What this page covers
- Facts checked
- Sources
- 34 listed, with access dates
- Screenshots
- 4 dated public-page captures
- Score
- No numeric score on this page
Desk review on 7 Nov 2026, carried out as an AI-assisted research pass in a public browser. Captured public homepages, pricing pages and API docs (snapshot, screenshot and page text, 1440x900, Aside Browser). Opened every funding and revenue source in the browser and saved its text. Searched the YC directory by name. Paused one official YouTube video per vendor at the listed timestamps and confirmed the player position. No accounts, trials, credits or API calls. Interface, output quality, speed, onboarding, reliability and support were not tested and are not scored.
Otterly vs Peec vs Profound: the short answer
Checked 7 November 2026. Otterly has the cheapest published plan, $29 a month for 15 prompts (Otterly pricing). Peec publishes every tier and opens its API from the $245 Pro plan (Peec pricing). Profound publishes a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan, with no paid price on the page (Profound pricing). This review compared public pages, docs and official videos only, through an AI-assisted research pass in a public browser. None of the three was tested, so this page says nothing about answer accuracy or how the apps feel to use.
What was reviewed and what was not tested
UI, UX and output quality were not tested. The research pass used no account on any of the three, ran no trial and made no API calls. Every interface note below comes from a vendor's public page or an official vendor video, and those are marketing material.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Published prices and plan limits | Read on each vendor's pricing page and saved as screenshots |
| API, MCP and rate limits | Read in each vendor's docs; no calls made |
| Funding and revenue | Read in company posts and named press, originals saved |
| Interface | Seen in public mockups and one official video per vendor, at the timestamps given |
| Answer accuracy, speed, onboarding, support | Not tested |
This page leaves out a combined score. With most of the important criteria untested, a total would rank the tools on how much they publish, which is a different question from which one works better.
What each one is
Otterly (OtterlyAI) is an AI search monitoring tool. Its about page says the first product launched in October 2024 and tracks brand mentions and website citations on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot (Otterly about page).
Peec (Peec AI) is a Berlin company whose docs say it "runs your prompts across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot daily" and reports visibility, position and sentiment (Peec docs).
Profound calls itself "The AI marketing platform". Its homepage leads with an agent it calls AI Marketer and lists analytics products such as Answer Engine Insights and Agent Analytics (Profound homepage).
Interface: public pages and official videos
None of these images come from a logged-in vendor account, and nothing here is a usability rating. The homepage panels are mockups each vendor chose to publish. For the videos, the research pass paused the official upload at each timestamp listed and recorded what was on screen.
Otterly's Welcome Tour (OtterlyAI channel, uploaded 9 August 2025). At 0:20 a report shows tiles for Brand Mentions, Share of Voice, Brand Position and Domain Citation, with a Top Prompts list. At 1:00 a "Brand Visibility Index on AI Search" chart plots likelihood to buy against visibility score, beside a "Your Most Cited URLs" list. At 2:30 the left menu shows AI Keyword Research, Brand Report and GEO Audit. The address bar in the recording shows a June to July 2025 date range, so today's app may look different.
Peec's Actions video (Peec AI channel, uploaded 27 February 2026, 22 seconds). At 0:15 an "All recommended actions" table lists each suggested action with an action type (Earned or Owned) and a domain type (Editorial, Competitor or Reference).
Profound's Introducing Agents video (Profound channel, uploaded 10 June 2026, 67 seconds). At 0:20 a workflow chains Generate Article, Format Article, Create Post and Parse Post URL steps. The Create Post panel targets a WordPress site and shows a warning: "This will publish your content and make it visible on your CMS." The node list includes Perplexity Search, Google SERP Results, Call API and Code.
