Why people look for a Scrunch AI alternative
Scrunch is a serious product. It was one of the first tools to treat AI agents as visitors, with bot traffic analytics, site audits and "agent pages" built for how models read a site.
The reasons people look elsewhere are not about quality. They are about what US$250 buys, and about who owns the company now.
Core is a single-market plan. Its own pricing page lists it at one country, one language, one persona and five competitors. If you sell in Spain and Mexico, or in English and Spanish, the second market is an Enterprise conversation.
Four engines, and not the two from Google you might expect. Core covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Gemini and Google AI Mode are Enterprise only, as are Claude, Grok and Meta AI.
Everything connective is Enterprise. Looker Studio, the query API, MCP access and SSO all sit in the right-hand column with no published price. Annual discounts, too: the FAQ says they are offered to Enterprise clients.
Sitecore bought the company. The acquisition was announced on 3 June 2026 and Scrunch now describes itself as "a Sitecore Company". Bloomberg put the price at about US$225 million, according to CMSWire.
Nothing has changed on the pricing page since. But a tool inside a digital experience platform has a different roadmap from a standalone one, and that is a fair thing to weigh before signing a year.
To be fair to Core, it is generous where it is generous: 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month and five user licences is more volume than most entry plans on this list, and the 7-day trial is self-serve.
Independent reviewers land in a similar place. Sreyashi Chatterjee, in a January 2026 review on GrowthPact, wrote that "Scrunch's value is consolidation, not discovery" and that "you're still doing manual work".
The US$100 plan she reviewed no longer appears on the pricing page.
We could not read the G2 reviews ourselves: the site blocked our requests on the day of writing, so we quote none of them.
The number that should decide this for you
Core lets you track five competitors. Before you decide whether that is enough, it helps to know how many competitors the engines actually put in front of your customers.
We went to our own database to find out.
| 11 to 20 distinct competitors | 4 brands · 9.5% | |
|---|---|---|
| 21 to 30 | 17 brands · 40.5% | |
| 31 to 50 | 12 brands · 28.6% | |
| More than 50 | 9 brands · 21.4% |
We took 42 brands that completed four or more analyses between 1 April and 30 September 2026, 580 analyses in all, a median of ten per brand. Every analysis records the ten competitors the engines named most often in that brand's prompts.
Then we counted how many different competitors passed through that top 10 over the period. The median brand saw 30.5. A quarter of the brands saw 48 or more, and one saw 96. Not a single brand stayed within 20.
The churn is the part that matters for a fixed list. Of the 427 competitors in the brands' latest top 10, 253, or 59.3%, were not there in the first analysis. Six months later, more than half the names are new.
So a tool that asks you to name five competitors up front is asking you to guess, and our data says the guess goes stale fast.
The useful question is not "who are my five competitors" but "who did the engines name this week", and that requires the tool to discover them from the answers.
What this does not say: it does not say the engines are random. Some names stay in every top 10 for six months. It says the long tail around them moves, and that a cap of five cannot see it.
The seven tools, compared
| Tool | Best for | Entry price (USD) | Prompts or credits | Engines on entry | Countries on entry | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CreceRank (our pick) | Anyone whose buyers ask in Spanish, and per-country measurement | US$49 | 10 prompts per brand, 60 queries per analysis | 3, five from US$89 | 1 per brand, chosen by you; 2 brands from US$89 | 14 days, no card |
| Scrunch AI (the baseline) | Single-market teams that care how agents crawl their site | US$250 | 125 prompts, 5,000 responses | 4 on Core, 9 on Enterprise | 1 country, 1 language | 7 days |
| Otterly.ai | Solo marketers and small budgets | US$33 (€29) | 15 prompts | 4 included, 3 as paid add-ons | Multi-country, 50+ | Yes, length not published |
| Peec AI | European teams wanting a clean daily tracker | US$96 (€85) | 50 prompts | 3 of 6 | 1 project; multi-country from US$480 | Not published |
| Rankscale | Agencies that want to spend credits where they choose | US$112 (€99) | 1,200 credits, unlimited search terms | Your pick, credits decide | All regions | 7 days |
| AthenaHQ | Teams that need the widest model coverage there is | Free, then US$295 | 300 free credits, 3,600 on Starter | 5 free, 11 on Starter | Single region; multiple on Enterprise | Free tier, no card |
| Profound | Large organisations with a procurement process | Enterprise only | 50 prompts on trial | 3 on trial, up to 9 | 1 region on trial | 7 days |
Everything is in US dollars. Otterly, Peec and Rankscale publish in euros; we converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 1 October 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1298 USD) and left the original in brackets.
| Otterly.ai | US$33 (€29) | |
|---|---|---|
| CreceRank | US$49 | |
| Peec AI | US$96 (€85) | |
| Rankscale | US$112 (€99) | |
| Scrunch AI | US$250 | |
| AthenaHQ | US$295 |
1. CreceRank: the alternative we would pick, and why
This is our own tool, so weigh this section accordingly. We put it first on purpose, we say why below, and we end the section with three cases where Scrunch or someone else is the better buy.
