AthenaHQ vs Frase: which SEO tool fits your team?

AthenaHQ

High: recommendations are paired with on-page/off-page actions, a content optimization agent, self-learning improvement, and Shopify publishing.

Starter lists on-page/off-page actions, content optimization agent, self-learning content improvement, and integrations; the case study documents programmatic content shipped with AthenaHQ Content and Shopify Integration. https://athenahq.ai/pricing https://athenahq.ai/case-studies/10-6pp-sov-gruns-ai-search-case-study

Frase

Generates on-brand finished drafts, images, and revisions.

The agent page states Frase researches a query, drafts the page and images in brand voice, and scores fixes. https://www.frase.io/features/agent

AthenaHQ

Strong account and market context from competitors, citations, prompts, personas, regions, and a knowledge base/claim review layer.

Ask Athena is described as using account data, competitive benchmarks, citation tracking, sentiment, ICPs and buyer personas; Enterprise adds Knowledge Base and claim review. https://athenahq.ai/ https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

Carries brand, competitor, first-party visitor-question, and published-site context through the loop.

The homepage describes learning the brand, competitor picture, and questions visitors ask via Frase Answers. https://www.frase.io/

AthenaHQ

Core product focus: cross-platform AI visibility, recommendation coverage, citation analysis, and GEO/AEO actions.

The homepage explicitly lists cross-platform AI visibility tracking across 11+ LLMs, automated content optimization recommendations, and citation source analysis/link building. https://athenahq.ai/

Frase

AI-visibility monitoring and GEO scoring are core capabilities.

The pricing page includes AI Visibility and the homepage describes monitoring citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI. https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

Native AI-surface monitoring and controls make GEO readiness a primary capability.

The plans comparison includes dynamically managed smart robots.txt and llms.txt, brand voice/guideline enforcement, citation intelligence, and visibility across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and other models. https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

Provides GEO scores, citation tracking, and AI-search fixes in the publishing loop.

Frase’s homepage says drafts are scored for SEO and GEO and that AI citations are monitored after publishing. https://www.frase.io/

AthenaHQ

Some technical AI-crawler and structured-content support is present, but the site does not document a broad technical SEO audit/crawl module.

The homepage FAQ recommends schema markup and crawler access, while pricing lists smart robots.txt and llms.txt management; no general crawl/audit feature is listed. https://athenahq.ai/ https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

Site auditing and page-level SEO readiness are present, but the reviewed first-party material does not establish a full technical crawler suite.

The homepage says Frase crawls a site page by page, scores SEO and AI readiness, and ranks fixes by impact. https://www.frase.io/

AthenaHQ

Strong action and publishing workflow with agents, integrations, exports, and human review evidence, though native CMS coverage is limited in the cited pages.

Starter includes CSV export, integrations, on-page/off-page actions and a content optimization agent; Grüns documents Shopify publishing with human-in-the-loop proofreading. https://athenahq.ai/pricing https://athenahq.ai/case-studies/10-6pp-sov-gruns-ai-search-case-study

Frase

Direct CMS publishing and hosted FraseCMS are supported.

The pricing page lists one-click publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, Wix, or FraseCMS. https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

Deep visibility, citation, sentiment, competitor, prompt, and revenue/traffic attribution measurement.

Athena says it tracks prompt-level visibility and citations, while GA4, Search Console, and Shopify connect visibility to traffic, conversions, and revenue. https://athenahq.ai/

Frase

Tracks Google rankings, AI citations, AI visibility, and decay.

The homepage explicitly lists ranking tracking, AI-citation monitoring, and Content Guard decay detection. https://www.frase.io/

AthenaHQ

Good team and enterprise collaboration controls through unlimited seats, RBAC, configurable views, SSO, audit logs, Slack, and enablement.

The pricing page lists unlimited seats/RBAC, configurable multi-views, Google/Microsoft OAuth, dedicated Slack, SAML SSO, audit logs, and white-glove setup. https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

Team seats, calendars, reports, and enterprise controls support collaboration.

Pricing lists multiple seats, a content calendar, client-ready exports, white-label reports, portals, SSO/SAML, and an account manager. https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

A meaningful free plan and transparent Starter price make entry accessible, although advanced scale and API use require paid or custom arrangements.

Essential is free with 300 credits; Starter is $295/month, while extra credits/API are add-ons and Enterprise is custom. https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

Self-serve plans begin at a public price with a no-card trial, though meaningful scale is paid.

The homepage says self-serve from day one and the pricing page publishes Starter at $39/month yearly with a 7-day no-card trial. https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

The product has a free Essential tier and a free audit CTA, but the official pages do not show a separate catalog of standalone free SEO tools.

The pricing page lists Essential as Free with 300 credits and the homepage offers Get Free Audit (10m); no other free-tool catalog is shown on those pages. https://athenahq.ai/pricing https://athenahq.ai/

Frase

A free trial and free FraseCMS hosting are available, but the core product is not a permanently free plan.

The pricing page documents a 7-day trial and FraseCMS Free at $0 with 100,000 page views/month. https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

The official industry page makes a substantial first-party scale claim, though it is a marketing-reported figure rather than independently verified here.

Athena's industry page states 2,400+ enterprise customers and 47 countries served. https://athenahq.ai/industry

Frase

First-party positioning indicates thousands of teams, but no exact customer count is supplied.

The pricing page says “Thousands of teams already run on Frase.” https://www.frase.io/pricing

AthenaHQ

Agent-native features are central: Ask Athena, Athena AI agent, recommendation/content agents, and an Athena Citation Engine.

The homepage describes Ask Athena as an agentic copilot grounded in account data, and pricing lists Athena AI agent, content optimization agent, Recommendation Engine, and ACE. https://athenahq.ai/ https://athenahq.ai/pricing

Frase

The product has a named AI SEO Agent with natural-language workflows, API, and automation hooks.

The agent page describes research, briefs, drafts, scores, clustering, repurposing, and publishing in one chat; the API page describes REST API and webhooks. https://www.frase.io/features/agent https://www.frase.io/features/api-integrations

AthenaHQ

High assisted autonomy for diagnosis and recommended execution, with evidence of self-learning and largely self-running Enterprise workflows; human review remains relevant.

Starter advertises self-learning content improvement, while the Grüns customer says the Enterprise platform largely runs itself and describes human-in-the-loop proofreading. https://athenahq.ai/pricing https://athenahq.ai/case-studies/10-6pp-sov-gruns-ai-search-case-study

Frase

Autonomous publishing and approval-based Content Guard fixes are explicit, with customer rules controlling what goes live.

The agent page says publishing occurs on approval and Content Guard proposes fixes for approval; pricing says the agent can publish on its own when enabled. https://www.frase.io/features/agent https://www.frase.io/pricing