Head-to-head · 2026
Athena (AthenaHQ) vs Profound
Athena and Profound are both AI visibility platforms, but they are sold in opposite ways. Athena publishes its pricing and sells self-serve: a free Essential tier and a $295/month Starter plan billed in credits. Profound publishes no prices at all — there is a restricted free trial, and everything beyond it goes through a demo. That single difference shapes almost every other comparison on this page, including how easily you can evaluate either one before committing.
Athena (AthenaHQ)
Generative Engine Optimization platform tracking brand presence across AI answer engines, sold self-serve on a credit-based plan with an enterprise tier above it.
Strengths
- Published self-serve pricing — $295/mo Starter
- 11 models tracked on Starter, the widest published list
- Free Essential tier with $25 credit (300 credits)
- CSV export and content optimization agent on Starter
Limitations
- Credit-based billing makes monthly spend hard to predict
- SSO, claim review and multi-language are Enterprise-only
- GEO-generalist — not built around B2B evaluation prompts
Profound
AI search analytics platform with visibility scoring and citation analysis, sold enterprise-first with a restricted free trial and no published pricing.
Strengths
- Up to 9 answer engines tracked on Enterprise
- SOC 2 compliance with SSO/SAML
- Dedicated support and a tailored prompt tracking plan
- Unlimited seats, even on the free trial
Limitations
- No self-serve paid tier — Enterprise requires a demo
- Free trial is 10 prompts, run once, ChatGPT only
- Cost cannot be evaluated without contacting sales
Side by side
Every figure below is taken from each vendor's own pricing page. Where a vendor does not publish something, this table says so rather than guessing.
| Athena (AthenaHQ) | Profound | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | $295/month (Starter) | Not published — “Get a Demo” |
| Free option | Essential — $25 free credit (300 credits) | Trial — limited AI Marketer credits |
| What the free option covers | Prompt and response analysis, sources and competitor insights, content recommendations | 10 unique prompts, run once, ChatGPT only, 1 language, 1 region |
| Engines tracked on the paid plan | 11 models, incl. ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral | Up to 9 answer engines, incl. ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Claude, AI Overviews |
| Billing model | Credits — 3,600/month on Starter | Custom; AI Marketer credits pooled across the team |
| Annual discount | 17% off | Not published |
| Self-serve paid signup | Yes | No — demo required |
| SSO / SAML | Enterprise only (SAML and OIDC) | Enterprise only (SSO/SAML, SOC 2) |
| Data export | CSV export on Starter | Custom integrations and data exports on Enterprise |
Verified 2026-09-15 · Athena pricing page · Profound pricing page
See what AI says about your brand
Get a free AI visibility snapshot across ChatGPT and Gemini — no signup needed.
Who each one is for
Both tools are competent. The question is which constraints you are working under — budget approval, procurement requirements, and how soon you need to be live.
Athena (AthenaHQ)
Choose it if
- Teams that want to start today without a sales call
- Anyone who needs the widest model coverage in one subscription
- Content and SEO teams who will act on optimization recommendations
- Budgets that can absorb $295/month without an approval chain
Look elsewhere if
- Organisations that need SSO or claim review below the Enterprise tier
- Teams that need a fixed, predictable monthly invoice — credits vary with usage
- Buyers who want prompts framed around purchase decisions rather than content gaps
Profound
Choose it if
- Enterprises where SOC 2 and SSO are procurement requirements
- Teams who want a vendor to build the prompt plan with them
- Large groups — seats are unlimited on both tiers
- Organisations already comfortable with demo-led purchasing
Look elsewhere if
- Anyone who needs to compare cost before a sales conversation
- Small teams evaluating on a trial — 10 prompts run once is a preview, not a pilot
- Buyers who want to be live this week
Verdict
If you want to start this week without talking to anyone, Athena is the only one of the two that lets you: pricing is public and the Starter plan is self-serve at $295/month. If you need SOC 2, SSO and a prompt plan built with a vendor team — and a procurement process is normal for you anyway — Profound is built for that, but you cannot compare its cost until you book a demo. Neither is organised around the buyer-intent prompts that decide B2B software deals, which is the gap Perciva fills at €49/month.
How to judge either one
Six questions that separate these tools in practice. They apply to any AI visibility platform, not just these two — take them into your trial.
