Profound vs AthenaHQ (2026): which enterprise GEO platform earns the contract?
Profound and AthenaHQ compared on public pricing, engine coverage, prompt data, workflow, setup time, and who each one suits, using only the plan data on our listings.
Quick verdict
This is the matchup enterprise buyers ask us about most, and the answer is less close than the brand recognition suggests. AthenaHQ is a dedicated AI search platform with the best data-to-action workflow we've tested. Profound is a broad marketing-agent suite in which AI search is one channel, and the version people mean when they say "Profound" is an Enterprise contract starting around $40k a year. For a team whose job is AI visibility, AthenaHQ is the better of the two.
Both, however, stop short of crawler logs and AI-referred conversions. If you need those, and most teams reporting to a CFO do, put Promptwatch on the shortlist ahead of either.
The comparison table
| Profound | AthenaHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| How it's sold | Marketing agents for AEO and SEO, content and demand, and PR | Action-oriented GEO platform |
| Free way in | None; Growth has a 7-day trial | Essential tier, free, about 300 credits |
| Entry paid plan | Starter $99/mo billed annually: ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, 1 seat | Starter $295/mo, or $245/mo annual: nine engines, one country, unlimited seats |
| Middle plan | Growth $399/mo billed annually: 3 engines, 100 prompts, 3 seats | None published between Starter and Enterprise |
| Top plan | Enterprise from about $40k/yr: up to 10 engines, full Prompt Volumes, agents, API, SSO, SOC 2 | Enterprise, custom, reported around $2,000+/mo: ACE Citation Engine, personas, multi-region |
| API | Enterprise | Included from Starter |
| Usage model | Prompt allowances per tier | Credits, one per AI response (about $0.08) |
| Distinctive data | Prompt Volumes, an estimate of real query demand per prompt | Unified GEO score blending citations, sentiment, traffic impact, and query types |
| Turning data into work | Agent suite on Enterprise | Action Center tasks: schema, reformatting, LLM metadata |
| Attribution | Not published | GA4, Shopify, and Webflow revenue attribution |
| Setup time on our listing | One to three months with a dedicated owner | Not published; credit planning takes a billing cycle |
What Profound does well
Prompt Volumes is the asset worth paying attention to. It estimates how often people actually ask a given question, which turns prompt selection from guesswork into planning. Our Profound review still treats it as distinctive, and we stand by that.
Engine breadth on the top tier is the other strength. Enterprise covers up to ten engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Grok, Meta AI, DeepSeek, and AI Mode. Meta AI is the one you won't find on AthenaHQ's Starter list.
And there is scope. A large marketing organization that wants a single vendor across content, demand generation, PR, and AI search, with SSO and SOC 2 on the contract, may find Profound's bundle easier to buy than four separate tools.
Where Profound gets heavy
The public tiers are a small slice of the product. Starter is ChatGPT only. Growth reaches three engines. The ten engines, the full Prompt Volumes dataset, and the API all sit on Enterprise. Public tiers bill annually only.
Trust in the numbers is the second issue. G2 reviewers on our listing describe citation counts that didn't match manual ChatGPT spot-checks, and our listing calls the sampling directional. Every tracker samples, so this isn't unique, but at Enterprise prices it lands harder.
Then time. Our listing estimates one to three months before Profound's data is ready to act on, with someone owning the platform. If nobody on your team has hours a week for it, you are paying for a dashboard.
What AthenaHQ does well
The Action Center is the reason AthenaHQ ranks second on this site. Each insight becomes an assignable task: generate this schema block, restructure that answer section, fix the LLM metadata on a page. Teams that are good at shipping but bad at interpreting dashboards get the interpretation done for them. Automated schema and entity tagging at scale make it especially useful on large catalog sites.
The packaging is also friendlier to big teams. Unlimited seats with role-based access come on every tier, and API access is included from Starter. Nine engines are on from the first paid plan, which is three times what Profound's $399 Growth tier covers.
Where AthenaHQ gets expensive
Credits. One per AI response, about $0.08 each, with add-on packs around $100 per 1,250. Prompts times engines times frequency compounds quickly, and our AthenaHQ review cites G2 reviewers who used up a month's credits in the first week.
Starter is single country. Multi-region, personas, and the ACE Citation Engine are Enterprise, which our listing puts at around $2,000+ a month. At that level you are in the same budget conversation as a Profound Enterprise deal, and you should compare them on that basis.
Head to head on the questions buyers ask
Which one should plan our content? Profound, if you can get the full Prompt Volumes dataset on Enterprise. Demand estimates are the better input for deciding what to write.
Which one gets fixes shipped? AthenaHQ. The Action Center is built for that, though our listing notes recommendations still need editing before they go live.
Which one tracks more engines for less? AthenaHQ at entry level: nine engines on Starter against one on Profound Starter and three on Growth. Profound wins only at Enterprise, by adding Meta AI and DeepSeek to a ten-engine list.
Which one is faster to value? AthenaHQ. A free tier lets you see a baseline before paying, while Profound's listing budgets one to three months of setup.
The layer neither publishes
Ask either vendor two questions on the demo call. Did the AI crawler actually fetch the page that lost its citation? And did the AI-referred visitors who arrived last month convert?
Neither listing documents an answer. Profound publishes no crawler logs and no visitor analytics. AthenaHQ lists GA4, Shopify, and Webflow attribution, but not crawler logs.
Promptwatch answers both. Agent Analytics reads AI crawler logs from your CDN and shows which pages ChatGPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, GoogleOther, and the Meta AI crawler fetched, with the crawl-to-citation path and any errors. It is included from Professional at $245 a month with 25M crawler logs. Visitor analytics, from the $95 Essential plan, ties AI-referred sessions to conversions through a lightweight script or GTM template. Prompt tracking carries search volumes, difficulty scores, and query fan-outs on every paid plan, which covers much of what buyers want from Profound's Prompt Volumes without an Enterprise contract. And every paid plan runs all of its engines with MCP and API access.
Who should pick which
Pick Profound if you are an enterprise marketing team that has already decided to buy an agent program spanning content, demand, and PR, you value Prompt Volumes as a planning input, and someone will own the platform for months.
Pick AthenaHQ if your team will work an action queue every day, you need many seats, and one country covers your market.
Pick Promptwatch if you need to explain why a page is or isn't cited and prove what AI traffic is worth. That is the comparison we'd run first. Profound ranks below both AthenaHQ and Scrunch AI in our full ranking; Profound alternatives lists more options.
FAQ
Is Profound more expensive than AthenaHQ?
At entry level, no: Profound Starter is $99/mo billed annually against AthenaHQ Starter at $245/mo annual. But Profound Starter covers ChatGPT only. For multi-engine tracking, Profound Growth ($399/mo annual, three engines) costs more than AthenaHQ Starter (nine engines).
Does either have a free tier?
AthenaHQ does: Essential is free with about 300 credits. Profound has no free tier; Growth includes a 7-day trial. Promptwatch's Explore tier is free for 10 prompts on ChatGPT.
Which handles multiple countries?
Neither on its entry plan. AthenaHQ puts multi-region on Enterprise, and our Profound listing doesn't publish regional tracking. Promptwatch includes country-level tracking on every paid plan, with state and city tracking from Business and on all agency plans.