Scrunch AI Alternatives: The Three Surfaces It Does Not Watch
Scrunch AI costs $300/month and does not monitor Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, or Copilot. Six alternatives compared on engine coverage, refresh cadence, and cost per prompt.
Scrunch AI tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini from $300/month. What it does not track is the reason most people end up looking for an alternative: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot are all absent, and data refreshes weekly rather than daily. Where to go next:
- IF THE GAP IS COVERAGE: LLMREFS AT $79/MO: Eight engines with no tiering, including all three surfaces Scrunch misses, for roughly a quarter of the price. 500 prompts at $0.16 each.
- IF THE GAP IS GOOGLE SPECIFICALLY: OTTERLY OR ATHENAHQ: Otterly includes Google AI Overviews and Copilot daily from $29/month, with AI Mode as a paid add-on. AthenaHQ covers six surfaces at $295/month.
- IF THE GAP IS DEPTH: PROFOUND: SOC 2 certified with citation-level analysis of which sources the models pulled from. A $99/month ChatGPT-only Starter, $399 Growth, enterprise from $2,000.
- SCRUNCH IS NOT ACTUALLY EXPENSIVE PER PROMPT: At $300 for 350 custom prompts it works out at $0.86 each, mid-table for the category. The problem is what those prompts can be pointed at, not the unit price.
- NONE OF THEM WILL TELL YOU WHAT TO FIX: Every tool here reports presence. If you already know you are invisible and need the technical reason why, that is a crawl, not a tracker.
Check which surfaces your buyers actually use before you shop on price. A cheaper tool that watches the wrong four engines is not a saving.
Scrunch AI does a real job well. The trouble is the list of things it does not watch: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot are all absent, at $300 a month. Try CrawlRaven free: 1 site, no credit card →
The short answer
Scrunch AI is a good product aimed at four engines. Whether it is the right product depends almost entirely on whether your buyers ask questions on the other three.
So unlike most alternatives lists, this one does not start with price. It starts with what each tool can see.
| Tool | Best For | Key Strength |
|---|---|---|
| LLMrefs | Closing the coverage gap outright | 8 engines with no tiering at a flat $79/mo, 500 prompts, unlimited sites |
| Otterly | Google surfaces on a small budget | AI Overviews and Copilot included daily from $29/mo |
| Profound | Depth and enterprise procurement | SOC 2 certified, citation-level analysis, $99/mo ChatGPT-only entry |
| AthenaHQ | Six surfaces without add-on maths | Broad coverage in one plan, though $295/mo is a premium |
| Peec AI | Teams that need many logins | Unlimited seats on every plan from EUR 89/mo |
| CrawlRaven | Knowing what to change, not what happened | Search Console and GA4 joined to a 200-point crawl, ranked |
The gap that sends people looking
What each tool actually watches
Scrunch monitors ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. That is a real spread, and for a developer-tools brand it may be exactly the right four.
It is a poor spread for almost everyone else, because the three surfaces it omits are the ones attached to Google's distribution.
Which AI surfaces each tool actually watches
| Tool | Entry | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Google AIO | Google AI Mode | Claude | Gemini | Copilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrunch AI | $300/mo | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| LLMrefs | $79/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Otterly | $29/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Yes |
| Peec AI | EUR 89/mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Higher tier | Higher tier | Higher tier | Higher tier |
| Profound Starter | $99/mo | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Read that grid one row at a time and the shape of the market is clear enough:
- LLMrefs is the only tool here with no gaps and no tiering. Eight engines on one $79 plan, including all three Scrunch misses.
- Otterly gets Google AI Overviews and Copilot into a $29 plan, but Gemini, Claude, and AI Mode are paid add-ons running $9 to $439 a month depending on engine and tier.
- Peec AI gates breadth behind price. Starter covers three engines, and the ten-plus tier is EUR 499 a month, around $550.
- Profound's $99 Starter is ChatGPT only. Cheap and narrow by design, which is the right trade for some teams and a trap for others.
Open Search Console and look at your AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions for the last month. Then look at your referral traffic from ChatGPT and Perplexity.
If Google surfaces dominate, Scrunch is watching the wrong four engines for you and no amount of interface polish fixes that. If they do not, the coverage gap is theoretical and you should be shopping on depth or price instead.
Weekly refresh, and when it matters
The second complaint is cadence. Scrunch updates weekly rather than daily, which sounds minor and is, right up until you try to prove something caused something else.
