Profound vs Loamly: An Honest Comparison From Loamly's Founder

Profound raised $96M at a $1B valuation in February 2026. Their prompt database has crossed 200 million queries. They have 100+ people and enterprise contracts with brands you know.

Loamly is bootstrapped. I built it myself. I have delivered 2,014 brand reports and built an $89/mo monitoring product.

This is not a symmetric fight. But the tools solve different problems, and that's worth understanding before you spend money on either.

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What Profound Does

Profound is an AI visibility monitoring platform. They run millions of prompts across five or more AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. They track whether your brand appears in responses, how often, and how you compare to competitors.

Their core product is continuous monitoring. You set up your brand and competitors. They run queries at scale and show you trends over time.

The "AI Rankings" feature positions them as the SEMrush of AI search. You see share of voice, platform breakdowns, and team dashboards. They have an API for custom integrations.

Pricing is $99 to $399 per month, subscription only (per their pricing page, as of February 2026).

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What Loamly Does

I built Loamly because I noticed my "Direct" traffic was growing 126% year-over-year. My brand awareness had not changed. Something was sending traffic that looked like direct visits. It was AI.

Loamly started as a traffic detection tool. The core insight: 80% of AI referral traffic arrives with no referrer header. GA4 can't see it. If you measure AI visibility without measuring actual traffic, you're missing the bigger number.

Loamly does three things:

First-party analytics with dark AI detection. The JavaScript snippet identifies AI-originated visits even when the referrer is stripped. This is the only part of Loamly that has no equivalent in Profound.

Continuous monitoring. At $89 per month, I run targeted prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. You see your visibility score, what AI says about you, and how it changes.

One-time audit reports. At $299 to $2,490 depending on depth, I run 50-100 targeted prompts, analyze verbatim AI responses, fact-check AI claims against your actual data, and produce a written report. No monthly subscription required.

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Head-to-Head Comparison

Metric	Profound	Loamly
Prompt Database	200M+ prompts	50-100 per audit
Platform Coverage	5+ platforms incl. Copilot	4 platforms
AI Traffic Detection	No	Yes (first-party)
Dark AI Detection	No	Yes
One-Time Audit Option	No (subscription only)	Yes ($299-$2,490)
Verbatim Response Analysis	No	Yes
Accuracy/Fact-Checking	No	Yes
Monitoring Pricing	$99-$399/mo	$89/mo
Team Dashboards	Yes	No
Enterprise Features	SSO, roles, API	Limited
API Access	Yes	No
Company Stage	$96M raised, 100+ team	Bootstrapped, solo founder
First-Party Analytics	No	Yes
Custom Prompt Testing	Yes	Audit only

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When to Choose Profound

You need the largest prompt database. 200 million prompts gives you statistical depth that no other tool can match. For enterprise brands tracking dozens of product lines across five platforms, that scale matters.

You need continuous monitoring at enterprise scale. Profound is built for teams. Multiple seats, dashboards, and trend data over months. If your CMO wants a weekly briefing on AI share of voice, Profound is the right tool.

You need Copilot coverage. Microsoft Copilot is the enterprise AI assistant. If your buyers are enterprise, they may be using Copilot more than ChatGPT. Profound covers it. Loamly doesn't yet.

You have a team that needs to collaborate. Profound has team dashboards, role permissions, and shared views. If your SEO lead, content team, and CMO all need access, Profound is built for that workflow.

You need procurement to approve the spend. A $1B valuation, $96M in funding, and 100+ employees makes Profound easy to defend in a budget review. I'm a solo founder. Some procurement teams won't touch that.

You want a developer API. Profound offers API access for custom integrations. If you want to pull visibility data into your own dashboards or data warehouse, that matters.

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When to Choose Loamly

You need to know if AI is actually sending you traffic. This is the fundamental gap in every AI visibility tool except Loamly. Knowing you appear in 40% of AI responses is useful. Knowing those responses are sending 3,200 visitors per month, converting at 3x (Microsoft Clarity data), is actionable. Profound doesn't measure this.

Dark AI traffic is your biggest blind spot. I measured this across my user base: dark AI traffic is 2.4x larger than visible AI referrer traffic. If you're relying on referrer headers to count AI visits, you're undercounting by more than half. See how this works.

You want a one-time audit instead of a subscription. Some problems don't need monthly monitoring. You need to know where you stand right now, fix it, and move on. Loamly's audit product gives you a 30-80 page written report for a flat fee. No ongoing commitment.

You need to know what AI actually says about you, word for word. Profound tracks whether you appear. Loamly captures verbatim responses and analyzes them. Are AI systems describing your product accurately? Saying something wrong? Recommending a competitor instead? The verbatim analysis surfaces this.

You want accuracy checking. AI platforms make factual errors about brands constantly. Wrong founding year. Outdated pricing. Products you discontinued. Loamly's accuracy audit cross-references AI claims against your actual data and flags every discrepancy. This is something no other tool does.

You're a small team or individual. Loamly is built for founders, marketing leads, and small agencies. The interface is simple. Setup takes minutes. There are no enterprise features you'll never use.

