Crawlytics vs Knowatoa, scoped honestly: Knowatoa monitors AI share-of-voice and probes crawler access; Crawlytics reads real bot traffic and serves llms.txt.
Quick answer
Knowatoa (knowatoa.com) is an affordable AI share-of-voice monitor across seven engines, paired with a standout AI Search Console that actively probes whether 24 AI user-agents can reach your site and tells you how to fix blocks. Crawlytics does a different job: it reads your real server-log bot traffic, generates and serves llms.txt plus clean HTML to AI fetchers, runs a free agent-readiness grader, and powers WebMCP agentic commerce. The two only truly overlap on one axis — AI crawler access and readiness. Pick Knowatoa if your main need is multi-engine share-of-voice plus a one-shot access check (it starts near $59/mo as of June 2026). Pick Crawlytics ($29.99-$49.99/mo) if you need real bot-traffic analytics, llms.txt, clean HTML to bots, or WebMCP. Many teams run both, because Crawlytics doesn't do share-of-voice and Knowatoa doesn't read your logs.
Knowatoa keeps coming up in the same breath as Crawlytics, and I want to be precise about why that comparison is only half fair. Knowatoa leads with prompt-sampling share-of-voice (sampling AI engines to see how often your brand gets mentioned), and Crawlytics doesn't do share-of-voice at all. If you're shopping for a brand-mention monitor, this isn't really a head-to-head; it's two tools for two jobs.
The one place these products genuinely meet is AI crawler access and readiness: can the AI bots actually reach and read your site? Knowatoa probes that with its AI Search Console; Crawlytics scores it with a free grader and then serves the fix. That's the axis I'll compare on directly, and everywhere else I'll be explicit about who does what so you can decide which one fits, or whether you want both. For transparency: I work on Crawlytics and we published this post. I've kept the Knowatoa facts to what's verifiable as of June 2026, linked their site, and called out where they win.
Two things, and the second is the genuinely distinctive one.
1. Prompt-sampling share-of-voice across seven AI engines. Knowatoa samples AI assistants with category and competitor prompts and reports how often your brand surfaces versus competitors. It's the affordable end of the share-of-voice category — a monitoring layer that answers "are we showing up in AI answers, and how do we compare." This is the core of the product, and it's the part Crawlytics has no equivalent for.
2. The AI Search Console — an active access probe. This is Knowatoa's standout feature and the reason it earns a spot in this comparison. Instead of just sampling answers, it actively tests whether 24 named AI user-agents (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and the rest) can actually access your site, checking robots.txt rules, server configuration, and security blocks like firewalls and bot-protection that might be quietly turning AI crawlers away. Then it gives fix guidance. There's also a free one-off audit to try it.
What the AI Search Console deliberately is not is log analysis. It probes permission ("would this bot be allowed in if it knocked") rather than attribution ("did this bot actually come, and what did it fetch"). As of June 2026 Knowatoa lacks traffic attribution, which is the cleanest line between the two products and worth keeping in mind throughout.
Crawlytics is an AI-agent-readiness platform built around three jobs: detect, serve, sell.
Detect — real bot-traffic analytics. Crawlytics reads your server logs and reports which AI bots fetched which pages, when, and how often, across 25+ signatures and 19 providers with three intent tiers. This is real fetch traffic from your own logs, not a permission probe.
Serve — llms.txt and clean HTML to AI fetchers. It auto-generates
llms.txt — llms-full.txt
from your sitemap and serves them at stable URLs, and it serves AI-optimized clean HTML and per-page markdown to AI user-agents (Googlebot excluded). It doesn't just score readiness — it ships the fix.
Sell — WebMCP agentic commerce. The Commerce tier exposes WebMCP tools so agents can transact on your site, with conversion attribution across five payment providers. WebMCP is a draft, emerging spec — today's real invokers are Perplexity's Comet browser, some extensions, and custom agents, not mainstream ChatGPT or Gemini — so treat it as forward-looking, not table stakes.
There's also a free agent-readiness grader that runs a real live scan and scores five categories: Discoverability, Content Accessibility, Bot Access Control, Protocol Discovery, and Attribution. That grader is where Crawlytics overlaps with Knowatoa's access probe.
This is the only axis where Crawlytics and Knowatoa are doing comparable work, so it deserves a clear-eyed look.
Knowatoa's AI Search Console actively probes 24 AI user-agents and tells you which are blocked and why. It's a focused, well-built permissions audit, and the 24-agent breadth is a real strength: you get a per-agent verdict, not a single yes/no.
Crawlytics approaches the same question from readiness scoring plus delivery. The free grader's Bot Access Control and Protocol Discovery categories flag the same class of problems (robots.txt blocks, missing protocol files, config that turns crawlers away), and the product then serves the remedy: a generated llms.txt, clean HTML to fetchers, and a re-crawl loop. For a practical playbook on the control side, see our guide to managing AI crawlers and the decision guide on blocking GPTBot.
The honest distinction: Knowatoa tells you, very thoroughly, whether a bot can get in. Crawlytics scores your readiness, serves the fix, and then, because it reads your logs, shows you whether the bot actually came. Permission versus arrival. Both are useful; they're not the same measurement.
Three places Knowatoa is the better pick, and the gaps are structural — Crawlytics doesn't compete on the first two.
If your job is to track brand mentions in AI answers across multiple engines and benchmark against competitors, Knowatoa does that and Crawlytics flatly does not. Share-of-voice is a monitoring discipline Crawlytics deliberately stays out of — we measure your logs and your crawl set, not a vendor-chosen prompt list. For that whole category, Knowatoa (and tools like it) are the right shelf.
