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Compared on fifteen questions · checked 10 Oct 2026

Mentionova vs AthenaHQ

Credit-metered AEO with a free tier, or flat plans with agents that finish the work?

Choose AthenaHQ if you want a free tier to start and eleven engines including Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

Choose Mentionova if you'd rather pay a flat price than count credits per AI response.

Start free trialSee pricing

14 days · no card · first growth signal in ~2 minutes

Case file · athenahqChecked 10 Oct 2026
MentionovaAthenaHQ

Engines

6

3 on Starter

11

named on its site

Runs

Weekly to monthly

opportunities nightly

Credit-metered

From

$99/mo

billed annually

$0/mo

Essential

Trial

14 days

no card

Free plan

AthenaHQ's numbers come from its own pricing page, docs and changelog

02 · The short answer

Who each one is for.

AthenaHQ is a Y Combinator company selling answer engine optimisation: eleven models on its $295 Starter plan, a free Essential tier with 300 credits, content agents that publish into eight CMS platforms, and SOC 2 Type II. Cost is metered per AI response, so engines × prompts × cadence sets the bill.

AthenaHQ describes itself as “Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)” and leads with “Become the Brand AI Trusts”.

Founded
Not published; a Y Combinator company
Based in
San Francisco
Funding
YC, FCVC, Amino Capital; amounts not published
Sells to
Brands and agencies, from a free tier up

Choose AthenaHQ if

  1. 01

    You want a free tier to start and eleven engines including Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

  2. 02

    Procurement needs SOC 2 Type II, NIST and GDPR statements.

  3. 03

    You publish into Wix, Framer or Contentful and want it native.

Choose Mentionova if

  1. 01

    You'd rather pay a flat price than count credits per AI response.

  2. 02

    You want Reddit tracked and engaged, which AthenaHQ doesn't publish.

  3. 03

    You run client workspaces and want published agency pricing.

Start free trial

03 · Side by side

Fifteen questions, both answers.

The same questions on every compare page, so the table can't be tuned to flatter us. Each mark is a shape first and a colour second: a tick, a tilde for in part, a cross, a dash for not published.

The questionMentionovaas shipped 10 Oct 2026AthenaHQfrom its own pagesChoose based on
Engines tracked
Yes: 6 on Scale and above: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google, Reddit. 3 on Starter.
Yes: 11 named: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral. 11 models on Starter; Essential limited to 5.
Which engines your buyers use; whether Starter's three are enough.
Scheduled runs
Yes: weekly, every two weeks or monthly; opportunities recomputed nightly.
Yes: configurable, credit-metered (1 credit = 1 AI response)
Daily snapshots, or scheduled runs with nightly opportunity scoring.
Metrics per run
Yes: mention rate, citation rate, share of voice, position-1 rate, sentiment, engine coverage, AI visibility score.
Yes: share of voice, citation rate, recommendation coverage, brand mentions, sentiment, visibility.
Which numbers your reports have to show.
Drift alerts with diffs
Yes: eight typed drift events (a mention gained or lost, a position up or down, a changed description, a sentiment shift, a competitor entering or leaving) on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, in the Monitor feed, with a daily opportunities digest by email.
Not published: Typed change events are not published as a feature; see the long-form sections below.
Being told what changed, not handed a new number.
Prompt volume data
No: Not sold as a dataset. Opportunities are scored on gap, reach, effort and heat.
Yes: Published as a feature.
Whether you need demand estimates per prompt before you choose what to target.
Gaps turned into briefs
Yes: Opportunities recomputed nightly and scored 0–100 on gap, reach, effort and heat; each one carries a gap diagnosis, a specific action and a content brief.
Yes: Content creation from opportunities, citation outreach, approval steps; publish to Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Framer, Wix, Payload (athenahq.ai/integrations)
The gap diagnosed and a brief written, or a list to act on yourself.
Drafts pushed to your CMS
Yes: brief → research → keywords → article in your brand voice → fact-check → editor → approval → schema; drafts land in WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or any webhook, and nothing goes live without you.
Yes: Content creation from opportunities, citation outreach, approval steps; publish to Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Framer, Wix, Payload (athenahq.ai/integrations)
Whether the tool should draft and deliver, or only recommend.
Reddit tracked and engaged
Yes: Tracked as an engine on Scale and above; finds the threads, drafts the reply in your voice; a person adds the disclosure and posts.
Not published: Not published.
Whether Reddit shapes answers in your category, and whether you want replies drafted.
Client workspaces and white-label
Yes: isolated client workspaces (3 on Launch, 10 on Growth, custom on Enterprise) and a portfolio view; report links with a view count and revoke; white-label logo, colour, tagline and footer.
Partly: Centralized client management, pitch-ready workspaces, referred leads after GEO certification, discounted licences; no agency price list. Reporting: Looker Studio, Slack reports, CSV (Starter), BI tools (Enterprise); white-label not published.
How many clients you run and whether reports must carry your brand.
Integrations
Yes: 38 API connectors (Ahrefs, DataForSEO, Semrush, Moz, HubSpot, Contentful, Ghost and more) plus Search Console and GA4, and draft publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a webhook.
Yes: Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Framer, Wix, Payload, Looker Studio, Slack, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, MCP, API.
Which of your systems need to connect without engineering.
API and MCP
Yes: v1 API on Scale and above; an MCP server with 56 tools for any MCP client.
Yes: API: included. MCP: included.
Whether your own agents or scripts need to read and write the data.
Crawler log analytics
No: Not offered. AI traffic is attributed on pages; crawler logs are not ingested.
No: Not offered.
Whether you need to see which bots fetched which pages, from your CDN logs.
Site audit
Yes: 42 checks: crawlability, on-page and duplicates, structured data, Core Web Vitals via PageSpeed Insights, mobile and security, internal links, hreflang, and four AEO checks (llms.txt, question H2s, entity and FAQ schema).
Yes: Included.
Whether technical and AEO checks belong in the same tool.
Try it on your own data first
Yes: 14-day free trial, no card: 5 prompts, 1 workspace, all six engines.
Yes: Trial: not published; the free plan stands in. Free plan: yes, Essential.
Whether you can see your own numbers before paying.
Entry price
Yes: $99/mo billed annually ($125 monthly) — Starter: 3 engines, 25 prompts, 100 agentic tasks.
Yes: Essential: $0. 300 credits; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot; unlimited members; the Athena AI agent.
What the first invoice buys.

