Ask about a result or what to review next. This local guide uses the report currently shown on this page.
These checks share the Trace a Video workflow. Availability varies.
Find earlier appearancesReverse-search selected video frames. Inspect file detailsReview metadata and available content credentials. Review image and AI cluesInspect available manipulation signals and their limits. Compare audioReview available sound matches and audio clues. Inspect location cluesReview possible places and supporting observations. Compare contextReview differences in dates, captions and claims.Selection is free. A trace allowance or credit is reserved when you submit a video.
Upload a clip or paste a URL. ClipTrace reverse searches it across the entire web, detects AI manipulation at the frame level, and delivers forensic evidence, in seconds.
Drop a video file or paste a URL from YouTube, TikTok, X, Instagram, or anywhere on the web. ClipTrace extracts keyframes and runs them through multiple search and forensic engines simultaneously.
Use a video up to 10 minutes, 500 MB and 4K. For a longer recording, save the section you want to review as a separate clip. Links must be accessible without signing in to the source website.
Select your checks, review the quote, then start the trace. Short clips can still provide useful results; a check that needs more material will explain why it was skipped.
Before you start tracing videos, please agree to our terms.
Enter the email address on your account. We'll send you a link to set a new password.
Last updated: August 2026
ClipTrace is for adults. You must be 18 or older to hold an account. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18, and if we learn that an account holder is under 18 we will close the account and delete the associated data.
When you use ClipTrace, we collect only what is necessary to provide the service: your email address and name if you create an account, the video files or URLs you submit for analysis, and, if you use certain optional features described below, additional information you choose to provide, such as an alert email for content protection or an organisation name for a Partner account. We do not sell, share, or monetise your personal data.
Raw Files
Uploaded video files, extracted audio, and submitted URLs are processed temporarily and deleted after processing. We do not store, host, or redistribute your raw video or audio content.
Forensic Intelligence Database
To power source-matching, we permanently retain each video's perceptual fingerprint, and, where applicable, a separate audio fingerprint and any standalone image fingerprints: mathematical hashes of content that cannot be reversed into a viewable or listenable file, alongside the best source URL identified during analysis. This data contains no personally identifiable information about the person who submitted it.
Cross-Platform Entity Linking
Where the same video is identified across multiple platforms (for example, the same clip on both YouTube and TikTok), we link those fingerprints together into a single record, along with a log of when and where each appearance was detected. This "spread history" contains only fingerprints, platform names, and dates. It never contains your identity as a submitter.
When a future user uploads the same or matching content, they are shown the source information found at original indexing, not your identity, filename, or anything about you as the submitter.
What is never stored: your raw video or audio file, your identity linked to a specific submission, or any personal context about why you searched.
What ClipTrace is: a forensic intelligence platform, not a video or audio hosting platform. Our database stores fingerprints and source intelligence. It never stores the underlying media itself.
In addition to the exact-match fingerprint described above, ClipTrace computes two further mathematical representations of a submitted video's visual content: one capturing overall video/frame content, and one capturing individual scene composition. Like the fingerprint, these are numerical representations only. They cannot be reversed into a viewable video or image, and contain no personally identifiable information about the person who submitted it.
Faces: where a video you submit contains human faces, ClipTrace converts each detected appearance into an anonymous mathematical descriptor to check whether a visually matching appearance also occurs in other clips users have previously submitted for tracing. Those descriptor vectors cannot be reversed into a viewable image and carry no name or identity unless you voluntarily register your own likeness under Protected Content. A visual match means a matching-looking person appears in another indexed clip; it is corroboration for you to evaluate, not an identification of anyone.
Unlike the fingerprint, which finds re-encoded or lightly altered copies of the same file, these representations are compared across all traced videos in our database to find content that is visually or compositionally similar, even where no copy relationship exists between the files. This is informational only: a similarity result never triggers a Protected Content alert on its own, and only strengthens an alert already raised by an exact fingerprint match.
This comparison runs automatically on every trace and cannot currently be opted out of individually. It is not a facial recognition or biometric process. It does not identify who appears in a video, and is unaffected by the facial-recognition consent setting described in Protected Content Registry.
When an analysis completes, the compiled report is stored so you can download it later. Unlike your raw upload, which is deleted after processing, this report is retained. It contains the findings rather than the footage: source links, metadata read from the file, any transcription, and any geolocation hypotheses.
Downloading a report requires you to be signed in as the account that ran the trace. Report links are not public and cannot be opened by anyone else, including someone who obtains the link. To have a stored report deleted, contact privacy@tracemyclip.com.
