Zene vs AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ is a YC-backed AEO/GEO platform built around a chat copilot ("Ask Athena"), its Athena Citation Engine and a brand Knowledge Base. Its customer list includes SoFi, Coinbase, Hearst, Twilio, Toyota and Volkswagen. If you're weighing it against Zene, you're comparing a broad enterprise platform with a small self-serve tool - both track whether AI engines mention your brand.
In one line: AthenaHQ is coverage- and workflow-first, Zene is price- and fix-first. AthenaHQ tracks 11 engines, ads and shopping carousels, and can publish drafts to a CMS through its MCP and Page Edits. Zene tracks five engines from a free plan and, on Pro, turns each gap into a prioritized action with drafts and outreach targets, for a fraction of the entry price.
Choose Zene if…
- You want Claude, Perplexity and Grok at $19/mo - AthenaHQ puts Claude on its $295 Starter plan
- You want a flat question allowance (10 Free, 15 Pro, 40 Growth, 75 Agency) instead of a credit budget per answer
- You want a prioritized action plan with drafts (brief, FAQ, schema, llms.txt) and an outreach list on the entry paid plan
- You're a founder, small team or small agency tracking several brands on a small budget
Choose AthenaHQ if…
- Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek or Mistral matter to you - AthenaHQ tracks all 11; Zene tracks 5
- You want an MCP server with 25+ write tools, plus GA4, Search Console and Power BI connectors
- You want ChatGPT and Google AI ads tracking and shopping-carousel insights
- You want approved drafts pushed straight to Sanity or Contentful, then re-checked on the live URL
The comparison, in one table.
| Zene | AthenaHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Engines tracked | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok | 11 on Starter: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Mistral. 5 on the free plan |
| Free plan / trial | Free forever: 1 brand, 10 questions, ChatGPT + Gemini, scans on demand, no card | Essential: 300 credits. The pricing page shows them as monthly; a third party describes them as one-time |
| Entry price | $0; Pro $19/mo (2 brands, 15 questions, all 5 engines) | Starter $295/mo: 3,600 credits (1 credit = 1 answer; Grok now costs 5 credits per answer) |
| Higher tiers | Growth $49/mo: 5 brands, 40 questions, PDF reports, Slack/Teams/webhook alerts, 3 markets. Agency $99/mo: unlimited brands, 75 questions, white-label reports, REST API, Zapier, Looker Studio, 10 markets | Enterprise (custom): Knowledge Base, Oracle discrepancy detection, citation engine, SSO, persona targeting, BI connectors |
| Fixes / content | Pro: prioritized action plan, content drafts (brief, FAQ, schema, llms.txt), outreach list | Brief, approve, draft workflow; Page Edits publishes to Sanity or Contentful; author outreach with a pitch pipeline |
| Ads and shopping | Shopify/e-commerce readiness check on every plan | Sponsored ads in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews; product carousels in ChatGPT and AI Mode |
| Accuracy | Sentiment and narrative | Knowledge Base claim review plus Oracle discrepancy detection |
| Integrations | Read-only MCP server from Pro; Slack, Teams and webhook alerts from Growth; the REST API, Zapier, Looker Studio and MCP write tools on Agency | MCP (30+ read, 25+ write tools), GA4, Search Console, Looker Studio, Power BI (BI connectors on Enterprise per the pricing page); API is a paid add-on |
| Setup | Self-serve signup; Free needs no card | 6-step setup, 15-20 minutes; results within a few hours |
| Best for | Founders, small teams and agencies that want fixes on a budget | Enterprise marketing teams that need broad coverage and integrations |
Facts as of October 4, 2026, from AthenaHQ's public pages (sources below). Both products ship fast - verify current details at athenahq.ai/ and on our pricing page.
Where AthenaHQ is stronger
Coverage and integrations. AthenaHQ tracks 11 engines on Starter, including Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek and Mistral - none of which Zene tracks today. It captures sponsored ads and shopping carousels in ChatGPT and Google's AI surfaces, connects to GA4, Search Console, Looker Studio and Power BI, and ships one of the deepest MCP servers in the category, with tools that can create prompts and publish content. Its Knowledge Base and Oracle check what AI says about you against your own facts. For an enterprise team running AI search as a channel, that breadth is real.
Where Zene is different
Zene is built for teams that can't justify $295 a month to start. Pro includes Claude, Perplexity and Grok and covers 2 brands and 15 questions shared across them, and every scan ends in a prioritized action plan with drafts you can publish - a content brief, FAQ copy, schema JSON-LD and an llms.txt - plus a list of cited sources to pitch. Questions are a flat allowance, so a costlier engine doesn't eat your budget. Every plan also gets a first-party AI-referral snippet and AI-crawler log drains (Vercel, Cloudflare, JSON).
Pricing
Zene: Free, Pro $19/month, Growth $49/month, Agency $99/month ($190/$490/$990 yearly), in USD. AthenaHQ lists a free Essential plan with 300 credits, Starter at $295 a month for 3,600 credits, and custom Enterprise pricing (per its pricing page). Its page shows the free credits as monthly, while a third-party review describes them as one-time, so check before you plan around them.
How to choose
If you need AI Overviews, AI Mode or Copilot data, GA4, Search Console and Power BI connectors or an MCP with dozens of write tools, AthenaHQ is the stronger tool and its price reflects that. If you want to see where you stand on five major engines this week and get the fixes drafted for $19 a month, start with Zene.
Sources · facts as of October 4, 2026
Every AthenaHQ fact on this page comes from these public pages, checked on October 4, 2026. Zene's side comes from our pricing page and methodology. Spot something outdated? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Common questions.
Yes, for teams that mainly need tracking plus fixes. Zene tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok from $19/mo with drafts included; AthenaHQ tracks 11 engines, including AI Overviews, AI Mode and Copilot, from $295/mo and adds MCP, BI connectors, ads and shopping tracking.
Zene: free plan, Pro $19/mo, Growth $49/mo, Agency $99/mo. AthenaHQ: free Essential plan with 300 credits, Starter $295/mo with 3,600 credits, Enterprise custom (AthenaHQ pricing page, checked 2026-10-04).
One credit buys one AI answer. AthenaHQ's October changelog raised Grok to 5 credits per answer. Zene uses a flat number of tracked questions per plan instead of credits.
Yes. AthenaHQ's Starter plan tracks AI Overviews, AI Mode and Copilot among 11 engines. Zene does not track AI Overviews, AI Mode or Copilot yet.
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