Checked 10 Oct 2026 · AthenaHQ column from its pricing page, docs and changelog · Mentionova column from the product as shipped the same day · Spot an error? team@mentionova.com

04 · Pricing

What the first invoice buys.

Both ladders as published on 10 Oct 2026, then the same three buyers priced on each side. AthenaHQ's numbers come from athenahq.ai; a figure marked third-party wasn't on its site.

Mentionova

/pricing
Starter

$99/mo annual · $125 monthly

3 engines, 25 prompts, 100 agentic tasks

Scale

$320/mo annual · $400 monthly

6 engines incl. Reddit, 100 prompts, 500 tasks

Enterprise

$799/mo annual · $999 monthly

250 prompts, 2,500 tasks

Agencies

Launch $200 · Growth $799

3 or 10 client workspaces; Enterprise custom

Trial

14 days, no card

5 prompts, 1 workspace, all six engines

AthenaHQ

Pricing page
Essential

$0

300 credits; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot; unlimited members; the Athena AI agent

Starter

$295/mo (17% off annual): 3,600 credits, 11 models, CSV export; API as a paid add-on

Enterprise

custom credits

custom: SSO, audit log, RBAC, Athena Citation Engine

Trial

not published; the free plan stands in

Free plan: yes, Essential

Billing: free. Model: prompt credits (1 credit = 1 AI response).

Three buyers, two bills.

The same brief priced on each side with the published plan that fits it. Where a plan doesn't fit the brief, the nearest one and the gap are named.

  1. Buyer 01

    One brand, 25 prompts, three engines

    Mentionova
    Starter, $99/mo billed annually ($125 monthly)
    AthenaHQ
    Essential is free (300 credits, 5 engines). 25 prompts × 3 engines × one monthly run is about 75 credits

  2. Buyer 02

    One brand, 100 prompts, every engine

    Mentionova
    Scale, $320/mo billed annually ($400 monthly): 100 prompts on all six engines
    AthenaHQ
    Starter $295/mo (3,600 credits). 100 prompts × 11 engines once a week is about 4,400 credits, so budget extra credits

  3. Buyer 03

    An agency with ten client workspaces

    Mentionova
    Growth, $799/mo billed annually ($999 monthly): 10 workspaces, 200 prompts, six engines
    AthenaHQ
    No agency price list; certified agencies get discounted licences

Watch for, on Mentionova

  • Starter tracks three engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google) and 25 prompts; the other three need Scale
  • The API is on Scale and above; the MCP server and connectors are on every plan
  • Runs are weekly, fortnightly or monthly; opportunities are rescored nightly, not the prompts

Watch for, on AthenaHQ

  • Credit metering scales cost with engines × prompts × cadence. 1 credit = 1 AI response. Source
  • API is a paid add-on on Starter. Amounts on request. Source
  • SSO, audit log and persona targeting are Enterprise-only Source
  • No Reddit tracking published; no crawler-log analytics. Crawlability checks only. Source

05 · Criterion by criterion

Seven things that actually differ.

