Why people look for an AthenaHQ alternative
AthenaHQ is a strong product with the widest model coverage on this list. Eleven engines on Starter, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.
Three things send people looking elsewhere, and none of them is "it does not work".
The step from free to paid is a cliff. The free Essential tier is genuinely useful: 300 credits, five engines, no card. The next tier is US$295 a month. There is nothing in between.
You buy credits, not prompts. One credit is one AI response. Starter gives 3,600 a month, so across eleven models that is roughly 327 prompt runs, and your real capacity depends on how many engines you switch on.
API access and extra credits cost more. Both are add-ons billed on top of the US$295, as the pricing page states. If you were budgeting US$295 all-in, check that first.
The number that should decide this for you
Before the price, settle the question AthenaHQ is really selling you on: do you actually need to track eleven engines?
We went to our own database to answer it, and the answer is less comfortable than we expected.
| Claude | 25.7% · 104 of 405 | |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Copilot | 18.0% · 183 of 1,016 | |
| Perplexity | 14.7% · 125 of 851 | |
| ChatGPT | 11.1% · 89 of 801 | |
| Gemini | 6.4% · 48 of 749 | |
| Google AI Mode | 5.0% · 36 of 722 | |
| Google AI Overviews | 4.5% · 24 of 534 |
We looked at 2,778 cases where one brand and one prompt were measured on five or more engines in the same analysis, across 20 brands and 220 analyses, between 1 April and 30 September 2026.
1,927 of those produced at least one mention. In 609 of them, 31.6%, exactly one engine named the brand. The other engines, asked the same question on the same day, did not.
And the part that matters most for this decision: in 687 cases, 35.7% of all the mentions we found, the only engines that named the brand were outside ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
So AthenaHQ is right about the problem. Track the three obvious engines and you will miss about a third of the times you are actually recommended.
Look at which engines carry that weight, though, because it changes what you need to buy. Claude, Copilot and Perplexity are the three that most often see something nobody else sees. Eleven models is not what closes the gap; those three are.
What this does not say: it is not a quality ranking. An engine that appears in fewer plans has fewer total mentions here, and a brand that is strong everywhere produces no exclusive mentions at all.
The seven tools, compared
| Tool | Best for | Entry price (USD) | Prompts or credits | Engines | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CreceRank (our pick) | Anyone whose buyers ask in Spanish, and per-country measurement | US$49 | 10 prompts per brand, 60 queries per analysis | 3, five from US$89 | 14 days, no card |
| AthenaHQ (the baseline) | Teams that need the widest model coverage there is | Free, then US$295 | 300 free credits, 3,600 on Starter | 5 free, 11 on Starter | Free tier, no card |
| Otterly.ai | Solo marketers and small budgets | US$33 (€29) | 15 prompts | 4 included, 3 as paid add-ons | Not published |
| Peec AI | European teams wanting a clean daily tracker | US$96 (€85) | 50 prompts | 3 of the list | Not published |
| Rankscale | Agencies that want to spend credits where they choose | US$112 (€99) | 1,200 credits, unlimited search terms | Your pick, credits decide | 7 days |
| Scrunch AI | Teams worried about how agents crawl their site | US$250 | 125 prompts, 5,000 responses | 4 on Core, 9 on Enterprise | 7 days |
| Profound | Large organisations with a procurement process | Enterprise only | 50 prompts on trial | 3 on trial, up to 9 | 7 days |
Everything is in US dollars. Otterly, Peec and Rankscale publish in euros; we converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 1 October 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1298 USD) and left the original in brackets.
| Otterly.ai | US$33 (€29) | |
|---|---|---|
| CreceRank | US$49 | |
| Peec AI | US$96 (€85) | |
| Rankscale | US$112 (€99) | |
| Scrunch AI | US$250 | |
| AthenaHQ | US$295 |
1. CreceRank: the alternative we would pick, and why
This is our own tool, so weigh this section accordingly. We put it first on purpose, we say why below, and we end the section with three cases where someone else is the better buy.
US$49 a month for one brand, 10 prompts and three models, with 60 queries per analysis. US$89 gets two brands, 20 prompts and five models. 14 days free, no card.
It costs a sixth of the paid step you are looking at
That is the whole argument against the cliff. If you left AthenaHQ’s free tier because US$295 was too big a jump, US$49 is the size of step that was missing.
