steek.ai vs Profound
steek vs Profound comes down to one thing: enterprise power vs self-serve access. Profound is the most powerful enterprise GEO platform there is — deep AI-agent analytics, huge prompt volumes and 1.5B+ conversations of original research — but it has no public pricing, no self-serve trial, and its cheapest reported tier is ChatGPT-only. steek.ai is the self-serve alternative: from €19/mo(billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month) with every engine, a 95% confidence interval on every number, and per-SKU AI Shopping for ecommerce — backed by a money-back guarantee. If you can afford a sales cycle and need the deepest analytics, pick Profound; if you want an honest read you can start yourself in minutes, pick steek.
The short version
- Power vs access: Profound is the enterprise heavyweight — steek is the self-serve tool you can start yourself in minutes.
- Price: steek is from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month) with all engines; Profound publishes no public pricing and gates everything behind a demo.
- Trial: steek has a free live checker (no signup) and a 10-day no-card trial; Profound has no self-serve trial.
- Honesty: steek puts a 95% confidence interval on every metric; that framing isn't Profound's focus.
- Best for: steek → small businesses & online stores. Profound → enterprises and large marketing orgs.
At a glance
| steek.ai | Profound | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | SMB & ecommerce | Enterprise |
| Entry price | from €19/mo * | No public pricing * |
| Self-serve trial | ✓ 10 days, no card | Demo required |
| Confidence intervals | ✓ Yes | — |
| Per-SKU AI Shopping → GA4 | ✓ Yes | Enterprise / — |
| Free live checker | ✓ No signup | — |
Access: self-serve from €19/mo vs a demo-gated enterprise sale
The starkest difference isn't a feature — it's whether you can even get started on your own. steek.ai is from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month), with every engine — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews — included. You can run the free live checker with no signup, then start a 10-day trial with no credit card. Nobody has to talk to you first.
Profound takes the opposite route. It publishes no public pricing and has no self-serve trial: you book a demo before you can evaluate it. Profound publishes no public pricing. Third-party reports suggest a ~$99/mo ChatGPT-only starter and a ~$399/mo growth tier, with enterprise plans commonly cited in the $2,000–$5,000+/mo range. All figures are secondhand — Profound routes buyers through a demo. For an enterprise with a procurement process, that's normal. For a small business or a single online store, a sales call to learn the price is a wall, not a door.
Power: where Profound genuinely leads
Let's be clear about what Profound is: the category's most capable platform. It offers deep AI-agent analytics, handles very large prompt volumes, ships an MCP/Claude connector and advanced integrations, and its team has published prolific original research — over 1.5B+ conversationsanalysed. If you need to understand how autonomous agents traverse your site at scale, or you want the deepest analytics money can buy, Profound is the tool, and steek does not pretend to match that depth.
steek makes a different trade. Instead of enterprise-scale agent analytics, it does a smaller set of things an SMB actually needs, and prices them so a store owner can afford them without a meeting.
Honesty: confidence intervals vs a single number
AI answers are volatile. Independent tracking finds that 40–90% of the domains an engine cites can change when you re-ask the same question over time. A visibility score with no error bar hides that noise.
steek is the only tool in this comparison that puts a 95% confidence interval on every metric, so you can tell a real movement from sampling noise. For a small team making one bet at a time, knowing whether a change is statistically real is the difference between acting and chasing noise — and it's the kind of honesty framing we build the whole product around.
Ecommerce: per-SKU shopping tied to real revenue
If you sell products, the question isn't just “is my brand mentioned” — it's “does the AI surface this product, and did it make money.” steek tracks per-SKU AI Shopping visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and ties it back to revenue in GA4. That per-product, revenue-attributed view is built for small ecommerce; Profound's strength is enterprise-scale analytics, not a from €19/mo store owner's GA4 dashboard.
What self-serve buyers actually need
An enterprise buys Profound to answer deep questions across huge prompt sets. A small business or store owner is trying to answer three: am I being mentioned, why, and did it earn revenue. The evidence says those are the right questions. Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands found brand mentions correlate with AI visibility far more than backlinks — 0.664 vs 0.218, so what you say and how often you're cited matters more than classic link-building. And getting the citation is partly a writing problem: the Princeton GEO study found that adding statistics and quotations lifts AI citation by roughly 37–41%. steek is built to track exactly that signal without an enterprise contract.