Knowatoa's AI Search Console actively tests 24 named AI user-agents and reports a per-agent access verdict. Crawlytics scores access through its grader and serves the fix, but it doesn't run a 24-agent active probe in that exact form. If a granular, agent-by-agent "who can reach me right now" report is the artifact you want, Knowatoa's is purpose-built for it.
Knowatoa starts around $59/mo as of June 2026, with higher tiers near $199/mo. If your sole need is monitoring plus a one-shot access check, that entry point is attractive — and there's a free one-off audit to start with. (Crawlytics is cheaper at the very bottom, $29.99/mo, but for a different job; more on that under Pricing.)
Five places Crawlytics is the better pick, mostly because Knowatoa is a monitor and Crawlytics is a readiness-and-action platform.
Knowatoa probes access but lacks traffic attribution (as of June 2026). Crawlytics reads your server logs and reports which AI bots fetched which pages, when, and how often. That's the difference between "GPTBot is allowed in" and "GPTBot fetched these 40 pages yesterday and skipped these 12." For how log-grounded tools stack up, see our roundup of affordable options.
Crawlytics generates llms.txt and llms-full.txt from your sitemap, serves them at stable URLs, and re-crawls to keep them current. Knowatoa doesn't. Because one tool both generates the file and reads your bot logs, you also get a coverage view: pages you declared that no bot has fetched.
Crawlytics serves AI-optimized clean HTML and per-page markdown to AI user-agents, so fetchers get a readable version instead of your full JS-heavy page. That's a delivery capability, not a report. Knowatoa, as a monitor and prober, doesn't serve content to bots.
Crawlytics exposes WebMCP tools so agents can transact, with conversion attribution across five payment providers, and it adds bot ROI verdicts — valuable, parasite, or watch — weighted by endpoint cost tier, conversions, and intent. None of that is in a share-of-voice monitor's scope. (WebMCP remains a draft spec with a narrow real-invoker set today, so weigh it as forward-looking.)
Crawlytics stores zero IP addresses, sets no cookies, and works on aggregate-only data, so there's no cookie banner to add. That's an architectural choice that matters if you care about how a measurement tool handles data.
The prices look close, but they buy different things — so compare jobs, not just numbers.
Knowatoa (as of June 2026): entry around $59/mo, a mid tier near $199/mo, and enterprise above that, plus a free one-off audit to try the AI Search Console. You're paying primarily for share-of-voice monitoring plus the active access probe. Check knowatoa.com for current numbers, since pricing in this category moves.
Crawlytics: two paid tiers and a free entry point.
The clean read: Knowatoa's $59 buys monitoring you can't get from Crawlytics, and Crawlytics' $29.99 buys real bot analytics and llms.txt serving you can't get from Knowatoa. They're not substitutes at any price. See the full Crawlytics pricing for details.
Who should pick what, by what you're actually trying to do.
Knowatoa. Share-of-voice across seven engines is its core job, and Crawlytics doesn't do it. If this is your headline need, Crawlytics isn't on your shortlist — pick Knowatoa or another monitor and move on.
Either, leaning Crawlytics if you want the fix shipped. Knowatoa's 24-agent probe is excellent for the diagnosis. Crawlytics scores the same access questions free and then serves llms.txt and clean HTML so the fix is in the product, not just on your to-do list. If you want a one-shot diagnostic, Knowatoa; if you want diagnosis plus remediation, Crawlytics.
Crawlytics. Real server-log analytics (which bots fetched which pages, when, how often) is structurally outside what an access-prober does. Knowatoa can confirm a bot is allowed; only a log-grounded tool tells you it showed up. Start with our agent-readiness tools roundup if you're comparing options.
Crawlytics. WebMCP commerce with conversion attribution is category whitespace; no share-of-voice monitor offers it. Just remember WebMCP is a draft spec with a narrow real-invoker set in June 2026, so adopt it as a forward bet, not a finished standard.
Both. Run Knowatoa for share-of-voice and the access probe; run Crawlytics for real bot analytics, llms.txt, clean HTML, and WebMCP. They overlap only on access and readiness, so the duplication is minimal and the combined coverage is broad. For a structured way to vet your stack, see our AI search visibility audit walkthrough.
Written by Crawlytics Team. Crawlytics tracks AI bots, generates llms.txt, and powers WebMCP commerce, all from one snippet on any stack. See how it works →
Knowatoa is an affordable AI share-of-voice monitor with a strong AI Search Console that probes whether 24 AI user-agents can access your site; Crawlytics reads your real server-log bot traffic, generates and serves llms.txt and clean HTML to bots, and powers WebMCP commerce. They overlap only on crawler access and readiness.
For teams that want affordable multi-engine share-of-voice tracking plus an active access probe, Knowatoa is reasonably priced at around $59/mo as of June 2026 and its AI Search Console is genuinely useful. It does not track your real AI bot traffic, generate llms.txt, or handle agent commerce, so it is a monitoring tool, not an agent-readiness platform.
No. As of June 2026 Knowatoa probes whether AI user-agents can access your site but lacks traffic attribution, so it does not report which bots actually fetched which pages from your server logs. If you need real bot-traffic analytics you need a log-grounded tool such as Crawlytics.
Yes, on the readiness axis. The free Crawlytics grader at /agent-ready scores Bot Access Control and Protocol Discovery among five categories, flagging robots.txt and config issues that block AI crawlers. The difference is that Crawlytics also serves the fix (llms.txt, clean HTML) and reads your real bot traffic, where Knowatoa probes access only.
Yes, and many teams should. Knowatoa covers prompt-sampling share-of-voice across engines plus its active access probe; Crawlytics covers real bot-traffic analytics, llms.txt, clean HTML to fetchers, and WebMCP commerce. They overlap only on access and readiness, so running both gives you mention tracking and the technical readiness stack with little duplication.
This page is part of Crawlytics.app. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt