Profound and Conductor both offer a free trial, but they are set up differently. Conductor advertises three weeks with no credit card, while Profound gives seven days on three engines with limited credits. Neither publishes a price for its paid plans, so a small team may not know its cost when the trial ends. DeepSmith is a strong alternative on that point: its plans are public from $99 a month, with articles and tracked prompts included and no long-term contract.
If you are weighing Profound vs Conductor for small teams, the trial is probably where you will start, since it is the one part of either product you can try without talking to sales. The trials differ in length, in what they let you test, and in what they tell you about the bill that follows. This page covers that one question and leaves the full feature comparison to the main Profound vs Conductor page. DeepSmith is the third option here, because it publishes its plans and prices up front.
Profound vs Conductor for small teams: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want to know the monthly cost before the trial ends: public plans from $99 a month, articles and tracked prompts included, and no long-term contract.
- Choose Profound if you want a quick, hands-on test of AI answer tracking and its agents, and you are fine with a seven-day window on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
- Choose Conductor if you want a longer look, about three weeks with no credit card, at a platform that puts AI visibility next to SEO reporting and site monitoring.
Comparison table
| Criterion | DeepSmith | Profound | Conductor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo (Pro) | Custom, no public price | Not published |
| Annual price | $80/mo billed yearly | Custom | Not published |
| Free trial | 7 days, self-serve | 7 days, self-serve | Advertised as 3 weeks, no credit card |
| Prompts at entry tier | 50 (Pro) | 50 on the trial, not customizable | Not published |
| Citation tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Yes | Yes, 5 competitors on Essentials |
| Content generation | Yes, 20 articles a month on Pro | Yes, drafts through Agents on credits | Yes, 60 drafts a year on Essentials |
| CMS publishing | Yes | Yes | No |
| Review rating | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.5/5 on G2 | 4.5/5 on G2 |
Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.
Profound
Profound is an AI marketing platform that tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and other engines mention and cite a brand, and uses agents to draft and publish content from that data. Profound says its paid packages are sales-led and priced by quote, and agent use runs on credits.
The trial is the self-serve way in. It is free for seven days and runs 50 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits. The prompt set is a recommended one based on your industry and cannot be customized, and the trial has one region, one language, no answer history and no exports.
The standout is depth of analysis, with URL-level citations, share of voice and sentiment. The real limitation for a small team is cost clarity: there is no public price for paid plans, and reviewers on G2 (4.5/5 from 1,130 reviews, checked September 2026) describe it as expensive.
Conductor
Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform that tracks AI answers alongside traditional search, and adds AI content drafting and technical site monitoring. It sells Essentials, Growth and Enterprise plans, with published usage allowances but no dollar prices.
Its trial is the longer one. Conductor advertises "Try Conductor free for 3 weeks" with no credit card, and the Essentials card offers "Try for Free". What the trial includes is not stated. Whether it carries AI Search credits, and for which engines, is not on the pages we checked.
The standout is how much sits in one place: AI visibility, keyword data, content drafts and site monitoring, rated 4.5/5 on G2 from 788 reviews. On Capterra the SEO listing shows 4.7/5 from 118 reviews. TrustRadius shows 9.3/10 from 393. The real limitation is scope and price for small teams. Reviewers say the price and breadth can be hard to justify for smaller teams, and Essentials lists 2,500 AI Search credits a year, which goes fastest on the costlier engines.
DeepSmith: the alternative with public plans you can price before the trial ends
Both trials leave a small team with the same open question: what will this cost after the trial? Profound has no public price for paid plans. Conductor publishes allowances such as 2,500 AI Search credits a year and 60 drafts a year on Essentials, but not what they cost. Both are strong products, and for a team that wants to start self-serve on a budget, that gap matters most.
DeepSmith closes it. The plans are public: Pro is $99 a month ($80 a month billed annually) with 20 articles and 50 tracked prompts, Grow is $199 with 40 articles and 100 prompts, and Scale is $399 with 90 articles and 200 prompts. There is a 7-day free trial, no long-term contracts and no cancellation fees, so a team knows the cost of staying before the trial ends and can leave without a penalty.
