GetXEO vs AthenaHQ

AthenaHQ is the closest product to GetXEO in this whole comparison, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. It monitors ten models, finds the gaps stopping a brand being cited, drafts content against them, runs outreach to the sources that shape answers, and manages AI crawler access directly. Four of the five links in the chain have a real answer. Two differences are left, and both are worth understanding before choosing: the shape of what gets published, and how the work is counted.

Arjun Shenoy

Co-Founder and CPO at GetXEO

Evaluates AI visibility tooling as part of the product role, and has run this category comparison across ten platforms.

31 August 2026 · 11 min read · 2,494 words · 8 cited sources

About the teamLinkedIn

This is the closest table in the comparison. AthenaHQ has a real answer on four rows, and on delivery it goes further than GetXEO does, because it changes the crawler files rather than reporting on them. The structure row is the one genuinely open link, and the metering is the second thing worth reading closely.

AthenaHQ describes the platform as monitoring what AI says, understanding why, and taking action. The monitoring half covers visibility and citations, prompt and demand intelligence, competitive intelligence and source intelligence.

Coverage is broad. Every plan includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Paid plans add Google AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and Meta AI. That is ten models.

The acting half is where it separates. Content creation produces on brand assets from real opportunities. Citation outreach targets the sources shaping AI recommendations, and commerce optimization improves product content. Both paid plans also manage AI crawler access through a smart robots.txt and llms.txt file. That is an action on the site rather than a report about it.

Everything is metered in credits. One credit equals one AI response. The free tier includes three hundred. The main self serve plan includes three thousand six hundred, at two hundred and ninety five dollars a month.

GetXEO reads the brand first. It crawls the domain, classifies every URL, and builds a profile every downstream writer reads. It then derives the question universe and curates twenty five queries per pillar, each mapped back to the keyword or question it came from.

Those queries produce one composite score. The dashboard carries AEO, GEO and SEO sub scores, model citation rates and the change since the last scan. AEO polls answer engines, GEO covers AI summarized search and weights paragraph position, and SEO tracks the classic result page alongside AI Overviews.

Output is designed as a set. Blogs are produced as one connected mesh, the visualizer maps that mesh beside keyword clusters and competitor networks, and the calendar sequences refreshes, technical fixes and new posts across twelve weeks. Every block is written to survive being lifted away from its page.

Delivery is audited and handed over. The GEO audit checks entity declarations, Organization schema, semantic HTML and knowledge graph signals. Three audits roll into one score with a page by page heat map, and the fixes arrive as a list a developer can work through.

Credits are the most distinctive thing about how AthenaHQ is bought, and the company publishes the arithmetic rather than hiding it, which is worth crediting.

The formula is prompts multiplied by locations, by credits per response, by days per week, by four point three three weeks. Two multipliers matter more than the prompt count. Standard models cost one credit per response and Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral cost five. And fan out, which streams three extra variations of each prompt, makes every response count four times.

Run it and the numbers move quickly. AthenaHQ's own default example on that page lands at seven thousand one hundred and forty five credits a month, against three thousand six hundred included in the main self serve plan. The page says so itself and recommends either paid add on credits or the enterprise tier.

None of that is a criticism. Metered pricing is honest that watching more models more often costs more, and a small brand tracking a few prompts pays very little. It does mean a buyer comparing a plan price against a flat fee is not comparing like with like. Additional credits and API access are both paid add ons on the main self serve plan rather than included.

• It acts on the crawler files. Dynamically managing AI crawler access through a smart robots.txt and llms.txt is a change to the site, not a recommendation about it. GetXEO audits and hands over a fix list, so this is a straight advantage
• Offsite is a product surface. Citation outreach targets the sources shaping AI recommendations, alongside source intelligence that names which sources shape each answer. GetXEO publishes nothing in this area at all
• It publishes named customer results. Grüns from two percent to twelve point six percent share of voice in sixty days, with about seventy percent of citations attributed to Athena authored content, and Rootly at roughly ten times citation rate growth. GetXEO publishes no customer results
• You can start free, and scale by usage. A free tier with three hundred credits, a main self serve plan at two hundred and ninety five dollars, and unlimited seats with role based access on both, against one thousand dollars a month list for GetXEO, five hundred with the discount on its page, and nothing free underneath

Integrations are a fifth. Google Analytics and Search Console, Shopify and Webflow, CSV export, and API access as a paid add on, where GetXEO publishes no connector at all. Model breadth is a sixth: ten on a paid plan against the four answer engines GetXEO polls, plus SOC 2 Type II, GDPR coverage and multi region support at the enterprise tier for markets GetXEO does not sell into.

