AI Visibility · Buyer’s Guide
Scrunch AI Alternatives in 2026: The Engine-Coverage Cliff
Scrunch publishes the widest engine range in this category — 4 LLMs at entry, 9 on enterprise — and no price for either. That combination makes engine coverage, not prompt count, the axis this comparison turns on.
Key takeaways
- Scrunch's entry tier covers 125 unique prompts and 4 LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO, Copilot), limited to 1 country, 2 languages, 3 personas and 5 competitors.
- Enterprise reaches 9 LLMs, adding Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode and Grok — the widest published engine range of any tool here, but behind a custom price.
- Scrunch publishes no dollar figure at either tier. Of eight vendors we fetched, only Profound and HubSpot AEO rendered readable prices.
- Engine coverage decides whether a measurement is meaningful; prompt allowance decides your bill. Most comparisons only tabulate the second.
- Watch add-on structures: Otterly includes 4 engines and sells Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid extras, so headline engine counts mislead.
- Disclosure: Linkeddit sells a competing product (Answer Radar, $99/month inside Compete), held to the same evidence standard as everything else here.
01What Scrunch AI actually publishes
Scrunch is unusually transparent about capability and entirely opaque about cost. Its pricing page renders a full feature matrix with no dollar figures anywhere.
The entry tier also includes 5 site audits per month, 1 brand workspace, 5 user licences, 3 personas, 2 languages, 5 tracked competitors, 3 AI Search Trends topics, limited query fan-out, a 25-page site map, 1 page optimisation per month, basic content generation, sentiment analysis, AI agent and bot traffic, email support, self-serve onboarding and Google single sign-on.
Enterprise adds a custom prompt count, the Agent Experience Platform, complete site audits, custom workspaces and licences, API access and integrations, expanded model coverage, SAML or OIDC single sign-on and a dedicated account team. Scrunch states it is trusted by more than 500 brands and agencies.
On allowance alone, 125 prompts is generous: two and a half times Profound’s 50-prompt entry tier and five times HubSpot’s 25. The unknown is what it costs.
02The engine-coverage cliff
The gap between 4 engines and 9 is the most consequential thing on Scrunch’s pricing page, and almost no comparison discusses it. Everything a buyer usually cares about most sits on the far side.
| Tier | Engines covered | What is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO, Copilot | Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode, Grok |
| Enterprise (custom price) | All nine, adding Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode, Grok | Nothing on engine coverage; the cost is the unknown |
If your buyers research inside Claude, an entry-tier score is measuring a world your buyers do not live in. This is the objection practitioners raise most sharply, in the context of another three-engine product:
“the '3 engine coverage' thing stood out to me too. like if youre betting on AI visibility as a real channel, not covering Claude or Copilot feels like leaving money on the table. those are huge in enterprise workflows. good point about the actionability gap too - dashboards are cool but if I cant actually do something about it from the same platform, whats the point”
The second half of that comment is the deeper complaint, and it is aimed at the whole category rather than any one vendor. Coverage without the ability to act is a report.
03Included versus available: the add-on trap
The most common way an engine count misleads is that engines are listed as supported while being sold separately. Otterly is the clearest published example: its plans cover four engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot) and list Claude, Google Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons on top. So a tool advertising seven engines may only include four in the price you were quoted.
Otterly also publishes something most rivals do not, which makes its marginal cost knowable even without a plan price: extra prompts cost $99 per 100, and a Standard plan can add up to 300 extra prompts before being moved to Premium. That is a useful benchmark for judging any per-prompt quote you receive.
04The alternatives, with verified numbers only
| Tool | Entry allowance | Engines at entry | Price on the vendor's own page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrunch | 125 unique prompts | 4 (9 on Enterprise) | Not rendered |
| Profound | 50 tracked prompts | Not stated on the pricing page | $99/mo Starter, $399/mo Growth (100 prompts) |
| HubSpot AEO | 25 prompts | 3 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) | $50/mo, or $45 paid annually |
| Peec AI | 350 on the tier shown | 3 models, up to 11 on Enterprise | Not rendered |
| Otterly.AI | Tiers at 15 / 100 / 400 | 4 included, +3 as paid add-ons | Not rendered (+100 prompts costs $99) |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Tracked plus custom prompts | 6 AI platforms | Not rendered on the product page |
| Linkeddit Answer Radar | Included in Compete | 4 (GPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude) | $99/mo |
| Alternative | What it gives you over Scrunch | What you give up |
|---|---|---|
| Profound | A published ladder you can forecast against: $99/mo for 50 tracked prompts, $399 for 100, custom Enterprise. | A much smaller allowance at entry (50 vs 125) and no published engine list. |
| HubSpot AEO | Cheapest verified entry at $50/mo ($45 annual), no other HubSpot subscription needed, with citation analysis, sentiment and prioritised recommendations. Free 25-prompt trial, no card. | 25 prompts and only 3 engines — no Claude, no Copilot. Still beta. |
| Peec AI | The largest advertised allowance at 350 prompts, with unlimited users, daily tracking and multi-country. | Also publishes no price, and entry is limited to 3 models. |
| Otterly.AI | Knowable marginal cost ($99 per extra 100 prompts) and published allowance tiers. | No plan price. Claude, Gemini and AI Mode are paid extras on top of 4 engines. |
| Linkeddit Answer Radar | Covers GPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude in one price, and runs the loop rather than stopping at a score: ranks gaps by intent and evidence, drafts a fix grounded only in the sources seen in that run, then re-measures. $99/mo with weekly competitor intelligence. | Built for founders and small teams rather than enterprise procurement; no Meta AI or Grok coverage. |
05The retrieval question, and why scores disagree
An AI engine answers either from what it absorbed during training or from what it fetched moments ago. Those are different measurements, and a score that blends them without labelling which is which cannot be interpreted.
