AthenaHQ alternatives compared feature by feature: six tools on one grid (2026)
Six AthenaHQ alternatives compared row by row on engines, credits, crawler logs, personas, location and publishing, from vendor pages checked in November 2026.
AthenaHQ sells to enterprise marketing teams, and its platform page sums up the pitch in its own headline: monitor what AI says, understand why, take action. The entry point is generous. Essential is free, with 300 credits across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot, unlimited users, and the Athena AI agent. Starter costs $295 a month and lists 11 models, unlimited topics, prompts and competitors, on-page and off-page actions, and a content optimization agent. None of the alternatives below puts a conversational agent on a free plan. AthenaHQ does, and that deserves credit before we pick it apart.
The reasons teams start comparing show up once you read the plan table one row at a time. Starter runs on credits. One credit is one AI response, and the plan includes 3,600 a month, so running all 11 models every day covers roughly ten prompts. Starter is country-level, for one region and one language. Multi-region tracking, persona targeting, the Knowledge Base with claim review, and SSO all sit on the custom-priced Enterprise plan. API access is a paid add-on on Starter, priced on request. Then there are the rows that aren't on AthenaHQ's pricing or product pages at all (checked November 2026): AI crawler logs, query fan-outs, a stated tracking frequency, social citation reports, and an MCP server.
AthenaHQ's homepage, captured November 6, 2026.
We put six alternatives on the same grid. Every competitor fact here comes from that vendor's own pricing or product pages, captured on November 6 and 8, 2026. Where a page says nothing, we say so rather than fill the gap. For the two-way version with a 30-row table and a worked pricing example, read our Promptwatch vs AthenaHQ feature comparison.
Quick verdict
- Promptwatch is the one to test first. It fills the rows AthenaHQ leaves blank (IP-verified crawler logs, fan-outs, personas, sub-country location, social citation reports, MCP) on self-serve plans with published prices.
- Scrunch AI suits teams that want bot traffic on the entry plan and are curious about serving agent-optimized pages, which needs Enterprise.
- Goodie AI fits brands whose main worry is AI stating wrong facts about them, and who like having a strategist included.
- Rankscale is the budget pick for hourly runs plus shopping and ads data, as long as you don't need content written.
- LLM Pulse is the cheapest way in if weekly data is enough.
- Semrush AI Toolkit fits SEO teams that want AI tracking from the vendor already holding their keyword and backlink data.
The comparison table
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | What it doesn't list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | Teams that need the evidence behind visibility: crawls, citations, conversions, plus publishing | $95/mo (Essential); 7-day free trial | No free plan; crawler logs and AEO articles start on Professional ($245/mo) |
| Scrunch AI | Sites that want bot traffic data early and agent-facing pages later | Core $250/mo; 7-day free trial | Gemini, Claude and AI Mode are Enterprise only; MCP, API and AXP are Enterprise only |
| Goodie AI | Brands focused on claim accuracy that want strategist support | Core $295/mo; 7-day free trial | Gemini starts on Pro ($999/mo); Claude is Enterprise only; CMS publishing not listed |
| Rankscale | Budget teams that want hourly runs and shopping or ads data | Pro €99/mo; Essentials €17/mo billed yearly | Does not generate content (its facts page says so); personas not listed |
| LLM Pulse | Small teams on a tight budget | Starter €49/mo with weekly tracking; 14-day trial | Daily tracking is a separate plan; Claude and Copilot are add-ons; crawler logs from Scale (€299/mo) |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | SEO teams already living in Semrush | Base $99/mo per domain, billed annually | 25 prompts on Base; crawler log analysis only on Enterprise AIO; extra seats from €43/mo |
| AthenaHQ (reference) | Teams that want a free tier and an action workflow | Free Essential; Starter $295/mo | Crawler logs, fan-outs, MCP and social citation reports not listed; personas and multi-region are Enterprise only |
Sources: each vendor's pricing page captured November 6, 2026, plus product pages and llms.txt files read November 8, 2026. Rankscale and LLM Pulse showed euro prices to a visitor in the Netherlands. Semrush's AI toolkit page showed dollars, its bundle page euros.