• The set is designed before the pages are written. Fifty blogs a month on the plan, produced as one connected mesh on a sequenced calendar, so each post is written knowing what the others say
• One composite across three layers. AEO, GEO and SEO roll into a single figure with model citation rates and the change since the last scan, including the classic result page rather than answer engines alone
• The invoice does not follow the configuration. A hundred and fifty questions and fifty blogs a month are included at a flat price, so adding models or locations does not change the bill. Going past the included volume does: more is sold in add on blocks at one hundred dollars a month
• The audit is written for retrieval. Three audits produce one score with a page by page heat map against a rubric covering entity declarations, Organization markup and semantic HTML, which is a different question from whether a crawler was let in

Five limits are worth knowing. It lists at one thousand dollars a month, shown at five hundred behind a fifty percent discount, with no free tier. It polls four answer engines rather than ten. It does nothing about earned mentions or outreach, and publishes no reporting connector or API. A workspace fixes its question set for six months so the score has a stable baseline, where AthenaHQ publishes unlimited topics. And the brands plan covers one workspace.

Not the crawler files, not outreach, not model breadth and not price at the entry point. AthenaHQ is ahead on all four and we have said so. Three things are left.

The structure. This is the real one. AthenaHQ produces assets from prioritized opportunities, which means the unit of work is the opportunity. GetXEO designs the set first, so the unit is the set and each page is written to hold the others up. Our position is that authority accumulates against a shape rather than against a sequence of good individual decisions, and we hold that as a design judgment rather than a measured finding. What is measured is the scale of the shift toward AI in buying: most B2B buyers now use AI somewhere in the process and more than half use it to compare vendors.

The measurement span. AthenaHQ reports visibility across ten AI models, and it connects Search Console so a team can set AI and search performance side by side. That is a real answer. The difference is narrower than it first looks: GetXEO rolls answer engines, AI summarized search and the classic result page into one composite figure, where AthenaHQ publishes two reports to be read together.

Predictability. Metered credits mean the bill follows the configuration, and the multipliers are steep: five credits for a heavier model, four times for fan out. A flat subscription is worse value for a small footprint and better value for a wide one. That is a procurement preference rather than a product fault, and it cuts both ways.

What craft still decides. Research on citation factors finds that pages carrying figures, quotes and citations get named noticeably more often, though the same work ranks off site brand signals ahead of on page craft. Both products act on the page. The difference is whether extraction rules reach every block of a designed set, or the asset in front of you.

GetXEO fits a marketing team that publishes often and wants the set designed rather than the next asset produced. It suits a buyer who would rather know the invoice in advance. It lists at one thousand dollars a month, currently shown at five hundred with a fifty percent discount.

AthenaHQ fits a team that wants to try before paying, or one whose gap sits on sites it does not own. It also fits a team that needs the crawler files actively managed, or one that wants several countries watched at once. On this comparison more than any other, both answers are reasonable, and the choice turns on which of those you are.

All were published or last updated within the past twelve months. A competitor page appears only as a record of that vendor’s own published terms.

1. Machine Relations, AI search citation factors research
2. Machine Relations, how B2B buyers research vendors with AI
3. AthenaHQ, the published home page and FAQ, read 28 August 2026
4. AthenaHQ, the published platform page, read 28 August 2026
5. AthenaHQ, the published plans and pricing comparison, read 28 August 2026
6. AthenaHQ, the published credit calculator, read 28 August 2026
7. AthenaHQ, the published customer results, read 28 August 2026
8. AthenaHQ, the published enterprise page and compliance record, read 28 August 2026

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