From sales-led contract to self-serve OSINT — without losing capability.

Why teams switch

The most common reason: budget shape. Cybercheck's enterprise pricing is structured for police departments and Fortune 500 SOCs with annual security budgets in the six figures. PI shops, boutique diligence firms, and lean newsrooms can't justify that math, and Cybercheck's sales-led model doesn't make it easy to scale down for the small-team buyer.

The second most common reason: workflow shape. Cybercheck is excellent at the case-driven law-enforcement workflow (here's a tip → here's a triaged report → here's a suspect lead). Civilian investigators tend to need different shapes — continuous monitoring on a watchlist of 50 subjects, recurring weekly reports for a diligence client, cross-case pattern detection across an SIU's claim portfolio. Tracelight's monitor-first + workspace-first design fits these workflows directly.

Capability overlap (what carries over)

OSINT enrichment depth — Tracelight's 32 workers cover roughly the same data sources Cybercheck pitches: sanctions, breach corpora, dark-web mentions, social-media identity, court records, adverse media. The output shape is structured similarly: identifier-anchored evidence with citation references.

Continuous monitoring — both platforms support tripwire monitoring on subjects with severity-graded alerts. Tracelight routes alerts to Slack, Discord, Teams, Zapier, generic webhook, or email digest; Cybercheck primarily uses email + SMS.

Defensible reports — both platforms emphasize citation-anchored work product. Tracelight's audit log + content-hash footer + per-evidence raw-API-response storage is more aggressive on the chain-of-custody side; Cybercheck's three-layer authentication is comparable in spirit.

What you give up (be honest)

24/7 Real-Time Operations Center. Cybercheck offers human analyst support 24/7 for active manhunts, amber alerts, real-time event coordination. Tracelight does not — we ship the platform; you operate it. If your team needs a phone number to call at 3 AM during an active investigation, Cybercheck's RTOC is a real differentiator.

ICAC / CSAM tip-triage product (Cybercheck Tag). Tracelight does not have a specialized tip-triage workflow for child exploitation cases. If your team's primary work is ICAC, stay with Cybercheck.

Sports / talent vetting product (Cybercheck Scout). If you're an NBA/NFL team running player diligence at scale, Cybercheck has a specialized product for that. Tracelight can do the same job with the general platform but isn't packaged that way.

Migration plan (30 days)

Week 1: Run Tracelight's 7-day free trial in parallel with your existing Cybercheck contract. Pick 3 active cases and run them in both tools. Compare report outputs.

Week 2: Identify the workflows you actually use in Cybercheck. Most teams use 20% of the platform; map those 20% to Tracelight equivalents. Tag the workflows you'll lose (RTOC, ICAC tip-triage if applicable).

Week 3: Train your team on Tracelight's dashboard. The learning curve is shallow — investigators run their first lookup in 60 seconds — but case workflows + report templates need familiarization.

Week 4: Cut over high-volume workflows to Tracelight. Keep Cybercheck for any specialized capability you genuinely need (RTOC, ICAC). Plan contract non-renewal accordingly.

ROI math (rough)

For a 5-person diligence shop: • Cybercheck enterprise: typically $30k-100k+/yr (negotiated; not public) • Tracelight Pro: $1,788/yr ($149/mo) • Annual savings: $28k-98k+ • Capability loss: RTOC (negligible for civilian work) + ICAC product (irrelevant)

For a solo PI: • Cybercheck typically not accessible (sales won't take a small-volume conversation) • Tracelight Starter: $588/yr ($49/mo) • Capability gain: full self-serve access vs no access at all

The math works for civilian-investigator workflows. It does not work for federal law-enforcement teams that need RTOC.