You get fewer engines for it, and we would rather say that plainly than bury it: three on entry, five from US$89, against eleven on AthenaHQ Starter.
It measures in the language your customers actually use
Most tools here were built and tuned for English prompts. Entity matching in Spanish is weaker: brand names get missed, accents break the match, and the local competitor set comes out wrong.
If your buyers ask "¿cuál es la mejor universidad online en España?", measuring the English version of that question tells you about a market that is not yours.
It tells you who is taking your place
Ten competitors tracked on every plan, including the US$49 one. When you are not mentioned, the useful question is who was, and that view answers it.
It shows the actual answer, not just a score
Every prompt opens into the real text each model returned, with your brand highlighted and the sources it cited listed underneath.
That sources list is what turns a report into work: it is literally the set of pages you need to appear on.
What else you get that trackers do not have
- GEO action items. Not "your visibility is 31%", but what to change on which page, ordered by expected impact.
- We write the content for you from the Professional plan up, which none of the other six do at any price.
- Per-country measurement. The same brand scores differently in Spain, Mexico and Argentina, and you can see each one.
- Source analysis showing which domains each engine cites for your category, so you know where to get mentioned.
- Google Analytics integration to tie AI visibility to the traffic it produces.
- Support over WhatsApp on every plan, including the US$49 one.
See the tool itself, in 7 minutes
A full walkthrough of the product, from the CreceRank channel. In Spanish, like the tool.
Not for you if
Engine breadth is your actual problem and US$295 is affordable. AthenaHQ tracks eleven models and we track five at the top of our published plans. On that one axis they win and no argument of ours changes it.
Your market is English-only. Our advantage is Spanish and per-country measurement; if neither applies to you, Otterly at US$33 or Peec at US$96 fit better.
You need 50 or more prompts on the entry plan. Peec gives you 50 for US$96 and we give you 10 for US$49, so on raw prompt volume they win.
Start your free 14-day trial, no card →
2. Otterly.ai: the cheapest paid step that exists
US$33 a month (€29), 15 prompts, four engines included: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.
Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons, which is the catch. Given that Claude produced the highest share of exclusive mentions in our data, that add-on is not optional for everyone.
ChatGPT Ads tracking is included on every plan, even the cheapest. Very few tools at this price do that.
Not for you if you need more than 15 prompts. Standard is US$214 (€189) for 100 prompts, which is most of the way to AthenaHQ Starter.
We have since taken Otterly apart on its own: which four engines the price covers, what Gemini, AI Mode and Claude cost on top, and what our data says those paid engines change. It is in our Otterly AI alternatives comparison.
3. Peec AI: the clean daily tracker
US$96 a month (€85) for 50 prompts, daily tracking and one project. Pro is US$232 (€205) for 150 prompts, Advanced US$480 (€425) for 350 prompts and multi-country.
It is the most prompts per dollar at the entry level of anything here, and the interface is the one most people find easiest.
Not for you if engine coverage is what you came for. Every plan below Enterprise lets you pick three models, which is precisely the cap our data argues against.
We wrote a whole piece on that trade-off in our Peec AI alternatives comparison.
4. Rankscale: credits, at an eighth of the price
US$112 a month (€99) for 1,200 credits, with unlimited search terms, 10 brand dashboards, 50 page audits and all regions. Pro+ is US$259 (€229) for 3,000 credits.
If you like AthenaHQ’s credit model but not its price, this is the closest thing to it. You decide whether to spend credits on many engines with few prompts or the reverse, and there is a 7-day trial to find out.
Not for you if you want predictable billing. Credits mean watching your usage every month, same as with AthenaHQ.
We have since taken Rankscale apart on its own: how its credit rates work, what 1,200 credits actually cover and the six alternatives, in our comparison of Rankscale alternatives.
5. Scrunch AI: for the crawling side of the problem
US$250 a month on Core, and the pricing page now publishes what that buys: 125 unique prompts, 5,000 responses a month, 5 site audits, 1 brand workspace and four engines. In September it published none of those numbers.
Scrunch is the only tool here that treats AI agents as visitors: agent traffic analytics, agent-optimised pages, site optimisation for how models read your content.
It answers a different question. AthenaHQ tells you whether you are mentioned; Scrunch tells you whether the crawler could read you at all.
Not for you if you want model breadth. Core covers four engines and the nine-engine version is Enterprise, so on this article’s central question it is a step backwards from where you are.
We took Core apart, limit by limit, in our Scrunch AI alternatives comparison.
