# Keitaro vs Cometly (2026) · OfferROAS

> Source: https://offerroas.com/compare/keitaro-vs-cometly

## Keitaro vs Cometly

By [Marcus Flynn](/authors/marcus-flynn), tracking and attribution editor. Updated 25 September 2026.

These two get shortlisted together and do almost opposite jobs. One is a click tracker you install and run to route paid traffic across offers. The other is a cloud platform that ties ad spend to revenue for a B2B SaaS business. Here is how to tell which one you are actually hiring.

**Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. 

Pick Keitaro if you route high-volume paid traffic across a rotation of offers and landers and want the routing engine and the data on a server you own, on a flat licence that never trips a per-event fee; pick Cometly if you run a B2B SaaS business and need to tie ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline, right through to closed-won ARR, with server-side conversions posted back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok.

Quick answer

**Keitaro** is our top pick for most people. A proven self-hosted click tracker and traffic-distribution system for media buyers: streams, filters, lander and offer rotation, split tests, server-to-server postbacks and bot filtering, on a flat EUR licence you run on your own VPS. It routes and optimizes high-volume paid traffic and lets you own the data, in exchange for running the server yourself. 

* **Keitaro.** Best for High-volume affiliate and media buyers who route traffic on their own server.
* **Cometly.** Best for B2B SaaS teams tying ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline.

### Side by side

__Feature comparison across 2 tools__
| Tool    | Core job            | Built for                | Routes offers | Server-side CAPI               | Free trial | From       |
| ------- | ------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------- | ------------------------------ | ---------- | ---------- |
| Keitaro | Route-through TDS   | Affiliates, media buyers | Yes           | Meta, TikTok, Google           | Demo only  | Not listed |
| Cometly | Revenue attribution | B2B SaaS                 | No            | Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok | Demo only  | Not listed |

### Keitaro: pros and cons

##### What works

* The licence does not climb with your clicks. Individual plans run EUR 40 to 104 a month billed yearly, with no per-event or per-click cap, so a campaign that suddenly does volume never trips an overage fee the way a metered cloud tool can.
* You own the data. Keitaro runs on your own VPS, so your click and conversion data lives on hardware you control, with retention you set rather than a cloud plan's limits.
* It is a deep media-buying tracker: streams and filters on GEO, device, browser, operator and schedule, offer and lander rotation, A/B testing, server-to-server postbacks, conversion sync to Meta, TikTok and Google, more than 35 parameters, and bot filtering built in.
* It is established and well supported. Keitaro's own site cites more than 4,000 businesses, long-term reviews describe years of continuous use, and support is the single most repeated piece of praise, at 4.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot.

##### What to watch

* You run the server. The docs require a clean VPS on CentOS 9 or 10 Stream with KVM, 20 GB of SSD and 4 GB of RAM or more, and the domains, SSL, backups, updates and security are yours to keep up. That weighs most on a non-technical or low-volume buyer; a media buyer who already runs a VPS will find it a fair trade for owning the data.
* There is no free trial. You buy a licence to use it, so you cannot run a real campaign through it for free first, though a public live demo lets you click around the interface.
* When the server or the support chain fails, it costs money. The sharpest reviews describe 502 errors on server-to-server conversion tracking and slow resolution, usually tracing to an under-provisioned VPS rather than the tracker itself, but on a self-hosted tool part of your uptime is your own responsibility.
* It carries reputation baggage. Security researchers have documented Keitaro's traffic-distribution system being abused in malware and cloaking campaigns, so some strict ad networks view the toolset warily. That is about criminal misuse of a general routing tool rather than honest tracking, but it is a reason to keep your redirects clean and your use compliant.

### Cometly: pros and cons

##### What works

* Server-side Conversion API is the genuine strength. Cometly sends deduplicated conversions back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, and reports Meta event match quality up to 9.3 out of 10 where a manual setup sits at 4 to 5\. Buyers on r/FacebookAds confirm it pushed more matched data to Meta than other trackers they had run.
* Revenue attribution built around Stripe and the CRM, not just clicks. The native Stripe sync ties trials, new customers, recurring revenue and LTV to the originating ad, and HubSpot and Salesforce lifecycle stages map onto the same touchpoints, right through to closed-won ARR. That is the report a SaaS finance team will actually defend.
* Modern data plumbing under it. A cookieless Comet Pixel with cross-device identity, 70-plus native integrations, an Agent you query in plain English instead of writing SQL, and on Enterprise a warehouse sync to Snowflake or BigQuery plus an MCP server that lets an AI agent read your attribution data. The vendor puts setup at hours rather than weeks.
* Established and reviewed, not a new app. Comet LLC has tracked paid spend for years, with named case studies (ClickFunnels reports a 31% ad-return lift, Trainual a 40% improvement in 90 days) and aggregate ratings of 4.8 out of 5 on G2 across 36 reviews and 3.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 92.

