Pick
Botify
Pick Botify if you want the better-funded company ($82.6M raised).
Head-to-head review · Updated June 2026
Botify vs OnCrawl: which one wins in 2026?
Botify and OnCrawl both claim to do the same thing: tell you where your brand shows up in AI search. They go about it differently enough that the choice matters. Botify is the more-funded incumbent; OnCrawl is the leaner challenger.
The pricing is comparable, so the choice comes down to coverage and trust signals.
The verdict
Pick
OnCrawl
OnCrawl is the right pick if your team prefers their approach and pricing fits.
If neither is right, GrowthManager.ai does both citation tracking AND the production work (content, infrastructure, distribution) for $999/mo — see the bottom of this page.
The case for Botify
Botify has raised $82.6M raised (Series C ($55M, September 2021)). Founded by Adrien Menard, based in Paris, France. On their site they list 10 named customers including L'Oreal, Expedia, The New York Times, Marriott. Pricing starts at Custom.
Enterprise SEO platform built around log file analysis and search agent visibility.
What people praise
- Depth of crawl data surfaces technical SEO issues that lighter tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs miss on enterprise sites.
- Log file analysis shows exactly how Googlebot actually crawls the site versus what the crawler thinks should be crawled.
- PageWorkers lets non-engineering teams ship technical SEO fixes without a dev queue.
- Pulls richer non-branded query data than Google Search Console exposes via the dashboard.
Where it falls short
- Steep learning curve; users report weeks to months before extracting full value from the platform.
- Platform UI can become extremely slow and almost unusable when crawling large sites.
- Customer support quality is inconsistent and frustrates users learning the tool.
- Pricing starts around $30K/year and reaches $400K+, locking out small and mid-market teams.
The case for OnCrawl
Founded by Francois Goube, Tanguy Moal, based in Bordeaux, France. On their site they list 10 named customers including Adidas, L'Oreal, Ticketmaster, Harrods.
Enterprise SEO data platform combining crawl, logs, and AI insights.
What people praise
- JavaScript-capable crawler scales to 300M+ URLs per project, putting it in the same league as Botify and DeepCrawl for enterprise sites.
- Log file analyzer processes 500M+ log lines per day, surfacing how Googlebot, Bingbot, and AI crawlers actually behave on the site.
- Cross-references crawl data, server logs, GSC, GA4, Adobe Analytics, and Majestic backlinks in one analysis - few competitors integrate all five sources.
- 100% unsampled data analysis appeals to enterprise SEOs frustrated with GA4 sampling and Search Console limits.
Where it falls short
- No public pricing - book-a-demo gating means SMBs and indie consultants are filtered out before evaluation.
- Capterra rating of 3.8 is the lowest among major technical SEO crawlers, with reviewers citing UI complexity and pricing opacity.
- Steep learning curve - the platform assumes data-science fluency, which leaves marketers needing a technical SEO specialist to extract value.
- Self-serve onboarding is limited; complex multi-source setups (logs plus crawl plus analytics) typically need OnCrawl's customer success team.
Pricing, tier by tier
Tier 1
Botify
Enterprise
Custom
- URL crawling at enterprise volume (100K to 1M+ URLs)
- Log file analysis
- Botify Analytics, Intelligence, and Activation modules
- Integrations with GSC, GA, Adobe Analytics
OnCrawl
—
—
Feature parity
What each one ships that the other doesn't. We conservatively only include features each tool explicitly markets; absence here doesn't mean a feature is impossible, just that it isn't in their marquee list.
Only on Botify
- Site Crawl. Enterprise-grade crawler that handles multi-million-URL sites with deep technical SEO diagnostics.
- Botify Analytics. Combines crawl, log, and rank data with GSC and Adobe Analytics for revenue attribution.
- Botify Intelligence. Forecasts the revenue and conversion impact of specific SEO actions before you do them.
- PageWorkers. Lets marketing teams deploy SEO fixes to live pages without involving engineering.
- Botify GEO. Tracks brand visibility across generative AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Only on OnCrawl
- SEO Crawler. JavaScript-capable cloud crawler that audits 300M+ URLs, mapping site architecture, internal linking, and orphan pages.
- Data3 Cross-Analysis. Combines crawl, logs, GSC, GA4, Adobe Analytics, and Majestic data in unified reports with custom segmentation.
