Profound vs Semrush for Mid-Market Companies in 2026

Profound vs Semrush for mid-market companies comes down to whether you want a dedicated AI search platform sold through a trial and custom Enterprise packages, or AI visibility added to an SEO suite with published prices. Profound lists a free seven-day trial and a custom Enterprise plan. Semrush lists a $99 monthly AI add-on, SEO plans with AI search included from $165.17 a month billed annually, and a custom Enterprise plan.

This article uses vendor pages read on October 31, 2026. No product was run for it, and claims about results, customers or ratings are the vendors' own. Prime AI Visibility publishes this site and sells a competing product, so it appears in its own section and is not ranked against the two vendors.

Profound vs Semrush for mid-market companies: the short answer

1. Semrush suits a team that already runs SEO in Semrush and wants AI prompts in the same account, with prices on the page.
2. Profound suits a team that wants a dedicated AI platform, accepts a sales-led purchase and may need more engines, history, exports, API access or SSO.
3. The units differ. Semrush counts tracked prompts per domain, and Profound sells a custom package after a trial, so no price per prompt is compared here.
4. Neither page proves results. Each lists capabilities, and what appears in answers depends on your own pages and questions.
5. A saved baseline helps either choice. The free check at Prime AI Visibility keeps up to 15 answers before you open a demo.

How was this compared?

Each product is read on the same five checks: who the plan is built for, the billing unit, the engines listed, the published price and the limit most likely to bind. A cell reads Not listed where a page did not state a fact. Prices are US-dollar list prices with the billing term named. Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable content frames the baseline: people-first pages come before any report about AI answers, so a platform is worth buying only if it points to pages you can improve.

"Mid-market" has no single definition. Semrush has a page for mid-market teams, and Profound's pricing page does not name a segment, so this article uses the label only for teams between a small-team plan and a large enterprise program.

What does Profound list today?

Plan	Price	What the page lists
Trial	Free	50 prompts run daily for 7 days, 3 engines, limited AI Marketer credits
Enterprise	Custom	Tailored prompts, up to 9 engines, agents, SSO/SAML and SOC 2

The trial lists ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with no history, exports or API. Enterprise lists all-time history, CSV and JSON export, API access, agent analytics, prompt volumes, custom regions and languages, and engines named as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. See the Profound products review for a closer read.

What does Semrush list today?

Plan	Price	AI visibility on the page
AI Visibility Base	$99 a month per domain, billed annually	25 custom prompts, 1 domain for Brand Performance
SEO	$117.33 a month billed annually ($139 monthly)	AI visibility reports and custom prompts, no prompt count shown
Starter, SEO + AI Search	$165.17 a month billed annually ($199 monthly)	50 prompts tracked daily, 1 domain, 300 reports a day
Pro+	$248.17 a month billed annually ($299 monthly)	100 prompts tracked daily, more sites and keywords
Advanced	Custom	Deeper insights, API access and automation
Enterprise	Custom	Custom prompt tracking, multi-brand, forecasting and ROI attribution, SSO

The base AI plan lists mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, plus competitor analysis, prompt research, an AI readiness site audit and daily, weekly or monthly updates. The SEO plans show Google Search, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini icons with "and more". Semrush's mid-market page offers a seven-day free trial and a demo. Semrush's knowledge base has said the base AI plan has no free trial, so confirm the trial terms for the plan you want at checkout.

Which choice fits which situation?

Situation	Read first	Why
Team already pays for Semrush SEO	Semrush	AI prompts sit beside keywords and audits
Need a price on the page before a call	Semrush	Profound shows no monthly price
Need up to nine engines and all-time history	Profound	Enterprise lists both
Need SSO and SOC 2 in procurement	Both	Each lists SSO on Enterprise, so ask which controls apply
Need to test with no purchase	Both	Each lists a trial, with different limits

How do the engines and units compare?

Profound's trial covers three engines and its Enterprise page lists up to nine. Semrush's base plan names four engine groups, and its SEO plans add "and more" without a full list, so ask Semrush which engines each prompt covers on the plan you choose. Profound's trial counts 50 prompts a day for seven days. Semrush counts the prompts you track each day on a plan, which is a standing limit, not a time-boxed one.