HubSpot documents the split on its own AEO Grader page: ChatGPT and Gemini pull from training data; Perplexity pulls from live search. A competitor stating that plainly is the best available confirmation that the distinction is real and that most single-number dashboards obscure it.
“AI prompt tracking can fool you into thinking you're doing great at AEO or GEO, when really you've just temporarily hijacked a search result.”
A retrieval-on score moves as fast as the pages that currently rank. A retrieval-off score reflects durable model association. Ask which you are being sold, whether the model version is recorded per run, and what happens to the chart when a run fails.
06The free method
Worth running before any purchase, because for a small question set it produces the same underlying signal. Shared by an agency practitioner in r/SEO.
- List the buying questions that matter — questions, not keywords. Usually under twenty per company.
- Ask each engine twice, once with web search on and once off, so you know which visibility you have.
- Extract the underlying query. Claude lists it in the answer, Perplexity exposes it under Steps, ChatGPT will tell you if asked.
- Track those queries in your existing rank tracker, tagged LLM-sourced.
- Cross-check volume in Google Search Console to prioritise.
“For now, many brands are better off just using a spreadsheet and manually reviewing AI answers for a small set of queries.”
Cover four engines and close the gap, in one price
07How to choose
| If this is you | Do this |
|---|---|
| You need Claude, Gemini or Grok covered | Scrunch Enterprise is the widest published range at 9 LLMs. Get the quote, then compare it against a tool that includes Claude at entry. |
| You need a forecastable price without a sales call | Profound ($99/mo for 50 prompts, $399 for 100) or HubSpot AEO ($45-50/mo for 25). The only two publishing figures. |
| 125 prompts across 4 engines is genuinely enough | Stay on Scrunch's entry tier, but confirm the price per extra 100 prompts and whether the allowance is per workspace. |
| You need site audits and personas as well as tracking | Scrunch is strong here — 5 audits/month, 3 personas and query fan-out at entry. Few rivals bundle that. |
| Your score never turns into an action | Choose a tool that shows the cited sources behind a loss and re-measures after you ship. That is the job Answer Radar is built for. |
| You track under 20 questions | Do not buy yet. Run the free method monthly and put the budget into classic SEO, which still feeds most AI answers. |
Frequently asked questions
How much does Scrunch AI cost?+
Scrunch does not publish a price. We fetched scrunch.com/pricing directly and it renders a detailed feature matrix with no dollar figures. The entry tier covers 125 unique prompts, 5 site audits per month, 1 brand workspace, 5 user licences and 4 LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO and Copilot), limited to 1 country, 2 languages, 3 personas and 5 competitors. The Enterprise tier is custom and reaches 9 LLMs, adding Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode and Grok, plus API access, SAML or OIDC single sign-on and a dedicated account team.
What is the best Scrunch AI alternative in 2026?+
If you need a price you can forecast, Profound is the only close competitor publishing a ladder, at $99/month for 50 tracked prompts and $399/month for 100, and HubSpot AEO is cheaper at $50/month or $45 annually for 25 prompts across three engines. If you need the largest advertised allowance, Peec AI shows a 350-prompt tier, though it also withholds pricing. If your real problem is that the score never turns into an action, the alternative is a tool that runs measure, fix and re-measure as one loop, which is where Linkeddit's Answer Radar sits at $99/month with competitor intelligence included.
How many AI engines does Scrunch AI track?+
Four at the entry tier and nine on Enterprise, per Scrunch's own pricing page. Entry covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AIO and Copilot. Enterprise adds Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, Google AI Mode and Grok. This is the widest published engine range of any tool in this comparison, but the jump sits behind a custom-priced tier, so the practical question is what Enterprise costs and whether you need Claude and Gemini badly enough to find out.
Is engine coverage or prompt allowance more important?+
Prompt allowance usually decides your bill; engine coverage usually decides whether the measurement is meaningful. If your buyers research in Claude and your tool does not cover Claude, a perfect score across three other engines tells you very little. The trap to watch is add-on structures: Otterly, for example, includes four engines and sells Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid extras on top, so a headline engine count is not the same as engines included in the price. Work out which engines your buyers actually use, confirm they are included rather than available, and only then compare prompt allowances.
Does Scrunch AI separate live search from training data?+
Its pricing page does not say, and this is the question we would put to any vendor first. HubSpot documents the distinction openly on its own AEO Grader page: ChatGPT and Gemini pull from training data while Perplexity pulls from live search. Those are different measurements. A retrieval-on result reflects whichever pages currently rank and is easy to gain and lose; a retrieval-off result reflects whether the model itself associates your brand with your category. Any tool blending both into one trend line without labelling which is which is reporting a number without error bars.
Can I replace Scrunch AI with a free method?+
For a small question set, yes. Ask each engine your buying questions, then extract the underlying search query it ran: Claude usually lists it in the answer, Perplexity exposes it under the Steps tab, and you can ask ChatGPT what it searched for. Track those queries in the rank tracker you already own, tag them as LLM-sourced, and cross-check volume in Google Search Console. This produces the same underlying signal most dashboards resell. It stops scaling past roughly twenty to thirty prompts, or when you need history, shared access, or repeatability you can trust.
Related guides
- Peec AI alternatives: a buyer's guide with verified numbers
- Profound alternatives: what you give up on price transparency
- Best AI brand visibility tools in 2026 (and when not to buy one)
- Answer Radar: AI brand visibility and answer engine optimization
- Peec AI, Otterly and Profound compared
- Competitor intelligence: track rival moves and complaints