##### What to watch

* It is not a route-through campaign tracker. Cometly attributes traffic to your own site and funnel; it does not rotate offers, split traffic across landers by rule, or distribute clicks the way Keitaro, Voluum or RedTrack do. That matters most to affiliate media buyers running many offers through a redirect. A SaaS team sending paid traffic to one funnel does not need routing.
* It has left the DTC and ecommerce market it once served. Cometly's own site now names Triple Whale as the ecommerce tool and positions itself for B2B SaaS. Shopify still integrates, but reviewers report weaker matching on cash-on-delivery and email-less orders, so an ecom brand should demand proof on its own orders before buying.
* No public price and no free trial. Every plan is usage-based on monthly pageviews and quoted on a sales call, and Cometly says it does not run a trial because attribution needs setup first. Buyers who want to test against their own numbers before paying, or just want a price before a call, get neither. One G2 reviewer wanted more transparent negotiation and flagged pricing changes over time.
* Support and journey timing draw the recurring complaints. The long-running r/FacebookAds thread reports support replies measured in business days and trouble seeing the full pre-purchase journey or getting purchases captured fast enough. The sample is small, but it is consistent enough that you should test response times and event latency during onboarding.

### The real differences

#### What each one actually is

Keitaro is a self-hosted click tracker and traffic-distribution system you install on your own Linux server. You route your campaign links through it, and on top of recording every click, its cost, the conversion and the ROI, it does the media buyer's daily job: it splits traffic across landing pages and offers by rules you set, on GEO, device, browser, operator and schedule, with offer and lander rotation, A/B tests, server-to-server postbacks and bot filtering built in. It has been sold by Apliteni for years, its own site cites more than 4,000 businesses, it runs on hardware you control, and the licence is a flat monthly fee that ignores how many clicks you push through it.

Cometly is a cloud attribution platform, and in 2026 it is built for B2B SaaS. It does not route traffic. Instead it ties your ad spend to what the spend actually earned: a cookieless Comet Pixel and a server-side Conversion API record conversions and post them back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, and a native Stripe sync plus HubSpot and Salesforce lifecycle mapping carry the number all the way to closed-won ARR. Comet LLC has tracked paid spend for years, it rates 4.8 out of 5 on G2 across 36 reviews, and it names case studies like ClickFunnels and Trainual. It is a managed SaaS product, so there is no server on your side.

#### The split that decides it

These two are not two takes on one job. Keitaro routes clicks; Cometly attributes revenue. Keitaro sits in front of your traffic and decides where each click goes; Cometly sits behind your funnel and decides which ad earned the sale. A media buyer running a rotation of offers through a redirect needs the first. A SaaS team proving to finance which channel drove new ARR needs the second. Very few businesses genuinely need both from one tool, and neither of these does the other's work.

So ask what you are hiring for. If the job is to route and rotate paid traffic across offers and landers and you want the engine and the data on a box you own, that is Keitaro. If the job is to connect ad spend to Stripe revenue and pipeline for a software business, that is Cometly. The correlated question settles the rest: are you promoting offers, or selling your own SaaS? If you are still torn, read the [Keitaro review](/reviews/keitaro) and the [Cometly review](/reviews/cometly) and the split usually resolves itself.

#### What Keitaro does that Cometly does not

Keitaro routes traffic, and Cometly simply does not. Keitaro splits clicks across landers and offers by rule, rotates what is winning, runs A/B tests and filters bots, all in front of the funnel. Cometly attributes traffic to your own site; it has no offer rotation, no rule-based distribution, no redirect engine. For an affiliate or media buyer running many offers, that is the whole job, and only Keitaro does it. Keitaro also puts the engine and the data on your own server, so your click and conversion history lives on hardware you control with retention you set, and its flat EUR 40 to 104 a month never trips a per-event fee no matter how much volume a campaign suddenly does. That flat, owned, uncapped shape is the same reason [RedTrack sits close to Keitaro](/compare/redtrack-vs-keitaro) for buyers weighing cloud against self-hosted.

#### What Cometly does that Keitaro does not

Cometly ties spend to revenue in a way a click tracker cannot. Its server-side Conversion API sends deduplicated conversions back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok out of the box, and it reports Meta event match quality up to 9.3 out of 10 where a manual setup sits at 4 to 5\. Keitaro can fire postbacks and sync conversions to Meta, TikTok and Google, but you configure that yourself on a server you maintain, and it stops at the click and the conversion. Cometly carries the number further: the native Stripe sync attributes trials, new customers, recurring revenue and LTV to the originating ad, HubSpot and Salesforce stages map onto the same touchpoints, and the whole thing runs in the cloud with nothing to host. For a SaaS team that has to defend which channel drove closed-won ARR, that report is the product, and Keitaro does not produce it. It is the same measurement-first case a [cross-channel platform makes against Keitaro](/compare/keitaro-vs-northbeam), and it wins in its own lane for the same reason.

#### Setup, who runs it, and what neither fixes

Keitaro is a project. The docs want a clean VPS with KVM, 20 GB of SSD and 4 GB of RAM or more, and the domains, SSL, backups, updates and security are yours to keep up. The sharpest reviews describe 502 errors on conversion postbacks, usually tracing to an under-provisioned box rather than the tracker itself, but on a self-hosted tool part of your uptime is your responsibility. Its routing engine also carries reputation baggage: security researchers have documented it abused in malware and cloaking campaigns, so some strict ad networks view the toolset warily. That is criminal misuse of a general routing tool, not honest tracking, but keep your redirects clean and your use compliant.