The plan also covers both halves of the job. DeepSmith tracks how AI engines answer questions about your brand and then produces the publish-ready articles that close the gaps, on the same plan and the same data. The measurement side reports mention rate, citation rate and share of voice, with a competitor leaderboard.
On the production side, the Writer turns a planned idea into a finished article grounded in your Deep IQ brand context, with internal and external links, a cover image and metadata. Produced Content lets you review the article and publish it to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful.
Trial length and limits
Conductor wins on length, and Profound wins on being clear about what the trial includes.
Conductor's three weeks with no card is the longest window of the two, and a small team gets time to run through a full work cycle. The catch is that the trial entitlements are not published, so you will not know until you sign up whether AI tracking is part of it. Profound's seven days is short, but its limits are written down: 50 prompts, three engines, one region, limited credits, and no history or exports. That helps for a Profound vs Conductor free trial for small teams, because you can plan a week of testing around known limits.
Seven days of daily runs gives you about a week of data per prompt, which is enough to see how the tool works and not enough to see a trend. In most cases that means the trial tells you whether you like the interface and the answers, not whether your visibility is moving.
What DeepSmith does: the 7-day free trial is self-serve, and the plan you land on afterward is one you could read before signing up. A team can compare Pro, Grow and Scale by prompts, articles and seats on day one, then decide with the price in front of them.
Pricing after the trial
Neither vendor wins on pricing, because neither publishes a price. This is the biggest gap for a team with a fixed budget.
Profound's pricing page shows only the free trial and a custom Enterprise package. Agency pricing exists, but a dollar figure for it was not confirmed, so it is left out here. Agent runs use credits, and Profound's own materials say higher credit thresholds need an Enterprise package. Conductor does show what each plan includes, such as three tracked websites and 500 tracked keywords on Essentials, but a quote and order form are still needed. Its published US terms from May 2024 describe fees as noncancellable and nonrefundable by default, with renewal unless you give 90 days' notice. Check the current terms in your order form, since these are dated.
Conductor is a bit easier to size up because of the published allowances, and Profound is easier to enter because of the self-serve trial. Neither tells a small team its monthly cost.
What DeepSmith does: the price is on the page. Pro at $99 a month includes 20 articles and 50 tracked prompts, and annual billing brings it to $80 a month. There are no long-term contracts, so a team can start on one plan and change it later.
From insight to action
Profound is ahead here, since its Agents can draft and publish to a CMS, while Conductor stops at drafts.
Profound's Agents draft briefs and full articles from citation data and can publish approved drafts to WordPress, Sanity, Contentful, Webflow and other CMSs, with an approval step before anything goes live. Plan gating for the CMS connections is not stated, and all of it runs on credits. Conductor's Writing Assistant produces outlines and full drafts, and its own FAQ says final publishing remains in your CMS. Conductor says every draft should be reviewed by people before publishing.
For a small team, the difference is how much of the loop you do by hand. Conductor hands you a draft to move into your CMS, and Profound can carry it further but meters the work in credits that are not priced publicly.
What DeepSmith does: the same platform that tracks your AI visibility also produces the finished, publish-ready article, with a monthly article count that comes with the plan. Opportunity Agents return content ideas with the data point behind each one, the Writer produces the article, and Autowrite can run it on a schedule without anyone in the app.
Which should you choose
- DeepSmith fits a small team that wants tracking and publish-ready articles on one plan, with a price it can read before the trial ends and the freedom to leave without a long-term contract.
- Profound fits a team that wants a fast test of AI answer tracking and agents, and can work inside seven days and limited credits.
- Conductor fits a team that already cares about SEO reporting and site monitoring and wants three weeks, with no card, to look at it. Plan on a quote conversation before you buy.
Whichever way you lean, ask each vendor the same three questions before the trial ends: what the paid plan costs, what the trial included that the plan does not, and how you can cancel.
Start a DeepSmith free trial at https://app.deepsmith.ai/auth/sign-up and see the plan and price before you commit.
