# AthenaHQ review: features, pricing and alternatives (2026)

> AthenaHQ review: a free plan, Starter at $295 a month for 3,600 credits and custom Enterprise. What credits buy, who it suits and 6 alternatives.

Canonical: https://www.searchmaxxed.com/research/athenahq-review
Last updated: 2026-11-02

AthenaHQ review: a free plan, Starter at $295 a month for 3,600 credits and custom Enterprise. What credits buy, who it suits and 6 alternatives.

Written by [Brenden House](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/people/brenden), Founder, Searchmaxxed

Published 2 November 2026 Updated 2 November 2026 13 min read

Summarise with AI

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## See who AI recommends instead of you

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## Key takeaways

AthenaHQ is a credit-priced AI visibility tracker that also drafts content and points you at the sources shaping AI answers.

| Plan | Price and coverage |
| --- | --- |
| Essential | Free, 300 credits, 5 engines |
| Starter | $295/month, 3,600 credits, 11 engines |
| Enterprise | Custom credits, SSO, multi-region, ACE |

- Best for teams with people ready to act on its findings.
- Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral cost 5 credits a response, so a full 11-engine schedule drains Starter's 3,600 credits fast.
- Peec AI, Scrunch and Otterly.AI sell fixed prompt allowances instead.
- To get named, not only measured, start with a free search analysis.

AthenaHQ, also written Athena HQ, is an AI search visibility platform for GEO and AEO. It tracks how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude and six more engines mention your brand, then suggests what to fix. Pricing has three tiers. Essential is free with 300 credits, Starter costs $295 monthly for 3,600 credits across 11 engines and Enterprise is custom. One credit buys one AI response. AthenaHQ suits a marketing team that wants to measure its AI visibility and has people ready to act on what the dashboard shows.

If you'd rather see those numbers move without building that team, that's our job. Here at Searchmaxxed, we're an AI-native search team, and we don't sell tracking software. We make your company the answer in Google and in the AI engines your buyers ask: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews. Then we turn those answers into a steady flow of high-intent leads and pipeline.

## What is AthenaHQ and what does it do?

AthenaHQ is software that shows how AI engines describe your brand, then tells your team what to change. Its [platform page](https://athenahq.ai/platform) splits the product into three parts: Monitor, Insights and Action Center.

In AthenaHQ's own terms:

- **Monitor**  tracks visibility, mentions, citations, sentiment and competitor movement across engines and markets. It also estimates prompt volume, meaning how often people ask AI platforms about a topic.
- **Insights**  traces each answer back to the sources and claims behind it. It flags inaccurate claims and pages AI crawlers can't reach.
- **Action Center**  turns gaps into content drafts, citation outreach targets and product-content fixes for AI shopping recommendations.

A prompt is a buyer's question, like "best SIEM for a mid-size bank", that AthenaHQ puts to each engine on a schedule. Track 50 of those. Each week you'll see who gets named for each prompt, who gets left out and which pages the engines quote as sources.

On top sits Ask Athena, a chat assistant that answers plain-language questions using your account's own data rather than the open web.

Setup is quick. The [setup guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/getting-started/setup) puts activation at 15 to 20 minutes, while a wizard builds your brand profile, proposes competitors and writes about 10 starter prompts. First results land within hours. From there, the guide recommends building to 50 to 100 prompts, which is enough to see patterns and still few enough to act on.

The [integrations guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/guides/settings-integrations) covers the stack a B2B marketing team already runs. GA4, Search Console and Google Ads handle measurement and attribution. Publishing runs through Shopify, Webflow, Wix, Framer, WordPress, Payload, Sanity or Contentful, and Looker Studio and Slack handle reporting.

Who's behind it? Its [about page](https://athenahq.ai/about) names CEO Andrew Yan, a former Google Search product manager and DeepMind alum, and CTO Alan Yao, who came from ServiceNow.

## How much does AthenaHQ cost?

AthenaHQ costs nothing on Essential, $295 monthly on Starter and a custom price on Enterprise. Its [pricing page](https://athenahq.ai/plans) takes 17% off for annual billing, and every plan bills in credits, with one credit buying one AI response.

| Plan | Price (USD) | Credits and engines | What stands out |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Essential | Free, with $25 free credit | 300 credits; 5 engines | Unlimited users, competitor insights, content recommendations |
| Starter | $295 monthly | 3,600 credits a month; 11 engines | Unlimited prompts and competitors, integrations, CSV export |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom credits | SSO, multi-region, ACE, BI dashboards, GEO specialist |

Starter is for "Self-Guided SMBs", the page says. On Starter, API access and extra credits are paid add-ons billed on top of the subscription, and you get their price from AthenaHQ's sales team. Enterprise includes the API.

