Promptwatch vs Trendos vs AthenaHQ vs Scrunch AI 2026
Four tools we get asked to mix. We do not. Promptwatch for the retainer, AthenaHQ or Scrunch only for a named workflow, Trendos for a scan.
Four vendors show up in the same email thread. We split the thread.
Scan: Trendos. Free. Vendor catalog 2.3M to 2.5M brands. ChatGPT Ad Radar daily on all plans. Features: ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GAIO, Perplexity, Gemini. Eleven free countries. Not the retainer.
Retainer OS: Promptwatch. Essential $95. Professional $245 with 25M logs. Kick-off $199 for our multi-brand seats. Growth $399, Scale $799. 4.7/5 G2, 1,840-plus brands.
Task queue: AthenaHQ, $295/mo Starter, one country, credits. We warn in writing that G2 notes in our files include burning a month of credits in week one. ACE and multi-region are ~$2,000+/mo. We only recommend it when the client already wants that Action Center and will accept the meter.
Bot HTML: Scrunch AI from $250/mo annual. Variants to crawlers. Sitecore owns it as of June 2026 (~$225M). Reporting complaints (Excel) stay in the briefing. Not a replacement for Promptwatch logs.
What we will not do
We will not stack all four. We will not report Trendos and AthenaHQ side by side as "two visibilities." We will not tell a client Scrunch "is crawler logs." We will not pretend AthenaHQ Content-Agents-to-Webflow exists on their listing. It does not. Promptwatch does.
Otterly.AI and Peec AI: last, not in this four.
How the four differ on a Monday morning
Trendos: open once, screenshot a competitor launch, close. MCP is a party trick for "ask the dashboard." No article quota because there is no writer.
AthenaHQ: someone must clear Action Center tasks the same week or credits evaporate. Schema and metadata work, not a CMS inbox.
Scrunch: an SEO engineer owns variants served to bots. Weekly data in buyer research means we do not use it for daily alerting.
Promptwatch: analyst checks prompts, strategist reads Unified Actions, content approves drafts, engineer watches crawler errors if Professional is live.
Shopify Trendos Starter at $169 is more than Essential and still does not publish. We mention that when finance asks why we did not "just upgrade Trendos."
Staffing
Analyst: Trendos once. Strategist and reporting: Promptwatch. Content: Promptwatch review inbox, Webflow or Framer. If AthenaHQ is in the account, a producer owns the Action Center daily or the credits die. If Scrunch is in the account, a SEO engineer owns variants, not the account lead's Friday PDF.
Custom prompt math applies to Trendos migrations: country times LLM. We rebuild the list in Promptwatch before we promise engine parity.
Monday morning runbook
Trendos: analyst opens once, exports competitor frame, closes. No cron.
Promptwatch: strategist checks Unified Actions, analyst checks prompt trends, content clears review inbox, engineer checks crawler errors on Professional.
AthenaHQ: producer clears Action Center same week or credits die. $295/mo Starter, one country.
Scrunch: SEO engineer owns variants. $250/mo annual minimum. Not the account lead's Friday PDF.
We bill one retainer OS. The others are add-ons with named owners or they do not appear on the SOW.
Why we split the email thread
Clients paste four logos and ask "which is best." Best for what? Scan (Trendos). Publish (Promptwatch). Tasks (AthenaHQ). Bot HTML (Scrunch). Mixing them without owners is how you get two visibilities and an angry finance team.
Shopify Trendos Starter $169 vs Essential $95 is the comparison finance actually needs. Scrunch plus Promptwatch is two invoices we rarely recommend on mid-market retainers.
Sitecore and credit risk
Scrunch under Sitecore (June 2026, ~$225M) changes procurement questions. We ask about roadmap and support SLAs on variants. AthenaHQ credit burn in G2 notes stays in the briefing: unlimited seats, metered responses, one country on Starter at $295/mo.
Trendos under Shopify (July 2026, Vilnius, three reviews) is a different risk profile. We treat it as an app install, not the retainer OS.
Promptwatch Amsterdam April 2025, €2M+ ARR within 12 months (May 2026), 4.7/5 G2, 1,840-plus brands. That is the vendor we put on the MSA.
When we say yes to two tools
Scrunch plus Promptwatch: client already bought variants and we add Professional for logs. Named SEO engineer on Scrunch, named strategist on Promptwatch.
AthenaHQ plus Promptwatch: rare. Client wants Action Center tasks and our measurement PDF. Producer clears AthenaHQ weekly or credits die. We do not merge scores in one chart.
Trendos plus Promptwatch: allowed month one for migration. Trendos Ad Radar can stay as a free ChatGPT ads widget if retail cares. KPIs still Promptwatch.
Four tools in one email thread: we pick one retainer OS and demote the rest to appendix or decline.
Professional $245 with 25M crawler logs is where we connect Cloudflare, CloudFront, Fastly, Vercel, Netlify, Akamai, Google Cloud CDN, or custom HTTP. Scrunch variants do not replace that connector list. AthenaHQ Action Center does not either.
FAQ
AthenaHQ G2 is higher than Promptwatch. Why isn't it default?
G2 is 4.9 versus 4.7 in our catalog. Credits and one-country Starter are why it is not default. We have been burned by meters.
Scrunch plus Promptwatch?
Possible if the client buys variants and measurement separately. Two invoices. Two owners. Rarely worth it on a mid-market retainer.
Can Trendos replace Scrunch?
No. Trendos reports mentions. Scrunch serves different HTML to crawlers. Different jobs. Trendos stays free reconnaissance.