We own cite-met. Three Impact is published by the same team, so this isn't an independent review and we don't give cite-met a score. What we can do is describe it from the same dataset as every other product, say plainly where it's weak, and tell you when to buy something else, which for many readers of this site is the right answer.
In one line: cite-met hosts your website and shows, page by page, which AI crawlers read it and which visits came from AI assistants. It's a good fit if you're building or moving a small-business site anyway. It isn't a prompt tracker, and if your question is "does ChatGPT recommend me?", Otterly or Peec AI answer it for less.
Hosting + analytics · ours
cite-met
Website hosting with AI-crawler and AI-referral analytics built in. We own it.
- Entry price
- $60/mo
- Free option
- Free visibility scan
- Engines
- None
- Sees AI crawlers
- Yes
Pick it if Small businesses rebuilding or moving their site who want hosting and AI crawler data in one place.
Skip it if You're staying on your current host, or you mainly want to know whether ChatGPT names you.
Prices from cite-met.com, checked Nov 1, 2026. Visit cite-met
What cite-met does
cite-met is a hosting platform for small-business websites with analytics built for AI search. You connect a site's code repository, and cite-met runs your build on Cloudflare's global network with managed DNS and SSL. Every request the site receives is then classified at the server: human visitor, search crawler, AI crawler, or a visit referred by an AI assistant.
That server-side position is the whole point. AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot fetch your HTML and leave; they don't run the JavaScript that Google Analytics and most tracking tags depend on, so those tools never see them. cite-met sees every fetch because it serves every page. It's also how we can publish the AI Search Observatory: aggregated, anonymised data from small-business sites cite-met hosts, which found AI crawlers fetched the typical site 4.4 times as often as Googlebot.
Around that sit one-click robots.txt and llms.txt fixes, sitemap checks, site health monitoring with outage alerts, Search Console from the Local plan, and AI mention tracking across major engines from the Growth plan.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Care | $60/mo | Hosting on Cloudflare's edge, DNS and SSL, per-page AI crawler analytics |
| Local | $300/mo | Everything in Care plus Search Console |
| Growth | $700/mo | Adds AI mention tracking across major engines, and Pulse |
| Authority | $2,000+ | Everything in Growth, at larger scope |
No setup fee; monthly and annual billing are the same rate. Mention tracking starts at Growth ($700). Source: cite-met.com/pricing, checked Nov 1, 2026. Prices in USD.
Compare like with like. $60 a month for hosting plus crawler analytics competes with a host plus a separate analytics tool, not with a prompt tracker. Prompt-style mention tracking only arrives at $700, where Otterly ($29 to $189) and Peec ($95 to $245) are far cheaper for that job alone.
How it compares, without a score
We don't score cite-met. We own it, and a score from us would be a self-serving rating. The facts below come from the same dataset as every other product, so you can compare line by line.
Run against our rubric honestly, cite-met would do well on "view of your own site", since that's its core, and poorly on engine coverage at entry, since the entry plan tracks no prompts at all. It doesn't fit the rubric cleanly because the rubric was written for prompt trackers, and cite-met is mainly something else.
- Engines at entry
- Crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google, Meta and others (server-side)
- Most engines available
- Mention tracking from the $700 Growth plan
- How it collects data
- Classifies every request your hosted site receives by user agent, server-side, so crawlers that never run JavaScript are counted.
- Refresh
- Live
- AI crawler / agent data
- Yes, per page, from server logs. This is the product's core
- Seats
- 1 user on Care and Local; roles and invites from Growth
- Trial
- Free visibility scan; no trial of the hosted plans
Where it's weak
We'd rather you hear these from us than find them after signing up.
- It's a hosting platform, not a standalone tracker. The crawler data comes from serving your site. If you're staying on Wix, Squarespace, Shopify or your current host, cite-met's script-based monitoring can't see crawlers, which is most of the value. (We exclude those monitored sites from the Observatory for the same reason.)
- No prompt-level rank tracking like Profound or Peec. cite-met tells you which AI agents read which pages and which visits came from AI assistants. It doesn't ask ChatGPT 50 questions a day and chart your share of voice, and mention tracking starts at $700.
- It's new and small. cite-met only began separating AI crawler fetches from AI referral visits in August 2026. It has fewer integrations than Semrush, Ahrefs or the funded trackers, and a small team behind it.
- It assumes you have a site build it can run. cite-met connects to a code repository and runs your build. That suits sites built by a developer or an AI app builder, not sites made in a drag-and-drop builder.
Where it's strong
- Sees AI crawlers that JavaScript analytics tags can't, because it counts requests at the server
- Separates AI crawler fetches from visits referred by AI assistants
- Hosting, robots.txt and llms.txt controls and analytics on one bill from $60
Where it's weaker
- It's a hosting platform: the crawler data needs your site hosted on it
- No prompt-level rank tracking like Profound or Peec; mention tracking only from $700
- New, from a small team, with fewer integrations than established tools
Who should pick something else
- You want to know if ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI names you. Start with Otterly.AI at $29, or Peec AI if you're an agency.
- You want agent analytics without moving hosts. Scrunch and Profound read AI traffic through CDN integrations on your existing setup, and Peec AI lists crawl insights on every plan.
- You're happy on your current builder. Check what AI can see with the free AI access checker first. Most mainstream builders are fine for AI search, as our platform comparison explains, and moving hosts is rarely the first fix.
Who it's for
A small business that's building a new site or rebuilding an old one, wants it hosted without managing servers, and wants to see AI crawler and AI referral traffic next to human and search traffic, on one bill. Our own sites, including this one, run on it, which is a disclosure rather than a recommendation.
Alternatives
- Otterly.AI$29/moA single business or consultant tracking its own name and a few competitors.
- Peec AI$95/moAgencies and in-house teams tracking a few brands or markets, who want daily data and a tidy UI.
- Scrunch$300/moMulti-location and mid-size brands that want prompt tracking and agent analytics in one tool.
- AthenaHQ$295/moBrands that need many engines, including Grok, DeepSeek and Mistral, and can budget by usage.
- ProfoundCustomLarge brands and enterprise marketing teams with budget and someone to act on the data.
- Ahrefs Brand Radar$199/moSEO teams and agencies on Ahrefs doing competitive and market research.
- Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit$99/moTeams already on Semrush who want AI visibility in the same reports.
Questions people ask
Is cite-met an AI visibility tracker like Profound or Peec AI?
No. cite-met is a website hosting platform with analytics that count AI crawler fetches and AI-referred visits at the server. It doesn't do prompt-level rank tracking the way Profound or Peec AI do; AI mention tracking starts on its $700 Growth plan.
How much does cite-met cost?
Care is $60 a month, Local $300, Growth $700 and Authority from $2,000, with no setup fee and the same rate monthly or annually (checked November 2026 on cite-met.com/pricing).
Can cite-met track AI crawlers on a site hosted somewhere else?
Not fully. Crawlers don't run JavaScript, so a script tag on an externally hosted site can't see them. Full crawler data needs the site hosted on cite-met, where every request is classified at the server.