Track how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini mention your brand. Self-hosted, with data you own and prompts you write yourself. No demo call required.
Both products track how your brand appears across AI answer engines. How they get there is where they differ.
| Feature | TraceAIO | Profound |
|---|---|---|
| Source code | Open source, Apache 2.0 on GitHub | Closed, proprietary SaaS |
| Deployment | Self-hosted via Docker Compose. Runs on your infra. | Hosted SaaS only |
| Where your data lives | Your Postgres database. You own every row. | Vendor-managed cloud |
| LLM coverage | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, OpenAI API, Anthropic API | 9 surfaces incl. Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, DeepSeek |
| Real browser sessions | ✓ Yes, matches what users see | ✓ Yes |
| MCP server for Claude | ✓ 17 built-in tools, conversational queries | ✓ Yes |
| REST API & Swagger docs | ✓ Full API, every endpoint documented | ~ Upon request, beta |
| Webhooks on run completion | ✓ Configurable URL + Bearer auth | − Not offered |
| n8n community node | ✓ Trigger + action nodes published | − Not offered |
| Scheduled runs | ✓ Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly | ✓ Yes |
| Competitor & source tracking | ✓ Auto-detect, merge, block, citation gaps | ✓ Yes |
| Source Watchlist | ✓ Track specific URLs, sitemap auto-watch | ~ Page-level analytics |
| Time to first run | ✓ ~60 seconds with one docker compose up |
− Days to weeks. Sales call and POC. |
| Vendor lock-in | ✓ None. Export your data or fork the repo. | ~ Standard SaaS terms |
Every prompt, response, citation, and competitor mention lives in your own Postgres database. You can query it directly or back it up however you want. Your data stays with you.
The built-in MCP server gives Claude Code and Claude Desktop 17 tools to query your data. Ask in plain English: "which prompts mention our top competitor but never us?" Claude figures it out from your dataset.
Browser-based providers run through real browser sessions. What you see is what your customers see when they ask ChatGPT or Perplexity the same question. The answers come from production, not an API approximation.
Auto-generate brand-neutral prompts across topics, then add as many of your own as you want. Reuse them across runs and edit them in place. The whole set lives in your config, so it versions like code.
REST API with full Swagger docs, webhooks on run completion, an n8n community node, and an MCP server. Pipe results into Slack, HubSpot, BigQuery, or anything else you already run.
One docker compose up and you're running. The full product, working, on your laptop. Procurement can wait until you've decided you like it.
Pull the image and run your first analysis in under a minute. The full product runs on your own machine.