When update cadence actually costs you something
The honest summary is that weekly is fine for reporting and bad for experimenting. If your programme is a quarterly slide, ignore this entirely. If you are trying to work out whether last month's rewrite moved anything, four data points will not tell you.
What Scrunch AI costs, and the per-prompt truth
Starter is $300 a month, or $250 billed annually. Growth is $500, or $417 annually. Enterprise is custom, there is no free tier, and the trial runs seven days. Verified July 2026 on the vendor's pricing page.
One thing worth correcting, because plenty of comparison posts still get it wrong: the $100 a month ChatGPT-only Explorer plan is gone. Multi-engine coverage now starts at Starter.
Monthly cost per tracked prompt, cheapest first
Here is where the usual narrative breaks down. Scrunch Starter buys 350 custom prompts plus 1,000 industry prompts for $300, which works out at $0.86 per custom prompt. That is mid-table, cheaper per unit than every Otterly and Peec AI tier.
- Scrunch is not overpriced per prompt. Only LLMrefs, at $0.16, beats it meaningfully.
- It is overpriced per engine. Four surfaces for $300 against eight for $79 is the comparison that actually stings.
- The allowance is generous and mostly unused. Most teams never point 350 prompts at anything they act on, so the headline allowance flatters the value.
What to check before you switch
- Which surfaces your buyers actually use. Check your own Search Console AI impressions rather than assuming. This decides the shortlist more than anything else on this list.
- Engines included versus gated. Add-ons and higher tiers are how a $29 or EUR 89 entry becomes a $500 invoice. Price the combination you need, not the entry tier.
- Refresh cadence against your workflow. Weekly for reporting, daily if you intend to run tests.
- Cost per tracked prompt at the volume you will really use. Not the volume on the pricing page.
- Whether citations are shown, not just mentions. Knowing which source a model quoted is the difference between a metric and a lead.
- What you can export. History does not port between these platforms, so check the exit before the entry.
The six alternatives
1. LLMrefs: the coverage answer
LLMrefs sells one plan at $79 a month, verified August 2026: 500 tracked prompts, eight AI engines with no engine tiering, unlimited team members, unlimited projects and domains, CSV export and API access, on a 7-day trial.
The eight are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Meta AI. That is every surface Scrunch covers plus every surface it misses.
- The saving is $221 a month. $948 a year against Scrunch Starter's $3,600, a difference of $2,652 or about 74 percent.
- No engine tiering is the real differentiator. Several competitors gate Claude or Gemini behind their most expensive plan.
- The shared budget is the catch. Unlimited sites and seats all draw on the same 500 prompts, so an agency roster spends it fast.
- Its own pages disagree on the engine count. The homepage lists more than the pricing page. We quote the pricing page.
2. Otterly: Google surfaces on a small budget
Otterly includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot on every plan, tracked daily. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts, Standard $189 for 100 plus API and MCP access, Premium $489 for 400. Verified July 2026, with annual billing saving 15 percent.
For a Scrunch refugee this is an unusual trade: you gain the two Google surfaces and Copilot, and you lose Claude and Gemini unless you buy them back as add-ons.
- Best when Google is the gap and Claude is not part of your buying journey.
- Add-ons run $9 to $439 a month depending on engine and tier, so full coverage is not a $29 product.
- Simplest onboarding in the category, which matters when you are re-proving the category internally after a switch.
3. Profound: depth instead of breadth
Profound is the move if what you actually wanted from Scrunch was more detail rather than more engines. It is SOC 2 certified, covers ten or more platforms on its upper tiers, and analyses which sources the models cited rather than only whether you appeared.
Pricing, verified July 2026: Starter $99 a month for ChatGPT only, Growth $399, and full enterprise contracts roughly $2,000 to $5,000+ a month. No free tier.
- Citation-level analysis is the product. It answers "whose page got quoted instead of mine", which is the first genuinely actionable question in this category.
- Growth at $399 is the honest comparison to Scrunch Starter at $300, not the $99 tier.
- The learning curve is steep and it needs an owner.
4. AthenaHQ: six surfaces, premium price
AthenaHQ covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and AI Overviews, which fixes most of the Scrunch gap in a single plan with no add-on arithmetic. Self-Serve is $295 a month, or $245 billed annually, verified July 2026.
