Traceten vs Profound
Profound is an enterprise AI visibility platform that tracks up to nine answer engines, with crawler analytics built from CDN and server logs. Traceten starts from your own site: which AI assistant sent each visit, what it earned and which crawlers read your pages, with AI visibility in beta on every plan.
Which one should you choose?
Choose Traceten if
- You want revenue per AI source from Stripe, Shopify, Lemon Squeezy, Polar or Paddle, not only mentions.
- You want every AI referral visit named, with a confidence score and a detection method.
- You want goals and funnels that show where AI visitors convert, beside the answers that sent them.
- You want published self-serve prices, starting with 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 Profound if
- You want the widest answer engine coverage: up to nine engines, plus ChatGPT Shopping, on Enterprise.
- You want prompt volume data drawn from licensed consumer panels.
- You need enterprise controls such as SSO and role-based access.
Side by side
Traceten and Profound, row by row. Every Profound fact links to its source.
AI traffic
Which AI assistant sent each visit, and how sure the classification is.
| Feature | Traceten | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| AI referral channel out of the boxVisits from AI assistants are grouped as their own source with no setup. | Yes | PartialReferrals reportIn Agent AnalyticsSource |
| 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 | PartialCrawler activity onlySource |
Revenue
Which AI assistant sent the buyers, from your payment provider's own records.
| Feature | Traceten | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | PartialConversion Pixel, in betaSource |
| Revenue per AI sourceAttributed revenue broken out by the assistant that sent the buyer. | Yes | PartialPixel conversions, in betaSource |
| 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 | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| 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 CDN and server logsSource |
| 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 | Reverse DNS, IP ranges, ASNAnthropic is listed as partially verifiedSource |
| 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. | Not published |
| 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 | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| Brand presence in AI answersRuns your prompts on answer engines and records whether your brand appears. | Yes | YesMentions, citations and sentimentSource |
| Answer enginesWhich engines your prompts run on. | Perplexity, Google AI OverviewsClaude and ChatGPT through each vendor's API, as an add-on | Up to 9 on EnterpriseIncluding ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and AI OverviewsSource |
| Prompts includedPrompts tracked for you, shared across every site on the account. | 1, 5 or 20 by planStarter, Growth and Pro | Custom on EnterpriseThe trial runs 50 prompts daily for 7 daysSource |
Product analytics
Where the product suites go deeper than Traceten does.
| Feature | Traceten | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | PartialPixel conversion events, in betaSource |
| 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 | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| CookiesWhat the tracking script stores in the visitor's browser. | First-party only | None for log analyticsThe beta Pixel sets first-party cookies after consentSource |
| IP addressesWhat happens to a visitor's IP address when it arrives. | Hashed on arrivalHMAC-SHA-256 under a per-site derived key | PartialPixel drops it for EU, UK and Swiss visitorsSource |
| EU data hostingWhether your analytics data can be stored in the EU. | NoEU data residency is not available yet | NoPixel data is processed in the United StatesSource |
| 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 | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| REST APIRead your data over HTTP. | YesDocumented with OpenAPI | PartialOn requestSource |
| 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 | Python, JavaScriptSource |
| 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 | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| Free planA plan you can stay on without paying. | Starter, $060,000 events and 100,000 AI crawl hits a month | Partial7-day trialSource |
| Entry paid planThe cheapest paid plan. | Growth, $49 a month | Custom, on EnterpriseSource |
| 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 | Custom package, plus agent creditsSource |
| Data retentionHow long visit data is kept. | 2 yearsOn every plan | All time on EnterpriseSource |
Checked 24 September 2026. Product names and logos belong to their owners; used here only to identify them.
Running both
Profound shows how answer engines describe your brand; Traceten shows what the visits those answers send are worth. Teams that invest heavily in AI visibility can run Profound for engine depth and Traceten for referral traffic, revenue and crawler logs on their own site.
Questions
01Is Traceten an AI visibility tool like Profound?
Partly. Traceten's AI visibility is in beta and covers Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, with Claude and ChatGPT through each vendor's API as an add-on. Profound tracks up to nine engines on Enterprise. Traceten's core is your own traffic: AI referrals, the revenue they drive and AI crawlers.
02How does each verify AI crawlers?
Profound publishes a mix of reverse DNS, IP range, ASN and heuristic checks, and lists Anthropic as partially verified. Traceten checks published IP ranges and reverse DNS where the crawler's vendor supports them.
03What does each cost?
Profound offers a free trial and custom Enterprise pricing. Traceten publishes its prices: Starter is $0 and Growth is $49 a month.
04Can Profound tie AI traffic to revenue?
Profound's Pixel, in beta, records conversions and attributes them to AI-channel traffic. Traceten connects to five payment providers and reports revenue per AI source, net of refunds.
AI is already sending you buyers. See the receipts.
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