Last updated: 2026-07-04
Palmata is Contentful's AEO platform launched June 2026, using a Sounder Discovery Agent to explain AI brand answers. Free report, Growth plan $600/month.
Palmata is Contentful's AI discovery platform, launched June 23, 2026, that explains why AI answer engines describe a brand a certain way and recommends content fixes. A free first report is available at palmata.ai with no Contentful account required. Paid Growth access costs $600 per month, and Enterprise pricing is custom, powered by the proprietary Sounder Discovery Agent.
Palmata is a content decision system for AI discovery built by Contentful, the headless CMS company that Salesforce acquired on June 1, 2026. Contentful announced Palmata's general availability on June 23, 2026, positioning it as a step beyond simple AI visibility tracking. Instead of just reporting whether a brand shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity answers, Palmata explains why AI systems describe a company the way they do and what content changes are most likely to shift that description. The platform runs on a proprietary Sounder Discovery Agent that continuously researches a company's market, competitors, audience and content footprint, then prompts answer engines the way real buyers actually would. Four capabilities structure the workflow: Steering Control lets teams point research at specific brands, products, competitors or regions; Adaptive Deep Research surfaces the prompt clusters and source patterns shaping AI answers; Recommended Actions turns that research into prioritized content edits; and Simulated Impact models the likely effect of an action before a team spends the time building it. Palmata is aimed at marketing, SEO, content, web and product marketing teams who are being asked to explain why AI answer engines describe their company a certain way and which fixes are worth funding. It fits organizations that already publish enough public content for AI systems to have formed an opinion about them, rather than brand-new companies with little web presence. Launch partners include The Atlantic, Box, Dataiku, Docusign, Marketbridge and Telus Digital. Anyone can run a first Palmata report for free at palmata.ai without being a Contentful customer. Paid access starts with the Growth plan at $600/month, built for teams steering research toward a defined set of priorities, while Enterprise pricing is custom for organizations running many parallel reports across product lines, regions and competitor sets. The product ships an MCP server so writers and editors can query their Palmata reports directly from inside ChatGPT, Claude or another MCP client. Because Palmata is a first-generation product from a company (Contentful) that just changed ownership under Salesforce, it currently has no third-party review presence on G2, Trustpilot or Product Hunt, and Contentful has not published Palmata-specific compliance attestations separate from Contentful's own SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.
Free tier: anyone can run a first Palmata report at no cost, no Contentful account required. Growth: $600/month, monthly billing only, for teams steering research toward specific priorities. Enterprise: custom annual pricing for organizations running multiple parallel reports across product lines, categories, regions, and competitor sets.
Palmata is a content decision system for AI discovery, built by Contentful and launched on June 23, 2026. It helps organizations understand, measure, and improve how AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity represent their business. Rather than only reporting whether a brand appears in an AI answer, Palmata explains why answer engines describe a company a certain way and identifies which content changes are most likely to shift that description. It is powered by the proprietary Sounder Discovery Agent, which continuously researches a company's market, competitors, audience, and content footprint. Contentful itself was acquired by Salesforce on June 1, 2026, and was founded in 2013 in Berlin. Launch partners for Palmata include The Atlantic, Box, Dataiku, Docusign, Marketbridge, and Telus Digital.
Palmata has three pricing paths. Anyone can run a first report for free at palmata.ai without a Contentful account, which is the main entry point for curious marketers. The Growth plan costs $600 per month, billed monthly only, and is built for teams that want to steer Palmata's research toward specific brands, competitors, audiences, or strategic priorities. Enterprise pricing is fully custom and covers organizations that need many parallel reports across product lines, categories, regions, competitor sets, and funnel stages, with annual billing available at that tier. There is no publicly listed mid-tier plan between the free report and the $600/month Growth plan.
Palmata's four core capabilities are Steering Control, Adaptive Deep Research, Recommended Actions, and Simulated Impact. Steering Control lets teams point research at specific brands, products, competitors, audiences, segments, or regions. Adaptive Deep Research, driven by the Sounder Discovery Agent, surfaces the prompt clusters, source patterns, and competitor claims shaping AI-generated answers. Recommended Actions translates that research into specific content edits, naming what to change and why it matters. Simulated Impact models the likely direction of change from a recommended action before a team commits the work, helping prioritize investments with more confidence than a static dashboard.
Palmata offers a genuinely free first report to any marketer at palmata.ai, and using it does not require being an existing Contentful customer. This free report is a full diagnostic run of Palmata's research process on the requester's own brand, not a stripped-down demo. Beyond that first report, ongoing steered research and simulated-impact recommendations require the paid Growth plan at $600 per month or a custom Enterprise agreement. There is no indication of a permanent free recurring tier beyond the initial report as of the July 2026 pricing page.
Profound is a strong alternative if a team wants prompt-volume data and ChatGPT Shopping tracking starting at $99 per month, a much lower entry price than Palmata's $600/month Growth plan. AthenaHQ suits teams that want a self-serve AEO platform with broader crawler-data coverage, though it starts at $295/month. Otterly AI is the budget pick at $29/month for teams that mainly need a GEO audit rather than deep simulated-impact modeling. SeaOcean and Clearscope, both already on hokai, cover adjacent GEO and content-scoring needs at lower price points than Palmata.
Palmata fits marketing, SEO, content, web, or product marketing teams at organizations that already publish enough public content for AI systems to have formed an opinion about them. It is aimed at teams being asked by leadership to explain why AI answers describe the company a certain way and to justify which content work should be funded next. Launch partners such as The Atlantic, Box, Dataiku, Docusign, Marketbridge, and Telus Digital suggest a fit with mid-to-large publishers and B2B enterprises. It is not well suited to brand-new companies or small businesses with a thin existing content footprint, since Palmata's research depends on having enough public signal to analyze.
Palmata ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server rather than a traditional REST API for end users. This MCP server gives writers, editors, and marketers direct access to their Palmata research from inside an AI-assisted content workflow, connecting to ChatGPT, Claude, or any other MCP-compatible client to ask questions about their reports. Pricing for MCP access is not broken out separately from the Growth or Enterprise plans. No standalone developer API documentation for custom integrations beyond the MCP server was found as of July 2026.
Profound is the G2 Winter 2026 Leader in the AEO category, tracking prompt volume and ChatGPT Shopping data starting at $99/month, versus Palmata's $600/month Growth plan entry point. Profound has an established third-party review base on G2, while Palmata launched June 23, 2026 and has no G2, Trustpilot, or Product Hunt reviews yet. Palmata's differentiator is Simulated Impact, which models the expected effect of a content change before a team builds it, a step beyond Profound's measurement-focused approach. Choose Profound for lower-cost, review-validated visibility tracking; choose Palmata if the priority is prioritized, simulated content recommendations backed by Contentful's enterprise CMS relationships.