You are looking past AirOps but every list gives you ten tools and no decision. The problem is that AirOps does two jobs. Which one are you actually replacing?
AirOps does two jobs and charges you once for both, which is exactly why replacing it is harder than it looks. Here is the paradox that catches most teams: the cheap way out costs less every month and more every quarter. You can leave AirOps with a $9 workflow builder and a $99 visibility tracker and be better off, or you can do precisely that and end up paying a person to carry findings between two tabs. Which half of the product are you actually replacing? Until you answer that, every price comparison you run is measuring the wrong thing.
Somewhere in your stack, one subscription pays for a capability nobody has opened in 30 days. You will not catch it by reading invoices, because the line item looks reasonable in isolation. It looks reasonable because it covers two products that no longer share a buyer. AirOps sells workflow automation and AI search visibility out of one box, and those two jobs now have different budgets, different owners and different vendors chasing them. Your renewal date does not care. It arrives once, covers both halves, and brings the decision you have been postponing with it.
The split question behind every AirOps alternatives list
Search for alternatives and you will notice the field has found the split already. mentionova titles its page around "AI visibility tracking and workflows". kitbase frames AirOps as a "content workflow and GEO" platform. dageno separates AI visibility from content creation. coldiq lists pure workflow tools only.
What none of them does is finish the job. They name the two halves, then hand you one list, which leaves you exactly where you started: still working out which half you are replacing. And not one of them prices what it costs to run both halves separately. That arithmetic decides the renewal, so it is where this article spends its time.
For the background on what AirOps is as a product, the AirOps review covers that ground. This page picks up where you have decided something has to change.
A five-question self-check before you compare anything
Answer these honestly. Two or more in the second column and you are replacing the workflow. Two or more in the third and you are buying a visibility tool.
Question | Workflow automation | AI search visibility |
|---|---|---|
What starts the work: a brief to execute, or a question to answer? | A brief | A question |
Does a client ever see the output? | No, they see the result | Yes, often as a report |
How many AI engines does your reporting name? | One is enough | Three or more |
Who runs it? | One person owning a pipeline | A content or SEO owner |
If one number moved, which would you notice first? | Tasks completed | Citation share |
If you are replacing the workflow automation
These five are the substitutes worth shortlisting. Each one wins a different constraint, so read the "best for" line rather than the price first.
1. Gumloop: the closest single substitute
Gumloop is the name the community lands on first for the automation side, and the pricing explains why. Pro runs $37/mo for 20,000 credits with unlimited seats, and a credit costs $0.005, so a team of four pays the same as a team of one. There is an 8% orchestration fee on managed runs, 16% if you bring your own model keys. The permanent free tier ended in July 2026: entry is now a 14-day trial that requires a card (verified 2026-10-03). Our Gumloop review covers where it holds up and where it does not.
Best for: a marketing team that wants node-based automation with room for lots of people, without a per-seat cliff.
2. n8n: where self-hosting economics win
n8n is the option that scales down almost to zero and up into the hundreds. Cloud starts at EUR 24/mo (Starter, 2,500 executions) and runs to EUR 60/mo (Pro, 10,000), quoted in EUR by the vendor, with unlimited users on every cloud plan since 2026 (verified 2026-10-03). The Community Edition is free if you self-host, and a small server costs $3.70 to $7/mo. The catch is the same one the n8n for marketing guide raises: self-hosting is a maintenance commitment, not a pricing decision, and somebody on your team owns upgrades and broken runs forever. If you are comparing it against Gumloop specifically, Gumloop vs n8n runs that comparison line by line.
Best for: a team with a technical owner and steady execution volume, where the free self-hosted tier is worth the upkeep.
3. Make.com: where visual building matters more than code
Make is the cheapest credible entry here: Core at $9/mo billed annually with 10,000 credits, Pro at $16 and Teams at $29 (verified 2026-10-03). Monthly billing runs about 17% higher, so the same plans land at $10.59, $18.82 and $34.12. What you buy for that is a builder you can hand to a marketer without a code conversation, which matters when the person who built the pipeline leaves. The ceiling is lower than n8n's, so it fits marketing operations rather than data engineering. Our workflow automation tools roundup covers where Make sits in the category.
Best for: a small marketing team that needs a visual builder and will not hit the execution ceiling.
