Cometly vs OpenPanel in 2026: Sales-led B2B attribution vs open-source product analytics
One requires a demo call and bills by website session volume to track pipeline through to closed-won ARR. The other publishes its full price list, starts at $2.50 a month, and hands you the source code.
Cometly
OpenPanel- Cometly attributes ad spend to closed-won ARR pulled from a CRM, built specifically for B2B SaaS sales cycles. OpenPanel tracks product and website events like funnels, revenue, and custom actions, with no ad attribution feature at all.
- OpenPanel is open-source and self-hostable, publishing full pricing from $2.50/month for 5,000 events. Cometly has no self-hosting option and discloses no pricing without a sales call.
- Both tools ship an MCP integration, but at very different scale: Cometly offers one Claude integration, gated to its Enterprise plan. OpenPanel exposes 38 MCP tools on every tier, including its cheapest cloud plan.
- Cometly automatically detects AI-sourced traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI Overviews. OpenPanel has no equivalent AI-referral traffic detection feature.
- Cometly requires a sales call and bills usage-based on website sessions, which can be hard to forecast for high-traffic sites. OpenPanel bills predictably by monthly event volume with no per-seat cost.
- OpenPanel has no white-label delivery feature by its own admission. Cometly does not offer white-label reporting either, since it is built for in-house B2B revenue teams rather than agencies.
- Cometly Enterprise adds Snowflake and BigQuery sync for warehouse-native attribution. OpenPanel gives every tier full API access and self-hosting, which functions as its own form of data ownership without needing a warehouse connector.
Cometly and OpenPanel sit at opposite ends of how an analytics tool can be sold and built. Cometly is a B2B SaaS attribution platform with no public pricing, a required sales call, and a singular focus on connecting ad spend to closed-won ARR in a CRM. OpenPanel is an open-source product and web analytics tool that publishes every price tier, starts at $2.50 a month for 5,000 events, and can be run entirely on your own servers. Both platforms happen to ship an MCP integration for AI agents, but that is close to where the overlap ends. The real question is whether you need revenue attribution for a B2B sales pipeline or event-level product analytics you can own outright.
The tools at a glance
Cometly
B2B SaaS ad attribution that connects every campaign dollar to pipeline created and closed-won ARR
Cometly is built around one job: proving that a specific ad campaign, not just a demo signup, eventually turned into closed-won revenue. It tracks the full funnel from first ad touch through booked demo, deal created, and closed-won ARR, calculating LTV ROAS against actual CRM deal values rather than platform-reported conversion counts. That distinction matters most for B2B SaaS companies whose sales cycles stretch well past the standard attribution window.
A server-side Conversion API supplements the standard pixel, recovering conversion events that ad blockers and iOS tracking restrictions would otherwise erase. Cometly also auto-detects AI-sourced traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI Overviews, and ships an MCP integration that lets Claude pull campaign ROAS and pipeline numbers directly into a conversation, though that integration is gated to the Enterprise plan.
None of this is cheap or fast to access. Pricing is usage-based on website sessions and disclosed only after a sales call, and there is no free trial clearly advertised. Cometly also makes no attempt to serve anyone outside B2B SaaS: if your business does not run deals through a CRM pipeline, most of what justifies the friction here does not apply.
| Feature | Core Usage-based, contact for pricing | Enterprise Custom |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Based on website sessions | Custom |
| Full-funnel revenue attribution | Yes | Yes |
| AI traffic source detection | Yes | Yes |
| MCP integration for Claude | No | Yes |
| CRM and warehouse sync | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting option | No | No |
| API access | No | Yes |
OpenPanel
Open-source product and web analytics with self-hosting, MCP integration, and Mixpanel-level event depth
OpenPanel is an open-source alternative to Mixpanel for event tracking and to Google Analytics for web traffic, available as a cloud plan starting at $2.50 a month for 5,000 events or as a fully self-hosted stack on your own infrastructure. Custom event tracking, funnel analysis, A/B testing, and revenue tracking are included at every tier, which is unusual for a tool priced this low.
Self-hosting is what changes who this tool is really for. Teams with data residency requirements or a policy against sending behavioral data to a third party can run the entire codebase themselves and audit exactly what gets collected. OpenPanel also exposes 38 Model Context Protocol tools, letting AI agents in Claude Code, Cursor, or a custom pipeline query event counts and segment data directly, on every plan rather than gated to an enterprise tier.
