For agencies · Updated September 2026
Found by AI vs AthenaHQ
An AI-visibility platform your team logs into. A white-label programme you resell.
AthenaHQ is a AI-search optimization platform: it watches how a brand shows up in AI answers, turns that into a structured backlog - content to add, sections to restructure, FAQs to write, schema to fix - and gives your team a conversational way to interrogate the data. The writing stays on your side of the line. Found by AI is a white-label AI-search content programme sold only through agencies: the monitoring identifies the buying questions leading AI assistants answer without your client in them, those gaps become the month's brief, and we write, publish and measure the content - with your agency's logo on the portal, the report and the emails.
Stop at the dashboard.
Show the gap. Don't address it with content production. A client looking at a monitoring dashboard with no content production is not a recurring conversation; it's a quarterly question.
Write briefs from keyword tools.
Briefs come from search-volume guesswork. They produce useful articles, but the priorities don't reflect what AI assistants are actually citing for the client's category.
Turn monitoring evidence into the next brief.
Last month's monitoring evidence, competitor appearances, citation gaps, missing facts, weak topics, is where next month's topics are chosen from. Then the Monthly AI-Search Visibility Report shows what changed.
The wedge is the loop, not any single layer of it.
The core difference
A backlog someone still has to execute.
Or a monthly loop that executes it.
AthenaHQ's job is to make a brand more legible to AI assistants and to tell an in-house team precisely what to change. Question research, content-structure analysis, FAQ and schema recommendations, an agentic assistant for ad-hoc competitive questions, and - on their commerce side - publishing integrations for storefronts. The diagnostic and advisory work is genuinely good, and it is their core strength. It fits when there is someone who will act on the backlog: a writer who will produce the FAQs, an engineer who will fix the markup. Detection is where the product stops, by design.
Found by AI starts where that stops, and it is sold to you rather than to your client. The loop is the product: the monitoring is the brief, not a dashboard - the questions AI assistants answer without your client become the month's articles. A named editor from your team or your client's signs the work - a real person with a job title, a public professional profile and written-by / reviewed-by bylines. Review before publish is the default for every new client brand, with a 7-day review window; publishing immediately after our quality gate is opt-in per client; dark until reviewed is available on request, and the client's own writers can publish alongside the articles the programme produces. It ships to a blog we host on the client's subdomain or your white-label domain - one DNS record either way, and the Monthly AI-Search Visibility Report shows what changed. Your brand, start to finish. We never solicit your clients.
Where each one sits
What AthenaHQ is best at
- Diagnostic breadth. Question research, content-structure analysis, FAQ suggestions and schema fixes, assembled into a backlog a team can work through
- An agentic assistant for asking content-gap and competitive questions in natural language and getting data-backed answers back
- Commerce integrations. For storefront clients, publishing and attribution paths we simply don't have
- Best fit: an in-house team, or an agency with spare editorial capacity, whose bottleneck is knowing what to write rather than finding someone to write it
What Found by AI is doing instead
- Sold only through white-label agency partners. You resell it, we run it, and the client sees your brand - never ours
- The monitoring is the brief. Topics come from what AI assistants actually answer for the client's category, not from a keyword tool
- Named editors from your team or your client's, with public professional profiles; written-by and reviewed-by bylines with structured author data on every article
- We publish, then measure: articles go live on the client's subdomain or your white-label domain - one DNS record either way, and the monthly report documents what moved
The operating difference
Detection is where most tools stop. The production is what we own.
Found by AI runs one loop for agency partners. Every week we put your client's buying questions to AI assistants, for example ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, and record who gets named. The questions your client is missing from are where the month's topics are chosen; then we write, publish and measure the content that answers them, and the Monthly AI-Search Visibility Report documents what changed. The monitoring is not a dashboard: it is the brief. All of it ships under your agency's brand.
| Generates content? | Publishes for you? | Publishing surface | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AthenaHQ | Recommendations, not articles | Commerce integrations only | Client's own site |
| Found by AI | Yes | Yes | A blog we host on the client's subdomain or your white-label domain, one DNS record, agency-branded; the same articles over the Content Delivery API or our WordPress connector |
AthenaHQ
Found by AI
AI does the research and the first draft; a named person from your team or your client's reviews, edits and signs it before it goes out. Articles the programme produces can carry the name of the person who reviewed them; posts your client's team write name their writer. Three publish modes, chosen per client: review before publish is the default for every new client brand, with a 7-day review window; publishing immediately after our quality gate is opt-in per client; dark until reviewed is available on request. Translations follow the same mode as the original. The client's own writers can publish alongside the articles the programme produces. We never solicit a partner's clients.
