Traceten vs Otterly.AI
Otterly.AI monitors brand mentions and citations across AI search engines, with GEO audits, agency workspaces and AI crawler logs from its Standard plan. Traceten measures your own site end to end: AI crawlers verified against IP ranges and reverse DNS, each AI visit named with a confidence and a method, and the revenue it drove, with AI visibility in beta.
Which one should you choose?
Choose Traceten if
- You want AI crawlers checked against IP ranges and reverse DNS wherever the vendor publishes them, not matched by user agent alone.
- You want every AI referral visit named, with a confidence score and a detection method.
- You want revenue per AI source from Stripe, Shopify, Lemon Squeezy, Polar or Paddle, net of refunds.
- You want AI crawler logging on every plan, including a $0 plan.
Every plan also includes
- AI traffic by assistant
- Revenue attribution
- Verified AI crawler logs
- AI visibility and citationsBeta
- Goals and funnels
- Real-time and visitor journeys
- API, MCP, CLI and webhooks
Choose Otterly.AI if
- You want AI search monitoring as the main job, with prompts tracked daily across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot.
- You run an agency and want unlimited workspaces, pitch workspaces for prospects and branded Looker Studio reports.
- You want GEO audits and prompt research next to your visibility data.
Side by side
Traceten and Otterly.AI, row by row. Every Otterly.AI fact links to its source.
AI traffic
Which AI assistant sent each visit, and how sure the classification is.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| AI referral channel out of the boxVisits from AI assistants are grouped as their own source with no setup. | Yes | PartialAI-referred visits in Agent AnalyticsFrom your server or edge logsSource |
| Named assistant on each visitWhich assistant sent the visit, not only that it came from AI. | 25+ assistantsChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and more | Not published |
| Confidence and detection method on every visitA confidence score and the method behind it (referrer, UTM tag or user agent) on each AI visit. | YesReturned with every session in the API | Not published |
| AI traffic in real timeCurrent visitors, with the AI source that sent each one. | YesThe live view shows each current visitor's AI source | Not published |
Revenue
Which AI assistant sent the buyers, from your payment provider's own records.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| Native payment integrationsPayment providers that connect directly, with no events for you to send. | Stripe, Shopify, Lemon Squeezy, Polar and PaddlePlus a payment API for any other provider | Not published |
| Revenue per AI sourceAttributed revenue broken out by the assistant that sent the buyer. | Yes | Not published |
| Refunds netted outRefunds come off revenue on the day they happen. | Yes | Not published |
| Multi-currencyRevenue in other currencies, converted at the rate for the day of the order. | 30 currenciesConverted at the order date's rate | Not published |
AI crawlers
Which AI bots read your pages, and whether they are who they claim to be.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| AI crawler visit loggingCrawlers never run JavaScript, so they have to be seen on the server. | Server or edge middlewareNext.js, Express, Hono and Cloudflare | From server, edge or file logsCloudflare, Netlify, WordPress, a webhook or a file uploadSource |
| Crawler verificationChecks that a crawler comes from the network its vendor says it uses. | IP ranges and reverse DNSWhere the crawler's vendor supports them | User agent matchVerification is not describedSource |
| Crawls includedAI crawler requests included before any limit applies. | 100,000 to 1,500,000 a monthStarter 100,000, Growth 650,000, Pro 1,500,000. Separate from your events. | 200K to 1M events a monthStandard 200K, Premium 1M; not on LiteSource |
| Past the crawl allowanceWhat happens when AI crawlers use up the allowance. | Opt-in overage at $0.00004 / crawl hitOn Growth and Pro. Without it, totals stay exact with less detail. Starter pauses at the limit. | Not published |
AI visibilityBeta
Whether AI answers mention your brand, on prompts you choose.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| Brand presence in AI answersRuns your prompts on answer engines and records whether your brand appears. | Yes | YesBrand Visibility Index and link citationsSource |
| Answer enginesWhich engines your prompts run on. | Perplexity, Google AI OverviewsClaude and ChatGPT through each vendor's API, as an add-on | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, CopilotClaude, AI Mode and Gemini as add-onsSource |