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | Otterly | Peec | Profound |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engines on paid plans | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot (pricing) | Pick 3 of ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini, Naver AI (pricing) | No public paid plan; the trial covers ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews (pricing) |
| Extra engines | AI Mode, Gemini and Claude as paid add-ons (pricing) | One more model from $30 a month on Starter; Enterprise lists API models such as Claude Sonnet 4 and Grok (pricing) | Enterprise lists up to 9 engines, including Claude, DeepSeek and Muse Spark (pricing) |
| Tracking frequency | Daily (pricing) | Daily; daily or weekly on Enterprise (pricing) | Daily (pricing) |
| Sources and citations | Citation source tracking (pricing) | Domain and URL views, citation share, gap analysis (pricing) | Citation analytics within Answer Engine Insights (homepage) |
| AI crawler and referral data | Agent Analytics on Standard and up (pricing) | Crawlability audit, AI referrals, crawl insights (pricing) | Agent Analytics, unlimited domains (pricing) |
| Agents and actions | Recommendations (pricing) | Peec agent with monthly credits, recommended actions (pricing) | AI Marketer, Agents, Sheets (pricing) |
API, MCP and how the data is collected
| Item | Otterly | Peec | Profound |
|---|---|---|---|
| REST API on | Standard, Premium and custom plans (help) | Pro, Advanced, Enterprise and agency plans (docs) | Enterprise plan only (docs) |
| Auth | Bearer key scoped to workspaces (docs) | API key from the account page (docs) | Personal key in an X-API-Key header; Profound stores only a hash (docs) |
| Stated limits | 2,000 requests a month on Standard, 5,000 on Premium (help) | 200 requests a minute per project (docs) | 600 requests an hour per key (docs) |
| MCP | Yes, OAuth 2.0 only (docs) | Yes, on all four plans (pricing) | Yes, hosted MCP server (docs index) |
| Maturity | Publishes an OpenAPI spec (docs) | API still v0 beta; docs warn of breaking changes (changelog) | v1 active, v2 endpoints added as beta in June 2026; Python and JavaScript SDKs (changelog) |
If you plan to compare numbers across tools, ask how each one collects answers. Peec's docs say it uses "browser automation to interact with AI platforms through their web interfaces", and that "the data reflects what real users see" (Peec docs). The research pass found no matching statement from Otterly or Profound on the pages it read.
Pricing and cost model
| Tier | Otterly (source) | Peec (source) | Profound (source) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free trial | Free trial offered on the homepage (source) | Trial: 50 prompts daily for 7 days |
| Entry | $29 Lite, 15 prompts | $95 Starter, 50 prompts | Not published |
| Middle | $189 Standard, 100 prompts | $245 Pro, 150 prompts | Not published |
| Upper | $489 Premium, 400 prompts | $495 Advanced, 350 prompts | Not published |
| Enterprise | Custom, from 1,000 prompts | Custom, annual | Custom |
| Annual discount | 15 percent | 15 percent | Not stated |
Worked example: 100 prompts a day. On 7 November 2026 Otterly's Standard plan covered that for $189 a month on four engines (Otterly pricing). Peec's Starter stops at 50 prompts, so you would need Pro at $245 a month with three models (Peec pricing). Profound needs a quote. The engine counts differ, so treat this as a prompt-budget comparison only.
Watch the add-ons on Otterly. Claude costs $29 a month on Lite and $439 a month on Premium (Otterly pricing).
Company and operations
| Fact | Otterly | Peec | Profound |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founders | Thomas Peham (CEO), Josef Trauner (CPO), Klaus-M. Schremser (CRO) (about) | Marius Meiners (CEO), Tobias Siwonia, Daniel Drabo (Peec blog) | James Cadwallader (CEO), Dylan Babbs (CTO) (Profound blog) |
| Base | OtterlyAI GmbH, Persenbeug, Austria (imprint) | Berlin (Peec blog) | New York (newsroom) |
| Launch | October 2024 (about) | Customers onboarded since February 2025 (Peec blog) | "Launched two years ago" as of September 2026 (TechCrunch) |
| Funding | No round mentioned on its about page; not publicly reported | $29 million total after a $21 million Series A led by Singular, November 2025 (Peec blog) | $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, September 2026 (newsroom) |
| Revenue | Not publicly reported | Company says it passed $20M ARR, November 2026 (Peec release) | Company says revenue tripled in six months; no dollar figure (TechCrunch) |
| Customers or users | Vendor claim: 40,000 marketing professionals as of August 2026 (about) | Company says more than 4,000 customers (Peec release) | Company says more than 1,000 enterprise customers (TechCrunch) |
Peec's growth figures all come from Peec, though one was checked by a newsroom. In November 2025 the company said it went from $0 to "$4M+ ARR in 10 month[s]" (Peec blog). In May 2026 TechCrunch reported Peec had crossed $10 million in annualized revenue, "according to internal dashboard data seen and verified by TechCrunch" (TechCrunch). The $20M figure comes from Peec's own 2 November 2026 release (GlobeNewswire).