- SEO Impact Report. Connects technical SEO metrics to business outcomes like organic revenue and conversions.
- REST API. Full developer API with automated crawl scheduling and log ingestion for enterprise SEO automation.
On both
Log File Analyzer
When each one wins
When Botify wins
- You want the better-funded incumbent. Botify has raised $82.6M raised, giving it more runway and shipping velocity.
- Depth of crawl data surfaces technical SEO issues that lighter tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs miss on enterprise sites.
When OnCrawl wins
- JavaScript-capable crawler scales to 300M+ URLs per project, putting it in the same league as Botify and DeepCrawl for enterprise sites.
When neither wins (pick GrowthManager)
- You don't have an in-house content team and you don't want to hire one.
- You want one $999/mo invoice instead of stacking Botify plus an agency.
- You need the team that measures to also act on the data, in the same week.
- You're a B2B SaaS, services firm, or e-commerce brand at $20K+ MRR.
Reasons to pick one over the other
Reasons to pick Botify over OnCrawl
- Public pricing. Botify publishes 1 tiers on its website; OnCrawl requires a sales conversation.
- Better-funded incumbent. Botify has raised $82.6M raised, giving it more runway and shipping velocity than OnCrawl.
- More verified reviews. Botify has 78 G2 reviews vs OnCrawl's none on file, so the average rating carries more weight.
- What users praise most. Depth of crawl data surfaces technical SEO issues that lighter tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs miss on enterprise sites.
Reasons to pick OnCrawl over Botify
- What users praise most. JavaScript-capable crawler scales to 300M+ URLs per project, putting it in the same league as Botify and DeepCrawl for enterprise sites.
Switching from one to the other
From Botify to OnCrawl
Export your saved queries and prompt panels from Botify (most tools support CSV export). Most OnCrawl setups can import the same query list in a single CSV upload. Expect 1-2 days of parallel running so you can validate OnCrawl's data againstBotify's; one to two weeks of full reconciliation before you cancel Botify. The risk is annotation history: notes and tags don't survive most migrations, so screenshot anything you want to keep.
From OnCrawl to Botify
Same flow in reverse. Export from OnCrawl, import to Botify. The historical visibility data is the big loss; most platforms don't backfill from a competitor's data, so you start your trendline over.
From either to GrowthManager.ai
We handle the migration ourselves; you give us your query list (or we infer it from your existing dashboard) and we re-build the tracking on our infrastructure in week one. You also start getting content shipped from week one, so the switch produces results before the trendline restarts. The conversation that kicks this off is a 20-minute call.
Side by side, every number we could verify
| Botify | OnCrawl | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at (USD/mo) | Custom | Custom |
| Founded | 2012 | 2013 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Bordeaux, France |
| Funding raised | $82.6M raised | — |
| AI platforms tracked | — | — |
| G2 rating | 4.4 / 5 (78 reviews) | 4.4 / 5 |
| Named customers | 10 | 10 |
| SOC 2 Type 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | ✓ Yes |
| HIPAA | — | — |
What real users say
Below: the recurring themes from G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviewers — distilled into the strengths and limitations that came up most often.
Botify — what users praise
- Depth of crawl data surfaces technical SEO issues that lighter tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs miss on enterprise sites.
- Log file analysis shows exactly how Googlebot actually crawls the site versus what the crawler thinks should be crawled.
- PageWorkers lets non-engineering teams ship technical SEO fixes without a dev queue.
- Pulls richer non-branded query data than Google Search Console exposes via the dashboard.
- Segmentation and reporting handle multi-million-URL sites without choking like SaaS crawlers do.
Botify — what users complain about
- Steep learning curve; users report weeks to months before extracting full value from the platform.
- Platform UI can become extremely slow and almost unusable when crawling large sites.
- Customer support quality is inconsistent and frustrates users learning the tool.
- Pricing starts around $30K/year and reaches $400K+, locking out small and mid-market teams.
- No transparent pricing forces every buyer through a sales cycle with multi-month negotiation.
OnCrawl — what users praise
- JavaScript-capable crawler scales to 300M+ URLs per project, putting it in the same league as Botify and DeepCrawl for enterprise sites.
- Log file analyzer processes 500M+ log lines per day, surfacing how Googlebot, Bingbot, and AI crawlers actually behave on the site.
