Profound vs AthenaHQ
Profound or AthenaHQ? Here is how they compare on price, free plan, platforms and the jobs each does best, from each vendor's own pages.
| Compared on | Visit | Visit |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI marketing platform that tracks brand visibility in AI answers and runs content agents | AEO and GEO platform that tracks AI search visibility and recommends content actions |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Not publishedProfound pricing | $245/mo billed annually (Starter)AthenaHQ pricing |
| What it covers | Not stated | Includes 3,600 credits a month (1 credit = 1 AI response) across 11 AI models; API access and extra credits cost extra. |
| Free trial | 7-day free trial: 50 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits | None stated |
| Platforms | Web, API | Web, API |
| Integrations (vendor's figure) | Not stated | Not stated |
| Open source | No | No |
| Made by | Profound | AthenaHQ |
Choose Profound if…
- The job is running AI visibility tracking and content agents for a large brand in one platform.
- The job is auditing AI visibility for agency prospects and clients.
Choose AthenaHQ if…
- You want a free plan: Profound does not have one.
- The job is trying AI visibility tracking on a free plan before paying.
- The job is getting AI visibility tracking and content recommendations in one tool.
Still weighing it up?
If neither is quite right, Profound and AthenaHQ are also compared with their other rivals: Profound vs Peec AI, Cituna vs Profound and Cituna vs AthenaHQ.
To see them doing real work, read 10 Best Profound Alternatives for 2026, Scored and The Best AI Visibility Tracking Tools in 2026 (Honest Reviews).
What Profound does
- Answer Engine Insights: brand and competitor visibility, citations, sentiment and ranking in AI answers
- Enterprise tracking across up to 9 engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude and Google AI Overviews
- Prompt Volumes: estimates of what people ask AI assistants
- AI Marketer agent and reusable Agents for research, content and reporting, run on credits
- Agent Analytics for AI-sourced traffic, with integrations for Cloudflare, Vercel, Akamai, AWS, Fastly and WordPress
- ChatGPT Shopping tracking on Enterprise
Watch out for
- No self-serve plan for brands: after the 7-day trial, Enterprise is priced by quote
- The trial uses a recommended prompt set that cannot be customised and covers three engines
- Agents run on credits, and more than the allotment needs an Enterprise package
What AthenaHQ does
- Tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral on the Starter plan
- Credit-based usage: one credit is one AI response
- Prompt and response analysis with source and competitor insights
- Content recommendations and a content optimization agent
- Smart robots.txt and llms.txt management for AI crawler access
- Google Analytics (GA4), Google Search Console, Shopify and Webflow integrations
Watch out for
- The only paid self-serve plan costs $295 a month ($245 billed annually)
- API access and extra credits are paid add-ons on Starter, priced on request
- Tracking in multiple regions and languages is an Enterprise feature
Questions
Do Profound and AthenaHQ have free plans?
AthenaHQ does; Profound does not, though it offers a 7-day free trial: 50 prompts run daily on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with limited AI Marketer credits.