Cometly asks nothing at the server level, and its honest costs sit elsewhere. It publishes no price and runs no trial: two plans, Core and Enterprise, are quoted after a demo and priced on your monthly pageviews, so there is no self-serve way to test it against your own numbers before you are on a sales call. It has also left the DTC and ecommerce market it once served and now points ecom buyers at Triple Whale, so an ecommerce or affiliate operator is not the customer it is built for in 2026, and reviewers report weaker matching on cash-on-delivery and email-less orders. Support replies measured in business days show up in the long-running r/FacebookAds thread, so test response times during onboarding. And the point both share: a tracker tells you where the money leaks and routes traffic where it converts, and an attribution platform tells you which ad earned the revenue, but neither fixes a weak offer or low match quality. Fix the offer first, then pick the tool for the job you actually have. If you want the wider field, look also at [the alternatives to Keitaro](/alternatives/keitaro).

### What each one costs

**Keitaro** publishes a flat licence that ignores your click count. Individual plans are billed yearly at EUR 40 (Starter), EUR 72 (Advanced) and EUR 104 (Expert) a month, with Team and Enterprise higher, and Keitaro lists discounts for paying up front. There is no free trial, only a public live demo, and the Linux VPS you host it on is a separate ongoing cost on top of the licence.

**Cometly** does the opposite. There is no public price and no free trial. Two plans, Core and Enterprise, are quoted after a demo and priced on your monthly pageviews, with annual billing about 20% cheaper than monthly. Cometly says it does not run a trial because attribution needs setup first, so there is no self-serve way to test it against your own numbers before you are on a sales call. Budget for a quote tied to your traffic, not a sticker price.

The two do not meter on anything comparable, because they are not the same kind of product. Keitaro is a flat licence for a routing engine you run yourself, plus the VPS to run it on. Cometly is a quoted usage subscription for a managed attribution platform that does no routing. Size Keitaro against the box you would rent and the volume you would push through it, and size Cometly against a demo quote for your pageviews. Compare the job first; the prices only mean something once you know which tool fits.

Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page, current as of 24 September 2026.

Our pick

### Keitaro

A proven self-hosted click tracker and traffic-distribution system for media buyers: streams, filters, lander and offer rotation, split tests, server-to-server postbacks and bot filtering, on a flat EUR licence you run on your own VPS. It routes and optimizes high-volume paid traffic and lets you own the data, in exchange for running the server yourself.

### Frequently asked questions

Keitaro or Cometly: which should I pick? 

Pick Keitaro if you route high-volume paid traffic across a rotation of offers and landers and want the routing engine and the data on a server you own, on a flat licence that never trips a per-event fee. Pick Cometly if you run a B2B SaaS business and need to tie ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline right through to closed-won ARR, with server-side conversions posted back to Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok. They do almost opposite jobs, so the answer turns on whether you are routing offers or measuring SaaS revenue, not on a shared feature.

Do Keitaro and Cometly do the same job? 

No. Keitaro is a route-through click tracker: it sits in front of your traffic, splits and rotates clicks across offers and landers by rule, and fires server-to-server postbacks. Cometly is a revenue-attribution platform: it sits behind your funnel and ties ad spend to Stripe revenue and CRM pipeline for a B2B SaaS business, with server-side conversions posted back to the ad platforms. One decides where a click goes; the other decides which ad earned the sale. They get shortlisted together but solve different problems.

Can Cometly route and rotate offers like Keitaro? 

No. Cometly attributes traffic to your own site and funnel; it has no offer rotation, no rule-based traffic distribution and no redirect engine. If your job is to send paid traffic across many offers and landers and split it by rule, that is Keitaro's work, and Cometly does not do it. Cometly's strength is the report after the click: which ad drove the trial, the new customer and the recurring revenue.

Is Keitaro or Cometly cheaper? 

You cannot compare them cleanly, because they are priced for different products. Keitaro is a flat EUR 40 to 104 a month licence plus the Linux VPS you host it on, and it does not climb with your clicks. Cometly publishes no price and runs no trial: two plans are quoted after a demo and priced on your monthly pageviews, with annual billing about 20% cheaper than monthly. For a media buyer routing offers at volume, Keitaro's flat licence is the known, capped cost; for a SaaS team, Cometly's number depends entirely on the demo quote for your traffic.

### How we compared these

We do not run paid campaigns through either tool. We read each vendor's own documentation and pricing, verify every number against the source, and weigh the long-term reports of operators who run them at real spend. The full rubric is on the [methodology page](/methodology).

### Related reading

* [Keitaro review](/reviews/keitaro)
* [Cometly review](/reviews/cometly)
* [Keitaro vs Northbeam](/compare/keitaro-vs-northbeam)
* [Hyros vs Cometly](/compare/hyros-vs-cometly)
* [Alternatives to Keitaro](/alternatives/keitaro)
* [Alternatives to Cometly](/alternatives/cometly)
* [Best ad tracking and attribution software](/best)
* [All head-to-head comparisons](/compare)

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