If you submit a Verified Note (a proposed correction to a search result), the text of your note, your account, and any ratings you give to other notes are stored and linked to your account for reputation-tracking purposes. Notes only become publicly visible once they meet the platform's community verification threshold. Note text is visible to other users once published; your identity as the author is not displayed publicly.
What other users are shown. To rate a note, another eligible user is shown the note text, the correction type, any source URL the author proposed, and the public source information ClipTrace found for that video: the platform, the page title, the public link, and our confidence figure. They are not shown your identity, and they are never shown your uploaded file name. Your file name is stored for your own history and is not exposed to other accounts anywhere in the product.
Protected content. Videos registered under the likeness protection type are kept out of the notes system: notes cannot be submitted on them and they never appear in the rating queue. Notes published before a protection was registered stay visible, and the other protection types do not restrict notes, so the registry cannot be used to remove corrections about public material.
Alerts go to your account email only. There is no field for a different address, so a registration cannot be used to send mail to anyone who did not create it.
What triggers an alert. ClipTrace compares each newly traced video's fingerprint against the registry and alerts you on a close match, not only an identical one, so re-encoded or altered copies are caught. Every alert states how close the match was. A protection with an end date stops matching when that date passes.
What an alert tells you, and what it does not. You are told the platform, the public link where the copy was found, how similar it was, and the date. You are never told who traced it, and dates are shown without clock times so that an alert cannot be used to work out when a particular person was looking.
Alerts are sent as a once-daily summary, not one email per match. This is deliberate. An instant alert would reveal not only that your content was found but the moment somebody looked for it, and because registration does not require proof of ownership, that timing could be used to monitor when a video is being investigated. Batching removes that signal. It also means you may hear up to a day after a match rather than immediately.
If you register content for proactive protection, we store the content's fingerprint, the alert email taken from your account, and a label you choose. We do not store the underlying video for this feature, only its fingerprint. If a future trace matches your registered fingerprint, we send an automated email alert to the address you provided, containing information about where the match was found. You may deactivate a registered protection at any time, which stops future alerts.
Facial recognition data (likeness protections only). If you register a "This is me / my likeness" protection and separately consent at registration, we extract facial recognition data (a biometric identifier derived mathematically from a face in the video, sometimes called a face embedding) from that video and store it alongside the fingerprint. The frame image used for extraction is discarded immediately afterward; only the resulting biometric identifier is kept. This is treated as sensitive personal data and is collected only with your explicit, separate consent, never as a condition of registering the fingerprint itself.
What this data is used for, and what it is never used for. Facial recognition data exists solely to corroborate a match that the fingerprint has already found, improving accuracy when a re-upload has been altered enough (re-encoded, filtered, cropped) that the fingerprint match is less certain. It is never used on its own to trigger an alert, and it is never used to search for your face across videos that do not already match your registered fingerprint. Faces appearing in other people's traced videos are never stored; a comparison happens only in memory at the moment a fingerprint match is found, and only the resulting corroboration score is kept.
Deletion. Facial recognition data is deleted whenever the protection it belongs to is deleted or deactivated; there is no way to remove only the biometric identifier while keeping the rest of the registration active. To delete a protection, use the controls on your account, or contact privacy@tracemyclip.com.
Organisations using a Partner account provide an organisation name, contact email, and organisation type. If an organisation enables BYOK, any third-party API keys they provide are encrypted at rest using industry-standard AES-256 encryption before storage, and are used solely to process that organisation's own requests. ClipTrace staff cannot view or retrieve raw BYOK keys once submitted.
Where a submitted video already contains embedded C2PA content credentials (a cryptographic record of its origin, sometimes present in files from newer smartphones or professional cameras), ClipTrace reads and displays this information as part of your results. ClipTrace does not create, issue, or sign C2PA credentials of its own.
If you are signed in, we store a record of your previous traces (file name, date, source found) so you can review them under My Traces.
Your history is private to your account. There is no feature that shares it, no setting that publishes it, and no route that returns one account's history to another. We treat this as one of the more sensitive things we hold: what a person chose to trace is often more revealing than any single result, and the people who bring footage to a forensics tool are frequently the people with the most to lose from that list being seen.
Deleting it. Use Delete all history in My Traces. Deletion is immediate and permanent. Note that Verified Notes eligibility counts completed traces, so deleting your history may return you to below the participation threshold.
Depending on which analysis features are used, we may send extracted, anonymised video frames, audio, or transcribed text to the following third-party processors: Google (Lens reverse image search), Yandex (reverse image search), OpenAI (transcription and query generation), Microsoft Azure (face detection), and AudD (audio fingerprinting). Each operates under their own privacy policies. We share only the minimum data necessary for each service to function. No account information is transmitted alongside it. Partner organisations using BYOK send their requests directly using their own API credentials.