1. Promptwatch: fills the blank rows
AthenaHQ is good at telling you what to do next. Where it goes quiet is the evidence underneath that advice: whether AI crawlers ever reached the page, which sub-queries the engine actually ran, and whether the answer sent a visitor who converted. That evidence is what Promptwatch is built around, and each of AthenaHQ's blank rows maps to a named feature on a listed plan.
The plans first. Essential is $95 a month for 1 project, 50 prompts and 6,000 responses. Professional is $245 for 2 projects, 150 prompts and 18,000 responses. Business is $579 for 5 projects, 350 prompts and 42,000 responses. All three come with a 7-day free trial on monthly billing and unlimited team seats, and annual billing is 12 months for the price of 10. Every paid plan can track any of the supported engines. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Amazon Alexa and Meta AI are monitored through their real interfaces, while Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral and Grok are tracked via API.
Now the gaps. Agent Analytics, from Professional, logs AI crawler visits and checks each one against the operator's published IP ranges, so a spoofed user agent doesn't pass as GPTBot. It shows a citation rate per page and explains crawl errors. That tells an access problem (the bot never read the page) apart from a content problem (it read the page and cited a rival). AthenaHQ lists robots.txt and llms.txt management and detection of inaccessible pages, which is useful, but no log of bot visits.
On prompt intelligence, Promptwatch shows the exact query fan-outs each model ran behind a response. Prompt Volumes gives monthly volume, a difficulty score and a citation rate per prompt, where AthenaHQ's volume estimates on Starter come without a listed difficulty score. Personas support stacking, and Persona Insights draws a radar per persona and points out the biggest gap against the general audience. Promptwatch doesn't list personas as a higher-tier feature. At AthenaHQ, persona targeting is Enterprise only.
Promptwatch Persona insights, from the Promptwatch changelog. Example project data.
Location goes deeper too. Country tracking is on every paid plan, state and city tracking on Business and every agency plan, and coordinate targeting (a pin with a 20 m to 5 km radius) on Business, Agency Scale and Enterprise.
Visitor Analytics, on every plan, counts AI-referred visits and conversions through Promptwatch's own script, a GTM template or the WordPress plugin, where AthenaHQ ties traffic to visibility through its GA4 integration. Brand Narrative (every plan) groups the claims AI makes about you by theme, and Fact Check (Business and up) checks a claim against pages crawled from your own site. AthenaHQ's claim review is Enterprise only. The hosted MCP server with 110+ tools and the REST API are on every paid plan. Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram citation reports, Page Tracker for any URL including a competitor's, and Ads Radar (Business and up) have no counterpart on AthenaHQ's pages.
The honest limits: there is no free plan, only the trial and the free AI Visibility Report. Essential has no crawler logs and no AEO articles, so the full comparison really starts at Professional. And AthenaHQ's agent is free to try, while Promptwatch's Agent Chat comes with paid plans only.
2. Scrunch AI: bot traffic on the entry plan, fewer engines
Scrunch AI is the closest structural match among the alternatives. Core costs $250 a month for 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses, 5 site audits, one brand workspace and five user licenses, with a 7-day free trial. Scrunch's pricing page lists AI agent and bot traffic on Core, split by model and by training, indexing and retrieval bots, which AthenaHQ's pages don't mention on any plan. Core also includes one persona, limited query fan-outs, basic content generation and sentiment analysis.
Scrunch's pricing page, captured November 6, 2026.
The trade is engine coverage. Core tracks four LLMs: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Claude, Gemini, Meta AI, AI Mode and Grok are Enterprise only, which means AthenaHQ's free tier covers Gemini and Scrunch's paid entry plan doesn't. MCP, the API, Looker Studio and the Agent Experience Platform (AXP), which serves token-light page versions to AI agents, are also Enterprise only. Scrunch lists no crawl-to-citation link or IP verification for its bot data, and seats are capped at five on Core where AthenaHQ's are unlimited.
3. Goodie AI: claim checking with a strategist attached
Goodie AI overlaps with AthenaHQ on action lists and goes further on brand accuracy. Brand Command drafts your brand facts from your site and documents. Once your team approves them, Goodie checks AI answers against those facts and flags false claims. Core costs $295 a month (annual billing gives two months free) for 110 prompts, one brand, two countries, two languages and daily tracking, with a 7-day trial. Every brand plan includes unlimited seats and AEO strategist support. Goodie also lists AI crawler analytics, AI-referred conversions, Search Console and Bing Webmaster integrations, and 50 ranked optimization actions a month on Core.