Enterprise is where the procurement features live. You get a Knowledge Base with claim review, Oracle discrepancy detection, persona targeting, multi-region tracking and dashboards in Tableau, Power BI or Looker. On top of that, you get white-glove setup, a certified GEO/SEO specialist, a dedicated Slack channel and a 2-hour support SLA.

Enterprise also gets the newest feature. AthenaHQ [announced the Athena Citation Engine (ACE)](https://athenahq.ai/blog/announcing-athena-citation-engine-ace) on 29 September 2025: a machine learning model that predicts how likely content is to earn citations.

## How far do AthenaHQ credits go?

Credits go furthest on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode, which cost 1 credit a response each. Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral cost 5 credits each, according to AthenaHQ's [credit calculator](https://athenahq.ai/credit-calculator), because they're heavier models to run. Prompt expansion counts every response four times.

Your monthly bill is one sum. Multiply prompts by credits per engine, then by runs a month, and remember that each extra location runs the full prompt set again. Personas stack more variations on top.

| Your setup | Credits a month | Where it fits |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 50 prompts, Essential's 5 engines, one run | 250 | Essential's 300 credits |
| 50 prompts, six 1-credit engines, weekly | 1,200 | Starter |
| 100 prompts, six 1-credit engines, weekly | 2,400 | Starter |
| 20 prompts, six 1-credit engines, daily | 3,600 | Starter, exactly |
| 100 prompts, six 1-credit engines plus Claude, weekly | 4,400 | Starter plus add-on credits |
| 50 prompts, six 1-credit engines, weekly, expansion on | 4,800 | Starter plus add-on credits |
| 50 prompts, all 11 engines, weekly | 6,200 | Add-on credits or Enterprise |

The sums assume four weekly runs or 30 daily runs a month, a single location and no personas, so adjust for your setup.

Two things jump out. Claude alone costs as much as five of the 1-credit engines, so adding it to 100 weekly prompts takes 2,000 credits a month. Daily runs cost 7.5 times more.

For most B2B teams, we'd take 100 prompts checked weekly over 20 checked daily, because the extra prompts cover more of the questions buyers ask. That's where deals start.

So pick engines by where buyers ask. In [G2's April 2026 report](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-g2-research-half-of-b2b-software-buyers-now-start-their-research-with-ai-chatbots-302742807.html) on 1,076 B2B software buyers, ChatGPT was the dominant chatbot for software research at 63%. Start there and with Google's AI Overviews. Keep the 5-credit engines for the prompts closest to a sale.

## Which AI engines does AthenaHQ track?

AthenaHQ's free Essential plan tracks five engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. Starter adds Google AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral for a total of 11, with more models available on request.

Watch each engine on its own. They lean on different sources, and our own panel of 44 agency questions across three engines showed how far apart they sit:

Perplexity cited a review directory (Semrush Agencies, Clutch, DesignRush and the like) in 36 of 44 agency answers. ChatGPT did it in 20 and Claude in 15. One agency's Clutch profile had six reviews and was cited 20 times.

ChatGPT scores won't predict Perplexity. Worse, a blended score across all 11 engines can hide the one engine where your buyers keep hearing a competitor's name.

## What do AthenaHQ's numbers measure?

AthenaHQ measures how often AI answers name you, how often they link to your pages, and how far you trail each competitor on both. Its [prompts guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/guides/prompts) defines each column. These five matter most:

- **Mention %**: the share of responses that mention your brand.
- **Citation %**: the share of responses that cite your brand's pages.
- **Mention gap and citation gap**: your rate minus a competitor's.
- **Est. impressions**: monthly queries multiplied by your mention rate.
- **Attributed citation %**: citations that came from content you created in Action Center.

Mentions and citations move separately, so watch both. We measured the gap:

We put 300 Australian agency-buyer questions to ChatGPT three times each, with search on. It pulled 17,870 search results into those 900 answers and kept 4,389 as sources. Being found is the easy part. About three in four results it reads never make the answer.

A tracker shows which side of that line you're on. Crossing the line takes work on your own pages and on the sites the engines trust, and AthenaHQ's [Lago case study](https://athenahq.ai/case-studies/lago-ai-overview-impressions-citations-case-study) makes the same call. Count citations and sources as the ground-truth KPI, it says, "not just mentions".

## Does AthenaHQ connect AI visibility to traffic and revenue?

Yes, through integrations. AthenaHQ's homepage says GA4 connects AI search visibility to traffic and conversions, and Shopify attributes revenue to AI search for [online stores](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/industries/ecommerce-seo). Search Console adds an SEO-versus-AEO view.

