Scrunch AI vs AthenaHQ: A Fair Head-to-Head

The short answer

Scrunch AI and AthenaHQ are both AI visibility platforms: they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, and show whether your brand is named, cited or skipped. AthenaHQ is the easier start, with a free tier, a $295 a month Starter plan that covers 11 AI engines, a Shopify connection and a content agent that drafts fixes. Scrunch, now owned by Sitecore, leans enterprise, with SOC 2 Type II, role-based access, a data API and its Agent Experience Platform, which serves AI bots a machine-readable version of your site. Starter is $300 a month, or $250 billed yearly.

Both tell you where you stand. Neither one, on its own site, says it will put finished pages live on your website for you. That gap matters more than any feature difference between them, and we come back to it at the end.

Side-by-side: Scrunch AI and AthenaHQ

Checked on each vendor's own site on October 20, 2026.

What Scrunch is today

Scrunch's headline is "Monitor and improve your brand's visibility in AI search." The product has three parts.

• Monitoring. It tracks prompts, topics and entities, with trends, citations, competitors and rankings, broken out by competitor, persona, topic and geography. It also shows a live feed of AI bots crawling your site.
• Insights. Guidance on what to change, analysis of the sources AI answers rely on, and alerts when AI bots cannot crawl your pages.
• Agent Experience Platform (AXP). A lightweight, machine-readable version of your site for AI agents, while the human-facing design stays as it is. Its pitch: "Your most important visitor isn't human."

Scrunch says it is trusted by more than 500 companies and agencies, naming Lenovo, Skims, Crunchbase and Penn State. The biggest recent change is ownership. On June 3, 2026, Sitecore announced it had acquired Scrunch and said its recommendations will be automated inside SitecoreAI's content management. If you already run Sitecore, that is a real advantage. If you do not, it is worth asking how the standalone product and pricing will evolve.

What AthenaHQ is today

AthenaHQ's headline is "Become the Brand AI Trusts." It tracks brand mentions, citations and share of voice across AI platforms, prompt by prompt and against competitors.

• Wide engine coverage. The free tier covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Paid plans add AI Mode, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral.
• Content and action. AthenaHQ Content ranks opportunities, such as a missing comparison page, and its agent creates on-brand drafts that move from draft to review to measurement. Ask Athena answers questions about your own visibility data in plain language.
• Integrations. Google Analytics 4, Search Console, Shopify, Webflow and Framer, with Tableau, Power BI and Looker on Enterprise.

Its named customers include HexClad, Hearst, Coinbase, SoFi and Grüns, and it reports results such as Grüns growing share of voice from 2.0% to 12.6% in 60 days. Those are AthenaHQ's own figures, not ours.

How they differ, at a glance

Put simply: if your question is "where do we stand and what should we fix," either tool answers it. AthenaHQ goes a step further toward the fix with drafts. Scrunch goes a step further into your site's plumbing with AXP. Our wider guide to AI visibility tools covers the rest of the field, from Profound to Peec AI.

What a tracker can and cannot tell you

Both tools work the same basic way. You give them a list of prompts, the questions a buyer might type into ChatGPT or Perplexity. They ask those questions on a schedule, record the answers, and count how often your brand is named, which sources are cited and who shows up instead. That is useful, and it is hard to do by hand at any scale.

Three things are worth knowing before you read the numbers.

• The prompt list decides the result. A tracker can only report on the questions you give it. Broad, short prompts make most small brands look invisible. Long, specific questions, the kind real buyers ask with a place or a need in them, give a truer picture. Spend your setup time on the list.
• AI answers move around. The same question can name different businesses on different days and in different assistants. A single week's share of voice is a reading, not a verdict. Look at the trend.
• Seeing the gap does not close it. When a tracker shows that AI answers cite a competitor's comparison page or a forum thread instead of you, the fix is new or better content, on your site and in the places AI reads. AthenaHQ helps you start drafts. Scrunch helps bots read the site you have. Neither writes, links and publishes the page for you.

