picked

Track AI bots on Vercel with a log drain

Connect Vercel and Picked creates one log drain on your project. Vercel sends every request to Picked, which keeps only the AI bots, checks their IP addresses against the ranges their owners publish, and shows which pages GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot and others opened. It needs a Vercel Pro or Enterprise team and counts from the day you connect.

Read the setup guideSee pricing

Picked is an AI visibility tool for SEO and marketing agencies, and B2B SaaS teams. Every day it asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers the prompts your buyers ask, records which brands and pages they name, and writes the article built to become the source they quote.

  • 1

    drain, created on the project you choose

  • Pro

    or Enterprise: the Vercel plans that allow drains

How it works

What does Picked do on Vercel?

Vercel can forward a project's logs to another service. Picked uses that: it installs as a Vercel integration, asks for two permissions (Drains and Projects), and creates one drain on the project that serves your site. Vercel then posts each request to Picked as it happens.

  1. Every request arrives

    A drain can't filter by user agent, so Picked receives the whole stream and keeps only the AI bots, plus a count of the page views that came from an AI answer (by the referrer or ChatGPT's utm_source). Everything else is dropped on arrival.

  2. Each hit is checked

    Anyone can send GPTBot as a user agent. For hits that come through a drain, Picked checks the IP address against the ranges OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google and Apple publish, and by reverse DNS for Amazonbot. The Analytics screen has a Verified only switch that keeps just those.

  3. Each delivery is signed

    Picked creates a fresh secret for the drain and rejects any delivery whose signature doesn't match, so nobody can feed your Analytics screen with made-up hits.

Connect

How do you connect Vercel?

  1. 1

    Open Analytics

    In your project, choose Connect Vercel.

  2. 2

    Install the Picked integration

    Pick the Vercel team that owns your site.

  3. 3

    Pick the project

    Picked chooses the one whose domain matches yours, and asks only if it can't tell.

  4. 4

    Watch the visits arrive

    The first AI crawler visit shows up once a bot next opens a page.

To stop, disconnect from the same screen: Picked deletes the drain on Vercel and the hits it stored.

Limits

What should you know before connecting?

  1. Vercel Pro or Enterprise only

    Vercel's drains documentation says drains are available on Pro and Enterprise, and that Hobby and Pro Trial teams must upgrade to Pro first.

  2. From today on

    A drain sends what happens after it is created. There is no history to read, so your first day of data is the day you connect.

  3. Vercel bills the volume

    Drains are metered by the data they carry, and it is your team's Vercel bill, not Picked's. The Vercel docs list $0.50 per GB on Pro (checked September 30, 2026). Because a drain can't filter by user agent, the volume follows your site's total traffic, not the bots' share.

  4. One source per project

    A project reads its crawlers from Vercel, Cloudflare or your server, not two at once, or the same visit would count twice.

  5. A few bots stay unverified

    Meta and some others publish no IP ranges, so their hits show, but not as verified.

When not to

When this won't work for you

Honest answer: sometimes this isn't worth your time.

  • You're on Vercel Hobby

    Drains aren't available there. Use your own server: the package runs inside your Next.js proxy.ts and sends only the AI bots, which costs nothing on Vercel's side.

  • Your traffic is very high

    Every request is billed as drain volume. On a busy site the package on your server is cheaper, because it sends only bots.

  • You need history

    Drains are forward-only. If the site is on Cloudflare too, Cloudflare reads the last 30 days.

  • You want it tested by others first

    Vercel is our newest connection. As of September 30, 2026 no live Vercel team has connected yet, so you may be the first. If a connection fails, Picked tells you and we get an email.

Sources

How we checked

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Short answers, each one checked against the product as built or the docs we link to.

Yes. Vercel offers drains on Pro and Enterprise, and Hobby or Pro Trial teams have to upgrade to Pro first. If you're on Hobby, add the package to your own server instead.

Drains (read and write), to create and remove the drain, and Projects (read), to find the project that serves your domain. Nothing else on your Vercel account.

A drain carries every request's log line, so Picked receives it. Picked keeps the requests from AI bots and, for people who came from an AI answer, only a count per page and assistant: no IP address and no referrer URL. The rest is dropped on arrival.

Vercel bills drain volume to your team. Its price list shows $0.50 per GB on Pro (checked September 30, 2026), and the volume depends on your traffic.

No. Drains only send what happens after they are created. If the site is behind Cloudflare, Cloudflare reads the last 30 days.

From the Analytics screen. Picked deletes the drain and the hits it stored for that project. Removing the integration from Vercel's side stops it too.

Find out what ChatGPT and Google AI say about you

Add your domain and the prompts your buyers ask. Unlimited seats for your whole team, and no promises we can't keep.

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