That works when the traffic data underneath is clean, and it isn't always, as we found when we dug into a client's analytics:

A client's GA4 showed AI-assistant visits jump from 354 to 6,050 in a month. Almost none of it was real. About 5,700 came in three one-hour bursts: same 1920x1080 desktop Chrome, all new users, no referrer, about 20 seconds each, landing on two pages. Real AI traffic was 385 sessions against 354 the month before, roughly flat.

Every tool that reads GA4 inherits a spike like that. So before you trust any AI traffic chart, check the hourly pattern, the screen sizes and the landing pages behind every spike.

B2B money sits in the CRM. Which AI answers sent the buyers who booked demos, and which of those deals closed? We track which searches and AI answers turn into revenue for our clients, through their CRM as well as in GA4.

## Is AthenaHQ ready for enterprise security reviews?

Yes. Its [enterprise page](https://athenahq.ai/enterprise) lists SOC 2 Type I from October 2025, Type II from June 2026 and GDPR compliance for EU and UK data. Its NIST CSF 2.0 implementation sits at Tier 3.

Enterprise adds SAML and OIDC single sign-on, an organisation audit log and custom access controls. Starter and Enterprise both include unlimited seats with role-based access control, and the homepage FAQ says multi-region tracking reaches 60+ countries and languages.

That's enough to open a vendor review. Ask for the SOC 2 Type II report itself, then check which sub-processors touch your prompt data, because your prompt list maps your go-to-market plan.

## What results does AthenaHQ say its customers get?

Lago saw a 50% rise in demos from AI search, AthenaHQ reports, and Grüns' share of voice climbed from 2.0% to 12.6% in 60 days. Those are AthenaHQ's figures.

The Lago story shows how. Its team ran a weekly playbook: find prompts where competitors appeared and Lago didn't, then write articles that answer those exact prompts with citable sources. They also researched about 300 social threads and added credible commentary, then tracked those sources as they surfaced in AI answers. AI Overview impressions grew from 3% to 33% between March and September 2025.

AthenaHQ's homepage FAQ says it plainly: "The brands that see compounding returns are the ones that act on Athena's recommendations consistently."

The dashboard is half the job. The other half is the weekly writing, fixing and outreach that moves the numbers, and somebody on your side has to own it.

## What are the best AthenaHQ alternatives?

The closest AthenaHQ alternatives are Profound for enterprise teams and Peec AI or Otterly.AI for fixed prompt allowances. Scrunch pairs tracking with site audits, and if you already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs, their AI visibility features may be enough.

| Tool | Best fit | Entry price (USD, Nov 2026) | Entry plan covers |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AthenaHQ | Tracking plus content actions in one tool | Free; Starter $295/month | 3,600 credits, 11 engines |
| Profound | Enterprise teams buying through sales | Free 7-day trial; Enterprise custom | Trial: 50 prompts daily, 3 engines |
| Peec AI | Fixed daily tracking at a set price | Starter $95/month | 50 prompts, 3 models, 4,500 answers |
| Scrunch | Tracking plus site audits | Core $250/month | 125 prompts, 5,000 responses, 4 engines |
| Otterly.AI | Small teams starting small | Lite $29/month | 15 prompts daily, 4 engines |
| Semrush | Teams already using Semrush for SEO | SEO + AI Search Starter $199/month | 50 prompts tracked daily |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Teams already on Ahrefs | Custom prompts from $50/month | Daily custom prompt tracking |

Choose by how you like to pay. Credits flex with a prompt set that changes from month to month, while a fixed allowance, like Peec AI's, keeps the bill the same. For the full field, our [AI visibility tools comparison](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/research/ai-visibility-tools) puts 12 trackers side by side.

## AthenaHQ vs Profound: which should you pick?

Pick AthenaHQ to start self-serve and scale by buying credits, or Profound if you'll buy through sales and want its AI Marketer agents. Both publish SOC 2 compliance.

[Profound's pricing page](https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing) offers a free trial: 50 prompts run daily for 7 days across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Its Enterprise plan is custom and tracks up to 9 answer engines, while AthenaHQ lets you test a free plan without a sales call. Still weighing Profound? Our [Profound alternatives guide](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/research/profound-alternatives) compares nine options.

## Do you need a tool like AthenaHQ, or a team that does the work?

You need a tool if you already have people to act on what it finds. You need a team if the gap is the doing: technical fixes, pages that answer buyer questions, and mentions on the sites AI engines trust.

| What you need | AthenaHQ, per its own pages | Searchmaxxed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| See where AI engines name you | Yes, prompt by prompt | Yes, as part of the work |
| Technical fixes | Smart robots.txt and llms.txt, plus site health checks | We fix technical SEO, crawl and indexing |
| Pages that answer buyer questions | Content agent drafts; publishes through your CMS | We write and publish them |
| Mentions on the sites AI cites | Citation outreach targets the sources | We go after those mentions |
| Rankings in Google | Search Console data beside AEO data | We take more of the searches that matter |
| Revenue from AI answers | GA4 and Shopify attribution | Your CRM as well as GA4 |
| Who does the work | Your team, plus a GEO specialist on Enterprise | Our team |

You can also run both. A tracker gives your CMO a weekly view, and a team does the work that changes the numbers. Our [AI search optimisation service](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/services/ai-search-optimization) covers that work in full, from technical SEO and content to digital PR and AI answer tracking. Prefer to run it in-house? Our [guide to showing up in AI search](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/research/how-to-show-up-in-ai-search) walks through every step in order.