- Cross-references crawl data, server logs, GSC, GA4, Adobe Analytics, and Majestic backlinks in one analysis - few competitors integrate all five sources.
- 100% unsampled data analysis appeals to enterprise SEOs frustrated with GA4 sampling and Search Console limits.
- 30-day ROI guarantee gives risk cover for enterprise buyers piloting against incumbent BrightEdge or Conductor deployments.
OnCrawl — what users complain about
- No public pricing - book-a-demo gating means SMBs and indie consultants are filtered out before evaluation.
- Capterra rating of 3.8 is the lowest among major technical SEO crawlers, with reviewers citing UI complexity and pricing opacity.
- Steep learning curve - the platform assumes data-science fluency, which leaves marketers needing a technical SEO specialist to extract value.
- Self-serve onboarding is limited; complex multi-source setups (logs plus crawl plus analytics) typically need OnCrawl's customer success team.
- BrightEdge ownership raises long-term roadmap questions for customers who prefer best-of-breed technical SEO over consolidated suites.
A third option
Both Botify and OnCrawlare tracking tools. They tell you what's wrong with your AI visibility. Neither one fixes it. That's our pitch for GrowthManager.ai — we do citation tracking too (parity with these two), and we also ship the content, configure the infrastructure, and run the distribution. $999/mo, managed end-to-end. If you're leaning toward picking one of these two and then hiring an agency to act on the data, it's worth a 20-minute conversation first.
Other comparisons in this space
Same shape, different pairs. Pick a comparison that shares a tool with this one.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Botify or OnCrawl?
Honestly: neither one fully solves the problem. Botify and OnCrawl are tracking tools — they tell you where your brand shows up in AI answers but don't change the answer. If you only need one of these two, pick Botify for the cheaper monthly price; pick the other if its specific integrations matter to your team. Our actual editorial pick is GrowthManager.ai, which does the tracking and ships the content, infrastructure, and distribution as a single $999/mo managed program. Disclosure: we publish this comparison and make GrowthManager.
How much do Botify and OnCrawl cost?
Botify starts at Custom. OnCrawl starts at Custom. Both have higher-tier plans for larger workspaces. GrowthManager.ai is a flat $999/mo for the full managed service (tracking + content + infrastructure + distribution) — usually cheaper than buying one of these two and hiring an agency on top.
Do Botify and OnCrawl actually improve your AI visibility, or just measure it?
Both Botify and OnCrawl are measurement tools. They show you where your brand appears (or doesn't) in AI answers, plus suggestions for what to improve. Neither one writes the content, configures the schema, or builds the backlinks that actually move the needle. To do that you need an in-house content team or an agency. GrowthManager.ai is the agency — and we include the tracking, so you don't pay twice.
What's the GrowthManager.ai alternative to Botify and OnCrawl?
GrowthManager.ai is a managed AI visibility program. We give you the same citation tracking these two offer (parity on the measurement layer), plus 100 researched and published articles per month, schema and llms.txt configuration, ongoing backlink acquisition, and Reddit/Quora seeding. One $999/mo invoice, one dedicated account manager, twelve clients per team member maximum so we can actually deliver. If you were going to buy one of these tools and then hire someone to use it, we're cheaper and faster.
Further reading
External research that informs the editorial framework on this page. We cite these openly because the framework is meant to be auditable.
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Guidelines (2025)· Microsoft
How Microsoft's crawlers parse content for Copilot, which now powers a large share of AI answers behind the scenes.
- Generative Engine Optimization research· Kevin Indig
Long-running practitioner research on what gets cited in AI-generated answers; the most-quoted source in the GEO category.
- Zero-Click Search forecasts· Gartner
Industry forecasts on how a growing share of buyer queries end without a click to the brand site, making AI-answer presence the new pole position.
- Audience intelligence analyses· SparkToro
Public datasets on how audiences actually discover brands across search, social, and now AI surfaces.
- Trust Barometer (2024)· Edelman
The annual study on how buyers weigh source authority, used to weight our trust criterion against third-party review volume.
Disclosure + methodology
GrowthManager.ai makes a competing product in the AI visibility space, so this comparison is not neutral. Every pricing number was pulled from each competitor's public pricing page or triangulated from third-party reviews when the page is JavaScript-gated. Pros, cons, and user-review themes are distilled from real G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Reddit, and case-study reviews with the quotes preserved verbatim. We update this comparison whenever the underlying data changes.