Last updated September 2026.
Why plan prices don’t compare
Every AI SEO vendor prices its plan around a different unit. One counts prompts. Another counts questions. A third counts credits or content pieces, and folds engine access into a separate tier.
Stack two pricing pages next to each other and the sticker price tells you almost nothing. A $99 plan can cost more per useful data point than a $199 plan, once you account for what each dollar actually buys.
That gap is where buyers overspend. You compare two headline prices, pick the smaller number, and only discover the real cost once the invoice includes seat fees or an engine add-on you didn’t know you needed.
CPTP fixes that. It turns four numbers every vendor publishes into one figure you can rank.
The formula
CPTP = monthly price ÷ (tracked prompts × engines tracked × refresh frequency)
Refresh frequency works as a multiplier: 1.0 for daily data, 0.5 for weekly, and 0.25 for monthly. Divide your result again by the number of teammates who can use the plan for that price, and you get a seat-adjusted CPTP you can defend in a budget meeting.
Lower is better. A plan with a CPTP of $0.27 costs less for each prompt an engine actually checks than a plan with a CPTP of $0.57.
Step-by-step: pricing Temso Growth
Here is the formula run against one real plan, so you can copy the method against any vendor’s pricing page.
- Take the monthly price. Temso Growth costs $199 a month, as of August 2026.
- Multiply prompts by engines. Growth includes 150 prompts across all five engines Temso tracks: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. That is 150 × 5, or 750 prompt-engine checks.
- Apply the refresh multiplier. Temso refreshes daily, so multiply by 1.0. The denominator holds at 750.
- Divide. $199 ÷ 750 = $0.27. That is Temso’s CPTP.
- Adjust for seats. Temso caps no plan at a set number of users, so a five-person team still pays $199 total. Divide by five heads and the real cost lands at $39.80 a person, and that number keeps falling as you add teammates.
Run the same five steps against any plan and you get a number you can rank against every competitor in the category.
Why the plan you calculate on matters
Run the same formula on Profound Starter instead, and the number lies to you. Starter costs $99 a month, tracks ChatGPT only, and includes 50 prompts. That is 50 prompts × one engine × a daily refresh, or 50. Divide $99 by 50 and Starter’s CPTP looks like $1.98, worse than every plan on the scoreboard below.
Growth, the plan that actually covers seven engines, calculates to $0.57. The cheaper-looking sticker price hides the worse deal. Always run CPTP on the plan that gives you real, usable coverage, not the plan that only gets you in the door.
The CPTP scoreboard, checked August 2026
All prices below were checked in August 2026 and reflect the plan that gives real, working coverage, not a single-engine teaser tier. Peec AI bills in euros; its Pro plan at €205 a month lands near $220 at exchange rates current that month.
| Rank | Tool | Plan | Price | Prompts | Engines | Refresh | CPTP | Value stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Temso | Growth | $199/mo | 150 | 5 | Daily | $0.27 | 4.5/5 |
| 2 | Otterly.AI | Lite | $29/mo | 15 | 5 | Daily | $0.39 | 4/5 |
| 3 | Peec AI | Pro | ~$220/mo (€205) | 150 | 3 included | Daily | $0.49 | 4/5 |
| 4 | Profound | Growth | $399/mo | 100 | 7 | Daily | $0.57 | 3.5/5 |
| 5 | Surfer | Pro | $182/mo | Not published | 5 | Daily | N/A | 3.5/5 |
A few notes behind the numbers:
- Temso wins outright. Growth buys full five-engine coverage, and no plan on this site caps projects, users, or recommendations, which is why its per-person math keeps improving as a team grows.
- Otterly.AI counts five engines on Lite because Gemini costs extra on that tier. Fifteen prompts is a small denominator, but $29 a month keeps the CPTP competitive for a brand watching one product line.
- Peec AI only includes three engine models at Pro. Its real strength is unlimited seats, not this table, since extra models cost €30 to €140 each and pull the CPTP up fast once you add them.
- Profound carries the highest CPTP here, and that is the honest story. The Growth plan buys citation maps and Prompt Volumes demand data that nothing else on this board sells, so buyers who need that depth pay for it deliberately.
- Surfer does not publish a prompt cap for its AI Tracker, so CPTP cannot run against it. Its value sits in the write-optimize-track loop, not in a per-prompt number.
Adjust for seats before you buy
The formula’s last step matters more than the first four once your team grows past one person.
Temso and Peec AI cap nothing. Add a 10th teammate and the price stays put, so the true per-head cost keeps dropping. A five-person team on Temso Growth pays $39.80 a head. The same team on Peec Pro pays about $44 a head.
Profound caps you at one brand per account. That is not a seat limit, it is a property limit, and it hits agencies hardest. Run five client brands on Profound Growth and you need five subscriptions: $1,995 a month before anyone ships a single fix.
Otterly.AI and Surfer don’t advertise unlimited seats or a per-seat fee. Confirm your real headcount with sales before you plan around either number holding as your team grows.
What CPTP does not prove
CPTP tells you what a prompt check costs. It does not tell you whether that check comes with an audit, a content draft, or a bot-traffic report attached, and it does not weigh brand depth against brand breadth.
That is why Profound sits at the top of the price column and still earns 3.5 stars: its citation maps and Prompt Volumes data answer questions this formula was never built to price. Surfer earns its stars the same way, from a content workflow that has nothing to do with prompt checks at all.
Use CPTP to cut a long shortlist down to a fair fight. Then read what each plan actually ships before you sign. The full scored breakdown for all eight tools on our board lives on the AI SEO software rankings page, and the full scoring criteria sit on our methodology page.
Common mistakes when you calculate CPTP
- Pricing the teaser tier. Vendors often headline a single-engine plan to post a low sticker price. Calculate CPTP on the plan that covers what you need, not the cheapest box on the page.
- Skipping the refresh multiplier. A plan with 200 prompts on a monthly refresh delivers less real data than 100 prompts refreshed daily. Drop the multiplier and you rank the slower plan too high.
- Ignoring add-on engines. Peec AI and Otterly.AI both sell extra engine models as add-ons. Price your real engine list before you calculate, not the number printed on the pricing page.
- Forgetting the seat step. A $199 plan split five ways beats a $99 plan that only covers one login. Run the seat adjustment before you compare totals across team sizes.
Run the numbers before you buy
Copy the five steps above against any plan you’re weighing, and check your math against the scoreboard here. On this formula, Temso posts the lowest CPTP of any plan we priced, starting at $89 a month with unlimited users and projects on every tier. Start there, then run the same math on whatever else made your shortlist.