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Where Loamly Falls Short

I'll be direct here. These are real limitations, not things I'm dismissing after the heading.

Prompt volume. Profound runs 200 million prompts. A Loamly audit runs 50-100. For statistical confidence at scale, for tracking rare-tail queries, for understanding niche product lines across five platforms simultaneously, Profound wins. My prompt count is not comparable.

Team size. I'm one person. Profound has 100+ people, a dedicated support team, and the ability to ship features in parallel. I ship features sequentially, and some take longer than I want. If you have a support issue at 2am, I might respond the next morning.

Platform coverage. Loamly covers ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Profound also covers Microsoft Copilot and other platforms. If Copilot is important to your audience, that gap matters.

Enterprise features. There are no team dashboards in Loamly. No SSO. No custom roles. No multi-workspace management. These things are on the roadmap, but they're not built yet. If you're a 50-person marketing team, Loamly will frustrate you.

Procurement credibility. This is awkward to admit, but it's true. A bootstrapped solo founder is harder to justify to a procurement committee than a company with $96M in VC backing and a $1B valuation. If your company has a formal vendor approval process, Profound is the easier conversation.

No developer API. Profound lets you pull data programmatically. Loamly doesn't have a public API yet. If you want to pipe AI visibility data into Looker or your own dashboard, Profound is the answer.

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Where Profound Falls Short

No traffic detection. This is the biggest gap. Profound tells you where your brand appears in AI. It cannot tell you whether those appearances result in actual visitors. Traffic attribution is a completely separate problem that Profound doesn't solve.

No dark AI detection. Without first-party JavaScript instrumentation, Profound has no mechanism to detect AI traffic that arrives without a referrer header. That's the majority of AI traffic. They're measuring visibility. They're not measuring reach.

Subscription only. If you want a one-time analysis, Profound isn't built for that. Every plan is monthly or annual. For brands that want a diagnostic report and then want to implement changes themselves, a subscription adds ongoing cost to a one-time need.

Mentions, not meaning. Profound tracks whether your brand appears in AI responses. It does not analyze what AI says. Two brands can have identical "mention" scores while AI describes one positively, the other negatively. Only verbatim analysis reveals this.

No accuracy checking. If an AI platform says your product costs $49 when it costs $79, Profound won't flag it. Loamly runs a fact-check pass on every audit. For regulated industries, or any brand where pricing accuracy matters, this gap is significant.

Price at scale. Profound's top tier is $399 per month, or $4,788 per year. Loamly monitoring is $89 per month, $1,068 per year. A one-time Professional audit is $990. For SMBs tracking one brand across four platforms, that cost difference is substantial.

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The Honest Take: Use Both If You Can

I'm not saying this to avoid the question. These tools genuinely solve different problems.

Profound answers: "Where does my brand appear in AI?"

Loamly answers: "Is AI actually sending me traffic, and what is it saying about me?"

If you're a mid-size company with a marketing team and a real budget, the best stack is Profound for enterprise-scale prompt monitoring and Loamly for traffic attribution and deep audits. They don't overlap much.

If you're an SMB or a solo marketer, pick the question you most need answered. Do you need statistical depth across 200 million prompts? Profound. Do you need to know if your GA4 "Direct" traffic is actually AI? Loamly.

According to my benchmark data across 2,014 companies, 85.7% of companies score 0-20 in AI visibility. Most brands are starting from zero. At zero, you don't need 200 million prompts. You need to understand the problem first.

For a full comparison of all 10 tools in the market, see the 2026 buyer's guide.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Profound worth the price?

Profound is worth it if you need enterprise-scale prompt monitoring, Copilot coverage, and team dashboards. At $99-$399 per month, it's priced for marketing teams with real budgets. If you're tracking one brand across four platforms and don't need the statistical depth of 200 million prompts, that's a high price for what you'll actually use.

Can Loamly replace Profound?

No. Profound's prompt database and platform coverage are genuinely larger. If you need those things, Loamly is not a replacement. Loamly fills gaps Profound doesn't address: traffic detection, dark AI detection, verbatim response analysis, and accuracy checking. They're complementary, not substitutes.

Does Profound track actual website traffic from AI?

No. Profound tracks brand mentions and visibility scores within AI responses. It does not measure whether those AI appearances result in visits to your website. For traffic attribution, you need first-party instrumentation. That's what Loamly's analytics does. The distinction matters because AI-referred visitors convert at 3x the average rate (Microsoft Clarity data). Knowing your conversion rate multiplier requires knowing which traffic comes from AI.

What's the best AI visibility tool for a small business?

If budget is tight, start with Loamly's free report at loamly.ai/check. It takes under 60 seconds and shows you your current AI visibility score across four platforms. Then decide whether you need ongoing monitoring ($89/mo), a one-time audit ($299-$2,490), or a larger platform like Profound. For a full comparison across 10 tools, see the buyer's guide.

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Want to see what AI actually says about your brand? Run a free report at loamly.ai/check. It's not a Profound replacement. It's a different lens on the same problem. Under 60 seconds. No credit card.