Peec vs Profound vs Otterly vs AthenaHQ: Prices and Fit

If you are choosing between Peec, Profound, Otterly and AthenaHQ, you are buying the same basic thing four ways. Each tool runs a set of buyer prompts through AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, then reports how often your brand shows up, where it sits in the answer, and which sources the engine cited. The differences that matter are how many prompts you get for the money, which engines are included, and how much the tool helps you act on what it finds.

This post compares the four on those points, with every price read from the vendor's own pricing page on 3 November 2026. Where a vendor shows EUR to European visitors and USD to everyone else, we say so.

TL;DR: Otterly is the cheapest way to start (from $29 per month for 15 prompts across four engines). Peec gives in-house teams the most prompts per euro in the mid-range (EUR 85, 205 and 425 per month, or USD 95, 245 and 495). AthenaHQ has a free plan and an 11-model Starter plan at $295 per month. Profound is enterprise software with a free 7-day trial and custom pricing. None of them fixes the visibility gaps they find. That part needs an audit or a team doing the work.

Peec vs Profound vs Otterly vs AthenaHQ at a glance

Peec, Profound, Otterly and AthenaHQ all track brand mentions, answer position and cited sources inside AI answers. They differ mainly on price structure and engine coverage. Prices below are monthly list prices, checked 2026-11-03.

Sources: peec.ai/pricing, tryprofound.com/pricing, otterly.ai/pricing, athenahq.ai/plans, all checked 2026-11-03.

If you want the wider field, including LLMrefs, AIclicks and Mangools, our roundup of the best AI search monitoring tools covers seven options. This post goes deeper on these four.

What each tool actually tracks

All four tools measure the same core signal, which is whether a given AI answer mentions your brand. They split on how many engines you get, whether you can edit the prompts, and what sits on top of the tracking.

Peec

Peec tracks visibility, position and sentiment for each prompt, across the models you choose. Every paid plan includes 3 active models, and the pricing page's model picker lists ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini. Adding a model raises the price. Enterprise opens up more, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral and Qwen through their APIs (checked 2026-11-03, peec.ai/pricing).

Plan limits, checked 2026-11-03:

• Starter: 50 prompts, 1 project, 1 country, 4,500 AI answers per month
• Pro: 150 prompts, 2 projects, 3 countries, 13,500 AI answers per month
• Advanced: 350 prompts, 5 projects, 3 countries, 31,500 AI answers per month, Looker Studio integration
• All paid plans: daily tracking, unlimited users and competitors

Peec calculates "AI answers" as prompts times active models times days, so 50 prompts on 3 models for 30 days gives the 4,500 figure. The plans also include a 1 to 5 prompt volume score, crawlability data from agent analytics, and a set number of credits for the Peec agent (500, 750 and 1,000 on the three self-serve tiers).

Profound

Profound is built for large brands, and its public pricing has two levels. The Trial is free and runs 50 unique prompts daily for 7 days across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Trial users get a recommended prompt set for their industry and cannot edit it. Enterprise is custom-priced, with editable prompts, daily tracking and up to 9 answer engines, including Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Mode and Exa Search (checked 2026-11-03, tryprofound.com/pricing).

Beyond tracking, Profound sells Agent Analytics (AI crawler and AI-referred traffic across your domains), Prompt Volumes (what people ask AI engines in your category), ChatGPT Shopping tracking on Enterprise, and an AI Marketer agent that runs on credits. The pricing FAQ also mentions a self-serve Agency Growth plan with 400 credits per month per client workspace, but the page does not show its price.

One correction worth making, since you may see it on older comparison pages. Profound does not currently list a "from $499" self-serve plan. The live page shows Trial and Enterprise only.

Otterly

Otterly is the low-cost entry point. Every plan tracks 4 engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot) daily, with Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini available as paid add-ons. All plans include brand visibility and sentiment, citation source tracking and optimization recommendations (checked 2026-11-03, otterly.ai/pricing).

Plan limits, checked 2026-11-03:

• Lite, $29 per month: 15 prompts, 1,000 GEO URL audits per month
• Standard, $189 per month: 100 prompts, 5,000 GEO URL audits, API and MCP access
• Premium, $489 per month: 400 prompts, 10,000 GEO URL audits, API and MCP access
• Enterprise: custom, starting from 1,000 prompts
• Extra prompts: 100 more for $99 on Standard and Premium

Annual billing takes 15% off. Otterly's pricing page shows EUR to European visitors and USD to others, with the same numbers.

AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ prices by credits, where 1 credit is 1 AI response. The free Essential plan includes 300 credits and covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. Starter costs $295 per month for 3,600 credits and covers 11 models: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral. Starter allows unlimited topics, prompts and competitors, with country-level tracking. API access and extra credits are paid add-ons (checked 2026-11-03, athenahq.ai/plans).

The page offers 17% off for annual billing. An earlier check we ran in late October read the $295 figure as the annual-billing rate, so confirm the monthly price at checkout before you budget for it.

Credits change the math. 3,600 responses a month works out to, for example, 40 prompts on 3 engines checked daily for 30 days. Add engines or prompts and you burn credits faster, so "unlimited prompts" means unlimited setup, not unlimited daily runs.

Real prices, compared per prompt

Peec and Otterly cost almost the same per tracked prompt at the entry level, and Peec gets cheaper per prompt in the middle tiers. The numbers below divide the USD list price by the plan's prompt allowance, using prices checked 2026-11-03.

