Profound vs AthenaHQ vs Peec, Compared by Someone With Nothing to Sell
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Profound vs AthenaHQ vs Peec comes down to how you want to buy. Peec sells self-serve plans from $95 a month, AthenaHQ runs from a free tier to a $295 credit-based Starter, and Profound now sells custom enterprise contracts after a free seven-day trial. All three track how often AI assistants mention and cite your brand, so the real differences are price shape, model coverage and metering.
Which one fits a team without a procurement department? What does a credit buy? And which of the three just deleted its cheapest plans?
The answers moved this month, so this page did too.
Key takeaways:
- Profound withdrew its $99 and $399 self-serve plans in September 2026; after a free seven-day trial, buying it means a sales conversation.
- AthenaHQ's $295 Starter covers 11 AI models on 3,600 monthly credits, one credit per AI response, and its free tier covers five.
- Peec's self-serve plans run from $95 to $495 a month and track three models of your choice, with more as paid add-ons.
- Visibility scores aren't built to compare across platforms, so pick one and judge trends inside it.
Why Trust This Comparison?
The comparison pages for these three tools are mostly written by tools. Search "athenahq vs profound" and the top results include Profound, AthenaHQ and several other AI visibility vendors, each grading its own homework.
We're a B2B SEO and GEO agency. We sell measurement design and content programs, not software, and no affiliate money moves whichever one you pick. Product facts below come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked on September 28, 2026.
Prices here change often, so treat the vendor pages as the live source and this page as the map of what to compare.
What Do the Three Platforms Do?
All three answer the same buyer question: how visible is my brand in AI assistants' answers, and is it improving? Each runs prompt panels against the assistants it supports, counts mentions and citations, benchmarks you against competitors, and recommends actions. If the category vocabulary is new, our plain-English guide to GEO, SEO, and AEO sets the scene.
What Changed at Profound in September?
Profound removed its $99 Starter and $399 Growth plans from its pricing page in September 2026. Both were listed in an archived copy of the page from September 14 and were gone by September 28.
That window includes a $180M Series D, announced on September 15 (Profound).
The live pricing page now offers two things: a free seven-day trial running 50 prompts a day across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and a custom Enterprise tier tracking up to nine engines.
For buyers, that means a single brand can no longer buy Profound self-serve: after the trial, the published path is a demo. Agencies are the exception. Profound's Agency Growth plan sells full client workspaces as a $399-a-month add-on, each tracking 100 prompts daily on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with 400 Agent credits.
The engine list changed as well. Grok was on it in mid-September and isn't now; the current nine are ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. Profound also now calls itself an "AI Marketer" platform, with agents that write AEO content and surface opportunities.
Profound vs AthenaHQ: Where Do They Differ?
Profound and AthenaHQ now differ most in how you buy them. AthenaHQ's plans page publishes a $295 monthly Starter covering 11 models on 3,600 credits, with 17% off for annual billing, while Profound's comparable coverage sits inside a custom Enterprise contract.
Coverage is close at the top. Both track ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek and Claude; AthenaHQ's Starter adds Grok, Meta AI and Mistral, and Profound's Enterprise adds Exa Search.
Profound leans into automation through its AI Marketer agents. AthenaHQ leans into insight: citation source analysis, brand sentiment and competitor benchmarking, with a content optimization agent from Starter up. Pick by your bottleneck: producing content, or understanding your position.
Run the math on AthenaHQ's credits before any demo. A 50-prompt panel checked daily across all 11 models uses 16,500 responses a month, more than four times Starter's 3,600 credits. AthenaHQ publishes a credit calculator, and it exists for a reason.
Profound vs Peec: Which Fits Smaller Teams?
Peec fits smaller brand teams better, because it's now the self-serve option Profound no longer is. Peec's pricing starts at $95 a month for 50 prompts, with Pro at $245 for 150 prompts and Advanced at $495 for 350, and 15% off for annual billing.
Every self-serve Peec plan tracks three models, chosen from ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Naver AI. Extra models are a paid add-on, priced per model and plan, and Perplexity is available only as an add-on or at Enterprise, which tracks up to 13 models.
A small team is choosing between a monitor it can buy this afternoon and a platform it can trial for a week.
Peec's agency orientation is visible in the workflow: tags, benchmarking and export for teams reporting in someone else's template, with Looker Studio on Advanced and API access at Enterprise. Peec says more than 3,000 brands and agencies use it.
Peec vs AthenaHQ: Prompts or Credits?
Peec and AthenaHQ are the two a brand can buy without a sales call, and they meter differently. Peec caps prompts and models per plan; AthenaHQ caps AI responses through credits and gives Starter all 11 models.