The trade-off is that OpenPanel asks more of you technically than a managed SaaS platform. Self-hosting means owning the uptime, upgrades, and infrastructure bill yourself, and there is no white-label delivery for agencies managing client accounts. It also has no ad spend or revenue attribution feature at all, so it is not a substitute for a tool built around marketing ROAS.
| Feature | 5K events $2.50/mo | 100K events $20/mo | 1.0M events $90/mo | Custom Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom event tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Funnel analysis | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| A/B testing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Revenue tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| MCP tools (38) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-hosting option | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| API access | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Cometly | OpenPanel |
|---|---|---|
| Core measurement type | B2B SaaS ad attribution | Product and web event analytics |
| Ad spend / revenue attribution | Yes (closed-won ARR) | No |
| AI traffic source detection | Yes (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, AI Overviews) | No |
| AI agent integration (MCP) | Yes (1 integration, Claude, Enterprise only) | Yes (38 MCP tools, all tiers) |
| Custom event tracking / funnels | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting option | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Data warehouse sync | Yes (Snowflake, BigQuery, Enterprise only) | No |
| API access | Enterprise only | Yes |
| White-label delivery | No | No |
| Public pricing | No | Yes |
| Starting price | Usage-based (contact for pricing) | $2.50/mo (5K events) |
Considering AI Peekaboo alongside Cometly and OpenPanel?
Cometly detects traffic arriving from ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI Overviews, but that only measures referral traffic, not whether your brand is actually mentioned or recommended inside the AI-generated answer itself. OpenPanel's 38 MCP tools let AI agents query your analytics data, which is a different capability entirely from monitoring what those same AI models say about your brand. Neither platform tracks brand mentions inside AI answers. AI Peekaboo does exactly that across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode, with a read and write API on every plan starting at $50 per month and no demo call required.
Read the AI Peekaboo review →Which should you choose?
CometlyOpenPanelOpenPanelCometlyOpenPanelCometlyOpenPanelCometly and OpenPanel solve almost entirely different problems that happen to share the "Analytics & Reporting" label. Cometly exists to prove ad spend produced revenue inside a B2B SaaS CRM pipeline, gated behind a sales process because that is how enterprise attribution tools are typically sold. OpenPanel exists to track product and website events with the transparency and ownership that an open-source, self-hosted tool provides. A team could reasonably run both: Cometly on the marketing attribution side, OpenPanel on the in-product analytics side, without any real redundancy between them.
Bottom line
Book the Cometly demo if you run a B2B SaaS pipeline and need to connect ad spend to closed-won ARR across a multi-week sales cycle; be ready to share your session volume to get a quote. Sign up for OpenPanel today, on the $2.50/month plan or self-hosted, if you need product and web event tracking with full data ownership and no sales call. If you need AI-answer visibility rather than AI-referral traffic or AI-agent tooling, neither platform covers it; a dedicated AI visibility tool like AI Peekaboo fills that gap alongside whichever of these two matches your actual analytics need.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cometly or OpenPanel better for a bootstrapped SaaS startup?
OpenPanel is the more realistic starting point for most bootstrapped teams. It has published pricing from $2.50 a month, no sales call, and a self-hosting option if you want to avoid any recurring cloud cost. Cometly requires a sales conversation and usage-based pricing tied to session volume, which makes more sense once you have a CRM pipeline and enough ad spend to justify the attribution depth.
Can OpenPanel replace Cometly for tracking ad spend ROAS?
No. OpenPanel has no ad spend or channel attribution feature at all. Its revenue tracking connects to subscription and purchase events inside your own product, showing which pages or segments drive income, but it does not ingest ad platform data or calculate closed-won ARR the way Cometly's full-funnel attribution does.
Which tool has better AI agent integration, Cometly or OpenPanel?
OpenPanel, by scale. It exposes 38 MCP tools on every tier, including its $2.50 a month plan, letting AI agents query event counts and segment data broadly. Cometly offers a single MCP integration for Claude that pulls campaign ROAS and pipeline data, but it is gated to the Enterprise plan only.
Do either Cometly or OpenPanel monitor brand mentions in ChatGPT or Gemini answers?
No. Cometly detects when a visitor arrives on your site from ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or Google AI Overviews, which measures referral traffic, not what those AI models say about your brand. OpenPanel does not track AI referral traffic or brand mentions at all. Monitoring what AI models actually say about your brand requires a dedicated tool like AI Peekaboo.
Can I self-host Cometly the way I can with OpenPanel?
No. Cometly has no self-hosting option and runs entirely on its own infrastructure with data connected through its pixel and Conversion API. OpenPanel is open-source specifically so it can be self-hosted, which is one of the most fundamental structural differences between the two products.
Is OpenPanel cheaper than Cometly?
Substantially, at least on paper. OpenPanel starts at $2.50 a month with full pricing published, while Cometly discloses no pricing without a sales call and bills usage-based on website sessions. The comparison is not fully apples to apples, since Cometly's cost reflects CRM-integrated revenue attribution rather than event tracking, but for teams without a CRM pipeline to attribute against, OpenPanel is the far lower-friction option.