US$49 a month for one brand, 10 prompts and three models, with 60 queries per analysis. US$89 gets two brands, 20 prompts and five models. US$299 gets five brands. 14 days free, no card.
It discovers your competitors instead of asking you for five
This is the direct answer to the chart above. Every plan, including the US$49 one, tracks ten competitors, and the list is built from who the engines actually named in your prompts, then refreshed with every analysis.
When 59% of the names in your top 10 are new after six months, a list you typed on day one is not a competitor set. It is a snapshot.
You choose the country, prompt by prompt
Scrunch Core is one country and one language. We measure each brand in the country you set, so a company selling in Spain and Argentina sees two different answers to the same question, which is what its customers see.
The language point is the same one we make in every comparison: most tools here are tuned for English prompts, and entity matching in Spanish is weaker.
If your buyers ask "¿qué herramienta de visibilidad en IA me recomiendas?", measure that sentence, not its translation.
It shows the actual answer, not just a score
Every prompt opens into the real text each model returned, with your brand highlighted and the sources it cited listed underneath. That list of sources is the set of pages you need to appear on.
What else you get that Core does not include
- Gemini and Google AI Mode on the published plans, which Scrunch reserves for Enterprise. Three engines at US$49, five at US$89.
- GEO action items. Not "your visibility is 31%", but what to change on which page, ordered by expected impact.
- We write the content for you from the Professional plan up.
- An MCP server with OAuth on every plan, so you can ask ChatGPT or Claude about your own visibility data. On Scrunch, MCP access is an Enterprise line item.
- Google Analytics integration to tie AI visibility to the traffic it produces.
- Support over WhatsApp on every plan, including the US$49 one.
See the tool itself, in 7 minutes
A full walkthrough of the product, from the CreceRank channel. In Spanish, like the tool.
Not for you if
The crawling side is your actual problem. Scrunch's site audits, agent traffic analytics and agent pages have no equivalent in our product. If you need to know whether the bots can read your site, Scrunch answers a question we do not.
You need 100 or more prompts on the entry plan. Scrunch gives 125 for US$250 and Peec gives 50 for US$96. We give 10 for US$49, so on raw prompt volume both beat us.
You need Copilot or Claude on a published plan. Our published plans cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Otterly includes Copilot at US$33, and AthenaHQ has both on Starter.
Start your free 14-day trial, no card →
2. Otterly.ai: four engines and 50 countries for US$33
US$33 a month (€29), 15 prompts, the same four engines Scrunch Core has (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot), daily tracking and, unlike Core, multi-country support for more than 50 countries on the cheapest plan.
Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude are paid add-ons: €9 a month each for the Google ones on Lite, €29 for Claude. Even with all three the bill stays under US$120.
ChatGPT Ads tracking is included on every plan, and API plus MCP access start on Standard at US$214 (€189) with 100 prompts.
Not for you if you need volume. 15 prompts is a tenth of Core, and getting to 100 costs most of what Scrunch does.
We have since taken Otterly apart on its own: which four engines the price covers, what Gemini, AI Mode and Claude cost on top, and what our data says those paid engines change. It is in our Otterly AI alternatives comparison.
3. Peec AI: the clean daily tracker
US$96 a month (€85) for 50 prompts, daily tracking and one project. You pick three models out of six (ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI), so you can have both Google surfaces on day one, which Core cannot.
Pro is US$232 (€205) for 150 prompts, and Advanced US$480 (€425) for 350 prompts and multi-country.
Not for you if three models is a ceiling you will hit. Every plan below Enterprise caps you there, and we wrote about why that cap bites in our Peec AI alternatives comparison.
4. Rankscale: credits, every engine, every region
US$112 a month (€99) for 1,200 credits, unlimited search terms, 10 brand dashboards, 50 page audits and all regions. The engine list includes ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok and Copilot, and you choose where the credits go.
Pro+ at US$259 (€229) adds the REST API, which on Scrunch is Enterprise. Scheduling runs from hourly to monthly, and there is a 7-day trial of Pro.
If the multi-brand and multi-region limits of Core are what pushed you here, this is the closest thing to a direct replacement at half the price.
Not for you if you want predictable billing. Credits mean watching your usage every month.
We have since taken Rankscale apart on its own: how its credit rates work, what 1,200 credits actually cover and the six alternatives, in our comparison of Rankscale alternatives.
5. AthenaHQ: eleven models, free tier, then a cliff
A permanent free tier with 300 credits and five engines, no card. Then Starter at US$295 with 3,600 credits and eleven models, including everything Scrunch keeps for Enterprise: Gemini, AI Mode, Claude, Grok and Meta AI.
It is the only tool here that beats Scrunch Enterprise on model count at a published price. The catch is the step: nothing between free and US$295, and API access and extra credits are add-ons billed on top.
We compared it against the same field in our AthenaHQ alternatives piece.
Not for you if you need more than one region on a published plan: its own comparison table lists Starter as single-region and single-language.
6. Profound: still enterprise only
As of 2 October 2026 its pricing page shows two options: a free 7-day trial with 50 prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and Enterprise with custom pricing, up to nine answer engines, SSO and SOC 2.