At $295 against $300 this is a sideways move on price, so it only makes sense if the extra surfaces are the point. Its e-commerce features, notably product-level visibility with Shopify and GA4 integrations, are the other reason to pick it. We covered the cheaper routes in AthenaHQ alternatives.
5. Peec AI: unlimited seats, tiered engines
Peec AI starts at EUR 89 a month, roughly $95, for 25 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Pro is EUR 199, about $230, for 100 prompts and five engines. Enterprise is EUR 499, around $550, for 300+ prompts and ten or more engines including Claude and Gemini.
Every plan includes unlimited team members, where most competitors charge $20 to $50 per additional seat. For an eight-person team that is worth $160 to $400 a month on its own.
- Cheapest way to add the Google AI Overviews surface if seats matter more to you than Claude coverage.
- Matching Scrunch's engine list means the EUR 499 tier, which is well above what you are leaving.
- No actionable recommendations, and its search volume figures have been unreliable in our testing.
6. CrawlRaven: the fix list, not the dashboard
Being straight about the category boundary: CrawlRaven is not a prompt-level visibility tracker and will not replace Scrunch for that job.
It answers the question every tool above leaves open. It joins your Search Console and GA4 data to a 200-point crawl and returns one ranked plan, so you get the page to fix and the reason rather than another presence score.
Lifetime licences start at $49 at launch, with a free plan for one site. See pricing for the current batch.
- Technical AI readiness is part of the crawl, covering whether AI crawlers can reach and parse the pages you want quoted.
- One-time licence against a $3,600 annual subscription. The launch price is recovered inside the first month.
- Pairs well rather than replaces. LLMrefs at $79 plus a crawl still costs less than Scrunch Starter alone.
Profound vs Scrunch AI, since everyone asks
This is the single most searched Scrunch comparison, so it deserves a straight answer rather than a hedge.
| Profound | Scrunch AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $99/mo (ChatGPT only) | $300/mo Starter |
| Comparable tier | $399/mo Growth | $300/mo Starter |
| Engines | 10+ on upper tiers | 4 (no Google surfaces) |
| Citations | Source-level analysis | Citation examples by persona |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Not published |
| Refresh | Not published as weekly | Weekly |
| Best at | Depth and procurement | Interface and persona tagging |
Pick Profound for depth, breadth, or a security review. Pick Scrunch if you have used both and prefer its dashboard, which is a legitimate reason and the one its users cite most.
How to choose
Where do your buyers actually ask?
- →Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: LLMrefs or Otterly. Scrunch cannot see either surface
- →ChatGPT and Perplexity mainly: Scrunch already covers it. Shop on price or depth instead
- →No idea: Check Search Console AI impressions before spending anything
What was missing from Scrunch?
- →Engines: LLMrefs at $79/mo, eight engines, no tiering
- →Detail on citations: Profound. Source-level analysis is its core product
- →Anything actionable: You want a crawl, not another tracker
Are you reporting or experimenting?
- →Quarterly reporting: Weekly refresh is fine. Optimise for coverage and cost
- →Testing content changes: Daily refresh. Otterly tracks its included engines daily
How many people need a login?
- →Up to three: Scrunch Starter includes three. Seats are not your constraint
- →Five or more: Peec AI or LLMrefs, both unlimited seats
The right pick for your situation
The verdict
LLMrefs at $79 a month is the switch that makes arithmetic sense. It covers every engine Scrunch does, plus the three it does not, for 74 percent less. Profound is the upgrade if you wanted depth, and Otterly is the cheapest route to the Google surfaces.
The thing worth keeping from Scrunch, though, is the honest part of its pitch. At $0.86 per custom prompt it is not gouging anyone. It is a well-built tool pointed at four engines, sold at a price that only works if those four are your four.
- Check the surfaces first, price second. A cheaper tool watching the wrong engines is not a saving.
- Do not pay for prompts you will never point anywhere. Most teams use a fraction of the allowance they buy.
- Re-verify before committing. Scrunch already removed a plan tier and moved domains, which is why every figure here is stamped July or August 2026.
Where to go from here, depending on what you have decided:
- Still shortlisting. Our roundup of the best AI visibility tools covers 14 platforms, including all six above.
- Google surfaces are the gap. Google AI Mode SEO tools covers that surface specifically.
- Ready to fix rather than measure. Our free llms.txt generator handles the AI crawler configuration most sites still have not set.
