How it actually got started.

Twelve sources per trace: a backlink index covering 100+ billion links, SimilarWeb traffic estimates, Hacker News and Reddit archives, the Wayback Machine, Google Trends, SERP rankings across 8 markets, ad libraries, and Stripe-verified revenue where the founder has connected it. Every line in a report links to the page it came from.

We only show what we can verify, and every claim links to its source so you can check it yourself. When a source fails or a site blocks us, the report says so instead of guessing. The verdict states its confidence level and names the data that would change it.

Three actions: the trace itself (12 sources, about 45 seconds), unlocking the full timeline with its evidence, and the verdict. Each costs 10 credits, so the complete picture of one competitor is 30.

No. Buy them once, use them whenever. If you subscribe to Unlimited, any credits you already own are frozen — untouched — and resume working the moment your subscription ends.

The data layer is public: anyone can read a report that has already been traced. What you pay to unlock stays yours. Other visitors see the paywall on the full timeline and the verdict, not your purchases.

A report is a snapshot from the moment it was traced. Reading an existing report is always free; re-running it with fresh data costs 10 credits, and the updated report replaces the old one for everyone.

Your credits come back automatically. Same for the verdict: if the analysis does not complete, you are refunded in full.

Those tools show where a product stands today. Tracetify reconstructs how it got there: the first mention, the quiet weeks, the directory wave, the launch spike. Every step is dated and sourced.

You can, and for famous products it will tell you a plausible story. The problem is that the story comes from training data, so it covers the handful of companies everyone already writes about, it cannot see anything launched recently, and it gives you no dated source to check. Tracetify reads live public records and links every claim to one.

Each verdict ends with three moves, and every move names the dated event it came from plus a rough cost. They come from the launch period rather than from current traffic, because what a product does at 500K visits a month is rarely something you can copy from zero. What it did at 500 usually is.

Unlimited covers normal human use: up to 30 fresh traces per calendar day. Unlocks and verdicts are never capped, and reading existing reports doesn't count. The cap exists to keep scripted abuse from ruining it for everyone.

Any domain works. For very large sites (100k+ backlinks) we skip first-mention archaeology, since backlink indexes only reach so far back, and sample authority links instead. The report tells you when that happens. On Unlimited, fair use allows 30 fresh traces a day.