If you want the background on how assistants pick sources in the first place, GEO vs SEO explains what changes and what stays the same as classic search.

Questions to ask on either demo

1. Which engines are in my plan, exactly? AthenaHQ's free tier covers five engines and Starter covers 11. Scrunch lists the major assistants. Make sure the ones your buyers use are included.
2. How many prompts can I track, and how often do they run? Scrunch counts prompts (350 custom on Starter). AthenaHQ counts credits, one per AI response, so more engines and more frequent runs use credits faster.
3. Who on my team will act on this every week? If the answer is nobody, the dashboard will report the same gap every month.
4. For Scrunch: what changes with Sitecore? Ask how standalone customers are supported and priced now that it is part of Sitecore.
5. For AthenaHQ: what happens to a draft? Ask where its content agent's drafts go, who edits them and how they reach your site.
6. Can I export my data? Scrunch offers a data API. AthenaHQ connects to Tableau, Power BI and Looker on Enterprise. Ask what is possible on your tier.

What each costs over a year

Monthly prices hide the real commitment, so here is the year, worked out from each vendor's pricing page on October 20, 2026, before tax.

• Scrunch Starter: $3,000 a year billed yearly ($250 a month), or $3,600 paid month to month ($300). That buys 350 custom prompts, 1,000 industry prompts and three users.
• Scrunch Growth: about $5,000 a year billed yearly ($417 a month), or $6,000 month to month ($500), for 700 custom prompts and five users.
• AthenaHQ Essential: $0, with 300 credits and five engines. It is a real way to see your baseline.
• AthenaHQ Starter: $3,540 a year at $295 a month, or about 17% less billed yearly, for 3,600 credits across 11 engines and unlimited seats.

At the entry level the two cost about the same. The difference is what the money buys: Scrunch spends it on prompts, enterprise controls and the AXP layer, AthenaHQ on engines, seats and drafts. Either way, the bill covers measurement. The time to act on it is a separate cost, and for most small businesses it is the larger one. That is the cost a done-for-you service replaces, which our guide to choosing an AI SEO agency weighs in more detail.

Who should pick Scrunch

• Brands on Sitecore, or moving to it, who want AI visibility built into the same system.
• Security-minded companies that need SOC 2 Type II, role-based access and a data API before anything gets bought.
• Large, multi-site or multi-region brands where the bot-facing AXP layer can matter at scale.
• Teams with engineers and content people ready to act on what the dashboards find.

Who should pick AthenaHQ

• Teams that want to see their AI visibility before spending anything. The free tier is real.
• Shopify brands and marketers who already live in Google Analytics and Search Console.
• Anyone who wants the widest engine coverage at the entry price, including Claude, Grok and Meta AI.
• Small marketing teams that want drafts to start from, and have someone to edit and publish them.

Alternatives to both

Other trackers

Profound pairs AI answer tracking with agents that research and write, sold mainly on Enterprise contracts. Peec AI is a lighter tracker with Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise plans, focused on reporting. If you want a quick, free read before choosing any of them, run our AI visibility checker.

Content platforms

If you are past measuring and need pages, a platform like AirOps or Jasper gives a content team the engine to produce them. See AirOps alternatives for how those compare.

A done-for-you service

If nobody on your side has time to act on a dashboard, a tracker will tell you the same bad news every month. A service like RunOctopus skips that step: Ollie, our AI, and our team research what your buyers ask, write the pages, link them into what you sell and publish them on your own site. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix. If you are weighing people against tools, our guide to AI SEO services lays out what you should get.

Our verdict

Between the two, AthenaHQ is the better pick for most small and mid-size brands: a free start, more engines at the entry price, unlimited seats and drafts to act on. Scrunch is the better pick for enterprise and Sitecore shops that need its controls and the AXP layer. Both are honest, capable trackers.