Head-to-head review · Updated June 2026

Lumar vs Profound: which one wins in 2026?

An honest editorial comparison from the team at GrowthManager.ai. We make a competing product, which is disclosed in full at the bottom.

Lumar and Profound both claim to do the same thing: tell you where your brand shows up in AI search. They go about it differently enough that the choice matters. Lumar has raised $37.6M, Profound has raised $154.5 million; Profound is the more-funded incumbent; Lumar is the leaner challenger.

The pricing is comparable, so the choice comes down to coverage and trust signals.

The verdict
Pick

Lumar

Lumar is the right pick if your team prefers their approach and pricing fits.

★ Our pick
Pick

Profound

Pick Profound if you need broader AI platform coverage (10 platforms vs 0); and you trust traction signals — they list 16 customers, Lumar lists 7; and you want the better-funded company ($154.5 million).

If neither is right, GrowthManager.ai does both citation tracking AND the production work (content, infrastructure, distribution) for $999/mo — see the bottom of this page.

The case for Lumar

Lumar has raised $37.6M (Series B (Aug 2022)). Founded by Michal Magdziarz, Matt Jones, based in London, UK. On their site they list 7 named customers including Adobe, Deloitte, Motley Fool, Comcast. Pricing starts at Custom.

Enterprise website intelligence platform (formerly DeepCrawl).

What people praise

  • Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
  • Renders JavaScript pages to capture client-side content, critical for modern stacks
  • Protect app runs SEO QA in CI/CD pipelines to catch noindex or blocked resource regressions before launch
  • Visual dashboards are clearer than Excel exports from competing crawlers and prioritize fixes by impact

Where it falls short

  • Pricing is entirely custom, no public tiers, and reviewers consistently call it expensive vs competitors
  • Steep learning curve, the UI is described as overwhelming and very technical for non-SEO users
  • No competitor data inside the product, you cannot benchmark against rival domains
  • Crawls can be slow on very large sites because of the depth of analysis

The case for Profound

Profound has raised $154.5 million (Series C in February 2026 at $1B valuation). Founded by James Cadwallader, Dylan Babbs, based in New York, NY, USA. On their site they list 16 named customers including Ramp, Zapier, Alchemy, Aleph. They cover 10 AI platforms. Pricing starts at $99/mo with no free trial.

Profound is the full-stack AI visibility marketing platform that helps enterprise brands monitor, optimize, and measure how they appear across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and eight other AI answer engines.

What people praise

  • Intuitive, polished UI that makes complex AI visibility data easy to read and report on
  • Unique Prompt Volumes dataset showing real AI search demand that no competitor offers
  • Fast and thorough onboarding with highly responsive customer success team
  • Conversation Explorer gives direct visibility into how real users query AI platforms

Where it falls short

  • Pricing is steep relative to what lower tiers unlock, with a large jump between Growth and Enterprise
  • No free trial or self-serve signup - every plan requires a sales conversation first
  • Dashboard can be confusing - visibility data does not clearly tell you what to do next
  • Single-workspace architecture makes it unusable or cumbersome for agencies managing multiple clients

Pricing, tier by tier

Tier 1
Lumar
Custom (modular)
Custom
  • Lumar Analyze, Monitor, Protect and Impact apps available individually
  • Technical SEO, GEO/AEO, site speed, accessibility and custom analytics metrics
  • Pricing scales with URL volume crawled (estimated $2,667/mo for 5M URLs)
  • Professional services and enterprise support
Profound
Starter
$99
  • ChatGPT tracking only
  • 50 prompts tracked
  • 1 language and 1 region
  • 1 seat
Tier 2
Lumar
—
—
Profound
Growth
$399
  • 3 answer engines tracked
  • 100 prompts tracked (9,000 responses)
  • 6 optimized articles per month
  • 1 language and 1 region
Tier 3
Lumar
—
—
Profound
Enterprise
Custom
  • 10 answer engines tracked
  • Multiple companies tracked
  • Tailored prompt tracking plan
  • API access

Feature parity

What each one ships that the other doesn't. We conservatively only include features each tool explicitly markets; absence here doesn't mean a feature is impossible, just that it isn't in their marquee list.

Only on Lumar
  • Analyze. Crawls websites at scale with 250+ built-in reports plus custom data extraction
  • Monitor. Continuous tracking across multiple domains with customizable dashboards and threshold alerts
  • Protect. Automated SEO QA tests wired into CI/CD pipelines, catches regressions pre-launch
  • Impact. Stakeholder reporting with industry benchmarking and commercial impact prioritization
  • GEO/AEO metrics. Tracks how AI search engines surface and cite your site
  • WCAG 2.2 accessibility audits. Levels A, AA and AAA compliance checking integrated into the crawl
Only on Profound
  • Answer Engine Insights. Tracks how a brand is mentioned, cited, and represented across AI answer engines, including sentiment analysis and competitive share of voice monitoring.
  • Prompt Volumes. Proprietary panel data showing estimated search volumes for AI prompts, revealing how often consumers ask specific questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLMs.
  • Profound Agents. Autonomous AI marketing agents that orchestrate content workflows, including content refresh, AEO FAQ generation, competitive research, and CMS publishing.

