Profound vs Otterly vs AthenaHQ: The Best AI Citation Tracking Tools Compared (2026)

You can't optimize what you don't measure. Three tools have emerged as the serious contenders for tracking AI citations — Profound, Otterly, and AthenaHQ. I've used all three for client work for 6+ months. Here's the honest comparison.

Which AI citation tracking tool should I buy?

Pick Profound if you're an agency or enterprise needing white-label reports and the deepest data — it's the priciest but the most complete. Pick Otterly if you're a single-brand marketing team that wants the cleanest UI and fastest setup. Pick AthenaHQ if you're a startup that needs flexible API access and competitive intelligence at a lower price point.

Profound: the enterprise pick

Strengths: tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, and Claude. Sentiment analysis on every citation. White-label reports. Competitor benchmarking with share-of-voice over time. Weaknesses: pricing starts at $499/mo, learning curve is real, and the dashboard is feature-dense to the point of overwhelming for solo marketers.

Otterly: the cleanest UX

Strengths: gorgeous, focused dashboard. Easy to set up — paste your domain and prompts and you're tracking in 10 minutes. Solid alerting. Weaknesses: smaller engine coverage (no Claude yet), shallower competitive data, and limited API access. Best for in-house marketing teams that don't need agency features.

AthenaHQ: the flexible challenger

Strengths: best API access of the three, flexible pricing tiers starting at $99/mo, and good competitor intelligence. Weaknesses: UI feels less polished, sentiment analysis is weaker than Profound, and reporting templates are basic.

Pricing comparison

Profound: $499–$2,499/mo. Otterly: $149–$799/mo. AthenaHQ: $99–$499/mo. All three offer free trials. None have meaningful free tiers.

What none of them do well yet

Click-through attribution from AI surfaces to revenue. The whole category is stuck at 'we counted citations' — closing the loop to pipeline is still manual. Whoever solves this first wins the next 18 months.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I really need a tool, or can I track manually?

For under 20 prompts you can spreadsheet it. Above that, the tools pay for themselves in saved hours.

How often should I run citation checks?

Weekly for active campaigns, monthly for steady-state monitoring. AI engine outputs vary day-to-day so single-point-in-time checks mislead.

Are these tools accurate?

Mostly. All three under-count by 5–15% vs manual audits because of API rate limits and engine variance. Use them for trends, not absolute numbers.

Will Google or OpenAI release official analytics?

Google is rolling out limited AI Overview impressions in Search Console. OpenAI has hinted at a publisher dashboard but nothing shipped as of May 2026.