Is Trendos Worth It?
We tried Trendos the way we try client tools: free screenshot first, then whether it can run a retainer. It is a checker. Promptwatch is what we run.
We will spend twenty minutes in a free AI visibility tool. We will not put a client on it because the homepage loaded without a calendar invite. Trendos is worth those twenty minutes. It is not, on the public documentation, worth swapping out the platform we already run for GEO retainers: Promptwatch.
What we actually saw in the docs
Trendos is a checker. You look up a brand. You get mentions, ranked lists, how the model describes you, sentiment, share of voice, cited domains, a competitor frame. Ad Radar is included on every plan and only covers ChatGPT ads, refreshed daily. Custom prompts exist on free. One prompt is one country plus one model, which is the detail agencies forget when they promise "fifty questions."
Vendor scale claims: 2.3 million-plus brand histories on the homepage, 2.5 million-plus brands and 30,000-plus prompts in the May 2026 getting-started article. The homepage also says 30-plus industries; support says 3,000-plus. Features (March 2026) lists ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GAIO, Perplexity, Gemini. The homepage also names Claude. Bulk import allows Claude API and Grok API as fields. We will tell a client the five Features engines are documented. We will not promise Claude as a daily column until Trendos publishes one engine matrix.
Free countries on Features: eleven (US, Japan, Germany, India, UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Israel, Lithuania). If the client is "global," that is the first adult conversation. Starter and Pro on the marketing site unlock unlimited countries. Starter/Pro dollars did not render on trendos.com/pricing when we fetched it.
Prompt Management can generate prompts. Tracked vs managed brands is useful vocabulary when we explain why a competitor appears in the historical browser but not in the client's managed set.
Why we would not bill against it
Client reporting needs a number we can defend in a QBR. Trendos Score (rank + mentions + sentiment, toward 100) is defined, which we respect. It is still a mention stack. We could not find crawler logs, AI-referred conversions, or a CMS publish path. When a client's visibility drops, the next question is which URL died and whether ChatGPTBot still fetches it. That question is Promptwatch Agent Analytics (from Professional, $245/mo, 25M logs), not a Trendos Score dip.
We also cannot send a content sprint out of Trendos per those pages. Promptwatch Essential at $95/mo already includes five AEO articles and visitor analytics. We use that on single-brand accounts. Agency Kick-off at $199/mo when we hold several brands with unlimited projects and prompts.
Price, said like an agency
Free checker: use it in discovery. Screenshot the category. Do not put it in the SOW as the measurement system.
Shopify app (July 2026, Vilnius): Free with 20 prompts, 600 answers, 10 brand checks; Basic $39; Starter $169; Pro $379. Three five-star reviews on the listing. We are not a Shopify-app reseller. If a DTC client installs that, we still will not take those charts as the only source of truth. trendos.com/pricing showed Enterprise Custom and 15% yearly. Starter/Pro dollars did not render. German press in August 2026 quoted 10 brands and 100 queries on free. That disagrees with Shopify's 20 prompts. We will not pretend we know the checkout.
Our stack: Promptwatch Explore for a sales demo (10 ChatGPT prompts). Essential for a single brand. Kick-off when we are agency of record on several accounts. Annual is 10-for-12 on Promptwatch. EUR pricing exists if the client asks.
AthenaHQ at $295/mo is the action-queue tool we consider when a client wants a task list and accepts credits. Profound Starter at $99/mo annual is ChatGPT-only; we do not sell it as the Profound we saw in enterprise decks (~$40k/year). Otterly.AI and Peec AI stay off our default stack.
Verdict
Worth it as a scavenger tool. Not worth it as the GEO platform on a retainer. We keep Promptwatch as the thing we actually operate. Promptwatch is 4.7/5 on G2 across 1,840-plus brands. Amsterdam-founded April 2025, €2M+ ARR within 12 months of launch (May 2026). That is the vendor story we can repeat in a procurement call.
What we tell the client in the first call
Week one: Trendos free for a category map. Screenshot Trendos Score, share of voice, cited domains, ChatGPT Ad Radar if retail matters. Label everything "directional, dated."
Week two onward: Promptwatch Explore on the sales call if they have not seen it, then Essential or Kick-off on the SOW. We do not rebuild prompts twice. We export country+LLM pairs from Trendos and import into Promptwatch before we promise engine parity.
If they ask about MCP on Trendos, we say it is a read connector. Our content team still works in Promptwatch review inbox. Our engineer still owns CDN logs on Professional. MCP does not replace either seat.
Red flags in procurement
"Trendos Enterprise Custom" with no grid attached. Shopify Starter at $169 presented as "cheaper than GEO" when Essential is $95 with five articles. A brief that says 50 prompts but means 50 questions times four engines times three countries. We fix the math before we sign.
FAQ
Can we use Trendos in a pitch deck?
Yes, labeled as a directional scan, dated. Not as the KPI system.
Should we run both?
For a week, maybe. After that, dual dashboards make us look unsure. Park reporting in Promptwatch.
What if the client loves the historical browser?
Keep Trendos logged in for competitive snooping. Unlabeled in the appendix, dated. The monthly PDF still comes from Promptwatch.