Mentionova's column describes the product as shipped. The AthenaHQ column is built from its own pages. The edge line is our call, and it doesn't always go our way.

  1. 01

    Engines and cadence

    Choose based on: Which engines your buyers actually ask, and whether daily snapshots or scheduled runs with nightly scoring suit how you work.

    Mentionova

    Six engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google and Reddit. Starter covers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google; Scale and Enterprise cover all six. Each workspace runs weekly, every two weeks or monthly, and opportunities are recomputed from the latest run every night. Google runs record the organic top ten; AI Overviews are pulled on demand through Nova rather than tracked on a schedule.

    AthenaHQ

    AthenaHQ names 11 engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral. 11 models on Starter; Essential limited to 5. Run cadence: configurable, credit-metered (1 credit = 1 AI response).

    EdgeAthenaHQ tracks eleven models on Starter; Mentionova six. AthenaHQ on breadth. Cadence on AthenaHQ is whatever your credits allow; Mentionova's is weekly to monthly with nightly scoring.

  2. 02

    What gets measured

    Choose based on: Which numbers your reports have to show, and whether you want to be told what changed rather than handed a new number.

    Mentionova

    Every run stores mention rate, citation rate, share of voice, position-1 rate, sentiment, engine coverage and an AI visibility score. Between runs the Monitor feed logs eight kinds of drift on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini: a mention gained or lost, a position up or down, a changed description, a sentiment shift, a competitor entering or leaving. A daily email digests the opportunities.

    AthenaHQ

    AthenaHQ reports share of voice, citation rate, recommendation coverage, brand mentions, sentiment, visibility. Prompt volume or demand data: yes, published as a feature. Typed change alerts: not published as a feature.

    EdgeA similar metric set. AthenaHQ adds recommendation coverage; Mentionova adds typed drift events. Even.

  3. 03

    From gap to draft

    Choose based on: Whether the tool should diagnose the gap, write the brief and leave a draft in your CMS, or hand you a list to act on.

    Mentionova

    Opportunities are scored 0–100 on gap, reach, effort and heat, each with a diagnosis, a specific action and a content brief. The content workflow runs brief, research, keywords, article in your brand voice, fact-check, editor, approval and schema, then pushes a draft to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or any webhook. Nothing goes live without you.

    AthenaHQ

    Content creation from opportunities, citation outreach, approval steps; publish to Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Framer, Wix, Payload (athenahq.ai/integrations) Automation: Athena AI agent, Ask Athena copilot, content optimization agent, Athena Citation Engine (Enterprise).

    EdgeBoth diagnose gaps and draft content with approval steps and CMS publishing. AthenaHQ reaches more CMSs; Mentionova includes the full pipeline on its $99 plan. Even.

  4. 04

    Reddit

    Choose based on: Whether Reddit threads shape the answers in your category, and whether you want replies drafted or only citations counted.

    Mentionova

    Reddit is a tracked engine on Scale and above: the threads where your category is discussed, the citations that reach AI answers, and reply drafts in your voice. A person adds the disclosure and posts; the agent never posts for you.

    AthenaHQ

    AthenaHQ doesn't publish Reddit tracking on any page we fetched.

    EdgeAthenaHQ doesn't publish Reddit tracking. Mentionova tracks it and drafts replies. Mentionova.

  5. 05

    Agencies and reporting

    Choose based on: How many clients you run, and whether the report has to carry your brand without a BI tool in between.

    Mentionova

    Isolated client workspaces (3 on Launch, 10 on Growth, custom on Enterprise) with a portfolio view across them. Reports share by link with a view count and a revoke switch; white-label covers logo, colour, tagline and footer. Agency plans start at $200 a month.

    AthenaHQ

    Centralized client management, pitch-ready workspaces, referred leads after GEO certification, discounted licences; no agency price list. Reporting: Looker Studio, Slack reports, CSV (Starter), BI tools (Enterprise); white-label not published.

    EdgeAthenaHQ offers client management and pitch workspaces but no agency price list. Mentionova publishes $200 and $799 agency plans with white-label reports. Mentionova.

  6. 06

    Integrations, API and MCP

    Choose based on: Which of your systems need to connect without engineering, and whether your own agents will read and write the data.

    Mentionova

    38 API connectors, among them Ahrefs, DataForSEO, Semrush, Moz, HubSpot, Contentful and Ghost, plus Search Console and GA4. The v1 API is on Scale and above. The MCP server exposes 56 tools to any MCP client, so your own agents can create prompts, read runs and pull reports.

    AthenaHQ

    AthenaHQ lists 18 integrations: Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Framer, Wix, Payload, Looker Studio, Slack, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, MCP, API. API: included. MCP: included.

