Known Agents is the new name of Dark Visitors, a tool that started as a public list of AI crawlers and a way to block them through robots.txt. Published by Bit Flip LLC, it now describes itself as a toolkit to track, control and optimize for AI agents and bots, and says it is used by more than 5,000 websites. Its starting point is simple: a large share of web traffic is no longer human, and site owners rarely see which bots read their pages, train on their content or act on behalf of users.
The product targets publishers worried about AI training scrapers, e-commerce and travel sites whose products and availability are now read by AI agents, marketplaces, and tech companies whose docs are used by AI coding agents. Recent additions include The Agentic Web Index, a public view of bot activity across 5,000+ websites, AI chat referral tracking and MCP access to project reports. Known Agents measures how AI systems visit and send traffic to a site; it does not track how a brand is described inside AI answers.
What Known Agents does
Known Agents connects to a website through a platform connector, a WordPress plugin or API calls from backend code. The features visible on its website in October 2026 include:
- Agent Analytics: real-time visits from crawlers, scrapers and AI agents, by page and by category (AI assistants, AI search crawlers, AI data scrapers, coding agents, SEO crawlers, search engine crawlers and more).
- An Agent Directory of more than 2,000 known bots and agents.
- AI Chat Referral Tracking: human visits that come from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Meta AI, DeepSeek, Mistral and other AI chats.
- Automatic Robots.txt: a full-coverage file that updates as new bots are discovered.
- WordPress rule enforcement to block agents that ignore robots.txt rules.
- Agent Identification API to verify which agent sends a request and apply access policies from your own code, plus a Reporting API for custom dashboards.
- MCP access to connect AI assistants to project reports, CSV export and team members.
- The Agentic Web Index, setup guides and a free AI Bot Robots.txt Checker.
Known Agents pricing in 2026
Known Agents is self-serve and bills monthly in US dollars, with prices checked in October 2026. The Free plan costs $0 and covers 1 project, 100K events per month and basic features, which the company says is enough for most websites. Startup costs $29 per month for 3 projects, 1M events and premium features. Growth costs $299 per month for 10 projects, 10M events and premium features. Enterprise is priced on quote, with unlimited projects, usage-based events, custom features and API, and dedicated live support.
An event is an API call, such as a tracked visit. No annual price is shown, and a referral program is available.
Known Agents pros and cons
Pros
- A free plan that covers most single websites.
- A large directory of identified bots and AI agents, sorted into clear categories.
- Referral tracking from many AI chat platforms in one view.
- An automatic robots.txt and blocking of agents that ignore it on WordPress.
- Developer APIs, MCP access and a public data index.
Cons
- No tracking of brand mentions or citations inside AI answers.
- No SEO features: no audits, keyword research, rank tracking or content.
- A large step between Startup at $29 and Growth at $299.
- Pricing based on events, which grows with traffic volume.
- No way to improve AI visibility directly: it measures and controls access.
The best Known Agents alternatives
1. 
Sorank
Sorank answers the question that comes after Known Agents: once you know that ChatGPT and Claude visit your pages and send you traffic, how do you get mentioned more often in their answers? Each month, Sorank asks the AI the questions your customers ask (10 prompts on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini with Essential, 20 prompts with Grok added on Pro, 50 on Business) and shows whether your brand is mentioned, which brands are cited in its place and which sources the AI use. Its dashboard gathers Search Console, Analytics and traffic from AI in one place.
Sorank then acts on it as an SEO and GEO autopilot software: it finds the keywords, builds topic clusters, then writes, illustrates and publishes articles on your CMS (more than 10 CMS, including WordPress, Shopify and Webflow), with internal linking, anti-cannibalization and fact checking. It brings backlinks through direct, one-way links between the sites of more than 5,000 users, with credits earned by hosting links and spent to receive them (100 credits per month on Pro, 300 on Business), and reads what up to 5 chosen competitors publish each week. You can drive it from Claude or ChatGPT with the MCP connector, offer it to clients with the white label, and use the free SEO tools and the Chrome extension. Plans cost $99, $249 and $499 per month (20, 60 and 120 articles), or $49, $129 and $249 per month billed annually, with a 3-day free trial and a 90-day results-or-refund guarantee.
2. 
Profound
Profound combines AI visibility tracking with AI crawler activity, share of voice and content gaps. It suits brands that want bot data and answer tracking in the same enterprise platform.
3. 
Promptwatch
Promptwatch tracks brand visibility in AI answers and adds crawler logs and visitor analytics. It is a close option for teams that want both views without enterprise pricing.
4. 
Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI helps brands observe what AI agents say and do and adapt their web presence to agents. It fits companies that want to optimize what bots receive, beyond blocking them.
5. 
Botify
Botify analyzes log files for large sites, including AI crawlers such as OpenAI's, and serves complete content to agents. It suits big e-commerce and media sites with technical SEO teams.
6. 
Otterly AI
Otterly AI monitors brand mentions and citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It covers the answer tracking that Known Agents leaves out.
How to choose between 
Known Agents and Sorank
Known Agents fits publishers, online stores, travel sites and developer platforms that need to see and control what bots and AI agents do on their site: which ones scrape content, which ones read product pages or docs, how many visitors AI chats send, and which agents to block or verify. If your priority is access control and bot analytics, its free plan or the $29 Startup plan gives you that view quickly.
Sorank fits companies that want to grow their presence in Google and in AI answers, not only measure AI visits. If you need to know where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini mention you, and then publish the articles and obtain the one-way links that improve it, Sorank covers it from $99 per month ($49 billed annually), with results usually visible within 2 to 4 months. Both tools can run side by side.