We use session cookies only for authentication. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or any analytics that identify you personally.
You have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal data at any time, including deactivating any registered content protections or Verified Notes contributor history. To exercise these rights, contact us at privacy@tracemyclip.com.
All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt and never stored in plain text. BYOK API keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256. Our infrastructure runs on Railway and Supabase, both of which maintain SOC 2 compliance.
For privacy enquiries: privacy@tracemyclip.com
Last updated: August 2026 · Effective immediately
By using ClipTrace ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
You must be at least 18 years old to use ClipTrace. The Service is not directed at children and we do not knowingly permit accounts held by anyone under 18. This is not a formality: source tracing returns links to third-party material that we neither host nor screen, and that material can be graphic, distressing, or otherwise unsuitable for minors. If we become aware that an account holder is under 18, we will close the account and delete the associated data. If you believe a minor is using the Service, contact legal@tracemyclip.com.
ClipTrace is a forensic research and fact-checking tool. You may use it to:
You may not use ClipTrace to:
Free accounts are limited to 2 traces per day and 8 traces per calendar month. Pro accounts include 30 traces per calendar month. Max accounts include 80 traces per calendar month. Partner (pilot/institutional) accounts have a limit agreed individually with ClipTrace, typically 100 scans per month. API accounts include 100 requests per calendar month. You must not create multiple accounts to circumvent these limits. We reserve the right to suspend accounts that abuse the service.
To protect the platform from unexpected infrastructure costs, ClipTrace may temporarily pause new Free-tier traces platform-wide if aggregate usage approaches underlying provider limits. Paid tiers (Pro, Max, Partner, API) are never affected by this safeguard.
Pro and Max accounts are subject to their respective monthly fair use limits stated above. Accounts found to be using the service in an automated, bulk, or abusive manner, including scripted requests, API hammering, or systematic crawling, may be suspended without refund. If you require higher volume, contact us at hello@tracemyclip.com to discuss a Partner or Enterprise arrangement.
Verified Notes is a community correction feature. Submitted notes are reviewed by other users before becoming publicly visible. ClipTrace does not guarantee that any note, whether published or not, is accurate. Notes reflect community assessment, not a ClipTrace determination. We reserve the right to remove any note and suspend any contributor's participation in Verified Notes at our discretion.
Who can take part. Submitting a note and rating someone else's note both require an account at least 14 days old with at least 3 completed traces, and a participation record that is not suspended. Rating is gated the same way as submission because ratings, not submissions, determine what becomes publicly visible.
What other users see. When you submit a note, the note text, the type of correction, any source URL you propose, and the public source information ClipTrace found for that video are shown to other eligible users so they can assess your note. Your identity is not shown alongside your note. Your own uploaded file name is never shown to anyone.
Proposed source links. Only http and https web addresses are accepted. ClipTrace does not verify, endorse, or take responsibility for anything at a link proposed by another user.
Protected content. Where a video is registered under the "this is me / my likeness" protection type, notes cannot be submitted on it and it does not appear in the rating queue. Two limits apply so that this cannot be used to silence criticism: the other protection types, covering verified originals and election-period material, do not restrict notes at all, because community correction is the purpose of those claims; and a note that was already published before a protection was registered remains visible, so registering protection after corrections appear does not erase them.
Automatic suspension. Contributors whose notes are repeatedly assessed as unhelpful by other users may be suspended from the feature automatically.
We do not verify ownership at the point of registration. Registering content you do not own or are not authorised to protect is a breach of these Terms and we may deactivate any registration and suspend the account. Registration does not prevent anyone from tracing a video, does not remove it from any platform, and confers no rights over it.
Alerts are delivered to your account email address as a once-daily summary. You may not register content in order to monitor when it is being investigated by others.
You may register content you own or are legally authorised to protect (including your own likeness) for proactive matching. You are solely responsible for the accuracy of information provided at registration, including the alert email address. ClipTrace is not responsible for actions you take, or fail to take, based on a match alert, and does not independently verify the legitimacy of any match before notifying you. Registering content does not grant ClipTrace any ownership interest in it, and does not constitute legal advice regarding your rights over that content.
Facial recognition consent. The authorisation requirement above applies with equal force to consenting to facial recognition data extraction under a "this is me / my likeness" registration. You may only give this consent for a video depicting yourself, or for another person's likeness where you hold their explicit authorisation to do so. Registering another person's likeness for facial recognition without their authorisation is a violation of these Terms, in addition to any liability you may hold independently of ClipTrace's involvement.
