---
title: "FAQ"
description: "Common questions about Optumus Analytics."
---

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Is Optumus Analytics really fully open source?">
    Yes. Every line of code that powers optimusanalytics.com is in the [public repo](https://github.com/optumus/optumus-analytics) under MIT. No paywalled features in the self-hosted build — the cloud service is just a hosted convenience.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What's the cost difference between cloud and self-hosted?">
    Cloud has a flat monthly subscription that includes everything (AI provider quotas, infrastructure, support). Self-hosted is free in software cost but you pay your own AI provider bills (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic) plus DataForSEO/Cloro if you use them.

    Rough back-of-envelope: a brand tracking 30 prompts daily across 4 AI engines costs ~$5–15/month in API fees, depending on response length and provider mix.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Why don't you scrape ChatGPT/Gemini directly?">
    For programmable AI engines (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini API), Optumus Analytics uses official APIs — most reliable, well-priced, and TOS-compliant. For *web* AI engines that don't have public APIs (like ChatGPT.com search results), Optumus Analytics uses Cloro as a managed scraping backend. Cloro handles browser fingerprinting, captcha bypass, and rate-limiting at scale.

    These are two distinct fetchers: **Cloro** scrapes the AI answer engines, while **Scrape.do** (via `SCRAPEDO_API_KEY`) fetches your *own* pages for the **Site Audit** feature (proxy + JS render). Self-hosters who want Site Audit need a Scrape.do key.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How often does tracking run?">
    Default schedule is once per day per brand. You can configure per-platform frequency under brand settings (e.g. ChatGPT daily, Perplexity 3x/week, Gemini weekly) to manage AI provider costs.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="My visibility score is 0. Did setup go wrong?">
    Probably not. Brand-new brands or those in non-English-language niches commonly start at 0 across most prompts. The score reflects what AI engines *currently* cite — closing that gap with content + earned media is exactly what AEO is for.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can I see the actual AI responses, not just metrics?">
    Yes. Click any prompt or platform cell on the Insights page; the drill-down sheet shows the full LLM response, parsed citations, sentiment, and detected competitor mentions.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I get help?">
    - **Bugs / feature requests**: [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/optumus/optumus-analytics/issues)
    - **Discussion**: [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/optumus/optumus-analytics/discussions)
    - **Cloud customers**: support email in your dashboard footer
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Is my data private?">
    For self-hosted: 100% on your infrastructure, never touches Optumus Analytics servers. For cloud: standard SaaS privacy — your prompts and responses are stored in our managed Supabase, isolated per organization via RLS, never used for training. Full DPA available on request for enterprise plans.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Does Optumus Analytics work for non-English brands?">
    Yes — 13 languages and 18 regions supported. AI engines respond in the language of the prompt; Optumus Analytics' mention/citation parsing is language-agnostic.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I contribute?">
    Read [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/optumus/optumus-analytics/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) in the repo. We welcome PRs for: new AI engine adapters, additional citation classifiers, language packs, UI polish, and bug fixes. For larger features, open an issue first to align.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>