Profound vs USTA: 2 GEO Tools 2026 (Examples + Templates)

Profound is an AI-visibility / GEO tracker with dated Starter and Growth list prices. A ticket layer is software that can refuse a CMS write when a page still has no unique fact. Those are two jobs. This versus names Profound and US Tech Automations only. Official tryprofound.com/pricing (HTTP 200, 2026-09-04) labels Starter $99/month and Growth $399/month. Zapier lists Profound from $82.50/month billed annually and notes the $82.50 Starter includes 50 prompts. Cited·Index says matching multi-engine depth needs Growth at $399/month. Print vendor $99/$399 and Zapier's annual $82.50 with attribution; never average them into a fake $90.

TL;DR: Buy Profound Starter at $99/month (or $82.50/month annual per Zapier, 50 prompts) if you need prompt tracking across answer engines. Buy Growth at $399/month if Starter's 50 prompts and engine depth are the actual bottleneck. Buy a ticket layer if HTML URLs still auto-publish without a unique fact. Buy both if you track prompts and still ship ungoverned pages. Buy neither if you do not have prompts to track and an editor already signs every URL.

COMPARISON earn rate: 17.8% vs 12.2% base according to US Tech Automations (2026) on 12,514 pages counted 2026-08-24 (941 COMPARISON pages). Neutral vertical default: 10 according to US Tech Automations mix-config (2026). Profound Starter: $99/month according to Profound (2026), official pricing fetched 2026-09-04. Profound Growth: $399/month according to Profound (2026) on the same page. Profound annual Starter: $82.50/mo according to Zapier (2026), 50 prompts on that Starter note. Canonical tags: 65% of mobile pages according to HTTP Archive Web Almanac (2024), 69% desktop.

Parent: the company homepage. Live neighbor for two GEO trackers: Profound versus Rankability. If you drifted into graders, Clearscope versus the ticket layer and Surfer versus Clearscope for SaaS.

AI-visibility tracker versus publish gate

GEO here means generative-engine / AI-overview visibility: which prompts cite you, on which engines, at what frequency. Profound sells that tracker. The ticket sells "may this HTML URL go live." Cancelling Profound to "replace it with automation" removes the prompt pane. Buying only a ticket without prompt tracking leaves you blind in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. Mixing the two SKUs into one invoice is how a team spends $399/month on Growth and still ships thin city pages.

A practical split: Profound owns "what do answer engines say." The ticket owns "may this URL go live." Finance teams who want one SKU for both will not find a public ticket $ to napkin against $99/$399. Compare jobs first. Print $99 monthly, $399 monthly, and $82.50 annual as three labeled numbers from two publishers. Do not blend them.

Profound is also not a writer, not a keyword suite, and not Site Audit. Teams stretch it into those jobs because a citation gap "feels like a content brief." A gap is a measurement. The brief still has to be written, the unique fact still has to exist, and post_status still has to flip. If the painful step is the brief, a $39 Frase yearly Starter (official page 2026-09-04) is a cheaper neighbor than jumping Starter $99 to Growth $399. If the painful step is brand-voice drafts, Jasper Pro at $59/seat/mo yearly is the writer neighbor. Keep the three conversations separate or you will buy Growth to solve a unique-fact problem.

Starter's 50-prompt note is easy to blow. Forty branded questions plus ten competitor questions is already 50. Growth at $399/month is 4× Starter monthly $99. Pay 4× when engine depth or prompt volume is the named bottleneck. Do not pay 4× because the dashboard looked sparse on week one — sparse often means you have not written the prompts yet.

Starter's 50-prompt note (Zapier) is a cap, not a citation guarantee. Cited·Index's point that matching multi-engine depth needs Growth at $399/month is a depth argument, not a rank forecast. If you have 40 prompts, Starter may be enough. If you need the broader engine set, Growth is the invoice — still not a unique-fact gate.

