Known Agents vs TollBit (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, TollBit grades higher than Known Agents: 3.0 against 2.6 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
TollBit grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Known Agents
Analytics and access control for the AI bots that visit your site
Which one is for you
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
Pick TollBit if
- Fits if you run a news or media site and want AI companies to pay for what they read
- Works for publishers that want to see which AI bots read pages without sending visitors back
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to track what AI answers say about your brand, as it doesn't
- Not for you if you can't touch your CDN, since that's how it connects
- Tight if you're counting on the income, since it depends on AI companies paying for access through TollBit
- Watch out: Agent Site, the product for brands, is sold through a demo with no price shown
How we grade them
| 2.6GPAKnown AgentsGood | 3.0GPATollBitVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | 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. | AFree for publishers: the analytics, the bot paywall and the licensing tools cost nothing, and TollBit takes its fee from AI companies instead. Its rivals here, Known Agents and Siteline, charge from $25 and $49 a month. Agent Site for brands goes through a demo, with no price shown. |
| Free plan and trial | 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. | AFree outright for publishers, with no cap on record, and you keep all of what AI companies pay through it. Only the brand product, Agent Site, needs a demo to get going. |
| Features | 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. | CAI bot and agent analytics, a paywall that makes bots pay per use, licensed retrieval, content controls, a scraper audit and agent-only pages. It does that job fully, but it's a different one: it doesn't check how AI answers mention you. |
| Ease of use | 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. | CNo rating on record. It goes in through your CDN, such as Cloudflare, Fastly or Akamai, rather than a script on the page. The FAQ puts that at under 30 minutes, but someone needs access to the CDN. |
| Platforms and integrations | 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. | BWeb only, with no desktop or phone app. It hooks into Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront, Google Cloud CDN, Azure Front Door and Vercel, and has an API and support for MCP and NLWeb. |
| Best for | seeing which AI bots visit your site | publishers who want AI companies to pay for access |
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: Known Agents and TollBit. How we grade
Price against what you get
Known Agents starts at $25 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. TollBit has no paid plan and scores 2.3.
They score the same, and TollBit starts $25 a month lower. Of the other AI search visibility tools on the chart, 4 score higher than Known Agents for less, and none scores higher than TollBit for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| Known Agents | TollBit | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free |
| Starts at | $25 per month for 1M events, billed yearly ($29 billed monthly) | Free |
| Free plan | 1 project and 100,000 events a month with the basic features; the event limit is a hard cap. No credit card needed. | Free for publishers: AI bot analytics, the bot paywall and licensing tools at no charge, and publishers keep all the revenue AI companies pay them through TollBit. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Bit Flip LLC | Novoscribe, Inc. |
| Price read from | knownagents.com | tollbit.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
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.
TollBit
- The Agent Site product for brands is sold through a demo, and the site does not say what it costs.
- Publisher revenue depends on AI companies paying for access through TollBit; the vendor says it works with AI demand partners.
- It works through the site's CDN, such as Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai or CloudFront, rather than as a stand-alone app.
- It reports on AI bot traffic to a site, not on how AI chat answers mention a brand.
Key features
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.
TollBit
- AI traffic analytics
- Shows which AI bots and agents request your pages, what they read, how often, and which pages they read without sending visitors, across a portfolio of sites.
- Bot and agent paywall
- Replaces anonymous scraping with authenticated access and usage-based prices that the publisher sets for AI companies.
- Licensed retrieval access
- Offers AI systems licenses for retrieval use, from summaries to full article display, and supports direct one-to-one licensing deals.
- Content controls and scraper audit
- Choose what AI systems may access on your site, and test what scrapers can still retrieve.
- Agent Site and CMS
- Serve agents their own version of a site, with extra pages, FAQs and fact boxes they see and visitors do not, tailored by AI platform.
- Agent protocols and task tests
- Supports MCP, WebMCP, NLWeb, A2A and other agent protocols, and measures whether agents complete customer tasks on your site.
Plans
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.
TollBit
Publishers$0
Analytics, bot paywall, content controls and licensing at no charge; TollBit charges AI companies a transaction fee instead.
Ways to pay less
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).
TollBit
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Known Agents or TollBit?
As of Oct 23, 2026, TollBit is cheaper to start with: it is free, against $25 a month for Known Agents. Known Agents starts at $25 per month for 1M events, billed yearly ($29 billed monthly), and TollBit is free.
Which has a free plan, Known Agents or TollBit?
As of Oct 23, 2026, both Known Agents and TollBit 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.