Agentrail vs Known Agents (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Known Agents grades higher than Agentrail: 2.6 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
Known Agents grades higher on value for money, the free plan and platforms. They get the same grade on features and ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Agentrail
Shows how AI agents use your docs, APIs and MCPs, and where they fail
Known Agents
Analytics and access control for the AI bots that visit your site
Which one is for you
Pick Agentrail if
- Fits if you make a developer tool and more of your users now arrive through coding agents
- Works for teams fixing docs, sign-in or an MCP server for agent use
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to know how AI chat answers mention or rank your brand
- Not for you if you sell to consumers rather than developers
- Tight if you have heavy agent traffic and a fixed budget: it's $0.10 per journey and $1 per simulation
- Too light for more than one product on the free tier, which covers 1 surface and 100 journeys that don't roll over
- Watch out: setup depends on your stack and no integrations are named, so expect engineering time
Pick Known Agents if
- Fits if you publish online and want to choose which AI crawlers can read your site
- Works for developers who need to verify AI agents in their own code through an API
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to know what ChatGPT says about your brand, as it doesn't check answers
- Tight if your site is busy: every API call and batch item counts, so budget about twice your human visits
- Not for you if you can't touch your server, CDN or WordPress setup, as there's no pasted script
- Watch out: the free plan stops at 100,000 events a month, with 1 project and only the basic features
- Watch out: custom features, a custom API and live support are on Enterprise, arranged through a demo
How we grade them
| 2.0GPAAgentrailFair | 2.6GPAKnown AgentsGood | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CNo monthly plan: after the free allowance it's $0.10 per agent journey and $1 per simulation, with volume tiers and an optional spend cap. So 1,000 journeys a month comes to about $90 before discounts, in the category's usual range. | BStartup is $25 a month billed yearly, or $29 monthly, for 3 projects and 1 million events. That's inside the cheaper quarter of this category, which starts at $29, and well under Siteline's $49. |
| Free plan and trial | CFree every month with no card: 100 agent journeys, 10 simulations, weekly readiness scans and fixes, on 1 product surface. Any product with real agent traffic will pass 100 journeys, and nothing rolls over. | BFree with no card and no time limit: 1 project and 100,000 events a month, which the vendor says covers most websites. It's a hard cap, though, and the premium features are paid. |
| Features | CJourney stitching across docs, APIs, SDKs and MCPs, failure detection, sandboxed agent runs, readiness scans and fixes with a prompt or pull request. It does that job fully, but it's a smaller one, and it doesn't track AI chat answers. | CBot and agent analytics, AI chat referrals, a robots.txt that updates itself and an API to verify agents. It does that job fully, but it's a smaller one: it doesn't check what AI engines say about your brand. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. How it connects depends on your stack, and the vendor only says it works from signals in your existing systems, so expect some engineering time. | CNo rating on record. Data comes from your server, CDN or WordPress rather than a pasted script, so there's a bit of plumbing before anything shows up. |
| Platforms and integrations | CWeb only, and no integrations are named in the listing, though it looks at how agents use your own APIs, SDKs and MCP servers. | BWeb only, with no desktop or phone app. It hooks into WordPress, Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, AWS, Google Cloud, Vercel and Node.js, and has an agent identification API. |
| Best for | seeing where coding agents fail on your product | seeing which AI bots visit your site |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Agentrail and Known Agents. How we grade
Where they differ
- Agentrail also covers AI agents.
At a glance
| Agentrail | Known Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | Not published | $25 per month for 1M events, billed yearly ($29 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | Free every month: 100 agent journeys, 10 simulation runs, weekly Agent Readiness scans and recommendations, on 1 product surface. No card needed. | 1 project and 100,000 events a month with the basic features; the event limit is a hard cap. No credit card needed. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Aeternus Inc. | Bit Flip LLC |
| Price read from | agentrail.co | knownagents.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Agentrail
- Beyond the free allowance it bills $0.10 per agent journey and $1 per simulation run, with graduated volume tiers and an optional monthly spend cap.
- It studies agents using your product; it does not track how AI chat answers mention or rank your brand.
- Free allowances reset on the 1st of each month and do not roll over; the free tier covers one product surface.
- How it connects depends on your stack; the vendor says it works from signals in your existing systems.
Known Agents
- It measures bot visits and AI referrals to your site; it does not check what AI engines say about your brand in their answers.
- Events include every API call and each item in a batch; the vendor suggests budgeting about twice your monthly human visits.
- The free plan stops at its monthly event limit; paid plans get an email suggesting an upgrade when they run over.
- It needs a server, CDN or WordPress integration to collect data, rather than a script pasted into the page.
Key features
Agentrail
- Journey reconstruction
- Stitches separate requests to the website, docs, APIs, SDKs and MCP tools into the single task an agent was trying to complete.
- Breakpoint detection
- Finds where agents retry, loop, give up or fail, and ranks the problems by how many journeys they affect.
- Simulations
- Runs real coding agents on your prompts in clean sandboxes to see whether they choose your product and finish the task.
- Agent Readiness scans
- Weekly scans of the website, docs and app as agents see them, with and without JavaScript, each finding with evidence and a fix prompt.
- Recommendations
- Ranked fixes across docs, authentication, APIs, SDKs and MCPs, each with a prompt or pull request to ship it.
Known Agents
- Agent Analytics
- Lists the crawlers, scrapers and AI agents visiting a site in real time, with traffic trends, pages visited, sessions, errors and robots.txt violations per agent.
- AI chat referral tracking
- Counts human visits that come from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek and other AI chats, kept apart from bot traffic.
- Automatic robots.txt
- Serves a robots.txt that blocks or allows agents by category and updates itself as new bots are found; the WordPress plugin can block bots that ignore it.
- Agent Identification API
- Identifies and verifies the agent behind an incoming request from your own code, for setting access rules by verified identity.
- Server-side collection
- Data is sent from the server, CDN or backend rather than a browser script, so it still works when browser analytics are blocked.
- Agent Directory
- A public directory of thousands of agents and bots that says who runs each one, what it does and how to manage its access.
Plans
Agentrail
Free$0
100 agent journeys and 10 simulation runs a month, weekly readiness scans, recommendations, 1 product surface and community support.
Known Agents
Free$0
1 project and 100,000 events a month, with basic features. The vendor says this covers most websites.
Startup$25
per month for 1M events, billed yearly ($29 billed monthly)
3 projects, 1 million events a month, the premium features and priority support.
Growth$250
per month for 10M events, billed yearly ($299 billed monthly)
10 projects, 10 million events a month, the premium features and high-priority support.
EnterpriseCustom
Unlimited projects, usage-based events, custom features and API, and dedicated live support. Arranged through a demo.
Ways to pay less
Agentrail
- Startups
Credits for startups and open-source maintainers
Agentrail says early-stage startups and open-source maintainers can apply for credits by contacting the team.
Known Agents
- Annual discount
Save up to 16% with yearly billing
Known Agents lists Startup at $25 a month billed yearly instead of $29 (14% less) and Growth at $250 instead of $299 (16% less).
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Agentrail or Known Agents?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Agentrail publishes no starting price, and Known Agents starts at $25 per month for 1M events, billed yearly ($29 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, Agentrail or Known Agents?
As of Oct 23, 2026, both Agentrail and Known Agents have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.