    EdgeAthenaHQ connects GA4, Search Console, eight CMSs, Looker, Tableau and Power BI, with the API as a paid add-on on Starter. Mentionova has 38 connectors and the API on Scale. Even.

  7. 07

    Site audit and technical

    Choose based on: Whether technical and AEO checks belong in the same tool as the briefs, and whether you need crawler logs rather than page checks.

    Mentionova

    A 42-check audit: crawlability, on-page and duplicates, structured data, Core Web Vitals via PageSpeed Insights, mobile and security, internal links, hreflang, and four AEO checks for llms.txt, question H2s, entity schema and FAQ schema. AI traffic shows up as page attribution; Mentionova doesn't ingest crawler logs.

    AthenaHQ

    Site audit: included. Crawler log analytics: not offered. Security: SOC 2 Type I (Oct 2025) and Type II (Jun 2026); GDPR; NIST CSF 2.0 Tier 3; SSO and audit log Enterprise-only.

    EdgeAthenaHQ has crawlability checks but no crawler-log analytics; Mentionova runs 42 checks. Mentionova, narrowly.

06 · Credit where due

Where AthenaHQ is the better choice.

4 things it does that Mentionova doesn't, or does less of, each linked to the page that says so. Read these before the sales deck.

  1. 01

    Eleven engines on the $295 Starter planIncluding Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.

    Source
  2. 02

    A free plan with 300 credits and an AI agent

    Source
  3. 03

    Publishing into eight CMS platformsPlus GA4 and Search Console.

    Source
  4. 04

    SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, NIST CSF Tier 3

    Source

07 · Switching

From AthenaHQ to a baseline, in an afternoon.

About twenty minutes of your time, then thirty days of both tools running side by side. Nothing here touches your site.

  1. Step 12 min

    Start the trial

    No pixel, tag or code. Sign up, name the workspace, pick the engines. The first growth signal lands in about two minutes.

  2. Step 210 min

    Bring your prompts

    Export the prompt list from AthenaHQ and add it to the workspace; the API and the MCP server create prompts in bulk from a list. The first run sets your baseline on every engine the plan covers.

  3. Step 310 min

    Connect the systems

    Search Console, GA4 and your CMS, whether WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Sanity or a webhook, so briefs turn into drafts where your team already works.

  4. Step 40 min

    Run both for thirty days

    Keep AthenaHQ running. Compare the two on the questions above with your own data, then decide. Cancel either in a click.

What won't transfer

AthenaHQ's run history and dashboards stay in AthenaHQ; export them before you cancel anything. Prompts, competitor lists and brand-voice notes move in minutes. Mentionova starts its own history from the first run, so the sooner the trial starts, the longer the overlap you get to judge on.

Start the overlap

08 · FAQ

Mentionova vs AthenaHQ, asked.

AthenaHQ's entry plan is Essential at $0, which buys 300 credits; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot; unlimited members; the Athena AI agent. Mentionova's Starter is $99 a month billed annually ($125 monthly) for 25 prompts on three engines with 100 agentic tasks, and Scale is $320 for 100 prompts on all six. Compare what each plan includes, not the headline number.

One credit is one AI response. Starter includes 3,600 credits for $295 a month; running 100 prompts across 11 engines once a week uses about 4,400. Mentionova prices by tracked prompts, engines and agentic tasks per plan instead.

Not on any page fetched on 10 October 2026. Mentionova tracks Reddit as a sixth engine on Scale and above, including thread discovery and reply drafts.

Yes. Export your prompt list, add the prompts to a Mentionova workspace (the API and the MCP server can create them in bulk from a list), and the first run gives you a baseline on every engine your plan covers. Your AthenaHQ history stays in your AthenaHQ exports.

Yes. Mentionova needs no pixel, tag or code, so the 14-day trial runs next to AthenaHQ without touching your site. Most teams compare a month of both before deciding.

AthenaHQ: configurable, credit-metered (1 credit = 1 AI response). Mentionova runs each workspace weekly, every two weeks or monthly, recomputes opportunities nightly and logs drift events between runs.

Every AthenaHQ fact comes from AthenaHQ's own pricing page, docs or changelog, fetched on 10 Oct 2026, and the claims that matter most link to the page they came from. Mentionova facts describe the product as shipped on the same date. If something has changed, email team@mentionova.com and we'll correct it.

Other comparisons

All comparisons
Long-formMentionova vs AthenaHQ (2026)Read on the blog

Try it on your own data

Run both forthirty days.

Start the 14-day trial next to AthenaHQ: five prompts, one workspace, all six engines, no card. Then judge on your own numbers.

Start free trialBook a demo

AthenaHQ is a trademark of its owner; Mentionova is not affiliated with or endorsed by it. Data checked 10 Oct 2026.