custom, against nine on Profound Enterprise); no licensed real-user conversation panel behind its question volumes; and paid plans go through a demo call rather than a checkout.
How each number is computed is on the methodology page, what connects today is on the integrations page, and multi-brand setups are on the agencies page.
Should you choose Profound, Scrunch or Proofsource?
- Choose Profound if you need a category-wide leaderboard built from real user conversations and can buy on an Enterprise contract.
- Choose Scrunch if you benchmark against a known set of rivals, want persona and funnel filters, and want a published price with a trial.
- Choose Proofsource if you want share of voice against every vendor the answers name, daily, with an interval that says whether a move is real.
- Profound pricing www.tryprofound.com/pricing
- Scrunch pricing scrunch.com/pricing
- Profound Help Center: About Prompt Volumes help.tryprofound.com/articles/4288109168-prompt-volumes
- Profound blog: Introducing the Profound Index www.tryprofound.com/blog/introducing-the-profound-index
- Scrunch FAQ: How does Scrunch measure AI share of voice? scrunch.com/faqs/how-does-scrunch-measure-ai-share-of-voice
Every source above is the vendor's own page, read on . Spot an error? Write to hello@proofsource.co and we will correct it.
What buyers ask about Profound vs Scrunch
Profound vs Scrunch AI for scoring AI visibility against category benchmarks: which is better?
Profound, if you need a whole-category leaderboard: its Index covers 50+ industries from real user conversations. Scrunch, if your benchmark is a set of named rivals and you want a published price.
What is the Profound Index?
Profound's industry leaderboard for AI search: prompt sets drawn from 1.5+ billion real user conversations, 50+ industries, run weekly, ranking brands on six metrics. Profound says it is available to its customers.
How does Scrunch calculate AI share of voice?
As a brand's mentions or citations divided by the same metric across the tracked competitive set, per Scrunch's own FAQ.
Which is cheaper, Profound or Scrunch?
Scrunch publishes a price ($250/mo Core (125 prompts, 5,000 responses a month); Enterprise custom); Profound publishes a free trial and custom Enterprise pricing.
Do Profound and Scrunch track Claude?
Both list Claude on Enterprise (Scrunch's Core covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot). Proofsource asks every question on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews from the trial up.
Ask your own buyer questions on all four engines.
See which buyer questions name your brand, who gets named instead, and what to fix. 200 answers. 25 Prompts/Question. Top AI engines. 2 days. Free. No card.
Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Mode