Model the real cost, not the sticker price
Both vendors bill in credits, which means the advertised number is a ceiling on usage rather than a description of it. Before comparing $295/month against a custom quote, work out what one month of your own monitoring actually consumes: prompts multiplied by engines multiplied by run frequency. A plan with 3,600 credits sounds generous until you discover that a single daily sweep of 40 prompts across 11 models spends them in under a fortnight. Ask both vendors what your specific prompt set would cost per month, and get the answer in writing.
Separate engine coverage from engine depth
Eleven models tracked once a month is a weaker signal than four models tracked every day. Coverage is the number every vendor advertises because it is the easiest to increase; frequency is the number that determines whether you find out about a wrong answer in hours or in weeks. When you compare the 11-model and 9-engine figures on this page, treat them as a starting point and then ask each vendor how often each engine is actually queried on your plan.
Ask who writes the prompts
The prompts decide everything downstream. A tool monitoring "best CRM software" and a tool monitoring "is HubSpot or Pipedrive better for a 12-person sales team" will report completely different things about the same brand. The first is a category question; the second is what an actual buyer types before a decision. Profound describes a tailored prompt tracking plan on Enterprise, Athena includes prompt and response analysis from the free tier — in both cases, look at the prompts themselves rather than the count, and check whether they read like your buyers.
Work out what happens when an answer is wrong
Every tool in this category will tell you that your visibility score moved. Far fewer will tell you which claim in which answer changed, which source the engine drew it from, and what to publish to correct it. When you run a trial, deliberately look for an answer that is factually wrong about your product, then follow the tool's workflow from that alert to a concrete action. If the trail ends at a dashboard, you have bought a metric rather than a remedy.
Test the trial against a real decision
Profound's trial is explicitly 10 prompts run once against ChatGPT only; Athena's Essential tier gives you $25 of credit to spend as you like. Neither is a pilot. Design your trial around one question that matters — for example, what four engines say when a buyer compares you to your closest competitor on price — and spend the entire allowance on that single question. A narrow trial answered properly tells you more than a broad one spread thin.
Check what you keep when you leave
Historical AI answer data is the part of this category that cannot be reconstructed after the fact — if you cancel and lose twelve months of records, you cannot re-run last March's queries. Athena lists CSV export on Starter; Profound lists custom data exports on Enterprise. Before signing, establish what the export actually contains: whether it includes the raw answers and their cited sources, or only the aggregated scores.
Looking for a third option?
Perciva — Buyer-Intent AI Monitoring
Perciva narrows the lens to buyer-intent prompts — comparison, pricing, integrations, security — and extracts claim-level intelligence with action hints attached to every alert. Self-serve from €49/mo with a 7-day free trial, no credit card.
7-day free trial · No credit card required
Frequently asked
How much does Athena cost?
Athena publishes its pricing. The Starter plan is $295/month with 3,600 credits, or roughly 17% less on annual billing. There is a free Essential tier that includes $25 of credit, equal to 300 credits. Enterprise pricing is custom. Verified on athenahq.ai on 15 September 2026.
How much does Profound cost?
Profound does not publish prices. There is a free trial, and the Enterprise plan is listed as Custom behind a “Get a Demo” button, so the only way to learn the cost is to contact their sales team. Verified on tryprofound.com on 15 September 2026.
Is Athena cheaper than Profound?
That cannot be answered honestly, because Profound does not publish a price to compare against. What can be said is that Athena's entry paid plan costs $295/month and you can buy it without speaking to anyone, whereas Profound's paid tier requires a demo first.
Do they monitor the same engines?
They overlap heavily but not exactly. Athena lists 11 models on Starter, including Meta AI and Mistral. Profound lists up to 9 answer engines on Enterprise. Both cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews. Note that coverage is not the same as how often each engine is queried — ask about run frequency separately.
Can I try either one properly before buying?
Partly. Athena's free Essential tier gives you $25 of credit to spend across its features. Profound's trial is restricted to 10 unique prompts, run once, against ChatGPT only, in one language and one region. Neither is large enough for a full pilot, so it is worth spending the whole allowance on a single question that matters to you.
Which is better for B2B SaaS?
For breadth of engine coverage on a self-serve plan, Athena. For enterprise procurement requirements like SOC 2 and SSO, Profound. Neither is organised around buyer-intent prompts — the comparison, pricing, integration and security questions a prospect asks an AI assistant shortly before choosing a vendor. That is the specific gap Perciva was built for.