trace.moe review
A free, specialized tool for finding anime scenes from screenshots.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
trace.moe is a free anime scene search engine for viewers, moderators, developers, and communities that need to identify an anime from a screenshot or image URL. It can return the matching anime, episode, and exact scene timestamp, then provide a short preview for result verification. Search results can be refined by cropping black borders or adjusting screenshot framing. The service focuses on source-finding for anime rather than general reverse image search, and it is explicitly not an AI system.
The free offering covers the core search experience and is donation-supported rather than divided into paid subscription tiers. Its ecosystem includes a web interface, browser extensions, an API for bots and applications, and a Telegram bot. The browser extension can search frames extracted from HTML5 video, which suits users who want to identify a scene while watching content in a browser. Developers and advanced users can also deploy the service themselves with Docker Compose.
Its main strength is specialization: the workflow connects an anime image to a title, episode, timestamp, and preview instead of stopping at visually similar images. That focus also defines the boundary of the product. The index is vendor-only and covers officially published Japanese anime, so it is not designed for broad web image discovery or non-anime media. Choose trace.moe when precise anime scene identification, API access, browser capture, or self-hosting matters. Choose a broader reverse image search tool when the target may fall outside its anime index.
trace.moe pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Identifies anime, episode, and exact scene timestamp
- Provides short previews to verify matching results
- Includes browser extension, API, and Docker Compose self-hosting
- Where it doesn't
- Search index is limited to officially published Japanese anime
- Vendor-only index makes it unsuitable for broad image search
- Uses content-based retrieval rather than neural-network image understanding
trace.moe fact sheet, pricing and score →
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