4. Zapier: where the integration count is the constraint
Zapier starts at $19.99/mo on Starter with 750 tasks (verified 2026-10-03), and the reason to pick it has nothing to do with price or flexibility: almost every tool your team already pays for has a Zapier connection, so you rarely hit the "no integration exists" wall that stops other builds. That breadth is also the trap: task-based pricing punishes high-frequency polling, so a workflow that checks something every five minutes burns the allowance fast. Read the Zapier pricing breakdown before you size a plan, because the step-count arithmetic is not obvious from the plan grid.
Best for: teams whose bottleneck is a specific integration rather than volume.
5. Allable: where the workflow and the decision share one workspace
Allable is the one on this list that answers the split question rather than picking a side. The decision and the workflow that acts on it live in the same place, so a visibility gap you find on Monday is a content brief on Tuesday and a published article on Wednesday. Pricing is the honest caveat: Pro is EUR 99/month, Business EUR 199/month and Scale EUR 399/month, with no free tier, a 7-day trial that requires a card upfront, and yearly billing that charges 10 months out of 12 (verified 2026-10-03). At EUR 99 in, it does not undercut Gumloop at $37, and anyone telling you otherwise is quoting a ladder that no longer exists. The argument for it is consolidation, not sticker price. For the platform question generally, our AI marketing platform breakdown covers what one subscription actually replaces.
Best for: a team currently paying for a workflow tool and a visibility tool separately who wants one invoice and no handoff.
If you are replacing the AI visibility measurement
This second set answers a different question: how do you find out what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI surfaces say about you. Four options, all priced above.
6. Profound: engine coverage and enterprise reporting
Profound prices in two clear steps. Starter is $99/mo billed yearly ($82.50 effective monthly) for ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, one seat and 1,500 responses a month. Growth is $399/mo ($332.50 effective) for three engines, 100 prompts, three seats and 9,000 responses, with Enterprise covering up to nine engines including Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and DeepSeek (verified 2026-09-16, vendor page). Our Profound alternatives piece runs the category comparison.
Best for: a team that needs breadth of engine coverage and can justify the Growth tier. Profound's own aggregated review score puts value for money at 3.2 out of 5, its weakest sub-score, and reviewers advise that budgets below roughly $2,000/mo are probably not its target customer. That segment is you if you are reading this page.
7. Peec AI: prompt discovery and research workflow
Peec AI was repriced in August 2026 and now runs Starter at EUR 70/mo billed annually or $95/mo monthly, Pro at EUR 180 or $245, and Advanced at EUR 360 or $495 (verified 2026-10-03). Seats are unlimited on every tier, unusual here and useful if several people read the same prompt set. Teams mention prompt discovery most: it is better at suggesting questions you have not thought to track than at reporting on the ones you already have. Three engines at a time below Enterprise, which is worth checking against your expectations before you commit.
Best for: a research-led team that wants help deciding which prompts are worth monitoring at all.
8. SE Ranking AI Search Toolkit: priced against a full suite
SE Ranking makes sense if you are buying rank tracking anyway. Core is EUR 87.20/mo billed annually (EUR 109 monthly) and already includes 100 daily AI prompts across five LLMs, and the AI Search add-on runs EUR 63.20/mo to extend coverage (verified 2026-10-03). A realistic AI-visibility configuration lands between $150 and $240 a month, well below the $337/mo average for standalone AI-visibility tools (independent category analysis, 2026). One thing to check: the add-on's published engine list omits Gemini, so ask before you buy if that engine matters.
Best for: a team that wants AI visibility as a module rather than a second subscription.
9. Ahrefs Brand Radar: if Ahrefs is already paid for
Brand Radar is the add-on for teams already inside Ahrefs, and it is the one price on this page you should not accept from anyone, including me. Ahrefs publishes two different numbers: $398/mo for "select platforms" and $699/mo for "all platforms" on the product page, against "from $199/mo" on the main rate card (checked August 2026). Nobody has explained the gap and I am not going to paper over it. Confirm at checkout before you budget. Base plans run Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449 and Enterprise $1,499, and a full coverage stack lands between $1,027 and $1,347 a month. Our Ahrefs Brand Radar review covers what it reports and where coverage stops.
Best for: a team already paying for Ahrefs where the incremental cost is the only decision left.
The two halves side by side
Prices below are the entry tier each tool publishes, all checked 2026-10-03 unless noted. AirOps does not publish its own Solo and Pro pricing, so those figures carry a third-party stamp and should be confirmed with sales.
