CrawlBit vs Profound vs Otterly vs Peec AI

The short answer

Every tool here measures your citations, and that stopped being the differentiator a while ago. Profound now goes further and writes, publishing content straight into your CMS. But all of them stop at the same border: your own website. CrawlBit works on the other side of it, on the third-party pages AI actually cites, and gets you onto them.

The AI visibility category raised over $300M between 2025 and 2026, and a dozen tools now track whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews mention your brand. They are good at telling you the score. The gap almost all of them share is the next step: once you know you are not cited, what do you actually do about it? That is the question this page is about.

  CrawlBitfree audit / $490 sprint Profound$99 / $399 / quote Otterlyfrom $29 Peec AIfrom €89
Best forAgencies, and the brands they serveEnterprise and in-house teamsSMB, agenciesMid-market marketing
Live AI answer test3 engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, ClaudeUp to 9 (1 on the $99 plan)ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews4 base engines
Live citation tracking
Competitor benchmarking
Actionable audit (names the exact fixes)PartialPartial
Writes the fix (content + schema)
Publishes it on your own siteDrafts only✓ via CMS
Works on third-party pages (listicles, reviews, communities)
DTC / Shopify product-schema readinessPartial
Free self-serve tier

Prices and engine coverage read from each vendor's own pricing page in August 2026, and they change often; check each vendor for current numbers. "Partial" means the capability exists in a lighter form than a dedicated feature. This table is maintained by CrawlBit, so treat our own column as the one we know best and verify the rest.

Where Profound wins

Depth, breadth, and now production. Up to nine engines, governance, SOC2, an API, and Agents that research, draft and publish straight into your CMS. If you have a website to fill and a team to review the output, Profound is the category leader and it is not close. Entry is $99 a month, but that plan watches ChatGPT and nothing else.

Where Otterly wins

Simple, affordable monitoring with a clean GEO audit. If all you want is to watch a handful of prompts and get a page-level score, Otterly is a friendly, agency-ready place to start.

Where Peec wins

Fast, clean self-serve analytics and reporting for a marketing team that lives in dashboards and will implement the guidance itself. Strong reporting, mid-market pricing.

Where CrawlBit wins

The half nobody else touches. Every other tool works inside your own website; CrawlBit works outside it. It finds the specific third-party pages AI cites your competitors on and that you are missing, drafts the pitch for each one, and on a Citation Sprint executes five of them for you. Agencies can run it under their own name.

Measurement is table stakes. The gap moved.

Every tool in this comparison can tell you whether AI cites you. That used to be the hard part; now it is the commodity. Through 2026 the gap was action, and it has partly closed: Profound Agents now research, write and publish. So the honest line is no longer "they measure, we act". It is where the work lands.

On-page is the half the category has caught up on: clear answer-first content, FAQ and Organization schema, tables instead of prose, a clean technical foundation, fresh timestamps. CrawlBit checks these, generates the schema and drafts the content. Profound will also publish it for you. Credit where it is due.

Off-page is the half that is still empty, and it is the stronger signal. The biggest predictor of being cited by AI is being mentioned elsewhere: on review platforms like G2, Trustpilot and Capterra, inside "best X" roundup listicles, and in genuine community discussion. CrawlBit finds the specific pages your competitors are cited on that you are missing, and drafts the outreach to get you in. That is the moat, and it is why measurement alone leaves the job half done.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best AI visibility tool in 2026?

There is no single best tool; it depends on what you need done. Profound has the widest engine coverage and now writes and publishes content to your own CMS. Otterly and Peec AI are strong mid-market monitors. CrawlBit is the one that works on pages you do not own: it finds the third-party pages AI cites your competitors on, and gets you onto them.

How is CrawlBit different from Profound, Otterly and Peec?

The difference is not measurement, and since 2026 it is not execution either: Profound Agents write and publish content through your CMS. The difference is where the work lands. Every one of these tools stops at the edge of your own website. CrawlBit works on third-party pages, the review platforms, roundup listicles and community threads that AI actually cites, finds the exact ones your competitors appear on, and gets you onto them.

How much does CrawlBit cost compared to Profound and Otterly?

CrawlBit is free to audit your site and test whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude names you. Paid work is a Citation Sprint at $490 one-time, which includes five off-page placements executed for you and a re-test after 30 days, then optional Monthly Tracking at $390 per month. The others are monitoring subscriptions: Otterly starts around $29 per month, Peec AI around €89 per month, and Profound runs $99 per month for ChatGPT only, $399 per month for three engines, with enterprise on quote. They tell you where you stand, and Profound will also write on your own site; none of them do the off-page work on third-party pages. Prices change; check each vendor for current numbers.

Which AI visibility tool is best for a Shopify or DTC store?

DTC stores need product-level readiness, not just brand tracking. Since Shopify's agentic storefronts push products into ChatGPT by default, the lever is complete, machine-readable product schema. CrawlBit checks Product schema completeness and the off-page footprint ecommerce brands are graded on, which general AI visibility trackers do not focus on.

See where you actually stand, then what to do about it.

Run a free CrawlBit audit. It shows whether answer engines can find and cite your site, tests real citations, and writes the fixes, on-page and off.

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