Who this versus is for

This page is for SEO and brand leads who have a Profound cart open and a CMS that still auto-publishes, and for finance partners who saw $99, $82.50, and $399 on three different tabs and asked which is "the price."

$99 is official Starter monthly. $82.50 is Zapier's annual-billed Starter with 50 prompts. $399 is official Growth monthly. All three can be true. Averaging them is how you lie to the spreadsheet. If procurement needs one number, pick the billing mode you will actually use and date the screenshot. Do not send a slide that says "about $90" and then get invoiced at $399 because someone clicked Growth for the engine list. Write the billing mode on the PO: monthly Starter $99, annual Starter $82.50, or Growth $399 — one line, one date. A unique-fact column is still the first add even when Profound is already open every Monday, because citations do not excuse thin HTML pages.

Red flags: Skip Profound if you have no prompts to track and only needed a blog CMS. Skip Growth if 50 prompts cover the brand. Skip a ticket layer if one editor already signs every HTML URL. Skip both if you do not publish programmatic pages and do not care what answer engines say.

Terms used on this page

Prompt: a question you track in an answer engine. GEO: visibility in generative engines, not a city page. Starter: Profound $99/month official, $82.50/month annual per Zapier, 50 prompts on that note. Growth: $399/month official. Unique fact: a sentence true only for that HTML URL. post_status: WordPress live field. Mix-config 17.8%: why this URL is a versus, not a Profound quality score. Fail-closed write: the URL does not go live unless a rule passes.

Weighted criteria

Source: Profound pricing 2026-09-04; Zapier 2026; mix-config 2026-08-24.

Feature matrix with first-party numbers

Source: mix-config; Profound; Zapier. Never average $99 and $82.50.

Dated prices

Source: Profound pricing and Zapier AI-visibility roundup. Cited·Index (HTTP 200) says matching multi-engine depth needs Growth at $399/month — a depth claim, not a third list price to average.

Yearly TCO at official Starter monthly is $1,188. At Zapier's $82.50 annual-billed it is $990. Growth monthly is $4,788/year. Those are three labeled figures. Pick the billing mode you will actually use. Do not report $1,089 as "the average."

Prompt caps versus dollars

Source: same Profound and Zapier figures. Official Starter prompt cap besides Zapier's 50 is contact vendor if the official card does not print it — this page will not guess.

Profound profile and ticket-layer profile

Profound

Best fit: Brands who need to see which prompts cite them in answer engines and who can live on 50 prompts (Zapier Starter note) or will pay Growth $399/month for depth. Limitation: Not a CMS; not a unique-fact gate; $99 and $82.50 are different billing modes, not a disagreement to split. Implementation: Track prompts, ship HTML changes in the CMS with a human, re-measure. Evidence: Profound. Profound wins the GEO pane. It loses the HTML publish gate. If 40 prompts cover the brand, Starter is the invoice to try before Growth's $4,788/year. If Cited·Index is right that matching multi-engine depth needs Growth, pay $399/month for that depth — still add a unique-fact column on the pages you publish because of what the tracker showed. A realistic Starter month: 48 prompts, a weekly screenshot of who is cited, two HTML URLs from real gaps, both with unique facts. A realistic bad Starter month: 50 prompts that are restatements of one head query, eight template URLs shipped the same week, three of them canonical collisions. The $99 list price is the same. The index and citation risk is not. Annual billing at $82.50/mo saves $198/year versus $99 monthly — real money, still smaller than editor hours on the three collisions.

Ticket layer

Best fit: Ops leads whose CMS publishes whatever a writer returns after a GEO insight. Limitation: Not a prompt tracker; public $ contact vendor; workflows here are proposed/configurable. Implementation: Trigger on row_ready, refuse write when unique-fact is empty, named reviewer, then post_status. Evidence: agentic workflows. The ticket does not replace Profound's prompt graph. US Tech Automations does the fail-closed step after someone decides an HTML URL should exist.