Every video you submit is automatically compared, using non-biometric visual similarity measures, against all other videos previously traced on ClipTrace, and future submissions from other users may be compared against yours in the same way. This comparison contributes only informational, corroborating context to forensic results and Protected Content alerts. It does not by itself identify you, publish your content, or notify anyone. See our Privacy Policy for what is technically stored.
Organisations using a Partner account, including those enabling Bring Your Own Key (BYOK), remain solely responsible for their own third-party API usage, costs, and compliance with those providers' respective terms of service when using their own credentials through ClipTrace. ClipTrace's role in a BYOK arrangement is limited to providing the matching layer, dashboard, and proprietary index access described in your Partner agreement.
All payments are processed securely by Paystack. Subscription fees are charged at the start of each billing period and are non-refundable once service has been accessed. If you have not used any traces in your current billing period, you may request a full refund within 48 hours of payment by contacting hello@tracemyclip.com. One-time payments for fixed-term access are non-refundable after the access period begins. We reserve the right to modify pricing with 30 days' notice to active subscribers.
ClipTrace provides analytical results, including source matches, AI detection scores, audio cross-reference flags, and C2PA credential information, as informational tools, not legal conclusions. Confidence scores and AI detection probabilities are estimates. We make no warranty that results are 100% accurate. Do not rely solely on our results for legal or medical decisions.
Some checks have limits worth stating plainly, because a result that looks confident is not the same as a result that is reliable:
You retain ownership of any video you upload. By submitting content, you grant ClipTrace a temporary, limited licence to process it for the purpose of analysis only.
ClipTrace surfaces links to material hosted by third parties. We do not host, control, screen, or moderate that material, and its availability, accuracy, and legality are outside our control. Following a link is your decision and your responsibility.
We aim for maximum uptime but do not guarantee uninterrupted service. We may modify or discontinue features at any time with reasonable notice.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, ClipTrace shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service, including reliance on Verified Notes, Protected Content alerts, or C2PA credential display.
These Terms are governed by the laws of Kenya. Disputes shall be resolved in the courts of Nairobi.
For legal matters: legal@tracemyclip.com
Rate corrections submitted by other users on videos you haven't rated yet. A note only becomes visible to everyone once it earns helpful ratings from a large, genuinely diverse set of raters, so every honest rating here helps keep source matches accurate.
Content you've registered for proactive protection. You'll get an email alert if a matching or manipulated version is traced by anyone on ClipTrace in future. Deactivate a protection at any time to stop those alerts.
One credit is one trace. Credits never expire and are used only after your included traces run out, so a plan you already pay for is always spent first.
Your 50 most recent traces. This list is private to your account. Nobody else can see it, and there is no way to share it, because what someone chose to trace is often more revealing than any single result.
Integrate ClipTrace's forensic video pipeline directly into your application: newsroom tools, content moderation systems, fact-checking platforms, or anything that needs to trace video origins and detect AI manipulation programmatically.
Every request must include your API key in the Authorization header:
An API trace runs the same pipeline as the web product: reverse image search across frames, intelligent search, metadata forensics, AI manipulation detection, audio fingerprinting and transcription, perceptual hashing against the fingerprint index, and C2PA credential reading where present.
Specialised geolocation is not part of the automatic pipeline. The dedicated geolocation model is billed per call and runs only on request. The reasoning-based geographic hypothesis still runs as standard.
Two fields carry meaning that is easy to misread, and integrations get this wrong more often than anything else:
aiDetection.overallProbability is null when the scan did not complete, which is not the same as a low score. Check for null before treating a result as clean. alertLevel defaults to "none" in both cases and must not be used to tell them apart. The verdict returns level: "partial" when a check produced no result.audio.fingerprint.releaseDate is the release date of the matched release, not the date of the original recording, and does not establish a lower bound on the video's age. Our audio provider returns no confidence score for a match.Where a search engine returns no publication date, date is absent and the ordering in internetFootprint.chronologicalChain reflects observation order only.
Submitted video is processed and deleted; the perceptual fingerprint and public source intelligence are retained to power future matching. Frames, audio, and transcribed text are sent to the third-party processors listed in our Privacy Policy. Compiled reports are retained and retrievable by the key that created them.
API access is bound by the same Terms of Service as the web product, including the prohibition on using surfaced source information to locate, contact, or pressure any person appearing in a video. Keys found to be used for bulk surveillance of individuals will be revoked without refund.
100 requests per calendar month, resetting on the 1st. Every response includes X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers so you can track usage without an extra call. Exceeding your limit returns a 429 status.
API questions: api@tracemyclip.com
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