If you are leaving Scrunch because you want the full enterprise package from a company that is not being absorbed into a CMS, this is the obvious call to book. If you are leaving because of the price, it is not.
Not for you if you are a small team. There is no published plan sized for you.
Profound's pricing changed shape again: there is no paid plan for one brand, and the published US$99 and US$399 figures are for agencies. We took it apart in our Profound alternatives comparison.
What changed since our last check, on 1 October
- Scrunch AI is unchanged: Core at US$250 with 125 prompts, 5,000 responses and four engines. What we read more carefully this time is the comparison table under the cards, which is where the one-country, one-language and five-competitor limits live.
- Otterly now lists its engine add-on prices on the pricing page: €9 a month for Gemini or AI Mode on Lite, €29 for Claude.
- Peec AI holds at €85, Rankscale at €99, AthenaHQ at US$295 and Profound at trial or Enterprise.
- The exchange rate did not move: the ECB rate of 1 October, 1 EUR = 1.1298 USD, was still the latest published when we wrote this.
How to choose, in four questions
- How many markets do you sell in? If the answer is more than one, Core is the wrong plan before you look at anything else. Otterly, Rankscale and CreceRank handle that at the entry price.
- Do you need Gemini and AI Mode? In our earlier measurement they produced few exclusive mentions, so a four-engine plan without them is not absurd. But if your market is Google-heavy, Peec, Rankscale, AthenaHQ and CreceRank all include them at a published price.
- Fixed competitors or discovered ones? Our data says 59% of your top 10 turns over in six months. If you can only track five, pick a tool that picks them for you.
- Tracking, or crawling? If your problem is whether AI agents can read your site, Scrunch is still the specialist and none of the six replaces that part.
If you want the long list rather than the six here, it is in the 15 best GEO tools in 2026.
Methodology
- Prices. Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 2 October 2026 in a real browser, not from third-party roundups. Euro prices converted at the ECB reference rate of 1 October 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1298 USD), the latest published at the time of writing. Where a vendor publishes no figure, the table says so.
- Screenshots. Taken by us on 2 October 2026 at 1440 pixels wide. Cookie banners were hidden for the capture, not accepted.
- Our own measurement. n = 42 brands with four or more completed analyses in CreceRank between 1 April and 30 September 2026, 580 analyses in total. Each analysis stores the ten competitors most often named in the brand's prompts across the engines measured. We counted distinct competitors per brand across all its analyses, matching by domain when available and by name otherwise, and compared each brand's first and last top 10.
- Acquisition. Taken from Sitecore's press release of 3 June 2026. The deal value is Bloomberg's figure as reported by CMSWire; neither company has published it.
- Selection. Tools were included if they track brand visibility across more than one AI engine and publish enough detail to be compared.
- FAQs. The three in quotation marks are real queries from our Google Search Console over the last 90 days, written as the searcher typed them. The rest are the questions this comparison raises.
Disclosure. CreceRank is our own product and we placed it first in this comparison.
The reason is stated in its section, the pricing is the same you will find on our pricing page, and we list three specific cases where a competitor is the better buy, including one where Scrunch beats us outright. Judge the argument, not the ranking.
Limitations
- We rank our own tool first. Treat that as the interested opinion it is, and use the "not for you if" paragraphs, which are there precisely so you can rule us out.
- Our 42-brand sample is ours. These are brands measured with CreceRank, mostly in Spanish-speaking markets, on the engines each plan includes. The 30.5 median is real but it is not a global average.
- The top 10 is capped by design. We only store the ten most-named competitors per analysis, so the true number of distinct competitors is at least what we report, never less.
- Name matching is imperfect. A competitor without a domain is matched by name, so one company with two spellings can count twice. The 59.3% churn figure is subject to the same noise.
- The plans are not equivalent. US$33 with 15 prompts and US$250 with 125 prompts and 5,000 responses are different products. Read the table, not just the chart.
- We did not read G2. The site blocked our requests on the day, so no G2 rating or review appears here. The one independent review we quote is one review, not a survey.
- Converted prices move with the exchange rate. The euro figures are the ones the vendor charges; the dollar ones are ours.
FAQs
Sources
- Scrunch AI pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- Sitecore acquires Scrunch, press release, 3 June 2026.
- CMSWire on the Sitecore and Scrunch deal, 3 June 2026, source of the Bloomberg figure.
- An honest review of Scrunch, Sreyashi Chatterjee, GrowthPact, 14 January 2026.
- Otterly.ai pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- Peec AI pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- Rankscale pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- AthenaHQ plans, read 2 October 2026.
- Profound pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- CreceRank pricing, read 2 October 2026.
- European Central Bank euro reference rate, 1 October 2026: 1 EUR = 1.1298 USD.
- CreceRank's own measurement database, 1 April to 30 September 2026: 42 brands with four or more completed analyses, 580 analyses, 5,800 competitor entries.
- Google Search Console queries for crecerank.com over the last 90 days, the source of the three quoted FAQs.