Profound's rounds, from its own announcements:
- June 2025: $20 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins (PR Newswire).
- August 2025: $35M Series B led by Sequoia (blog).
- February 2026: $96M Series C at a $1B valuation, led by Lightspeed (blog).
- September 2026: $180 million Series D, co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins (newsroom).
Otterly's user count differs across its own sites: 40,000 on the company about page, "Over 15,000" on Thomas Peham's personal site (founder site). This page treats both as vendor claims.
Y Combinator: the research pass found no listing in the YC company directory under the names Otterly, OtterlyAI, Peec, Peec AI, Profound or TryProfound (checked 7 Nov 2026). A search miss proves nothing either way. Headcount is not reported here, because no dated reading was taken.
Recent announcements from the vendors
Two recent posts from the companies' own X accounts. Both are vendor claims. This review did not test either feature.
- Peec, 21 October 2026: "Peec AI now helps you act" with prioritized recommendations, a Peec Agent and "25+ connectors" (@peec_ai on X).
- Profound, 5 November 2026: "Introducing Profound Ads, now in beta", with the line "Approve every recommendation before it acts" (@profound on X).
What each does well and badly
Otterly
- Good: the lowest published entry price, and every add-on price is on the page (pricing).
- Good: REST and MCP docs, with a published OpenAPI spec (docs).
- Weak: AI Mode, Gemini and Claude cost extra on every tier (pricing).
- Weak: no API on Lite, and its about page and its founder's site give different user counts.
Peec
- Good: the full feature matrix and model add-on prices are public (pricing).
- Good: its docs explain how it collects answers, and the API changelog has dated entries on 27 October and 4 November 2026 (changelog).
- Weak: the API is still v0 beta (changelog).
- Weak: no API on the $95 Starter plan (docs).
Profound
- Good: the widest public API of the three, with SDKs, a cookbook and streaming endpoints (docs index).
- Good: the official agent demo shows a publish warning before a WordPress post goes live.
- Weak: no published paid price, and the API is Enterprise only (docs).
- Weak: its homepage panel is labelled illustrative, so you see little of the real app before a demo.
Who should pick which
- Pick Otterly if you are a solo marketer or a small team, want to start under $30 a month, and the four default engines cover your market.
- Pick Peec if you want an API or MCP without an enterprise contract, or you care how answers are collected.
- Pick Profound if you run a large marketing team that wants agents drafting and staging content, and procurement can work with a custom quote.
- Run a trial first if accuracy matters to you. None of the three publishes an accuracy benchmark on the pages read for this review, and this review measured none.
FAQ
Does Otterly have an API?
Yes. Its help centre says "API access is available on Standard, Premium, and Custom plans", with 2,000 requests a month on Standard (Otterly help).
Does Peec AI include MCP on the cheapest plan?
Yes. Peec's pricing table marks MCP as included on Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise (Peec pricing).
How much does Profound cost?
On 7 November 2026 its pricing page showed a free trial and a custom Enterprise plan, with no paid price published (Profound pricing).
Sources, disclosure and changelog
Research pass: no vendor product credits were used and no vendor was contacted during this review. Links are direct source URLs with no affiliate parameters.
Limits: desk review only. The interface notes come from vendor mockups and edited official videos, which may be older than the live apps. Answer accuracy, speed, onboarding and support were not tested.
Changelog: 7 November 2026, first version. Same day, revised: removed a combined score, added inline sources and recent vendor announcements.