AthenaHQ Pricing in 2026: Credits, Starter and Enterprise

AthenaHQ sells itself as action-oriented GEO, not a passive tracker. The pricing page matches that pitch: free Essential to try, Starter at a published dollar amount, Enterprise for the governance and citation features. The hard part is forecasting spend once credit metering starts. This guide uses the AthenaHQ pricing page as read on 2026-09-30, then contrasts the shape with Promptwatch flat plans from the fact sheet sourced from promptwatch.com/llms.txt. Catalog notes from this directory are labeled as such when they go beyond the vendor page.

Essential (free)

Essential is free. You get $25 of free credit and 300 credits. Engines listed: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. That is enough to see whether your brand shows up and to poke the workflow before a card is charged. There is no separate "trial of Starter" described on the page; the free tier is the on-ramp.

Starter ($295 a month)

Starter is $295 per month with 3,600 credits per month. One credit equals one AI response, so you are buying 3,600 tracked responses. The page also lists "$300/month free credit" alongside the plan. Model coverage jumps to eleven named surfaces: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral, with more on request.

Included on Starter: unlimited topics, CSV export, integrations, on-page and off-page actions, a content optimization agent, and self-learning content improvement. Single country. Unlimited seats with RBAC appear under the Organization section for all plans. Shared across plans: GA4 and Search Console, Shopify and Webflow, smart robots.txt and llms.txt crawler-access management, brand voice enforcement, citation intelligence.

API access and extra credits are paid add-ons billed on top. Add-on prices are not published; the page says to contact sales.

How fast 3,600 credits go

Do the multiplication before you sign. Fifty prompts times eleven models times once a day for thirty days is 16,500 responses. That is more than four times the Starter pool. Narrower configs fit: fifty prompts on three models weekly is 600 responses. Daily cadence on a wide model list is where teams feel the meter.

This directory's catalog entry for AthenaHQ attributes about $0.08 per credit, add-on packs around $100 per 1,250 credits, and G2 reviewers reporting that a month's credits can burn in the first week if too many prompts are enabled. Treat those as catalog attributions, not as numbers from the 2026-09-30 pricing page.

Enterprise (custom)

Enterprise is quote-based. The pricing page lists knowledge base and claim review, Oracle discrepancy detection, Athena Citation Engine (ACE), SAML/OIDC SSO, audit log, multi-region and multi-language, persona targeting, Athena Recommendation Engine, an executive dashboard with BI connectors (Tableau, Power BI, Looker), white-glove setup, API included, and custom credits. If you need ACE, personas or multi-market tracking, you are in sales conversations, not on the $295 row.

Do not treat an older "~$2,000+/mo Enterprise" figure from this directory's catalog as a verified list price. Ask for a written quote.

What every plan shares

Unlimited seats with RBAC. GA4 and Search Console integration. Shopify and Webflow integration. Crawler-access management for robots.txt and llms.txt. Brand voice enforcement. Citation intelligence. G2 rating on the page: 4.9/5, Spring 2026 High Performer in Answer Engine Optimization.

How this compares to Promptwatch billing

Promptwatch does not meter one credit per AI response the way AthenaHQ Starter does. Explore is free with 10 prompts on ChatGPT. Essential is $95 a month (7-day trial) with 50 prompts, 6,000 responses, 200K visitor events and 5 AEO articles. Professional is $245 with 150 prompts, 18,000 responses, 1M visitor events, 25M crawler logs and 15 AEO articles. Business is $579. Agency Kick-off, Growth and Scale are $199, $399 and $799 with unlimited projects and prompts on those agency rows.

Feature gap matters as much as the sticker. Promptwatch Content Agents publish to Webflow or Framer through a review inbox. Agent Analytics logs ChatGPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot hits with crawl-to-citation paths. Visitor analytics connect AI referrers to conversions. AthenaHQ's Starter story is Action Center style optimization tasks and a content optimization agent; the public pricing page does not document that full Promptwatch publish-and-logs stack.

Who should buy which AthenaHQ tier

Essential: prove the category and inspect the UI. Starter: one country, a team that will clear the action queue, and a prompt set that fits inside 3,600 responses after you pick model count and cadence. Enterprise: multi-region, ACE, SSO, claim review and BI dashboards.

If the buying motion is "ship GEO pages and prove crawlers fetched them," compare Starter's real credit burn against Promptwatch Professional before you lock a vendor. Open Promptwatch when you want flat allowances plus publish and crawler evidence in one place.

FAQ

Does Starter include the API?

No. On the 2026-09-30 pricing page, API access is a paid add-on on Starter. Enterprise lists API as included.

Is there a $99 AthenaHQ plan?

Not on the current pricing page. Starter is $295 a month. Older "~$99 launch tier" notes in this directory's catalog are outdated relative to that page.

How many responses is 3,600 credits?

Exactly 3,600 AI responses, because one credit equals one response on the pricing page.