Unsourced vs AthenaHQ
Updated 2026-07-16 · maintained by Unsourced
AthenaHQ and Unsourced both promise to show you where you stand in AI answers. They part ways on two things: how you pay for it, and what you get back. AthenaHQ meters your usage in credits at a premium tier; Unsourced is a flat, self-serve plan that hands you the evidence. Here is the comparison.
How do I check if my brand appears in AI chatbot answers?
To check if your brand appears in AI chatbot answers, you look at each assistant's actual responses to real buyer questions and confirm whether your page is cited. Unsourced does this automatically across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, and starts from evidence rather than an optimisation score: the exact answer, whether a verified crawler fetched your page, and the specific gap to close.
An estimate from sampled prompts. Cited in which answer? By whom? Did an AI actually read your page? The number can’t say — so when it moves, you’re guessing why.
The actual answer, the verified fetch behind it, and the exact topic where a competitor won instead — open it, check it, act on it.
A credit meter, or a flat plan with the proof attached
AthenaHQ positions itself to “See, Act, and Win on AI Search” as a premium GEO platform, and prices on credits you spend as you monitor and optimise. That model rewards heavy, budgeted use. Unsourced takes the opposite approach: a flat monthly plan, and instead of a usage meter you get the underlying evidence, the exact answer, the verified crawl, the competitor cited in your place.
The question is whether you want a premium dashboard you meter, or a checkable record you own and can hand to a client.
Evidence you can open, on every check
- The actual answer, not a credit-weighted score. See where an assistant cited a competitor instead of you, and the question behind it.
- Verified crawler identity. Bot Trust confirms a crawler against published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS, so “GPTBot” is proven, not trusted.
- Live crawl versus training data. Origin Signal ties a verified fetch of your page to the model reproducing your words.
You shouldn't need an enterprise budget to see if AI cites you
As published at the time of writing, AthenaHQ's self-serve tier is around $295 a month on credits, with Enterprise rising well beyond that. Unsourced is a flat £39 a month with a 10-day free trial and no card, and for that you get citation checks across seven assistants, verified crawler identity, the gap report, and measured lift after you act. The evidence shouldn't be the part you ration.
Why an optimisation score can't answer this
In Unsourced’s own monitoring, across more than 150 versions of questions like “how do I find out if my brand is being mentioned in ChatGPT or other AI chatbot responses?” and “is there a reliable platform that tracks brand mentions across multiple AI assistants at once?”, AI assistants named hundreds of different tools — and rarely the same one twice from one week, or one rewording, to the next.
An optimisation score promises to move a number up, but the number sits on answers that reshuffle with every rewording, and it can't prove an AI actually read the page it credits. Unsourced starts from the evidence instead: the exact answer, whether a verified crawler fetched your page, and the gap you can genuinely close.
Unsourced and AthenaHQ, point by point
| Unsourced | AthenaHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat monthly — £39 / £89 / £199, nothing metered | Credit-metered, around $295/mo self-serve |
| Starting price | From £39/mo, free trial, no card | Around $295/mo on credits, Enterprise beyond |
| Core output | The cited answer plus the verified crawl behind it | A premium GEO visibility score, metered by credits |
| Verified crawler identity | Yes — published IP ranges + reverse DNS (Verified / Impostor / Unverifiable) | Not stated |
| Live crawl vs training data | Yes — Origin Signal separates a live fetch from old training data | Not stated |
| Proof a fix worked | Re-checks the exact topic, confirms a citation only on evidence | Not stated |
| Exportable client reports | AI Visibility Audit + Evidence Report PDFs | Dashboard reporting |
The AthenaHQ column is drawn from AthenaHQ’s own published information and was accurate at the time of writing; “not stated” means the company does not publish that detail. Pricing and features change — see the source link below.
The number most visibility tools never check
AthenaHQ meters your monitoring in credits and reports a visibility score. A score, however you pay for it, still can't tell you whether the AI crawler behind a result was genuinely the operator it claimed to be.
In a two-week study, Human Security found 5.7% of traffic claiming to be a well-known AI crawler was fake, and DataDome reports the same agents are routinely impersonated. A tool that trusts the user-agent counts those spoofs as real AI interest. Unsourced checks every crawler against the operator’s published IP ranges and forward-confirmed reverse DNS — Verified, Impostor or Unverifiable — so the crawl behind a citation is evidence, not a string anyone can type.
Common questions
How does Unsourced's flat price compare with AthenaHQ's credits?
AthenaHQ meters usage in credits, around $295 a month at its self-serve tier, which rewards heavy, budgeted monitoring. Unsourced is a flat £39 a month with nothing to ration: citation checks across seven assistants, verified crawler identity, the gap report and measured lift, all included. You own a checkable record rather than a meter you watch.
Do I need an enterprise budget to see whether AI cites me?
No, and that is the gap Unsourced is built to close. The evidence — the actual answer, the verified crawl, the competitor cited instead of you — shouldn't be the part you ration on credits. It is a flat £39 a month with a 10-day free trial and no card.
What do I get on every check, rather than a credit-weighted score?
The specific answer where an assistant cited a competitor over you, the question behind it, confirmation of whether a real crawler fetched your page, and a re-check after you act. Concrete events you can open, not a single number weighted by how many credits you spent.
More comparisons
Go deeper
What you walk away with
Whichever tool you choose, ask what it hands you. Every Unsourced account generates two reports built from your own live data — open them, check them, hand them to a client or your boss:
Sources & disclosures
This comparison is based on AthenaHQ's own published information, accurate as of 2026-07-16. Pricing and features change — follow the link for AthenaHQ's current details.
All competitor names, logos and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here solely for nominative, comparative identification; their use does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by them. Each comparison is drawn from the competitor’s own publicly available information and was accurate as of the date shown — pricing and features change, so check the linked source for current details.
Sign up today and Unsourced starts logging which AI assistants cite you, who is genuinely crawling your site, and whether a fix actually moves a citation.
Sign up free →10-day free trial · no card required · cancel anytime
Run several sites or an agency? Unsourced is built for agencies and has a 20% recurring partner programme.