Profound vs Scrunch AI for AEO: Which tool delivers better ROI?
As businesses adjust to the new AEO landscape, marketers are seeing increasing convergence with marketing automation—HubSpot’s recent acquisition of Xfunnel signals this shift, bringing AI search optimization directly into the CRM ecosystem where attribution and revenue tracking happen.
As a result, Marketers need the right AEO tools to reach their audience, who are flocking to AI search engines in droves. Two platforms gaining traction are Profound and Scrunch for AEO.
Both platforms boast useful tools meant to boost discoverability and reach, but which between the two is best for your business? Keep reading for a breakdown of Profound vs Scrunch for AEO and to see which would work best for you.
Table of Contents
- What is Profound?
- What is Scrunch?
- Profound vs Scrunch for AEO: Comparison at a glance
- Profound vs Scrunch compared
- Which should you choose for AEO: Profound or Scrunch?
- Frequently Asked Questions about Profound vs Scrunch for AEO
What is Profound?
Profound is an enterprise-grade Answer Engine Optimization platform that helps brands boost discoverability across AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews
Profound combines comprehensive monitoring across 9+ AI engines with powerful content creation tools called Agents that enable teams to produce AI-optimized content at scale.
My research shows Profound is particularly known for its Prompt Volumes feature—the first tool to reveal actual search volume data for AI conversations—and its specialized ChatGPT Shopping optimization capabilities for e-commerce brands.
What is Scrunch?
Scrunch is an AI Customer Experience Platform that focuses on technical optimization and helping brands control how AI agents interpret and cite their content. Rather than emphasizing content creation, Scrunch identifies technical barriers that prevent AI crawlers from accessing your site, analyzing which sources AI engines prefer to cite, and providing actionable recommendations to improve visibility.
My favorite, and a fan favorite, feature is its Agent Experience Platform (AXP), which creates parallel, AI-optimized versions of your web pages specifically designed for AI consumption—dramatically improving how effectively AI systems can process and reference your content.
Profound vs Scrunch for AEO: Comparison at a glance
Here’s a high-level comparison I put together to help you quickly understand how Scrunch and Profound differ:
Profound
- Primary Strength: Content creation and production at scale
- Best For: Enterprise brands needing to generate high volumes of AI-optimized content
- Standout Features:
- Agents tool with dozens of AI-optimized content templates (listicles, how-tos, comparisons)
- Prompt Volumes showing actual AI search demand by topic
- ChatGPT Shopping optimization for e-commerce brands
- Monitoring across 9+ AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Google AI Overviews)
- Implementation Timeline: 4-6 weeks to first visibility improvements
- Pricing Model: $99/month for Starter tier; …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
Author: Aaron