Frequently asked questions
What is Scrunch AI?
Scrunch AI is an AI visibility platform that tracks how often your brand is mentioned, cited, and recommended inside large language model answers. Founded in 2023 and backed by a $15 million Series A, it monitors prompt-level visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, with persona and content-cluster tagging on the citations it finds. It now lives at scrunch.com, and the older scrunchai.com domain redirects there.
What is the best Scrunch AI alternative?
LLMrefs, for most teams leaving over coverage. It tracks eight engines with no tiering, including the Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Copilot surfaces Scrunch does not monitor, at a flat $79 per month against Scrunch's $300. If you need citation-level depth rather than breadth, Profound is the better swap. If you want Google coverage on a small budget, Otterly starts at $29.
How much does Scrunch AI cost?
Scrunch AI's Starter plan is $300 per month, or $250 per month billed annually, and Growth is $500 per month, or $417 annually. Enterprise pricing is custom. There is no free tier and the free trial runs seven days. Verified July 2026. The $100 per month ChatGPT-only Explorer plan that earlier reviews mention no longer appears on the pricing page.
Does Scrunch AI track Google AI Overviews?
No. Scrunch monitors ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot are not covered, which is the single largest coverage gap among the platforms in this comparison. For most B2C and local brands those Google surfaces carry more impressions than the assistants Scrunch does watch, so the omission is worth checking against your own audience before renewing.
Profound vs Scrunch AI: which is better for AEO?
Profound, if the decision is about depth or procurement. It is SOC 2 certified, covers more platforms, and analyses which sources a model cited rather than only whether you appeared. Scrunch's advantage is the interface and its persona and content-cluster tagging, which several teams find easier to act on. On price they are close at the top and very different at the bottom: Profound has a $99 ChatGPT-only Starter, where Scrunch begins at $300.
Are there Scrunch AI alternatives under $100 a month?
Yes. LLMrefs is $79 per month for eight engines with unlimited sites and seats, Otterly Lite is $29 per month for 15 tracked prompts, Peec AI Starter is EUR 89 per month, roughly $95, and Profound Starter is $99 per month for ChatGPT only. All four are below a third of Scrunch's $300 entry price.
How often does Scrunch AI update its data?
Weekly rather than daily. That is fine for quarterly trend reporting and competitive share of voice, both of which move slowly. It is a real constraint if you are trying to attribute a movement to a specific content release, catch a sudden drop quickly, or run a structured test, because a four-week experiment gives you four readings instead of 28.
Scrunch AI vs AirOps: how do they compare?
They solve different problems. Scrunch AI measures where your brand appears inside AI answers. AirOps is a content workflow platform for building and running AI content pipelines at scale. Teams evaluate them side by side because both are marketed under the GEO umbrella, but one is measurement and the other is production, so most stacks that use both use them together rather than choosing.
Is Scrunch AI worth $300 a month?
It is worth it if the four engines it covers are where your buyers actually ask questions, and if someone acts on the persona and citation data monthly. It is poor value if your category shows up mainly in Google AI Overviews, because you are paying a premium price to watch the surfaces that matter least to you. Check a month of your own Search Console AI impressions before renewing.
Will I lose my tracking history if I switch?
Almost certainly. These platforms build history from the day you start tracking and exports rarely import cleanly into a competitor. Pull whatever CSVs Scrunch will give you before cancelling, and plan for a fresh baseline rather than a continuous trend line. If you are mid-way through proving a programme works, finish the quarter first.
Do any of these tools tell you how to improve?
Not in the way most buyers expect. The category measures presence and, at the better end, which sources were cited. None of them crawls your site and hands back a prioritised list of technical fixes. That is why teams often end up pairing a cheap tracker with a technical audit rather than paying a premium for one tool that does neither job completely.
How many prompts should I track?
Start with 15 to 25 covering your category terms, your brand against one competitor, and the buying questions your sales team hears most. That fits inside Otterly Lite or Peec AI Starter. Scrunch's Starter allowance of 350 custom prompts is generous, but an allowance you do not use is not value, and most teams never point more than a few dozen prompts at anything they act on.
15+ years of growing SaaS websites through SEO | Author, 200-Point Audit Checklist
Aditi has spent 15+ years helping SaaS companies scale organic traffic through technical SEO and content strategy. She is the author of the CrawlRaven 200-Point Audit checklist used by agencies and in-house teams to systematically improve search performance.