Two caveats keep this honest. Otterly includes 4 engines per prompt and Peec includes 3, so Otterly gives you more answers per prompt. Peec includes more projects and countries on its upper plans, which matters if you track several brands or markets. Profound has no public per-prompt price, and AthenaHQ's credit model does not convert cleanly to a per-prompt figure.

Who each tool fits

The right pick depends on your team size, your budget and how many engines your buyers actually use.

Choose Otterly if you are a small team or a founder who wants real numbers this month without a sales call. $29 gets 15 prompts on 4 engines, which is enough to see whether you show up for your most important buyer questions. You will outgrow 15 prompts fast if you track several product lines.

Choose Peec if you are an in-house SEO or content team that wants 50 to 350 prompts, multiple countries and clean reporting. The per-prompt cost drops as you move up, and unlimited users means the whole team can see the data. Check that the 3 models you need are covered before you buy, because extra models raise the price.

Choose AthenaHQ if engine breadth is the priority. The Starter plan's 11 models include Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral, which none of the other three include on an entry plan. The free Essential plan is a reasonable way to test the interface first.

Choose Profound if you are an enterprise brand that wants tracking plus crawler analytics, prompt volume data and ChatGPT Shopping in one contract, with SSO and dedicated support. The free 7-day trial shows you the dashboard, but trial prompts are preset, so it will not tell you how you perform on your own buyer questions.

A fair note on Peec, since it publishes its own Peec vs Profound page and buys ads on Profound's brand name. That page is a vendor's view. The pricing pages above are the neutral ground, and both companies' pages are worth reading before you decide.

When a tracking tool stops being enough

A tracking tool tells you that you are missing from an answer. It does not tell you why, and it does not fix it. That is where many teams stall. The dashboard shows a flat line for months, and nobody can say which change would move it.

These are the signs you need more than a tool:

• Your visibility is near zero on every engine. That often points to a technical block, such as AI crawlers disallowed in robots.txt, pages rendered only in JavaScript, or no structured data. Trackers report the zero but do not diagnose it.
• Competitors get cited from third-party sources you are absent from, such as review sites, directories, Reddit threads or industry lists. Closing that gap is outreach and content work, not software.
• AI answers describe your company wrongly, with an old price, a product you dropped, or a competitor's feature. Fixing entity facts means correcting them across your site and the sources the engines trust.
• You have the data but no one owns the fix list. A dashboard without someone turning it into page-level tasks is a monthly report nobody acts on.

At that stage an AI visibility audit that diagnoses why you are missing is the next step. A good audit checks crawler access and technical readiness, maps the sources each engine cites for your category, compares you against the competitors that do get named, and ends with a prioritized list of fixes. AY Rank's audit covers those areas and hands over a prompt baseline and implementation roadmap. You can keep your tracking tool afterward to measure whether the fixes worked.

For a broader look at software options before you commit to any, see our guide to the best AI visibility tools. If you are comparing agencies rather than software, our list of the best AI visibility audit services covers that side.

How to choose in four steps

1. Write 15 to 30 prompts your buyers actually ask, including comparison and "best X for Y" questions.
2. Check which engines your buyers use. If they live in ChatGPT and Google, all four tools cover you. If Claude, Grok or DeepSeek matter, AthenaHQ Starter or Profound Enterprise are the options here.
3. Start on the cheapest plan that covers those prompts and engines, and run it for four weeks before upgrading.
4. If the numbers stay flat after content changes, stop buying more prompts and book an audit of your AI search visibility gaps to find the cause.

Frequently asked questions

Is Peec or Profound better? Peec is better for teams that want transparent self-serve pricing, with plans at EUR 85, 205 and 425 per month (USD 95, 245 and 495), checked 2026-11-03. Profound is better for enterprise brands that want tracking, crawler analytics and prompt volume data in one custom contract. Profound's only public plan is a free 7-day trial with 50 preset prompts.

How much does Profound cost? Profound's pricing page lists a free Trial (50 prompts run daily for 7 days on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) and a custom-priced Enterprise plan, checked 2026-11-03 at tryprofound.com/pricing. There is no public self-serve price.

What is the cheapest AI visibility tracking tool of the four? AthenaHQ's Essential plan is free with 300 credits, and Otterly Lite is the cheapest paid plan at $29 per month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, both checked 2026-11-03.

Does Otterly track Gemini and Claude? Otterly tracks Gemini, Claude and Google AI Mode only as paid add-ons. Its base plans cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot (checked 2026-11-03, otterly.ai/pricing).

Which tool covers the most AI engines? AthenaHQ Starter lists 11 models at $295 per month, the most of any entry paid plan here. Profound Enterprise lists up to 9 answer engines, and Peec Enterprise opens additional API models. Peec's self-serve plans include 3 active models each (all checked 2026-11-03).

Why are Peec's prices sometimes in euros and sometimes in dollars? Peec shows prices by visitor location. A Paris browser sees EUR 85, 205 and 425 per month, and a request with no locale sees USD 95, 245 and 495, both checked 2026-11-03 at peec.ai/pricing.

Do I need an agency if I already have a tracking tool? You need outside help when the tool shows a gap your team cannot explain or fix, such as near-zero visibility, missing third-party citations or wrong facts in AI answers. A tracking tool measures visibility. An audit finds the cause, and implementation fixes it.