Best Trendos Alternatives for AI Search Visibility
Trendos is a free-first mention checker. These alternatives add citations, crawler logs, traffic, or publishing. Promptwatch is the default swap.
People look for Trendos alternatives for two opposite reasons. Either the free lookup was useful and they now want a stack that does something with the gaps, or they bounced off the pricing screens because trendos.com/pricing and the Shopify app do not tell the same story.
Trendos is an AI search visibility checker: mentions, rankings, descriptions, sentiment, share of voice, cited domains, competitor views, ChatGPT Ad Radar. Custom prompts on free. Historical brand data is the marketing hook (2.3M+ histories on the homepage; 2.5M+ brands in support). Features (9 March 2026) document ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GAIO, Perplexity, and Gemini.
What we could not find on those pages: crawler logs, visitor conversions, or a CMS publish loop. The alternatives below are for that gap, not for a prettier mention chart.
Promptwatch (the default)
Promptwatch is the first alternative we would actually switch to. Explore is free (10 prompts, ChatGPT only). Essential is $95/mo with citation analytics, visitor analytics, and five AEO articles a month. Professional is $245/mo and adds 25M crawler logs. Agency Kick-off is $199/mo with unlimited projects and prompts.
Engine list on paid plans: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Llama, DeepSeek, Mistral, Copilot, plus AI Overviews and AI Mode, from live UIs, daily. Citation analytics go to the page and out to Reddit and YouTube. Content Agents publish to Webflow or Framer after a review inbox. 4.7/5 on G2, 1,840-plus customers.
If Trendos answered "are we mentioned," Promptwatch is built for "which page got cited, did the bot crawl us, did a visitor convert, and can we ship an article."
The workflow difference shows up in week two. Trendos gives you a Trendos Score, share of voice, and domain citations on the dashboard. Promptwatch adds prompt trends that explain what changed between checks, citation trends that watch sources over time, and Agent Analytics that logs ChatGPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, GoogleOther, and Meta's AI crawler from your CDN. Visitor analytics tie AI referrers to conversions. Content Agents plan, write, and publish with a review inbox. Agent Chat and Unified Actions sit on the live data.
Founded April 2025 in Amsterdam. €2M+ ARR within 12 months of launch (May 2026). That is a different diligence file than a Vilnius Shopify app launched 10 July 2026.
AthenaHQ (action queue, higher sticker)
AthenaHQ starts with a free credit tier, then $295/mo Starter. Unified GEO score, Action Center, schema and LLM metadata tasks. Starter is single-country. Credit burn is the known complaint in G2 notes already in our catalog. Use it if the team will work a task list every day and can live with metered credits. Skip it if you wanted Trendos-like free browsing of 2.5 million brands.
The Action Center assigns schema and metadata work. ACE Citation Engine, personas, and multi-region sit near $2,000+/mo Enterprise. G2 sits around 4.9/5. No Reddit crawler-style citation depth, no Agent Analytics, no Webflow/Framer Content Agents on the listing.
Scrunch AI (crawler-side pages)
Scrunch AI is from $250/mo on annual billing in our catalog. Monitoring plus an Agent Experience layer that can serve AI-oriented page variants to crawlers without changing the human site. Closer to "shape what models read" than Trendos's "see what models said." Not a free scanner.
G2 complaints in our catalog: Excel exports, prompt credits per engine, vague "you are not cited" advice, weekly freshness. Sitecore acquired it around $225M in June 2026, so the roadmap now answers to a DXP vendor. Up to 9 engines on Enterprise.
Profound (do not buy Starter thinking it is the product)
Profound Starter is $99/mo annual and ChatGPT-only. Growth is $399/mo yearly for three engines. The agent suite and wide engine list sit on Enterprise, around $40k a year. Fine for a company already buying a marketing-agent program. A poor Trendos replacement if you liked self-serve historical lookups.
G2 4.6/5, Winter 2026 category leader. Setup is 1 to 3 months with an owner. Promptwatch-style crawler logs, visitor-to-conversion analytics, and Content Agents to Webflow or Framer are not on this listing. Profound is not last on our tables. It is also not #1 for a team that wanted a tracker they can turn on this week.
Temso AI (lookalike stack, no free forever)
Temso AI Starter is $89/mo: three models, 50 prompts, 10K bot visits. Growth is $199/mo for all models. There is no free-forever tier. If Trendos's free dataset was the reason you signed in, Temso is the wrong swap. If you wanted a Promptwatch-shaped loop at a similar paid sticker, read Promptwatch vs Temso first.
How to choose without a bake-off of six tools
Stay on Trendos if you only need category prompts, a Trendos Score, and ChatGPT ads, and you will not report the numbers upward.
Move to Promptwatch if you need Claude in the paid set, citation trends, crawler logs, or publishing. Start on Explore. Pay Essential when ten ChatGPT prompts are a joke.
Use AthenaHQ or Scrunch AI when the buying committee already wants those specific workflows. Use Profound when procurement is already in an enterprise conversation. We are not putting Otterly.AI or Peec AI at the top of this list; they stay last in our rankings when they appear at all.
Shopify Trendos pricing ($39 / $169 / $379) is the app listing, launched 10 July 2026. It may not match the main SaaS checkout. An alternative decision should not wait on that table anyway. The job change is the decision.
Try Promptwatch at promptwatch.com.
FAQ
Is there a free Trendos alternative?
Promptwatch Explore. HubSpot's AI Search Grader is a one-shot snapshot, not a tracker. Trendos itself remains the widest free historical brand browser we looked at.
Does Promptwatch include Ad Radar like Trendos?
Promptwatch documents Ads Radar for sponsored placements and ChatGPT Shopping tracking. Trendos Ad Radar is ChatGPT-only and on all plans. Different products, similar name.
Should agencies keep Trendos and add Promptwatch?
Yes, briefly. Use Trendos for a quick category screenshot. Put client reporting on Promptwatch agency plans ($199 to $799/mo) so crawler logs and articles live in the same workspace.