Goodie's Brand Command page, captured November 8, 2026.
The engine ladder is the weak spot. Core covers ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, AI Mode and Copilot. Gemini arrives on Pro at $999 a month, and Claude, Meta AI, DeepSeek and Grok appear only in the Enterprise column. Our capture didn't show which tier includes Brand Command or the crawler analytics, so ask before you buy. Query fan-outs and CMS publishing aren't listed, and the REST API is Enterprise only.
4. Rankscale: hourly runs on a credit budget
Rankscale answers a question AthenaHQ's pages leave open: how often does tracking run? Every Rankscale plan schedules runs anywhere from hourly to monthly. Pro is €99 a month for 1,200 credits, up to 4,800 answers, and all 17+ engines, with a 7-day trial. Credits are spent per engine: 0.25 a run for ChatGPT, AI Mode, Perplexity and Gemini, 1 for DeepSeek, 2 for Claude. Query fan-outs and page audits are on every plan. Pro adds AI Visits (crawler data through a read-only Cloudflare connection), shopping and ads tracking, and a Looker Studio connector. The REST API starts on Pro+ at €229.
Rankscale's pricing page, captured November 6, 2026. Prices shown in euros for a visitor in the Netherlands.
Where it falls short of AthenaHQ is the action side. Rankscale's own facts page says it analyzes output but does not generate text or media itself. Personas aren't listed, and AI Visits works with Cloudflare only, on a daily sync, without IP verification or a crawl-to-citation link listed.
5. LLM Pulse: the low-cost entry, weekly by default
LLM Pulse costs the least to start. Starter is €49 a month on weekly tracking for 50 prompts, one project and five engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini), with unlimited seats, an MCP server with about 140 tools, and a 14-day trial, double the 7 days most others give. Growth (€99) adds sentiment, social and community citations, and AI traffic analytics with conversions. Scale (€299) adds crawler logs, shopping and ads tracking, the REST API and a Looker Studio connector.
The catches are cadence and add-ons. Weekly is the default, and daily tracking comes on separate plans that start paid, with no trial. Copilot, which AthenaHQ includes even on its free tier, is a €10 add-on on weekly Starter, and Claude is €25.
6. Semrush AI Toolkit: AI tracking next to classic SEO data
Semrush AI Toolkit makes sense if the rest of your SEO stack is already Semrush. The AI Visibility Toolkit's Base plan is $99 a month per domain, billed annually, with 25 custom prompts tracked daily across ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, plus 300 instant AI visibility reports a day for any domain. Around it sits data no AI tracker here offers: Semrush cites 28B+ keywords and 43T+ backlinks, and there is a free plan that lists AI Visibility features.
Against AthenaHQ, the AI side is thinner. Twenty-five prompts is a small panel, Claude and Copilot aren't named on the self-serve pages, and crawler log analysis appears only on the Enterprise AIO page. Search Console data and scheduled PDF reports come through a paid report add-on, and extra users start at €43 a month.
Feature-gap table
Rows where Promptwatch has the capability, checked against each vendor's matrix entry. "Not listed" means not on that vendor's pricing or product pages (checked November 2026).
