Promptwatch vs Trendos 2026
How we staff a GEO retainer: Trendos as a free scan, Promptwatch as the operating system. Sourced limits only.
Clients send us "have you seen Trendos, it is free." We have. We still run Promptwatch on the accounts that pay us. This is the comparison we give in the kickoff, without inventing Trendos list prices the marketing page would not show us.
The two jobs
Trendos is a scan. Historical mentions, Trendos Score, share of voice, sentiment, domain citations, ChatGPT Ad Radar, custom prompts, MCP. Good in week one of discovery when we do not have login fatigue. Vendor catalog: 2.3M+ histories on the homepage, 2.5M+ brands in support.
Promptwatch is the operating system. Daily UI checks on a long engine list (paid), citation analytics down to pages and Reddit/YouTube, crawler logs from Professional, visitor conversions, Content Agents that publish to Webflow or Framer, agency SKUs with unlimited projects. Kick-off $199/mo, Growth $399, Scale $799. Business $579 for larger brands.
If the client only wanted a screenshot for a board slide, Trendos free might be the whole purchase. That is not the retainer we sell.
What we tell them about coverage
Trendos Features: ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GAIO, Perplexity, Gemini. Homepage also Claude. Eleven countries on free including Netherlands and France. Starter/Pro: unlimited countries on the marketing site.
Promptwatch paid: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Llama, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode. Explore is ChatGPT-only, 10 prompts, which is our demo mode, not delivery.
We do not tell them Trendos "has Claude" as a certainty. We tell them the docs disagree in the way vendor sites often do. Bulk import templates list Claude API and Grok API. That is not the same as a daily Claude column in Brand Insights.
What we tell them about money
Promptwatch: Explore $0. Essential $95. Professional $245 (this is where 25M crawler logs start). Business $579. Our default agency door is Kick-off $199 with unlimited projects and prompts, 10 seats. Annual is 10-for-12.
Trendos: $0 to look. Shopify $39/$169/$379 if they insist on that app. Free on Shopify: 20 prompts, 600 answers, 10 brand checks, unlimited countries. Main site Custom Enterprise. 15% yearly toggle. We will not write "$169 Trendos" into a proposal as the SaaS price unless the client is on Shopify and the invoice says so.
AthenaHQ $295 plus credits is a different conversation (task queue). Profound $99 Starter is not the Profound enterprise package. We keep Otterly.AI and Peec AI off the proposal.
How we staff it
Analyst: Trendos free for a category map. Strategist: Promptwatch Essential or Kick-off. Content: Promptwatch articles, reviewed, then Webflow/Framer. Engineer: crawler logs on Professional when the client has a CDN we can connect (Cloudflare, CloudFront, Fastly, Vercel, Netlify, Akamai, Google Cloud CDN, or custom HTTP).
Trendos MCP is a nice "ask the dashboard" trick. It does not replace that staffing plan.
Ad Radar on Trendos is ChatGPT-only and sits on every plan, including free. Useful in a retail pitch. Still a monitoring widget. Promptwatch documents Ads Radar and ChatGPT Shopping on the platform fact sheet. Different depth, same messy ad surface.
Custom prompt math bites agencies. Ten questions times two engines times two countries is 40 Trendos prompts before you add Gemini. We put that in the SOW footnotes so nobody promises parity on a "20 prompt" export.
Monthly deliverable, stated plainly
Trendos output: screenshots, Trendos Score movement, Ad Radar if ChatGPT ads matter. Good appendix material.
Promptwatch output: citation URL list, prompt trends, visitor conversions from script or GTM, approved articles live on Webflow or Framer, crawler errors on Professional when CDN is connected. That is what we put in the monthly PDF.
We have had clients ask for "Trendos numbers in the deck and Promptwatch in the footnotes." We push back. One KPI system or the QBR turns into a methodology fight.
When Trendos wins the conversation anyway
DTC on Shopify who already installed the July 2026 Vilnius app and love the UI. Fine. We still want Promptwatch for citations and publish on the brands we manage. We scope Trendos as theirs, Promptwatch as ours, and we do not merge charts.
Competitive intelligence only: keep Trendos free, skip the retainer upsell. That is honest scoping.
German press August 2026 quoted 10 brands and 100 queries on Trendos free. Shopify says 20 prompts. Features says eleven countries. We list all three in the footnotes and move on. Clients who need EU coverage care about Netherlands and France on Features. Clients on Shopify care about unlimited countries on free.
FAQ
Will we look stupid if the client already bought Trendos?
No. We will use it as a second opinion for a month, then stop dual reporting. The deliverable lives in Promptwatch.
What if they only have budget for a free tool?
Then the retainer should not include monthly AI-visibility KPIs across five engines. We can do a ChatGPT-only Explore plus Trendos screenshots. We will say that out loud so nobody thinks they bought the full program.
Why Promptwatch over Trendos Pro at $379?
Shopify Pro buys 1,050 prompts and 31,500 answers. It still does not publish or log crawlers. We would rather invoice Essential at $95 and add Professional when logs matter.