## Is Searchmaxxed right for you?

We're a strong fit if you're a law firm, clinic or premium builder that's losing ground in Google or missing from AI answers. Maybe your SEO team hasn't caught up. You want your name in the answer when buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google which vendor to choose, and the pipeline that follows.

You talk to the people doing the work, with no account manager in between, and you own your site, content and data from day one.

One client came to us with a website that wasn't working. Three months later he was on page one for one of the most competitive searches in his industry. Now he has more high-intent leads than he can handle, and we're building the systems to handle them.

The bigger picture:

Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than $15 million in revenue through search for its clients.

We're the wrong call in two cases. If you need leads this month just to survive, search takes longer. And if all you want is a dashboard to watch in-house, a tracker such as AthenaHQ or Peec AI is the better buy.

## What should you do next?

Try AthenaHQ free first if you like. Load 50 real buyer prompts into Essential and run them once across its five engines, which costs 250 credits and gives you a baseline.

Then find out what moves it.. We'll benchmark you against your top competitors across Google, ChatGPT and the other AI engines. We'll show you where they're named instead of you, and the few moves that will matter most.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is AthenaHQ free?

Yes. AthenaHQ's Essential plan is free and includes 300 credits, $25 of free credit and unlimited users across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter costs $295 monthly, adding six more engines and 3,600 credits a month.

### What is an AthenaHQ credit?

An AthenaHQ credit pays for one AI response. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode cost 1 credit a response, while Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral cost 5. Prompt expansion counts each response four times.

### Is API access included on AthenaHQ Starter?

No. On Starter, API access and extra credits are paid add-ons on top of the $295 subscription, priced by AthenaHQ's sales team. Enterprise includes the API.

### Does AthenaHQ write content?

Yes. Starter and Enterprise include a content optimization agent that drafts in your Brand Kit's voice, and integrations publish to Shopify, Webflow or WordPress. Enterprise adds the advanced agent, ACE and persona targeting.

### Who founded AthenaHQ?

Andrew Yan and Alan Yao. Yan is CEO and a former Google Search product manager and DeepMind alum. Yao is CTO and previously worked at ServiceNow.

### Is AthenaHQ good for agencies?

Yes, it runs a dedicated agency programme. Its agency page lists multi-brand management, pitch-ready workspaces, discounted licences and client leads routed to agencies once they earn AthenaHQ's GEO certification.

### What's the difference between AthenaHQ and an AI SEO agency?

AthenaHQ measures your AI visibility and suggests what to change. An AI SEO agency makes the changes for you: technical SEO, pages, digital PR and mentions on the sites AI engines cite. Searchmaxxed does that work for [law firms](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/industries/legal-seo), [clinics](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/industries/healthcare-seo) and [premium builders](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/industries/construction-seo).

## Sources

1. [platform page](https://athenahq.ai/platform)
2. [setup guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/getting-started/setup)
3. [integrations guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/guides/settings-integrations)
4. [about page](https://athenahq.ai/about)
5. [pricing page](https://athenahq.ai/plans)
6. [announced the Athena Citation Engine (ACE)](https://athenahq.ai/blog/announcing-athena-citation-engine-ace)
7. [credit calculator](https://athenahq.ai/credit-calculator)
8. [G2's April 2026 report](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-g2-research-half-of-b2b-software-buyers-now-start-their-research-with-ai-chatbots-302742807.html)
9. [prompts guide](https://docs.athenahq.ai/guides/prompts)
10. [Lago case study](https://athenahq.ai/case-studies/lago-ai-overview-impressions-citations-case-study)
11. [enterprise page](https://athenahq.ai/enterprise)
12. [Profound's pricing page](https://www.tryprofound.com/pricing)

## About the editorial team

[**Brenden House**](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/people/brenden)

Founder, Searchmaxxed

## Get named when buyers ask AI who to hire

- Where you stand for 10 buying questions
- Your top 3 competitors and why they get picked
- Days 1-30, 31-60 and 61-90, and the first 3 moves

Get your free growth plan

Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than $15 million in revenue through search for its clients.

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## Related

- [Research](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/research)
- [Searchmaxxed](https://www.searchmaxxed.com/)