That makes the choice a question of panel shape. A large prompt panel on two or three assistants is Peec's shape. A smaller panel spread across many assistants, including Claude and Grok, is AthenaHQ's. If neither shape fits, our roundup of AthenaHQ alternatives covers the rest of the field.
One note applies to all three: we found no published run-to-run variance figures for any of their scores. Keep a small manual panel running alongside whichever platform you buy, as a sanity check the vendor didn't calibrate.
Which Should Your Team Pick?
Match the platform to the team shape rather than the feature count:
- First AI visibility tool, small team: Peec's $95 Starter, or AthenaHQ's free Essential tier for a first look (300 credits is about 60 prompt runs across its five models). Profound's trial is useful for a week-long look, but ongoing use now runs through a sales conversation.
- Mid-market, want broad coverage: AthenaHQ's Starter ($295, 11 models) or Peec's Pro or Advanced. Run the credit and prompt math on your real panel.
- Agency running client panels: Peec's tags and export, or Profound's Agency Growth plan at $399 a month per client workspace. AthenaHQ pitches its Enterprise tier at "Enterprises & Agencies"; price a realistic multi-client month before deciding.
- Enterprise with analysts: Profound and AthenaHQ both want this conversation. Bring your prompt panel to both demos and make them score it live.
Before any of the four, know which prompts you're losing. A competitor gap analysis for AI search tells you where competitors own the answers, which turns every demo from a tour into a test.
What Should You Test in a Trial?
Run the same four tests in every trial, because these are the differences that survive the honeymoon:
- Metering against your real panel. Load the prompts and competitors you'd track, run a normal week, and read the burn. Plan prices only mean something divided by your consumption.
- Panel visibility. Confirm you can see and edit every prompt the tool runs. A score built on prompts you can't inspect is a number you can't defend.
- Run-to-run variance. Ask each vendor what normal week-to-week movement looks like on their platform. Movement smaller than that variance is noise, and a vendor who won't quantify it is asking you not to check.
- Export completeness. Pull your data out in week one. If the history doesn't leave cleanly, neither will you.
Profound's trial can't run tests 1, 2 or 4: it uses a recommended industry prompt set you can't edit, and it has no history or exports. Treat it as a preview and save the tests for Peec, AthenaHQ or a Profound Enterprise pilot. If two platforms survive, run them head to head on the identical panel and keep the one whose findings you acted on. Picking the tool is also part of what the best AI SEO agencies do for B2B teams, ideally without a reseller margin in the room.
What Do None of Them Solve?
None of these platforms create visibility; they report it. What AI engines cite is largely earned: third-party coverage and authoritative sources, not your own pages. A 2025 University of Toronto preprint found the engines it studied systematically favor earned media over brand-owned content in consumer product queries, and earned media is precisely the material no dashboard can produce for you.
So budget the tool as the thermometer, not the treatment. The content patterns that earn citations are covered in our GEO playbook for B2B companies.
FAQs
Is Profound better than AthenaHQ?
Neither is better in general; they differ in shape. Profound now sells custom Enterprise contracts after a free seven-day trial, tracking up to nine engines with its AI Marketer agents, while AthenaHQ runs from a free tier to a $295 credit-based Starter covering 11 models. The right one depends on your panel size, your budget, and whether your bottleneck is content production or insight.
Is Peec AI good for small teams?
Peec suits small teams well: self-serve plans from $95 a month, three models of your choice, and extra models as paid add-ons. Teams that need Claude should note it isn't on Peec's self-serve model list, while AthenaHQ includes it from the $295 Starter.
Can I compare visibility scores between Profound, AthenaHQ, and Peec?
No, visibility scores aren't built to compare across these platforms. Each uses its own model set, sampling and formula, so the same brand scores differently on each. Pick one platform for trend reporting and benchmark against competitors inside it.
What do these platforms cost in practice?
Published entry points as of September 2026: Profound offers a free seven-day trial, then custom Enterprise; AthenaHQ is free on five models, then $295 a month on credits; Peec starts at $95 a month for 50 prompts on three models. Enterprise tiers are custom everywhere, and the number that decides your bill is consumption against the metering, not the sticker.
Do these tools improve AI visibility or just measure it?
AI visibility platforms mainly measure visibility rather than improve it. Profound's agents and AthenaHQ's content optimization agent generate some content, and all three recommend actions, but the earned coverage and third-party sources that AI engines draw on come from work outside any dashboard.
Decide in three steps: write your real prompt panel, run the metering math on it, then trial the survivors head to head. Any of the three can be right, and your panel, not their feature grid, is the judge. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on that panel first, schedule a Founder Call.
