# Culpa vs AgentWatch > AgentWatch blocks a spiralling agent at its gateway and keeps forensics there. Culpa runs on your infrastructure and adds margin and a forecast. URL: https://getculpa.com/culpa-vs-agentwatch Last reviewed: 2026-08-03 ## Answer AgentWatch is an edge gateway that detects a spiralling agent, blocks it with a 402, and keeps replay and cross-provider forensics on the traffic it routes. Culpa, a local-first LLM cost, margin, and forecast ledger, stops nothing. It runs on your own infrastructure, adds margin against revenue, and forecasts the next month. ## Why this happens Both watch runaway agents and both report on spend, so the real question is where each one sits. AgentWatch is a gateway. Your traffic routes through it, which is what lets it refuse a call mid-loop, and it keeps the forensics on that traffic at its own edge. Culpa never sits in the request path and can't block anything, and in exchange the data stays on your infrastructure and it captures calls that never go near a gateway. The second difference is scope. AgentWatch answers what your agents spent. Culpa carries revenue too, so it answers whether that customer is profitable, and forecasts the next month. ## What this usually looks like - An agent looped overnight and the first anyone knew was the invoice. - You have a spend ceiling and still can't say which feature consumed the budget. - Nobody can tell you what next month costs at current growth. - A customer's usage doubled and nobody knows whether they're still profitable. ## Common mistakes - Expecting spend reporting to answer a margin question. Why it hurts: Knowing a customer cost $80 decides nothing until you set it against what they pay you. Do instead: Check which tool holds revenue. A cost figure alone can't tell you whether an account is worth keeping. - Expecting a ledger to stop a runaway agent. Why it hurts: Culpa reports rather than blocks, so a loop that starts at 2am runs until something stops it. Do instead: If you need a hard stop, run something that enforces one. Culpa is the record, not the brake. - Assuming any cost layer keeps your prompts. Why it hurts: It rules out useful tools on a concern that may not apply, and both of these publish their answer. Do instead: Read each vendor's retention statement. AgentWatch publishes zero prompt retention and Culpa keeps prompts on your own infrastructure. ## Self-check - Write down the last incident. Did you need it stopped, or explained? - If stopped: does anything in your stack enforce a hard ceiling today? - If explained: can anything name the conversation and the customer behind the spend? - Check whether either layer sits in the request path, and what happens when it fails. - Most teams find they answered yes to both questions and have only one of the two. ## The same runaway loop, seen by a ceiling and by a ledger AgentWatch's published behaviour and plans, read from agent-watch.dev on 2026-08-03, against what Culpa does with the same incident. No pricing comparison is drawn: AgentWatch prices per request and Culpa prices per tracked call, so a like-for-like figure would be invented. AgentWatch: a hard per-session dollar ceiling, enforced at the edge, returning 402 when the session passes it AgentWatch: detects the loop pattern rather than only the threshold, and offers a remote kill-switch AgentWatch: agent replay and cross-provider forensics on the traffic it routes, and an audit trail AgentWatch plans: free at 50,000 requests a month, Starter $39, Pro $99, Enterprise custom AgentWatch retention: its site states it never stores prompts or completions, only metadata Culpa: the same spend attribution, on your own infrastructure rather than at a vendor's edge Culpa: margin per customer against revenue you enter, which AgentWatch doesn't claim Culpa: forecasts the next month from your own history, with a median and a worst case Both fail open by default, so neither becomes a single point of failure in your request path Both explain spend and only one can refuse a call. The choice is really about where the data sits and how far the question goes: a gateway that can stop a loop, or a ledger on your own infrastructure that carries revenue and a forecast. A team burned by a loop often wants both. ## Cost figures Every figure carries its confidence and its source. No figure on this site is provider-reported. - $39 to $99 per month, AgentWatch's published Starter and Pro plan prices [provider-reported] Source: agent-watch.dev pricing, read 2026-08-03. Starter covers 150,000 requests a month and Pro 500,000, with a free tier at 50,000. ## FAQ Q: Does Culpa block runaway agents like AgentWatch does? A: No, and that's a real limitation rather than a positioning choice. Culpa is a ledger and a forecast, not an enforcement layer, because it never sits in the request path. A loop that starts at 2am runs until something else stops it. If you want a hard stop, AgentWatch's ceiling and kill-switch are built for exactly that. Q: Does either one keep my prompts? A: AgentWatch's site states it never stores prompts or completions and keeps only metadata such as tokens, latency and cost. Culpa runs on your own infrastructure, so your prompts and responses stay there and Culpa counts the calls to run your plan. Both published answers are read 2026-08-03. Q: Will either break my app if it goes down? A: Both are designed not to. AgentWatch states it fails open by default, so calls proceed if it has a problem. Culpa's capture paths fail open by contract, and the in-process route never sits between your app and the provider at all. Q: Can they run together? A: Yes, and it's a sensible pairing. A ceiling keeps a loop from becoming an invoice, and a ledger tells you which feature and customer the surviving spend belongs to. ## Sources - AgentWatch: https://agent-watch.dev Run the free Cost Leak Scan: https://app.getculpa.com/scan?source=pseo&slug=culpa-vs-agentwatch&cluster=competitor Machine-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/api/pages Human-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/guides Site overview: https://app.getculpa.com/llms.txt Privacy: Culpa runs on your infrastructure. Your prompts and responses never leave it. Culpa counts calls to run your plan, and it fails open, so if it ever breaks your app keeps running.