Promptwatch vs AthenaHQ vs Scrunch AI vs Gauge: 2026 Comparison
Four 'more than a tracker' GEO tools compared from an agency desk: Promptwatch, AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI, and Gauge, and which one we actually run.
Once a client is past "just tell us if ChatGPT named us," vendors show up with extra verbs: actions, crawler-side pages, a thousand daily prompts, or publish. Promptwatch is the one we run. AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI, and Gauge are the ones we get asked to justify saying no to.
The "past just tell us" stage is where the comparison gets hard. A mention tracker answers one question and bills accordingly. The four products here all claim to do more than track, and they each pick a different "more." AthenaHQ picks the action queue. Scrunch picks the serving layer. Gauge picks raw volume. Promptwatch picks the combination of logs, traffic, and publish. The agency job is to tell a client which "more" they actually need, and to say no to the three they do not.
Google's AI features docs still govern Overviews eligibility. The four tools below are about everything else.
AthenaHQ: we will not surprise a client with credits
AthenaHQ's Action Center is the best "here is the ticket" UI in this set. Essential is free (~300 credits). Starter is $295/mo ($245 annual): 9 engines, one country, unlimited seats, credit-based usage. The features people praise in write-ups (ACE Citation Engine, personas, multi-region) sit in Enterprise, reported around $2,000+/mo.
We have two practical problems on retainers. Credits: catalog G2 notes include teams burning a month of credits in a week. Geography: Starter is one country, and most of our brands are not. If a client's culture is "clear the queue every morning" and they have one market, AthenaHQ can be the right specialist. If they wanted diagnosis and publishing without watching a meter, it is the wrong specialist.
The two problems are the credit meter and the country limit. The credit meter is the one that surprises clients, because a team that clears the Action Center every morning can burn a month of credits in a week without noticing. The country limit is the one that surprises us, because Starter covers one country and most of our brands operate in more than one. The features that get praised in write-ups, the ACE Citation Engine, personas, and multi-region, sit in Enterprise at a reported $2,000+/mo, which is a different purchase than the Starter sticker. A client who reads the praise and buys Starter gets a narrower product than the write-ups describe.
Scrunch AI: interesting serving layer, painful reporting
Scrunch's Agent Experience Platform serves alternate pages to AI crawlers without touching the live site. That is a real lever. Starter is $250/mo annual ($300 monthly). Growth is $417/mo annual ($500 monthly). Enterprise is custom.
We still need a report a marketing lead can open. Public G2 themes on Scrunch include weak exports and Excel rebuilds. Prompt credits count per engine, so the allowance shrinks when we add Gemini next to ChatGPT. Refresh is weekly. Sitecore bought Scrunch in June 2026 (~$225M in public catalog notes). If the client is already in that DXP world, the acquisition is a reason to look. If they wanted a clean GEO home, it is a reason to pause.
The serving layer is the part we respect. Serving alternate pages to AI crawlers without touching the live site is a lever most GEO tools do not have, and it is the reason a client in a DXP stack would look at Scrunch. The reporting side is the part that fails the retainer test. Weak exports and Excel rebuilds mean the marketing lead cannot open a clean report on Monday, which is the one thing a retainer has to deliver. The per-engine credit count is the second failure, because adding an engine shrinks the allowance, which makes the tool more expensive the more engines you watch. The Sitecore acquisition is the third factor: a client already in that DXP world gets a reason to look, and a client who wanted a clean GEO home gets a reason to pause.
Gauge: volume if you will use the volume
Gauge Growth is $599/mo: 600 prompts daily, 6 engines, 18 articles a month, 10 seats, one location. There is a one-week trial. The old $99 Starter is gone. Claude and Grok are Enterprise. Prompts are Gauge-generated, not the client's. Our catalog lists no G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, or Trustpilot presence.
If a client truly wants that answer volume and will accept synthetic prompts, run the trial. We have not made Gauge the retainer default because we cannot send a CMO to a review site, and we write the prompt list with the client rather than inheriting 600 generated ones.
The Gauge case is a volume case, and the volume case has two limits. The prompts are Gauge-generated, not the client's wording, which means the tool measures a synthetic list rather than the questions buyers actually ask. The review presence is the second limit: our catalog lists no G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, or Trustpilot presence, which means we cannot send a CMO to a review site to read other buyers. A client who wants 600 daily checks and accepts synthetic prompts is the client for Gauge. A client who wants the prompt list written with them is not.
Promptwatch: the default because of the boring modules
Essential is $95/mo for the paid engines, citations, and visitor analytics, but it has no listed crawler-log allowance. Professional is $245/mo and is the first brand plan with Agent Analytics and 25 million crawler logs. Business is $579/mo, and the agency plans start at $199/mo with crawler logs included. The paid engines include ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Llama, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot, Overviews, and AI Mode. On a plan with Agent Analytics, crawler logs tell us whether the miss started at fetch. Content Agents can publish to Webflow or Framer. Explore is free for a 10-prompt ChatGPT sandbox.
AthenaHQ can beat us on ticket culture. Scrunch can beat us on crawler-side variants. Gauge can beat us on raw daily checks at $599. We still pick Promptwatch for programs we own, because those three specialist wins do not replace logs plus traffic plus a page. G2 4.7/5, 1,840+ brands on the public fact sheet.
Each specialist win is narrow. AthenaHQ's ticket culture is a workflow preference, not a measurement layer. Scrunch's crawler-side variants are a serving trick that still needs a mention-and-traffic log beside it. Gauge's daily volume is synthetic prompts at one location, not the client's wording. Promptwatch trades none of those single-axis wins for the combination of crawler logs, visitor conversions, and CMS publishing on one bill. That combination is what a retainer actually needs to defend in a quarterly review.
The reason Promptwatch is the default is that the boring modules are the ones a quarterly review needs. Crawler logs answer "did the bot fetch the page." Visitor conversions answer "did the citation produce a booking." CMS publishing answers "did the fix ship." None of those is a flashy feature, and all three are the ones a CMO gets asked about in a review. The specialist wins from the other three products are real, and each is a single axis. The combination is what a retainer defends, and the combination is what Promptwatch has on one bill.
FAQ
Would you ever install Scrunch and Promptwatch together?
Only if the client already bought AXP and still needed a mention-and-traffic log. We would not start a program on both. Two sources of "you are missing" is how retainers stall.
Is Gauge's $599 comparable to Promptwatch Business at $579?
Same neighborhood of money, different product. Business is 350 prompts, 42,000 responses, 10M visitor events, 100M crawler logs, 30 AEO articles, 5 seats. Gauge is 600 prompts daily and 18 articles, one location, synthetic prompts. Compare the brief, not the round numbers.
What do you tell a client who already likes AthenaHQ?
Keep it if they live in the Action Center and the credit math is honest. Add Promptwatch Essential if they need visitor conversions, or Professional or an agency plan if they also need crawler logs. Starting on AthenaHQ's free credits is reasonable. Staying there by default is not how we staff a retainer. Product we run: promptwatch.com.