| Feature | Promptwatch | AthenaHQ | Scrunch AI | Goodie AI | Rankscale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Query fan-outs | Yes | Not listed | Limited on Core; full on Enterprise | Not listed | Yes, every plan |
| Personas | Yes, with stacking | Enterprise only | 1 on Core | Yes, plan not stated | Not listed |
| State/city and coordinate targeting | Yes, Business and up | Not listed (multi-region on Enterprise) | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Tracking faster than daily | Every 12, 6 or 1 hours, Business | Not listed | Not listed | Daily; faster not listed | Hourly, every plan |
| Social citation reports | Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram | Not listed | Partial ("Social" owner segment) | Not listed as reports | Not listed |
| Track any URL, incl. a competitor's | Yes, Page Tracker | Not listed | Partial (own pages) | Partial (own pages, 10 on Core) | Partial (audits any URL) |
| AI crawler logs | Yes, Professional and up | Not listed | Yes, Core | Yes, tier not legible | Yes, Pro and up (Cloudflare only) |
| IP verification and crawl-to-citation rate | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Partial (blocks and errors) | Partial (404 signals) |
| AI-referred visits and conversions | Yes, every plan | Partial (via GA4) | Not listed | Yes | Partial (GA4 beta, no conversions) |
| Fact check against your own pages | Yes, Business and up | Enterprise only | Not listed | Yes, tier not legible | Not listed |
| CMS publishing | WordPress, Webflow, Framer; automated on Business | Partial (Shopify) | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Ads inside AI answers | Yes, Business and agency plans | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed | Yes, Pro and up |
| MCP server | Yes, every paid plan | Not listed | Enterprise only | Yes, every plan (read only) | Yes, every plan |
| Coding agent visibility | Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
Which missing rows matter depends on who is reading the dashboard. An in-house SEO or content team trying to get pages cited should weigh the crawler rows most, because without IP-verified logs and a per-page citation rate you can't tell whether a page failed on access or on content. Multi-location brands and franchises care about the location row: AthenaHQ Starter stops at one country, and of the tools in this table only Promptwatch lists city and coordinate targeting. Regulated or fast-moving brands should look at fact checking, which AthenaHQ puts on Enterprise. Data and ops teams should look at MCP and API access, since AthenaHQ lists no MCP server and charges extra for the API on Starter. Rankscale beats Promptwatch on two rows of this table, offering hourly runs and ads tracking on cheaper plans, and that's worth knowing if those are your only two needs.
Who should pick which
- You need to know why a page is or isn't cited and what it earns in traffic: Promptwatch, on Professional if crawler logs matter.
- You want bot traffic on a $250 plan and might move to agent-facing pages later: Scrunch AI.
- AI repeating wrong facts about your brand is the main risk: Goodie AI, or Promptwatch Business for Fact Check.
- You want hourly runs and shopping data on a small budget and will write content elsewhere: Rankscale.
- You want the lowest monthly bill and can live with weekly data: LLM Pulse.
- Your SEO team already pays for Semrush and wants AI tracking in the same login: Semrush AI Toolkit.
- Stay on AthenaHQ if your team works the action list every week, one country is enough, and the free agent or the credit rollover is what you value most. Switching costs a few weeks of setup that may not buy you anything.
Our recommendation
If you are reading this, the likely reason is that AthenaHQ tells you what to change but can't show you whether AI crawlers ever read the result. That is the job Promptwatch's Agent Analytics does. Start the 7-day free trial on Professional, connect crawler logs through Cloudflare or the WordPress plugin, and load the same prompts you track in AthenaHQ. After a week, open the citation rate per page. It shows which pages the bots never reach and which ones they read but don't cite, and those two problems need very different fixes. Keep AthenaHQ running in parallel that week so you compare the two on the same prompts.
FAQ
Which AthenaHQ alternative has a free plan?
Semrush lists a free plan with AI Visibility features. Promptwatch, Scrunch AI, Goodie AI and Rankscale offer 7-day trials, and LLM Pulse offers 14 days on its weekly plans. AthenaHQ's free Essential tier, with 300 credits and the Athena agent, is still unusual in this group.
Which alternatives track Gemini and Claude on the entry plan?
Every paid Promptwatch plan can track any supported engine, with Claude tracked via API. Rankscale includes all its engines on every plan, though Claude costs 2 credits a run. LLM Pulse includes Gemini and sells Claude as an add-on. Scrunch Core and Goodie Core include neither: Gemini is Enterprise only at Scrunch and starts on Pro at Goodie.
Which alternatives include AI crawler logs?
AthenaHQ doesn't list crawler logs on any plan. Promptwatch includes them from Professional ($245/mo) with IP verification and a per-page citation rate. Scrunch lists bot traffic on Core ($250/mo), Rankscale on Pro (€99/mo, Cloudflare only), and LLM Pulse on Scale (€299/mo). Goodie lists crawler analytics without a legible tier, and Semrush only on Enterprise AIO.
Are AthenaHQ credits cheaper than a fixed allowance?
It depends on cadence. Starter's 3,600 credits cover about 30 prompts on four engines checked daily. Promptwatch Essential's 6,000 responses at $95 cover 50 prompts on four engines over a 30-day month, but without crawler logs. Run fewer engines or check weekly and AthenaHQ's credits go further.