| Prompts includedPrompts tracked for you, shared across every site on the account. | 1, 5 or 20 by planStarter, Growth and Pro | 15 to 400 by planLite 15, Standard 100, Premium 400; Enterprise from 1,000Source |
Product analytics
Where the product suites go deeper than Traceten does.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| FunnelsSee where visitors drop off between steps. | Up to 8 steps | Not published |
| GoalsCustom events and page matches you want to count. | 200 per site | Not published |
| Retention cohortsHow often users come back after a first action. | No | Not published |
| Session replayRecordings of what individual visitors did on the page. | No | Not published |
| Feature flagsTurn features on for some users and not others. | No | Not published |
| ExperimentsTest a change against a control and measure the result. | No | Not published |
| HeatmapsWhere visitors click and scroll on a page. | No | Not published |
Privacy
Cookies, IP addresses and where the data lives.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| CookiesWhat the tracking script stores in the visitor's browser. | First-party only | Log-based, no consent neededOnly AI crawler and agent traffic is collectedSource |
| IP addressesWhat happens to a visitor's IP address when it arrives. | Hashed on arrivalHMAC-SHA-256 under a per-site derived key | Removed before storageUsed only for de-duplicationSource |
| EU data hostingWhether your analytics data can be stored in the EU. | NoEU data residency is not available yet | PartialAWS FrankfurtPublic monitoring data is stored in the USSource |
| Open source or self-hostedWhether you can read the code or run it yourself. | NoA hosted service | Not published |
Developer
Build on your data, or hand it to an agent.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| REST APIRead your data over HTTP. | YesDocumented with OpenAPI | YesWith a published OpenAPI specSource |
| MCP serverAsk an AI agent about your data through the Model Context Protocol. | Yes | YesHostedSource |
| CLIUse your data from a terminal or a coding agent. | Yes | Not published |
| Server SDKsSend events and payments from your backend. | Node, Python, Go | Not published |
| Outbound webhooksSend events to your own endpoint as they happen. | YesSigned with HMAC-SHA-256 | Not published |
| API rate limitsWe link each vendor's own rate-limit docs and print no figures, ours included. | Scales with plan | PublishedSource |
Pricing
What it costs to start, and what you pay for.
| Feature | Traceten | Otterly.AI |
|---|---|---|
| Free planA plan you can stay on without paying. | Starter, $060,000 events and 100,000 AI crawl hits a month | NoA 14-day free trialSource |
| Entry paid planThe cheapest paid plan. | Growth, $49 a month | $29 a monthLite, 15 promptsSource |
| What you pay forThe unit a plan is measured in. | Events, plus AI crawl hitsPageviews, custom events and goals on one meter; crawls on their own | Search promptsExtra engines are add-onsSource |
| Data retentionHow long visit data is kept. | 2 yearsOn every plan | Not published |
Checked 30 September 2026. Product names and logos belong to their owners; used here only to identify them.
Running both
Otterly.AI can stay your AI search monitor while Traceten covers your own traffic. Otterly shows where AI answers mention and cite you; Traceten shows which verified crawlers read your pages, which assistant sent each visit and what those visits earned.
Questions
01Both log AI crawlers. How do they differ?
Otterly.AI reads your logs through Cloudflare, Netlify, WordPress, a webhook or a file upload, identifies AI agents by user agent and removes IP addresses before storage. It is included from the Standard plan. Traceten records crawls with server or edge middleware on every plan and checks published IP ranges and reverse DNS where the crawler's vendor supports them.
02Can Otterly.AI tie AI traffic to revenue?
Otterly.AI does not describe revenue attribution. It offers a free Looker Studio template that shows AI referral traffic from GA4. Traceten connects to five payment providers and reports revenue per AI source, net of refunds.
03Which one tracks more answer engines?
Otterly.AI tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot on every plan, with Claude, Google AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons. Traceten's AI visibility is in beta, with Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on every plan and Claude and ChatGPT through each vendor's API as an add-on.
04What does each cost?
Otterly.AI starts at $29 a month on Lite, with a 14-day free trial. Traceten's Starter plan is $0, and Growth is $49 a month.
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