A free way in, or a lower paid plan. Here is what each one buys.
AthenaHQ is a San Francisco AI search platform with a free plan, a $295 a month Starter that reads 11 AI models, and an Enterprise plan by quote. SKYA's paid plans start lower, at $59 a month for 4 AI platforms and $199 for all 9, and include a Hallucination agent and one-click technical fixes on WordPress.
Athena gives you a free start and more AI models on its first paid plan. SKYA costs less once you pay, and installs the technical fixes it finds.
AthenaHQ's position: San Francisco AI search platform. A free Essential plan with $25 of credit; Starter at $295 a month with 3,600 credits and 11 AI models; Enterprise by quote with SSO, discrepancy detection and 60+ countries and languages. SOC 2 Type 2.
| Capability | SKYA | AthenaHQ |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest paid plan | $59 a month (Starter: 4 AI platforms, 50 tracked prompts) | $295 per month (Starter: 11 AI models, 3,600 credits) |
| Free option | 7-day free trial, no credit card | Free Essential plan with $25 of credit (300 credits) |
| AI platforms tracked | Up to 9 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot). 4 on Starter, 7 on Agency, all 9 on Brand Pro at $199 and Agency Pro at $649 | Athena: 5 on the free plan; 11 models on Starter, including Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI and Mistral |
| Specialist agents | 4 specialist agents (On-Page Audit, Keyword Gap Analysis, Hallucination Audit, Brand Sentiment (Reputation)), on top of AI Visibility and Competitors' Intelligence as core features with their own menus | The Athena AI agent and a content optimization agent |
| Hallucination audit | Included on every paid plan: 3 to 7 chat assistants by plan, each claim checked against your facts | Discrepancy detection listed on Enterprise |
| Competitors' intelligence | Rivals detected for you, with their Google Top 100 keywords beside their AI share of voice | Competitor insights in AI answers; classic search rankings not listed |
| Client-ready reports | Day 0 baseline and monthly client reports free on every paid plan, custom reports, PDF and Word exports with your logo and no-login share links; a client portal with client logins on Agency and Agency Pro | CSV export; BI tool integration on Enterprise |
| Publish drafts and fixes to your site | One-click install on WordPress, head fixes through the SKYA apps for Shopify and Webflow, drafts into all three and eight headless stacks, seven of them in beta | Publishes AEO content to Shopify; on-page and off-page actions |
| Prompt volume in your market, ICP and intent filters | Search demand scored 1 to 5 per tracked prompt, in the country you track, with persona and intent filters | Not listed on their feature page |
| Citation freshness and hidden sub-queries | Cited pages dated; the searches behind each answer recorded | Not listed on their feature page |
| Topic clusters and prompt tags | Topic clusters with suggested topics, and intent, buyer stage, persona and branded or comparison tags on every prompt | Unlimited topics, and persona targeting on Enterprise; intent and a buyer stage not listed (checked 15 October 2026) |
| AI crawler visits and AI referrals | AI crawler visits by page, on every plan, from your Cloudflare, the SKYA Helper for WordPress, a webhook with snippets for Vercel, Akamai and your own server, or a log upload (CloudFront and Google Cloud CDN included), plus an AI referral snippet; for any other host, SKYA Edge at $15 a project a month | AI crawler access managed through a smart robots.txt and llms.txt; crawler visits not listed (checked 15 October 2026) |
| Ads in AI answers | Ads in ChatGPT answers: the prompts that carry them, the share of answers with ads, and which advertisers appear, you and tracked rivals marked | Not listed on their pricing page (checked 15 October 2026) |
| Honesty rules | Refund when nothing measured; scores withheld below the evidence floor | Not listed on their feature page |
| Meta Ads Hub | Included: creative lab, fatigue read, fixes with copy and image briefs | Not listed on their feature page |
| Google Reviews | Free on every plan: request links, QR codes, private feedback, what AI platforms say about your reputation | Not listed on their feature page |
| Reddit Visibility | Included from Agency and on Brand Pro: cited threads, who is named, the gaps | Not listed on their feature page |
| AI Shopping (AI shopping shelf) | Add-on from $29: product visibility, position and win rate against rival products on ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot, with price, stock and dead link alerts | ChatGPT Shopping tracking |
| Seats | Unlimited on every plan | Unlimited members, the free plan included |
A tick marks the side that leads on that row. No tick means the two are even, or not directly comparable. Athena facts checked on 25 September 2026 against athenahq.ai/pricing and athenahq.ai. A cell that carries its own date was read again on that date.
