AirPulse vs AthenaHQ: self-serve attribution, or fixes shipped with you?
AthenaHQ is a strong self-serve product and one of the few with revenue attribution.
Pick AthenaHQ when…
You want self-serve. Starter is $295/month with 3,600 credits and unlimited seats; Essential is free with 300 credits (athenahq.ai/pricing, checked 2026-09-09).
You want GA4, GSC, Shopify and Webflow integrations that connect AI visibility to outcomes.
You want 10 models on Starter, including Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI.
Pick AirPulse when…
You need bot-log analytics. Agent Pulse reads what agents fetch; AthenaHQ diagnoses what they could see.
You want execution done with you and verified live.
You'd rather scope an engagement than meter credits.
Feature by feature
| AthenaHQ | AirPulse | |
|---|---|---|
| Engines monitored | Starter: 10 (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI). Free Essential: 5 Checked 2026-09-09 against athenahq.ai | ChatGPT and Perplexity on Starter; adds Google AI on Growth and Pro; adds Gemini on Enterprise (2 to 4 engines by plan) |
| Monitoring depth | Prompt-volume tracking, SOV + GEO Score, citation intelligence, sentiment with crisis detection, content-gap detection; 60+ countries Reviewed June 2026 | Daily prompt runs: citation sightings, source mix, sentiment, category rank |
| Crawler / agent analytics | No bot-log analytics: “dynamic AI crawling” is site diagnostics Reviewed June 2026 | Agent Pulse: crawler & agent log analytics, tied to remediation |
| Content execution | Content Optimization AI Agents (customer-operated) Reviewed June 2026 | Content Pulse: schema-aware authoring |
| Done-with-you remediation | No done-for-you execution Reviewed June 2026 | Yes: done with you, verified by live re-audits on production |
| GSC / analytics integration | GA4 and GSC integration, Shopify and Webflow; BI dashboards (Tableau, Power BI, Looker) on Enterprise Checked 2026-09-09 against athenahq.ai | GSC integration; control-brand analysis on your own analytics |
| Evidence standard | 4.6/5 on G2; SoFi, Coinbase, Nextiva, PagerDuty Reviewed June 2026 | Published methodology: control groups, consistent windows, live-verified audits |
| Pricing transparency | Published: Essential free (300 credits, 5 models); Starter $295/mo (3,600 credits, 1 credit = 1 AI response, unlimited seats); Enterprise custom; API access and extra credits are paid add-ons; annual billing 17% off Checked 2026-09-09 against athenahq.ai | Published: Starter $89/mo, Growth $179/mo, Pro $399/mo, Enterprise by demo; 14-day free trial, no card |
| Best fit | SMB self-serve up to enterprise Reviewed June 2026 | Mid-market B2B that wants fixes shipped |
Where the two differ
Attribution
AthenaHQ's GA4, GSC, Shopify and Webflow integrations tie answers to outcomes. AirPulse uses GSC plus a control brand. On our own domain, branded clicks per week went from 6 to 19 while the control fell 14% (window dates not yet published).
Diagnostics versus bot logs
AthenaHQ's “dynamic AI crawling” shows what a bot could see on your site. Agent Pulse reads real crawler and agent traffic, which engines fetch what, how often, and what changed after a fix.
Software agents versus a team in the loop
Athena's content optimization agent gives your team tooling at $295/month; the work is yours to run, metered in credits (1 credit = 1 AI response, 3,600 a month on Starter). AirPulse ships the work with you and re-audits live.
Results, with dates
Newton School: Google AI mention rate 51.4% to 93.3% (Baseline window May 20 to 25, 2026; end window Jun 8 to 10, 2026; Google AI).
Newton School: Blended visibility across four engines 55.8% to 74.2% (May 20 to Jun 10, 2026; Four engines (blended)).
BytePe, PropChk and Airmeet results are on the case studies page with their windows and cohorts.