Workflow automation
Tool | What it replaces | Entry price (checked) | The one thing it does best |
|---|---|---|---|
Gumloop | AirOps Actions | $37/mo Pro, 20,000 credits, unlimited seats | Per-seat economics at team scale |
n8n | AirOps Actions | EUR 24/mo Cloud Starter, or free self-hosted plus $3.70 to $7/mo server | Cost floor and execution ceiling |
Make.com | AirOps Actions | $9/mo Core annual, 10,000 credits | A visual builder a marketer can own |
Zapier | AirOps Actions | $19.99/mo Starter, 750 tasks | Breadth of ready-made integrations |
Allable | AirOps Actions plus the decision layer | EUR 99/mo Pro, no free tier | Workflow and marketing decision in one workspace |
AirOps Actions | (incumbent) | ~$199 to $200/mo Solo, third-party reported 2026 | Workflows triggered by its own insights data |
AI search visibility
Tool | What it replaces | Entry price (checked) | The one thing it does best |
|---|---|---|---|
Profound | AirOps Insights | $99/mo Starter yearly, ChatGPT only | Multi-engine coverage at the Growth tier |
Peec AI | AirOps Insights | EUR 70/mo Starter annual | Prompt discovery |
SE Ranking AI Search | AirOps Insights | EUR 87.20/mo Core annual plus EUR 63.20/mo add-on | Visibility inside a full SEO suite |
Ahrefs Brand Radar | AirOps Insights | Published as $199, $398 or $699 depending on the page | Integration with existing Ahrefs data |
AirOps Insights | (incumbent) | Bundled with Solo, ~$199 to $200/mo | Insights and actions on one data model |
The cost of running both, and where the split stops paying
This is the section no other page runs, and the one your finance lead will ask about.
AirOps Solo is reported at ~$199 to $200/mo with 20,000 tasks, 100 tracked prompts, one seat and ChatGPT insights only. Pro is reported at ~$1,999 to $2,000/mo with 75,000 tasks, 250 prompts, multi-engine coverage and unlimited seats. The jump between them is roughly $1,800 a month with nothing in between, and four independent sources agree on that gap even where they disagree on the exact figures (checked 2026-10-03).
Now price the split. Matching Solo takes a workflow tool carrying comparable volume plus a visibility tool covering 100 prompts across more than one engine. Gumloop Pro at $37 covers the volume. Profound Growth at $399 covers three engines and 100 prompts. That is $436/mo against Solo's ~$200, and it buys something Solo cannot: visibility across three engines instead of ChatGPT alone.
The cheap end exists too. Make Core at $9 plus Profound Starter at $99 is $108/mo, genuinely less than Solo. Read the fine print before you celebrate: both sides are ChatGPT-only at that price, so it replicates Solo's central limitation rather than solving it, at lower volume.
Where the split clearly wins is the tier most teams eventually need. Against AirOps Pro at ~$2,000/mo, Gumloop plus Profound Growth is $436, and a SE Ranking configuration lands between $150 and $240. The split is neither cheaper nor more expensive in principle. It is cheaper on one side of AirOps' pricing cliff and more expensive on the other.
Three crossover lines worth writing down
Tracked prompts. Solo caps at 100. Add an engine and you pass the tier that includes multi-engine coverage, which is where AirOps Pro starts.
Engine count. Solo reports ChatGPT only. Multi-region and multi-language tracking reportedly requires Enterprise, so a team selling into two markets has no self-serve path to it at all.
Published output. ColdIQ measured 500 to 800 tasks per article in June 2026. Solo's 20,000 tasks therefore covers roughly 25 to 40 articles a month. Gumloop credits and Profound responses do not map one-to-one onto AirOps tasks, so you cannot compare the ladders directly and should not try.
The other cost is not on any invoice. Two tools mean two vendors, two onboarding processes and, critically, a manual handoff where AirOps ran one. When a visibility tool tells you which prompt you are losing, nothing carries that finding into a workflow that drafts the fix. If that handoff is your job, price your own hours into the comparison before you decide.
Who should not switch
Some teams should renew, and the advice is worth stating plainly because no vendor page will say it.
If your work is genuinely both halves in one pipeline, splitting makes you worse off. AirOps' entire proposition is Insights feeding Actions on a shared data model: the gap the tool finds is the input to the workflow that addresses it. Replace that with two vendors and the seam between them is a person, a spreadsheet, or a script you now maintain. A team running that loop several times a week will spend more on the stitching than it saved on licences.
Two profiles should stay. A team whose entire usage is ChatGPT visibility tracking does not need to move: Solo delivers that at a price two subscriptions will struggle to beat once you have paid for a workflow tool you did not need. And a team that has not opened the Actions side in 90 days should not buy a workflow replacement. Cancel that half instead. The honest answer there is a downgrade, not a migration.