6. Profound: still enterprise only
As of 1 October 2026 its pricing page shows two options: a free 7-day trial with 50 prompts on three engines, and Enterprise with custom pricing and up to nine answer engines.
The mid-range plan it used to publish is still gone. If you were hoping that had come back, it has not.
Not for you if you are a small team. There is no longer a plan sized for you.
Profound's pricing changed shape again: there is no paid plan for one brand, and the published US$99 and US$399 figures are for agencies. We took it apart in our Profound alternatives comparison.
What changed since our last check, on 26 September
- Scrunch AI started publishing what Core includes: 125 prompts, 5,000 responses and four named engines. Five days ago its page showed the price and nothing else.
- AthenaHQ Starter holds at US$295, and the page now states that API access and extra credits are add-ons billed on top.
- Peec AI holds at €85, Otterly at €29 and Rankscale at €99.
- Profound is unchanged: trial or Enterprise, no entry plan.
- The euro moved. The ECB reference rate went from 1.1403 on 25 September to 1.1298 on 1 October, so every euro price above is about 1% cheaper in dollars than in our last comparison. Nobody changed their price; the exchange rate did.
How to choose, in four questions
- Is breadth really your problem? If you are already tracking Claude, Copilot and Perplexity alongside the big three, the jump from six engines to eleven buys you much less than the jump from three to six did.
- What language do your customers ask in? If it is Spanish, test the tool in Spanish before paying. This is the one that changes the answer most often.
- Credits or prompts? Credits are flexible and hard to budget. Prompts are the opposite. Neither is better; pick the one your finance team can live with.
- Do you need tracking, or fixing? Peec, Otterly and Rankscale report. CreceRank, AthenaHQ and Scrunch go further into what to do about it.
If you want the long list rather than the six here, it is in the 15 best GEO tools in 2026.
Methodology
- Prices. Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 1 October 2026, not from third-party roundups. Euro prices converted at the ECB reference rate of 1 October 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1298 USD). Where a vendor publishes no figure, the table says so.
- Screenshots. Taken by us on 1 October 2026 at 1440 pixels wide. Cookie banners were hidden for the capture, not accepted.
- Our own measurement. n = 2,778 cases of one brand and one prompt measured on five or more engines within the same analysis, from 20 brands and 220 completed analyses, between 1 April and 30 September 2026. A case counts as a mention when at least one engine named the brand. Engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Copilot and Claude.
- Selection. Tools were included if they track brand visibility across more than one AI engine and publish enough detail to be compared.
- FAQs. The two in quotation marks are real queries from our Google Search Console over the last 90 days, written as the searcher typed them. The rest are the pricing questions this comparison raises.
Disclosure. CreceRank is our own product and we placed it first in this comparison.
The reason is stated in its section, the pricing is the same you will find on our pricing page, and we list three specific cases where a competitor is the better buy, including one where AthenaHQ beats us outright. Judge the argument, not the ranking.
Limitations
- We rank our own tool first. Treat that as the interested opinion it is, and use the "not for you if" paragraphs, which are there precisely so you can rule us out.
- Our 20-brand sample is ours. These are brands measured with CreceRank on five or more engines, mostly in Spanish-speaking markets. The 31.6% figure is real but it is not a global average.
- Exclusive mentions are not a quality score. Engines are not enabled on every plan, so an engine with fewer total mentions in our data is not necessarily worse at finding brands.
- The plans are not equivalent. US$33 with 15 prompts on four engines and US$295 with 3,600 credits on eleven are different products. Read the table, not just the chart.
- Credit models are hard to compare. Rankscale and AthenaHQ sell credits; the rest sell prompts. One credit is one AI answer, so the real cost depends on how many engines you run.
- Converted prices move with the exchange rate. The euro figures are the ones the vendor charges; the dollar ones are ours.
FAQs
Sources
- AthenaHQ pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- Otterly.ai pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- Peec AI pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- Rankscale pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- Scrunch AI pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- Profound pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- CreceRank pricing, read 1 October 2026.
- European Central Bank euro reference rate, 1 October 2026: 1 EUR = 1.1298 USD.
- CreceRank's own measurement database, 1 April to 30 September 2026: 2,778 brand-and-prompt cases measured on five or more engines, from 20 brands and 220 analyses.
- Google Search Console queries for crecerank.com over the last 90 days, the source of the two quoted FAQs.