Structural comparison
Deliberately no plan or price table. Their packaging changes, and a stale figure on our page would be worse for you than no figure at all - check anything commercial on AthenaHQ's own site. What follows is the difference in shape, which doesn't go out of date.
| Found by AI | AthenaHQ | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A white-label content programme agencies resell | An AI-visibility platform a team subscribes to and operates |
| What arrives each month | Published articles and a report on what changed | Updated findings and a backlog of recommended changes |
| Who writes | We do | Your team |
| Who publishes | We do - to a blog we host on the client's subdomain or your white-label domain - one DNS record either way | Your team, on the client's own site (storefront integrations aside) |
| Author accountability | A named reviewer from your team or your client's - real job title, public profile linked - with role-accurate written-by / reviewed-by credits and structured author data | Whatever your team puts on the page |
| Review before publish | Three modes per client: review window (the default, 7 days), publish immediately (opt-in), dark until reviewed (on request); the client's own writers can publish alongside the articles the programme produces | Your own editorial process |
| Whose brand the client sees | Yours - white-label portal, report and emails | AthenaHQ's, unless you only pass on exports |
| Diagnostic breadth | Scoped to what the month's brief needs - we're not selling a research console | Broader, and it is their core strength |
Key differences
Choose AthenaHQ if...
- You already have the editorial capacity and the bottleneck is knowing what to write - a sharper diagnostic is genuinely the thing you're missing
- You want to interrogate the data yourself, ad hoc, rather than receive a brief someone else has already turned into articles
- Your clients are storefronts and the commerce integrations matter - that's real capability we don't have
Choose Found by AI if...
- You run an agency without spare editorial capacity and don't want to hire writers to work through a backlog
- You want the work briefed by evidence - what the assistants actually answer for your client's category - and published, not just recommended
- You need a monthly report you can take into the retainer meeting, with a named editor from your team or your client's behind the articles
- The client relationship must stay yours - your brand on every surface, and a supplier who never approaches them
Frequently asked questions
Does AthenaHQ write the articles for me?
No - and it isn't meant to. AthenaHQ is an AI-visibility platform: it tells a team which questions they're missing from, which sections to restructure, which FAQs to add and which markup to fix, and lets them interrogate that data conversationally. Turning it into pages is your job. Found by AI is a white-label content programme sold only through agencies: the monitoring becomes the brief, we write the articles, publish them and report on what moved, under your brand. If the bottleneck is knowing what to write, AthenaHQ fits better. If it's finding someone to write and publish it, that's us.
Can I use AthenaHQ and Found by AI together?
Plausibly, for a client where you want deeper diagnostics than a monthly brief provides. They don't compete for the same slot: one is a research and recommendation console you operate, the other is production you resell. What we wouldn't do is position ourselves as a cheaper AthenaHQ - the diagnostic breadth is theirs, and pretending otherwise would mislead you.
Which AI assistants do you cover?
We monitor the leading AI assistants - enough to see which buying questions in your client's category get answered without them. We deliberately don't publish an assistant-by-assistant scoreboard, because the point of our monitoring isn't the count, it's the brief it produces. If a client's audience lives on a specific assistant, ask us on the call and we'll tell you plainly whether we cover it.
Why is Found by AI sold only through agencies?
Because the programme needs someone who owns the client relationship, knows the category and can hold the strategic conversation - that's the agency, not us. So we stay behind you: the portal, the monthly report and the emails carry your brand, and we never approach your clients. Brands that find this page are served through a partner agency rather than by us directly.
Bottom line
AthenaHQ is a strong diagnostic: it tells a team exactly what to change and gives them a good way to explore why. If you have the capacity to act on that, it earns its place. Found by AI is a white-label AI-search content programme sold through agencies: the monitoring becomes the brief, we write and publish the articles with a named editor from your team or your client's behind them, and the report documents what changed - with your brand on every surface and a standing promise that we never approach your clients. Detection is where they stop; the production is what we own. We promise the process, not an outcome.
More content comparisons
Next step
Run the loop on one client. Judge us on three reports.
Bring one retained client. We show you the monitoring, the articles it produced, the review flow and a real report. Three monthly reports later, you decide.
Founder terms, for agencies signing up through 31 December 2026: the founder rate is locked when you claim it and runs on a 12-month agreement per client brand, with one brand swap inside the term. Your first client brand is the trial: one retained client, three monthly report cycles, then decide at the third report. Roll out on the founder term, or stop there and take a full export. No minimum on standard monthly terms. No per-brand setup fee; a one-time partner onboarding fee applies, waived for founding partners.
Not an agency? Then we're not the right people to buy from, but your agency might be. Get in touch and we'll tell you plainly whether there's a partner for you.