How to test in two weeks
Do not decide this on a demo. Run both configurations against the same work for 14 days and score three numbers.
Metric 1: citation share on a fixed prompt set. Pick 20 prompts before day one and do not change them. Week one on AirOps, week two on the visibility candidate. Include one engine you did not build your content strategy around, because the same brand can see citation volumes differ by a factor of 615 between engines. If the new tool only reports the engine you already optimised for, you have learned nothing.
Metric 2: task-to-published-output rate. Count paid tasks or credits consumed, then count content assets that actually went live. This is the number that exposes a tool which is cheap per task and expensive per result.
Metric 3: manual stitching hours. Log every minute spent moving an insight from one tool into an action in another. Teams consistently estimate this at near zero, then measure it at four to six hours a month. That is the hidden line item in every split, and it is the one that decides between the two paths.
At the end of week two, compare the three numbers against the renewal quote. If citation share improved, output per task held and stitching stayed under two hours, the split earns its place. If stitching is the number that moved, renew.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best AirOps alternative?
There is no single answer, which is the whole problem with the category. For workflow automation, Gumloop is the substitute most often named, n8n wins on self-hosting economics and Make.com wins on entry price at $9/mo (checked 2026-10-03). For AI search visibility, Profound covers the most engines at the Growth tier, Peec AI is strongest at prompt discovery, SE Ranking is the cheapest way in if you need a rank tracker anyway, and Ahrefs Brand Radar is the sensible pick if you already pay for Ahrefs. Pick the half first, then the tool.
Is Gumloop a good AirOps replacement?
For the automation half, yes, and the pricing is the main reason: $37/mo for 20,000 credits with unlimited seats (checked 2026-10-03) is a fraction of AirOps Solo at a reported ~$200/mo. Two caveats. The free tier ended in July 2026, so entry now means a 14-day trial with a card. And Gumloop does not replace the visibility measurement at all, so if that was part of why you bought AirOps, you are still shopping.
Does AirOps do AI search visibility?
Yes, and on Solo it is ChatGPT only with 100 tracked prompts. Multi-engine coverage starts at Pro, reported at ~$1,999 to $2,000/mo, and multi-region and multi-language tracking reportedly sits behind Enterprise. The honest answer for anyone selling into more than one market: AirOps does AI search visibility, but not at a self-serve price you can reach without the tier jump.
Is there a free AirOps alternative?
There is a free tier for the visibility half and effectively not for the rest. n8n's Community Edition is free if you self-host, with a server at $3.70 to $7/mo. AirOps itself has reported a free Insights tier at 1,000 tasks and one user, though it is not on the vendor's own pricing page and should be confirmed with sales. On the paid side, Make.com at $9/mo annual and Zapier at $19.99/mo (both checked 2026-10-03) are the cheapest credible starts. Note what is missing: independent 2026 category analysis puts the average AI-visibility tool at $337/mo, and no serious multi-engine tracker is free.
Should I run two tools instead of one?
Only if the stitching cost stays small. Two tools cost $436/mo against AirOps Solo's ~$200 at comparable volume, and $436 against AirOps Pro's ~$2,000, so the arithmetic flips depending on the tier you were going to buy. The deciding factor is rarely licence price. It is how many hours a month somebody spends carrying a finding from the visibility tool into the workflow tool. Measure that for two weeks before you commit.
Related reading
If you are still choosing a category rather than a vendor, agentic marketing tools and agentic AI tools map the wider field, and no-code AI agents covers the build-it-yourself route. For the automation layer, marketing workflow automation and workflow automation tools go deeper than this page can. On measurement, AI search monitoring explains how tracking works, and AI visibility tracking shows what the reporting looks like inside a single platform.
The reason this page exists is that every roundup on the result set names the two halves of AirOps and none of them does the arithmetic. A split is not a saving or a cost in the abstract. It is a saving or a cost depending on which AirOps tier you were going to buy, and the answer changes the moment you price the handoff between the two tools. Where does that handoff happen on your team today, and who owns it?
You can keep renewing a two-job subscription and hope both halves stay useful, or you can put the workflow and the decision it acts on in the same workspace and drop the seam between them. Start a 7-day trial with Allable and run the two-week test on your own prompts and your own output count.
Run the two-week test on your own numbers
Put the workflow and the decision it acts on in the same workspace, and drop the seam between them.