When each one wins

When Lumar wins
  • Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
When Profound wins
  • Budget is the constraint. Profound starts at $99/mo vs Lumar's $∞/mo, so on a per-seat basis it's the cheaper way in.
  • Platform coverage matters. Profound monitors 10 AI platforms; Lumar covers 0.
  • You're enterprise and need to call a reference. Profound lists 16 named customers; Lumar lists 7.
  • You want the better-funded incumbent. Profound has raised $154.5 million, giving it more runway and shipping velocity.
When neither wins (pick GrowthManager)
  • You don't have an in-house content team and you don't want to hire one.
  • You want one $999/mo invoice instead of stacking Lumar plus an agency.
  • You need the team that measures to also act on the data, in the same week.
  • You're a B2B SaaS, services firm, or e-commerce brand at $20K+ MRR.

Reasons to pick one over the other

Reasons to pick Lumar over Profound

  1. More mature platform. Lumar (founded 2010) has had more time to harden the product than Profound (2024).
  2. What users praise most. Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
  3. EU data residency. Lumar is HQ'd in London, UK, which simplifies GDPR data-processor agreements for European buyers.

Reasons to pick Profound over Lumar

  1. Lower entry price. Profound publishes a clear entry tier at $99/mo; Lumar gates pricing.
  2. More plan flexibility. Profound offers 3 pricing tiers vs Lumar's 1, so there's a better chance one fits your team size.
  3. Broader AI platform coverage. Profound tracks visibility across 10 AI engines vs Lumar's 0.
  4. Better-funded incumbent. Profound has raised $154.5 million, giving it more runway and shipping velocity than Lumar ($37.6M).
  5. More named customers. Profound lists 16 customers vs Lumar's 7, including Ramp, Zapier, Alchemy.
  6. HIPAA-ready. Profound is HIPAA compliant; Lumar is not.
  7. More verified reviews. Profound has 790 G2 reviews vs Lumar's 101, so the average rating carries more weight.
  8. Faster product velocity. Profound has shipped 8 public launches in the last year vs Lumar's 5.
  9. Built for the LLM era. Profound was founded in 2024, built around AI search from day one; Lumar dates back to 2010 and is retrofitting.
  10. Wider integration ecosystem. Profound integrates with 28 tools; Lumar ships 10.
  11. What users praise most. Intuitive, polished UI that makes complex AI visibility data easy to read and report on

Switching from one to the other

From Lumar to Profound

Export your saved queries and prompt panels from Lumar (most tools support CSV export). Most Profound setups can import the same query list in a single CSV upload. Expect 1-2 days of parallel running so you can validate Profound's data againstLumar's; one to two weeks of full reconciliation before you cancel Lumar. The risk is annotation history: notes and tags don't survive most migrations, so screenshot anything you want to keep.

From Profound to Lumar

Same flow in reverse. Export from Profound, import to Lumar. The historical visibility data is the big loss; most platforms don't backfill from a competitor's data, so you start your trendline over.

From either to GrowthManager.ai

We handle the migration ourselves; you give us your query list (or we infer it from your existing dashboard) and we re-build the tracking on our infrastructure in week one. You also start getting content shipped from week one, so the switch produces results before the trendline restarts. The conversation that kicks this off is a 20-minute call.

Side by side, every number we could verify

LumarProfound
Starts at (USD/mo)Custom$99/mo
Founded20102024
HeadquartersLondon, UKNew York, NY, USA
Funding raised$37.6M$154.5 million
AI platforms tracked—10
G2 rating4.6 / 5 (101 reviews)4.6 / 5 (790 reviews)
Named customers716
SOC 2 Type 2✓ Yes✓ Yes
GDPR✓ Yes✓ Yes
HIPAA—✓ Yes

What real users say

Below: the recurring themes from G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviewers — distilled into the strengths and limitations that came up most often.

