Otterly vs AthenaHQ

Otterly monitors AI search on four base engines with audits and recommendations: mentions, sentiment, citations, a crawlability checker and prompt research. AthenaHQ tracks brand visibility across up to nine AI models with prompt and response analysis, competitor insights, and content optimization agents, with a real free tier. They compete only where the categories overlap, and the chapters below walk every dimension a buyer would price: which AI engines each can see, how the tracking actually meters, what each produces on the content side, what surrounds the core product, and the full published tier lists.

Otterly is an AI search monitoring tool with real credentials: a Gartner Cool Vendor for AI in Marketing in 2025, a 4.8 rating badge, and 30,000+ marketing professionals by its own count, with Roche, Opera and BenQ among the logos on its pricing page. The surface covers brand mentions, sentiment and citations tracked daily, a Brand Visibility Index, domain citation tracking updated weekly, AI prompt research, a crawlability checker, content audits with specific improvement recommendations, and ChatGPT Ads and Shopping tracking.

Pricing model. Lite $29, Standard $189 and Premium $489 a month with 15% off annually and four engines included on every tier; Claude costs $29 to $439 a month extra by tier, Gemini and Google AI Mode $9 to $149 each, and Enterprise starts from $1,000 a month.

AthenaHQ is a San Francisco AEO platform with strong review credentials: a G2 High Performer for Answer Engine Optimization (Spring 2026) and 4.9-out-of-5 ratings on its badges. The product analyzes prompts and responses across up to nine AI models, estimates prompt volumes numerically, tracks unlimited competitors with sentiment, and acts through on-page and off-page GEO actions, a content optimization agent, smart robots.txt and llms.txt management, and an enterprise citation engine (ACE). Unlimited seats with role-based access come on every plan, and it publishes its own comparison pages against Profound, Peec, Scrunch, Semrush and Ahrefs.

Pricing model. Essential is free with a $25 credit (300 credits, five models including Claude); Starter is $295 a month with a $300 monthly credit (3,600 credits, nine models), with API access and extra credits as paid add-ons; Enterprise is custom with annual 17% off available.

Otterly. Four engines are included on every tier, verbatim from the pricing cards: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and MS Copilot. Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini are sold as add-ons, with Claude at $29, $109 or $439 a month by tier and Gemini and AI Mode at $9, $59 or $149 each; Grok and DeepSeek appear on neither list.

AthenaHQ. The free Essential tier covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude; Starter adds AI Mode, Copilot and Grok for visibility across nine models, with additional models available on request. Claude ships from the free tier, which is rare in this set; DeepSeek does not appear on the page.

Summarized: Otterly reads 4 included (ChatGPT, AIO, Perplexity, Copilot); Claude, Gemini, AI Mode as add-ons; AthenaHQ reads 5 free; 9 on Starter (incl. Claude, Copilot, Grok, AI Mode). On Claude specifically, Otterly: add-on, $29 to $439/mo; AthenaHQ: yes, from the free tier.

Otterly. Prompt runs are daily on every tier, 15 prompts on Lite up to 400 on Premium, with extra prompts at $99 per 100 on the upper tiers. Domain Citation Tracking refreshes weekly per the features page, and sentiment classification tags mentions as enthusiastic, with caveats, or dismissed.

AthenaHQ. Metering is credit-based with one credit equal to one AI response: 300 credits free, 3,600 on Starter, custom on Enterprise. Tracking includes unlimited topics, numerical prompt-volume estimation, unlimited competitor tracking and benchmarking, prompt variations with conversation context, and real-time brand sentiment.

Otterly. The optimization surface is audit and advice: a content audit that produces specific improvements, a crawlability checker, prompt research and recommendations. There is no long-form writer and no CMS publishing anywhere on the public pages, so the output is a to-do list for your team.

AthenaHQ. Content recommendations ship on the free tier and a content optimization agent from Starter, with brand voice and guideline enforcement, on-page and off-page GEO actions, and Shopify and Webflow integrations. The enterprise Athena Citation Engine and Recommendation Engine extend the action layer; there is no long-form article pipeline described.

Otterly. There is no Google organic rank tracker and no local surface of any kind on the public pages; the product's scope is AI search.

AthenaHQ. There is no Google organic rank tracking and no local surface on the pricing page. GA4 and Google Search Console integrations connect AI visibility with site traffic, which correlates traffic with visibility; position measurement is a different job.

Otterly. API and MCP access ship from the $189 Standard tier, metered at 2,000 requests a month each (5,000 on Premium), with a Google Looker Studio connector on the same tiers and CSV exports on every tier.

AthenaHQ. CSV export ships from Starter, GA4 and GSC integrate, and API access is an optional paid add-on billed on top of the Starter subscription, included only on Enterprise. Enterprise adds SAML and OIDC SSO, audit logs, multi-region and multi-language support, and executive dashboards with Tableau, Power BI and Looker support. No MCP server is listed.

Every cell below was read from the vendors’ own rendered pages as of August 2026. Where a vendor’s public pages neither confirm nor deny a capability, the cell says so.