Keitaro vs Voluum: Self-Hosted or Cloud Tracker?

Keitaro and Voluum answer one question differently: who runs the tracker. Keitaro is software you install on your own server and pay for as a license. Voluum is a cloud service you pay for by monthly events, with the servers on its side. In short: Keitaro is cheaper per month and gives you the data and the server, Voluum removes the server and the sysadmin and charges for volume. Facts below were read from the vendors’ own pages on 4 November 2026; prices are “as of November 2026” and change.

Keitaro vs Voluum at a glance

Where a page says nothing, the cell says so rather than guessing.

	Keitaro	Voluum
Hosting	Self-hosted on your server; the key is bound to its primary IP	Cloud-based SaaS; no self-hosted option mentioned
Price (as of November 2026)	Starter 40, Advanced 72, Expert 104 euro per month with the “Yearly” toggle	Profit $119, Scale $299, Start-up $539, Agency $799 per month, billed annually
What the price scales with	Users and domains	Events per month, active campaigns, data retention, support level
Volume	No click limit on the pricing page; your server sets it	Profit 1M events, Scale 5M, Start-up 10M, Agency 25M a month
Over the limit	Not applicable to the license; size the server	Tracking continues; overage from $0.06 down to $0.03 per 1,000 events
Domains	1, 100 or 500 with SSL	Profit 3 custom plus 1 dedicated, up to 20 plus 1 on Agency
Data retention	Data stays on your server	6 months on Profit, 12 on Scale and Start-up, 18 on Agency
Trial	Not stated on the pages we read; a live demo exists	14-day platform preview through sales, no payment details
Ad platforms	Facebook, Google Ads (5) and TikTok (5) integrations listed on the plans	Cost sync through APIs, with Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent, MGID and others listed
Automation	Flows monitoring	Auto-rules, AI-powered traffic distribution, anti-fraud tools
Support	Online support and onboarding assistance	Response times from 24 hours on Profit to 1 hour on top plans

What the price is made of

Keitaro’s pricing page sells editions by users and domains: Starter has one user and one domain, Advanced one user and up to 100 domains, Expert five users and 500 domains. Click volume is not part of the price, so the cost of growth is a bigger server. The docs size it for you: under 100,000 clicks a day is a 4 GB, 2 CPU VPS, and 5 to 10 million a day is a 64 GB, 8 CPU server.

Voluum’s pricing page sells by events. Profit includes 1,000,000 events a month and 20 active campaigns; Scale 5,000,000 events and 60 campaigns. That is about 33,000 events a day on Profit, so count your own clicks and conversions before you pick, and read how Voluum defines an event. Going over does not stop tracking; the page charges from $0.06 per 1,000 events on Profit down to $0.03 on Enterprise.

Retention is the quiet line item. On Voluum it depends on the plan: 6 months on Profit, 12 on Scale. On Keitaro the data lives in your database, so retention is a question of disk space and backups, not of plan level.

Who runs the infrastructure

With Keitaro you rent a server. The install docs ask for a clean KVM server with CentOS 9 Stream and no control panel, at least 4 GB of RAM and 20 GB of SSD, and give auto-installation guides for DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, HostZealot and Friendhosting. You also own the backups, the SSL and the updates.

One rule matters for teams. The license page says “one key, one server, one tracker”, and that an expired license stops Keitaro completely, redirects included, with a warning 7 days before. Data stays on the server and comes back on renewal.

Voluum’s FAQ calls it “a cloud-based SaaS solution”. There is nothing to install, the pricing page lists support response times by plan, and it accepts wire transfer, PayPal and cards. The price of that is the usual one: your click history lives in someone else’s cloud, under the retention of your plan.

Automation, anti-fraud and ad-platform links

Voluum’s features page lists redirect and direct tracking, S2S postbacks, cost synchronization through APIs, AI-powered distribution across landers and offers, automatic split tests, rule-based redirects by GEO, device and language, auto-rules that pause campaigns for bot traffic, and anti-fraud filters. Its integrations include Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent, MGID, Pushground, EvaDav and Zeropark.

Keitaro’s home page lists S2S postbacks, a Click API and Admin API, A/B testing, custom domains, role-based access, 35+ tracking parameters and exports. The plans add Facebook, Google Ads and TikTok integrations, a landing page editor and Keitaro Geo DB. We did not find an AI distribution or an auto-rule engine described on the pages we read, so for pausing campaigns on a rule you would use the ad platform or another tool.

Verdict by use case

• Solo buyer on a tight budget: Keitaro Starter is the cheaper monthly line, if you can run a VPS. The cost of your own time is real.
• Buyer who does not want a server: Voluum. Nothing to install, nothing to renew on an IP.
• Team with many buyers and domains: Keitaro’s Expert edition has five users and 500 domains; Voluum’s plans grow users and workspaces with price. Compare the seats you actually need.
• High, steady volume: Keitaro’s cost stays flat while the server grows. Voluum’s cost follows events, and the overage is explicit.
• Rules and anti-fraud in the tracker: Voluum’s pages list more built-in automation.
• Raw data ownership: Keitaro, since the database is yours.

Where DarkCore Tracker fits

Voluum is a cloud service and Keitaro is installed on your own server. DarkCore Tracker is a cloud tracker too, run by DarkCore, so there is nothing to install or host. What it does:

• Routing: rules on country, OS, language, device type and sub1 to sub10 (equals, not equals, starts with, contains), and weighted splits between landers, offers, direct links, PWAs or any URL. A returning device keeps its branch for 90 days.
• Bot filter: each stream has a bot filter set to None, Standard or Strict. It keeps out known bots, datacenter IPs and VPN, TOR or proxy traffic unless you allow it, and Strict adds a browser check.
• Conversions: click IDs are signed. Incoming postbacks accept click_id, clickid or subid, status, goal or event, payout and a transaction ID, and duplicates are dropped. Server-side events go to Meta CAPI, TikTok Events API and Google Ads, and outgoing S2S postbacks fire per status.
• Reports and domains: ClickHouse reports with 50+ group-by dimensions, drill-down, saved views, CSV or XLSX export and 180 days of history. Domains are your own (CNAME, automatic SSL) or bought in the product.

What it does not do: it does not track spend, cost or ROI. That is the job of DarkCore CRM, which reads both Keitaro and the DarkCore tracker. There is no import from Keitaro, Binom, Voluum or RedTrack, so you set streams up again, though partner postbacks that use those parameter names keep working. Rules have no city, ISP, browser or schedule filters, and there is no auto-optimization. No price is published, so it is not in the table above: pricing is discussed in Telegram, contact @DarkCore_service.

FAQ

Is Keitaro cheaper than Voluum?

On the plan cards, yes: 40 to 104 euro a month for Keitaro against $119 to $799 for Voluum’s first four plans. The comparison is not like for like. Keitaro needs a server you pay for, and Voluum’s price includes the infrastructure and event volume.

Does Voluum have a free trial?

The pricing page does not offer a free trial of paid plans. It offers a 14-day platform preview that needs no payment details and is arranged through sales.

Can I move from Keitaro to Voluum?

None of the vendor pages we read covers migrating campaigns or history. Plan to re-create the setup and keep exports of your Keitaro data.