Recipe: 50 prompts to a blocked HTML write

Worked example: a B2B SaaS brand tracking 48 of Zapier's 50-prompt Starter note on Profound at $82.50/mo annual ($990/year) — or $99/mo official monthly ($1,188/year) if they did not prepay — and shipping 8 HTML URLs/month from citation gaps, with WordPress post_status held at draft until a unique fact exists. Three of 8 fail because the "what is X" page is a template that already has a canonical sibling (HTTP Archive 65% mobile canonical usage is the reminder). A Make scenario logs the prompt export, retries 5xx, and writes run_id. US Tech Automations, in a proposed configuration, would ticket the 3 and block the WordPress write — CMS token required; human review is the editor of record. Jumping to Growth at $399/month because "we need more engines" does not un-fail those 3 templates. It buys depth on the remaining prompts.

Zapier, Make, or n8n can poll a sheet of prompts, retry, and PATCH WordPress with a run history. You own idempotency (page_key), escalation, access, retention, and the Profound session. If the unique-fact checkbox is optional, you did not build a gate. Budget 2 hours to write the scenario and 1 hour a month to read the log. If nobody owns that hour, a ticket product is the owner of the stop rule. No-code can still retry 5xx; it cannot invent the unique fact.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: Stay on Profound Starter alone when you only needed prompt tracking and HTML is already governed. Stay on Growth alone when depth is the job and an editor already signs URLs. Stay in n8n alone when the scenario already retries, logs, and pages a human.

Common GEO mistakes

Averaging $99 and $82.50. Treating 50 prompts as 50 published URLs. Buying Growth at $4,788/year because Starter "felt small" while unique-fact cells are empty. Treating 17.8% COMPARISON earn as a GEO quality score. Publishing citation-gap pages that share a canonical. Using Profound as a writer. Using a ticket as a prompt tracker. Skipping Profound versus Rankability when the actual question was two GEO vendors, not a ticket.

A second cluster of mistakes: changing title, H1, and schema in the same week you also changed the prompt set, then attributing a citation move to Profound. Citation moves need a window, the same way GSC ctr needs 1,000 impressions. Do not call a GEO winner at 40 impressions of an answer-engine screenshot.

Key Takeaways

• Profound Starter is $99/month official; Zapier lists $82.50/month annual with 50 prompts; Growth is $399/month official. Print all three; never average.

• A ticket layer is a fail-closed HTML write, not a prompt tracker.

• First-party COMPARISON earn is 17.8% vs 12.2% base on 12,514 pages (2026-08-24).

• seo_automation uses mix-config default 10, not a vertical earn rate.

• Zapier/Make/n8n can retry and log; they do not invent the unique-fact rule.

GEO versus gate questions

Is this a fair versus?

Only if you admit different jobs. Profound sells prompt tracking. The ticket sells a fail-closed HTML write. The versus is for buyers about to cancel one to "replace" the other.

How should I read the two invoices?

Profound Starter $99/month official or $82.50/month annual per Zapier (50 prompts). Growth $399/month official. Ticket layer: contact vendor. Do not average $99 and $82.50.

Should SEO teams pick Profound or a ticket?

Pick Profound when answer-engine prompts are the missing pane. Pick a ticket when HTML publish is ungoverned. Pick both when both are true.

Does $82.50 mean the official $99 is wrong?

No. $82.50 is Zapier's annual-billed Starter. $99 is official monthly. Date both. Pick the billing mode you will use.

Can I use Profound without a ticket layer?

Yes. Most GEO seats should. Add a ticket when citation-gap pages auto-publish or when 5xx retries duplicate URLs.

What field does the recipe gate?

WordPress post_status. Profound's job is the prompt row before that field flips. Do not gate the Profound project, which can hold unused prompts without hurting the HTML index.

If you want a fail-closed ticket on top of a Profound seat, compare the public list on the pricing page.