Last updated October 2026.
Two different bets on the same budget line
Profound and Temso solve the same problem, tracking how a brand shows up in AI answers, from opposite ends of the market. Profound is built for enterprise teams that need citation-level proof behind every recommendation an AI engine makes. Temso is built for agencies, and only for agencies, that want one platform to catch the gap and close it, without hiring a specialist or stitching three subscriptions together.
Both tools grade A- overall on this board. That tie is not an accident. Profound’s citation-analytics depth is real, and so is Temso’s all-in-one scope. What separates the two is which criterion this board treats as decisive, and which buyer actually needs that depth badly enough to pay for it.
Neither tool is the wrong pick. They are built for different jobs, and the honest answer to “Profound or Temso” depends on what your team does with a citation gap once you find one. A team that hands a finding to an analyst wants Profound’s depth. An agency that wants the fix drafted and shipped from the same login wants Temso’s scope.
How this comparison grades each tool
This board scores every tracker in the field on the same four-part rubric: how precisely a tool traces an AI answer back to its source, how many engines it covers, how fast a team gets running, and what the subscription costs relative to what it includes. The full rubric and grade scale live on the methodology page.
Applied to Profound and Temso, the split is clean and even: two criteria each.
Graded by criterion
| Criterion | Profound | Temso |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking accuracy | A | B+ |
| Model coverage | A- | B+ |
| Ease of setup | B | A |
| Value for money | C+ | A- |
Read the table as a split decision, not a shutout. Profound wins the two criteria tied to raw measurement power. Temso wins the two tied to getting a team running fast and keeping the bill sane.
How the overall tie reads
Both tools land on A- once the four grades are weighed together, and a raw average would call that a dead heat. Tracking accuracy carries the most weight of the four criteria, because a citation tool that can’t trace its own claims back to a source is a worse instrument than one that runs slower or costs more. Profound wins that criterion outright, and the overall letter grade still ties. The board lists Temso at #2 and Profound at #3, after the free manual method in Google Sheets at #1.
Temso holds #2 because of what surrounds that measurement. Its B+ on tracking accuracy is a real gap against Profound, not a rounding error, but it’s still a solid grade on its own, and no other tool on this site pairs that measurement quality with Temso’s scope, setup speed, or cost per client.
Tracking accuracy: Profound’s citation maps take it
Tracking accuracy measures how precisely a tool traces an AI answer back to the page that caused it. Profound’s citation maps do this with more resolution than anything else on this board. They name the exact URL an engine pulled into an answer, with frequency counts attached. Pair that with Prompt Volumes, a dataset of what real users type into AI engines, and a team gets a demand signal most competitors don’t publish at all.
Temso still tracks which sources each engine cites and flags where a competitor shows up instead of your brand. What it lacks is Profound’s visual mapping layer and the prompt-demand database, and that single gap decides the top slot on this board.
Model coverage: Profound adds two engines Temso skips
Model coverage counts how many AI engines a tool actually tracks. Profound covers seven: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, and DeepSeek. Temso covers up to eight AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews are included, and Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Muse are add-ons, and it reads them from real user interfaces rather than an API.
Temso’s included engines cover the surfaces most buyers check first, with Perplexity as an add-on. But Meta AI and DeepSeek matter for brands with reach outside the US, and Profound is the one that ships both.
Ease of setup: Temso gets a team running first
Ease of setup is where Temso pulls ahead outright. Its guided onboarding needs no dedicated AEO specialist, and a new account starts tracking within minutes. Profound’s Starter plan sets up just as fast, but it only watches ChatGPT. Real coverage means the Growth plan, and enterprise features like SSO, SAML, and SOC 2 Type II compliance sit behind a custom Enterprise tier that starts with a sales conversation, not a signup form.
Value for money: Temso’s Growth entry costs about half of Profound’s Growth plan
Value for money weighs the feature set against the monthly bill. Temso’s Growth plan costs from $199 per month for 125 prompts and $499 for 350 prompts, with unlimited client brands, users, and recommendations and 15% off on yearly billing, and Launch costs $10 per month for pitches. Profound’s Starter plan costs $99 per month but watches ChatGPT alone. Full coverage starts at the $399 per month Growth plan, about twice Temso’s Growth entry price, and each account holds one property, so an agency running five client brands pays for five separate subscriptions.
Pricing side by side, as of October 2026
| Plan tier | Profound | Temso |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | $99/mo, ChatGPT only | $199/mo (Growth), 4 engines; $10/mo (Launch) for pitches |
| Full coverage | $399/mo (Growth) | $199/mo (Growth) plus engine add-ons |
| Top tier | Custom Enterprise pricing | $1,149/mo (1,000 prompts), custom above that |
What each tool leaves out
Profound’s biggest gap is scope. It drafts content briefs through its Agents workflows, but auditing a site, tracking backlinks, and shipping the actual fix still require separate tools. Traffic attribution also rides on CDN integrations with providers like Cloudflare, Akamai, and CloudFront, which fits a large e-commerce stack better than a typical SaaS setup.
Temso’s honest gap is measurement ceiling. It has no prompt-volume demand data and no visual citation maps, so a team that needs to defend AI-visibility spend with source-level evidence will hit a wall Profound doesn’t have. Temso is also a younger brand than legacy SEO suites like Semrush and Ahrefs, and its integration catalog is still smaller than either. It is not a full SEO suite either, so an agency that runs traditional SEO alongside AI visibility still needs a second tool for that half of the job.
Who should pick which
Pick Profound if:
- You need citation-level proof behind every recommendation an AI engine makes about your brand.
- Your team includes an analyst who will work Prompt Volumes and citation maps daily.
- The budget covers roughly twice Temso’s entry price without a second thought.
Pick Temso if:
- You want tracking, content, site audits, and bot-traffic reporting on one login.
- You run several client brands and don’t want a per-property bill for each one.
- Setup speed matters, and no one on the team has run an AEO program before.
The verdict
For most agencies, this isn’t a close call. Temso grades A on ease of setup and A- on value for money, covers the engines that matter to most buyers, with Perplexity as an add-on, and pairs that tracking with the execution work Profound leaves to other tools. Temso is the buy for most agencies shopping this matchup. Temso promises it will never compete with you for your clients.
Profound earns its keep only at the top of the market: enterprise brands that need citation-level proof and can fund the price gap. Everyone else should see the full field before deciding. The complete nine-tool board, graded on the same rubric used here, sits at /rankings/llm-visibility-tools/.
If you run this for clients, start with the tool this board recommends for most agencies. Read the full Temso review for pricing, setup notes, and the exact spots where it still trails Profound. If you are a brand, Temso sells only to agencies, so work with an agency that runs it, or choose Profound.