An honest, feature-level breakdown of both platforms across the pillars that actually move the needle for answer engine optimization.
SKYA's paid plans start at $59 a month, and all 9 AI platforms are $199. Athena's first paid plan, Starter, is $295 a month.
Athena's Essential plan is free, with $25 of credit, and does not end after 7 days. SKYA offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card, then a paid plan.
Athena's Starter reads 11 AI models, including Meta AI and Mistral. SKYA does not read Mistral and sells Meta AI as an add-on for one project, from $11 per 50 prompts a month. SKYA reads 4 on Starter and 9 on Brand Pro and Agency Pro.
SKYA installs schema, meta tags, sitemap, robots and llms.txt on WordPress in one click and drafts into eight headless stacks, seven of them in beta. Athena lists on-page and off-page actions and a Shopify integration that publishes AEO content. Both reach your site; they reach it in different ways.
SKYA's Hallucination agent asks the AI assistants on your plan a 38-prompt library, 3 on Starter and up to 7 on Agency Pro, checks each claim against your own facts, and hands you the correction for every one that is false. It is on every paid SKYA plan. Athena lists discrepancy detection on its Enterprise plan.
Every SKYA finding ends in something you can ship. The nine readiness checks each generate their fix; schema, meta tags, sitemap, robots and llms.txt install on WordPress in one click; Shopify takes schema, meta description, Open Graph and llms.txt through the SKYA app, and Webflow takes page titles, meta descriptions and Open Graph after you approve them; and any draft the Content Engine or the action plan writes carries a Publish to site button that creates an unpublished post or page in your own editor, on WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and Framer, and in beta on Ghost, Strapi, Directus, Payload, Sanity, Drupal and Adobe Experience Manager. Athena: publishes aeo content to shopify; on-page and off-page actions.
A SKYA audit that measured nothing is marked failed and refunds its credit; a reputation dimension without enough independent sources says Not scored instead of printing a number; every hallucination finding is checked against your own facts before it is called false; and the Reddit and citation counts are stored answers, never a rank. That is the difference between a dashboard you can put in front of a client and one you have to explain.
The Meta Ads Hub is included on every SKYA plan, Reddit Visibility (the threads AI cites and where a rival is named instead of you) is included from the Agency plan onwards and in Brand Pro, AI Shopping (your products inside AI shopping answers) is an add-on beside any plan, and Google Reviews (request links, QR codes, private feedback from unhappy customers, what AI platforms say about your reputation) is free on every plan. Athena: partial coverage, see the table above.
Starter at $59 a month, and all 9 AI platforms at $199, both below Athena's first paid plan.
AI visibility and competitor tracking, then 4 agents from measurement to fix.
Ship the recommended change without waiting on engineering. Seven of the eight headless stacks are in beta.
Nothing SKYA generates stays trapped in the tool. Copy it, or send it to your site as a draft and finish it in the editor you already use.
Visibility, fixes, content, ads, reviews and Reddit for every client, with seats and roles, a project switcher on every page, dated client-ready reports, and add-on products you can resell.
Starter $59/mo with 7-day trial, Brand Pro $199/mo for all 9 platforms, up to Agency Pro at $649/mo.
Essential free with $25 of credit. Starter $295 a month, 17% off annually, with 3,600 credits. Enterprise by quote.
Athena is cheaper to try, with a free plan. SKYA is cheaper to pay for, from $59 a month.
Export tracked prompts and brand terms from AthenaHQ.
Start the SKYA 7-day trial and enter your domain.
Import prompts. Auto-discovery expands to 4 intent layers.
Let SKYA read your prompts across the AI platforms on your plan.
Invite team seats and enable Fix Now on your CMS.
Free 7-day trial. No credit card required. Up to 9 AI platforms, competitor intelligence, 4 agents, hallucination defense and fixes that reach your site once you approve them. The first answers land within minutes of setup, and every tracked prompt has its first reading within 24 hours on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overview.