Read across a row, not down a column. Semrush's $99 for 25 prompts and Profound's trial of 50 prompts for a week are different offers, and neither tells you what an Enterprise package costs. For the related head-to-heads, see Profound vs Ahrefs, Rankscale vs Ahrefs Brand Radar vs Semrush AI toolkit and Profound vs Otterly AI.

What does each one measure?

Keep five signals separate whichever you choose:

1. Mention. An answer names the brand.
2. Citation. An answer links a page.
3. Recommendation. An answer suggests the brand as a choice.
4. Referral. A visit arrives from an answer.
5. Conversion. The visit becomes a lead or sale.

Semrush lists AI visibility reports, competitor research, prompt research and brand sentiment. Profound lists agent analytics and prompt volumes on Enterprise. Mentions and citations are what an engine displayed. Referrals and conversions are what your own analytics show, and a platform page claiming to forecast return is a vendor claim to test, not a result. For the labels used on this site, see the measurement metrics page.

What should a mid-market team ask in a demo?

1. Which engines does each prompt run on for the exact plan quoted?
2. How many prompts, domains and brands can we track, and what happens at the limit?
3. What can we export, and does export need a higher plan?
4. Who can see the data, and which SSO and audit controls apply to us?
5. How are prompts chosen, and can we freeze our own wording?
6. What does it cost after the trial, in writing, for a year?

How should you run a side-by-side test?

1. Write 20 buyer questions and freeze the wording outside every tool.
2. Save a manual baseline: answers from ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity with the links each displayed.
3. Load the same questions into the Profound trial and a Semrush trial.
4. Compare per question, not per score, against your baseline.
5. Note what each tool cannot show, such as the answer text, the link or the date.
6. Decide who acts on the data before you sign, since a report does not fix a page.

What does a before and after content outline look like?

This is an illustrative outline, not a measured change. The question is invented, and the outline shows the shape of a page change, not a result in any engine.

Part	Before	After
Question	Page opens with company history	Heading asks the buyer's question in the buyer's words
Answer	The answer sits in paragraph four	One plain sentence under the heading
Citation support	Claims have no source	Each claim links a primary source
FAQ	None	Three questions drawn from saved answers
Internal links	Links to the homepage only	Links to the pages that answer the next question

A change like this is a suggestion that follows Google's helpful-content guidance. Whether any engine then displays or cites the page is a separate observation, so save answers before and after and compare them question by question.

What can a retail category show about question sets?

My Military Savings is a public site in another field, so it works as an illustration. Its homepage presents monthly brand promotions and Commissary categories, and its coupons page lists weekly coupons by product. Category questions such as "which pet-food coupons are listed this week" (invented) change with the calendar, so an answer from last month may be stale. An engine's answer could cite the site's pages or someone else's, and only a saved answer shows which. This is an illustrative public website, not a Prime AI client, endorsement or paid relationship, and it carries no AI-search outcome.

Where does Prime AI Visibility fit?

Prime AI Visibility is an AI Search Visibility Platform built around saved answers. The free check runs up to five buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, keeps up to 15 answers with the links each displayed, and needs no card. It is one check a month. Starter is $69 a month and adds Gemini and an AI Overview-style preview, which is not a captured live Google AI Overview. It reports brand named and website cited as separate counts, and its Content Studio drafts pages as files with nothing published without approval.

It has no sentiment, crawler or traffic reporting, no SEO suite, no managed service and no prompt volumes, so it does not replace either vendor above. Use it as an AI visibility checker for a baseline, then as an AI visibility tracker if a smaller question set is enough. Teams that want a lighter AI Brand Visibility Tool alongside an SEO suite can read the platform features page, plus pricing and the tracker comparison. This is a disclosed affiliated recommendation, not an independent ranking.

For the process, read the AI visibility audit guide, the AI visibility strategy guide and the guide to choosing between trackers.

When is implementation the next job?

If a test shows pages that answers skip or misstate, the work moves to content, sources and structure. Percepture, a company with a working relationship with Prime AI Visibility, offers generative engine optimization services for implementation, with a tools overview for background. It is a services firm, not a tracker.