AthenaHQ vs Peec AI: how we explain the choice on client calls
AthenaHQ meters credits from $295 and queues actions. Peec AI is a polished tracker from $95 with model add-ons. What each covers and what we run.
AthenaHQ and Peec AI show up together when a marketing lead wants "AI visibility software" and pastes two demos into Slack. They solve different slices of the problem. One meters responses and hands you an action queue. The other is a clean prompt-level tracker with screenshot evidence. Neither is the full retainer stack we run.
AthenaHQ on a retainer brief
AthenaHQ is an action-oriented GEO platform. Essential is free ($25 credit, 300 credits) on ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter is $295 a month with 3,600 credits, where one credit equals one AI response. Starter lists eleven models, unlimited topics, CSV export, integrations, on-page and off-page actions, and a content optimization agent. Single country only. Extra credits and API access are paid add-ons without published prices. Enterprise is custom and includes ACE, persona targeting, multi-region and multi-language, SSO, audit logs, BI dashboards and white-glove setup. AthenaHQ marks Enterprise as best for enterprises and agencies.
Shared across plans: unlimited seats with RBAC, GA4, Search Console, Shopify, Webflow, robots.txt and llms.txt management, citation intelligence. G2 4.9/5 and Spring 2026 High Performer in Answer Engine Optimization.
Budget math we show clients: 3,600 responses on Starter versus roughly 16,500 responses if you run 50 prompts across 11 models daily for a month. Multi-country work is Enterprise, not Starter.
Peec AI on a retainer brief
Peec AI is a prompt-level visibility tracker from $95 a month. The interface is polished. It scores visibility per prompt over time, keeps screenshot evidence for measurements, tracks competitor share per prompt, and shows source and citation breakdowns. Unlimited seats and daily data sit on the product as presented in our catalog notes. G2 scores it at 4.9.
Two commercial gotchas before anyone signs. Each tier includes only three of six or more models; additional models cost $35 to $165 a month each, so real bills often run 30 to 50 percent above the list price. Claude and DeepSeek tracking are Enterprise only, and Grok is not covered. There is no historical backfill, so your baseline starts the day you subscribe. Starter is small: 50 prompts, three models, one project.
Peec AI stops at measurement. It will show where you appear. It will not queue schema work, publish GEO pages, or attribute AI-referred conversions.
We do not present Peec AI as a top pick for running a GEO program. It can be a tidy tracker for a team that already has writers and an analytics stack. It is not an operating system.
Where both fall short for agency work
Our retainer chain is simple: is the brand visible, why or why not, which sources do models cite, does the traffic convert, and what do we publish next.
AthenaHQ covers visibility and a task queue. Peec AI covers visibility with audit-friendly screenshots. Neither gives us published AI crawler-log analytics that show ChatGPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot hits and crawl-to-citation paths. Neither documents visitor analytics that connect AI referrers to conversions the way we need for a finance review. Neither ships Content Agents that plan, write and publish to a connected CMS with a review inbox.
What we run instead
We run programs on Promptwatch. Agent Analytics covers crawler logs and errors. Citation analytics go page-level, domain-level, Reddit, YouTube and offsite. Visitor analytics attribute AI traffic and conversions via a script or GTM template. Content Agents publish to Webflow or Framer after we approve drafts in the review inbox.
Agency pricing: Kick-off $199, Growth $399, Scale $799, unlimited projects and prompts, ten seats. Brand pricing: Explore free, Essential $95 with a 7-day trial, Professional $245, Business $579.
How we advise
If the client wants assignable optimization tasks and accepts credit burn plus a possible Enterprise jump for multi-country work, AthenaHQ belongs in the conversation as a workstream tool. Price the credits and the geography first.
If the client wants a defensible tracking dashboard with screenshots and already has people to act on the data, Peec AI can work, with model add-ons priced in up front and no expectation of historical depth on day one.
If the brief is to move citations and show the business result inside one platform, we steer them to Promptwatch. That is the tool we already operate, so the retainer maps cleanly to features we use every week.
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