Attribution is the other gap self-serve buyers hit. More than 97% of AI-driven visits carry no UTM — it's “dark traffic” your analytics can't see by default. That's why steek ties per-SKU AI Shopping visibility back to GA4 revenue: for a store owner, a mention that can't be connected to a sale is just a vanity metric. Profound's answer to attribution is enterprise-grade and priced accordingly; steek's is a from €19/mo dashboard you can wire up yourself.
We won't pretend steek out-muscles Profound — it doesn't, and it isn't trying to. Profound is the strongest enterprise GEO platform available: deeper analytics, far greater scale, an MCP/Claude connector, and original research nobody else matches. If you're an enterprise or a large marketing org that needs agent-level analytics and huge prompt volumes — and budget and a sales cycle aren't blockers — Profound is the better fit, and we'd rather tell you that than oversell steek.
Who each is for
Choose steek.ai if you're a small business or online store that wants an honest, affordable read on AI visibility without a sales call — from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month), every engine, confidence intervals, per-SKU shopping, and a free checker you can run right now.
Choose Profound if you're an enterprise or large marketing org that needs the deepest agent analytics, the largest prompt volumes and original research at scale — and no public pricing or demo-gated onboarding is fine.
FAQ
What is the main difference between steek.ai and Profound?
Profound is the category's most powerful enterprise platform — deep AI-agent analytics, huge prompt volumes and prolific original research. But it has no public pricing and no self-serve trial: you have to book a demo, and its cheapest reported tier is ChatGPT-only. steek.ai is the opposite: self-serve, from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month) with every engine included, a confidence interval on every number, and per-SKU AI Shopping for ecommerce. Profound is built for enterprises; steek is built for small businesses and online stores.
How much does Profound cost?
Profound publishes no public pricing and routes buyers through a demo, so any figure is secondhand. Profound publishes no public pricing. Third-party reports suggest a ~$99/mo ChatGPT-only starter and a ~$399/mo growth tier, with enterprise plans commonly cited in the $2,000–$5,000+/mo range. All figures are secondhand — Profound routes buyers through a demo. steek, by contrast, is from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month) you can start yourself with a 10-day trial and no credit card.
Can I try Profound or steek without talking to sales?
steek.ai has a free live AI-visibility checker with no signup and a 10-day trial that needs no credit card — you never have to talk to sales. Profound is demo-gated: there is no public self-serve trial, so you book a call before you can evaluate it.
Does Profound publish its pricing?
No. Profound publishes no public pricing and has no self-serve trial — you book a demo before you can evaluate it, so every figure you'll read is secondhand. Profound publishes no public pricing. Third-party reports suggest a ~$99/mo ChatGPT-only starter and a ~$399/mo growth tier, with enterprise plans commonly cited in the $2,000–$5,000+/mo range. All figures are secondhand — Profound routes buyers through a demo. steek.ai, by contrast, shows from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month) on the page and lets you start a 10-day trial with no credit card.
Is Profound worth it?
For the right buyer, yes. Profound is the most powerful enterprise GEO platform available — deep AI-agent analytics, very large prompt volumes, an MCP/Claude connector and prolific original research (1.5B+ conversations analysed). If you're an enterprise or large marketing org that needs that depth and a sales cycle isn't a blocker, it's the stronger tool and we won't pretend otherwise. Where it's a poor fit is the SMB or single-store buyer who wants an honest, affordable read without a demo — that's the gap steek.ai fills, from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month).
Which should a small business or online store choose?
If you're an SMB or ecommerce store that wants an honest, affordable read on AI visibility without an enterprise budget or a sales call, steek.ai fits: from €19/mo (billed annually; €29.90 month-to-month), every engine, confidence intervals, per-SKU AI Shopping tied to GA4 revenue, and a free checker you can run now. If you're an enterprise or large marketing org that needs deep agent analytics, huge prompt volumes and original research — and pricing isn't a blocker — Profound is the stronger tool.
See your honest AI-visibility read in minutes — no demo required
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