Lumar — what users praise

  • Handles very large sites (millions of URLs) where desktop crawlers like Screaming Frog hit resource limits
  • Renders JavaScript pages to capture client-side content, critical for modern stacks
  • Protect app runs SEO QA in CI/CD pipelines to catch noindex or blocked resource regressions before launch
  • Visual dashboards are clearer than Excel exports from competing crawlers and prioritize fixes by impact
  • Official Looker Studio and BigQuery connectors let you blend crawl data with revenue or product data

Lumar — what users complain about

  • Pricing is entirely custom, no public tiers, and reviewers consistently call it expensive vs competitors
  • Steep learning curve, the UI is described as overwhelming and very technical for non-SEO users
  • No competitor data inside the product, you cannot benchmark against rival domains
  • Crawls can be slow on very large sites because of the depth of analysis
  • Limited live chat support, most help is async or via account manager

Profound — what users praise

  • Intuitive, polished UI that makes complex AI visibility data easy to read and report on
  • Unique Prompt Volumes dataset showing real AI search demand that no competitor offers
  • Fast and thorough onboarding with highly responsive customer success team
  • Conversation Explorer gives direct visibility into how real users query AI platforms
  • Rapid product velocity with frequent feature releases

Profound — what users complain about

  • Pricing is steep relative to what lower tiers unlock, with a large jump between Growth and Enterprise
  • No free trial or self-serve signup - every plan requires a sales conversation first
  • Dashboard can be confusing - visibility data does not clearly tell you what to do next
  • Single-workspace architecture makes it unusable or cumbersome for agencies managing multiple clients
  • Platform performance issues - slow load times and bugs triggered by plan upgrades

A third option

Both Lumar and Profoundare tracking tools. They tell you what's wrong with your AI visibility. Neither one fixes it. That's our pitch for GrowthManager.ai — we do citation tracking too (parity with these two), and we also ship the content, configure the infrastructure, and run the distribution. $999/mo, managed end-to-end. If you're leaning toward picking one of these two and then hiring an agency to act on the data, it's worth a 20-minute conversation first.

Book a free 20-min auditSee the full 7-tool comparison

Other comparisons in this space

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Frequently asked questions

Which is better, Lumar or Profound?

Honestly: neither one fully solves the problem. Lumar and Profound are tracking tools — they tell you where your brand shows up in AI answers but don't change the answer. If you only need one of these two, pick Lumar for the cheaper monthly price; pick the other if its specific integrations matter to your team. Our actual editorial pick is GrowthManager.ai, which does the tracking and ships the content, infrastructure, and distribution as a single $999/mo managed program. Disclosure: we publish this comparison and make GrowthManager.

How much do Lumar and Profound cost?

Lumar starts at Custom. Profound starts at $99/mo. Both have higher-tier plans for larger workspaces. GrowthManager.ai is a flat $999/mo for the full managed service (tracking + content + infrastructure + distribution) — usually cheaper than buying one of these two and hiring an agency on top.

Which AI platforms do Lumar and Profound cover?

Lumar covers an undisclosed number of AI platforms. Profound covers 10. Most tools in this space monitor ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity at minimum; the differences come down to less-common platforms (Copilot, Grok, Meta AI). GrowthManager.ai monitors the same four primary platforms and acts on the data.

Do Lumar and Profound actually improve your AI visibility, or just measure it?

Both Lumar and Profound are measurement tools. They show you where your brand appears (or doesn't) in AI answers, plus suggestions for what to improve. Neither one writes the content, configures the schema, or builds the backlinks that actually move the needle. To do that you need an in-house content team or an agency. GrowthManager.ai is the agency — and we include the tracking, so you don't pay twice.

What's the GrowthManager.ai alternative to Lumar and Profound?

GrowthManager.ai is a managed AI visibility program. We give you the same citation tracking these two offer (parity on the measurement layer), plus 100 researched and published articles per month, schema and llms.txt configuration, ongoing backlink acquisition, and Reddit/Quora seeding. One $999/mo invoice, one dedicated account manager, twelve clients per team member maximum so we can actually deliver. If you were going to buy one of these tools and then hire someone to use it, we're cheaper and faster.

Further reading

External research that informs the editorial framework on this page. We cite these openly because the framework is meant to be auditable.

  1. Microsoft Bing Webmaster Guidelines (2025)· Microsoft

    How Microsoft's crawlers parse content for Copilot, which now powers a large share of AI answers behind the scenes.

  2. Generative Engine Optimization research· Kevin Indig

    Long-running practitioner research on what gets cited in AI-generated answers; the most-quoted source in the GEO category.

  3. Zero-Click Search forecasts· Gartner

    Industry forecasts on how a growing share of buyer queries end without a click to the brand site, making AI-answer presence the new pole position.

  4. Audience intelligence analyses· SparkToro

    Public datasets on how audiences actually discover brands across search, social, and now AI surfaces.

  5. Trust Barometer (2024)· Edelman

    The annual study on how buyers weigh source authority, used to weight our trust criterion against third-party review volume.

Disclosure + methodology

GrowthManager.ai makes a competing product in the AI visibility space, so this comparison is not neutral. Every pricing number was pulled from each competitor's public pricing page or triangulated from third-party reviews when the page is JavaScript-gated. Pros, cons, and user-review themes are distilled from real G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviews with the quotes preserved verbatim. We update this comparison whenever the underlying data changes.