poker tracker
Poker trackers compared
Pokiq is not a tracker and does not try to be one. That makes this the easiest comparison on the site to write honestly: here is what the trackers do that we do not, how each one is licensed, and the question about your poker room you should answer before you buy.
What you are actually buying
A tracker does three things. It imports the hand histories your client writes to disk, it keeps them in a database you can filter, and it draws a heads-up display over the table so you can see how the player in seat four has been behaving. The third one is the reason most people buy it, and it is the one that is most often not allowed.
Pokiq does none of those three. It reads hands after the session, finds the mistake that keeps coming back, and puts a number on what it costs you. If you want to see an opponent's fold-to-three-bet frequency while the hand is live, this page is going to end with you buying somebody else's software, and that is fine. What Pokiq itself costs is on the pricing page.
what each one does
Four options.
| product | licence model | trial | coverage and limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| PokerTracker 4 | One-time licence | 14 day free trial | Hold'em and Omaha, in no-limit, limit and pot-limit, across cash ring games, sit and go and multi-table tournaments. |
| Hold'em Manager 3 | One-time licence, lifetime, with one year of updates included | 14 day free trial, then a limited free version | Hold'em and Omaha as separate licences or as a combo. Annual support and maintenance is optional from year two. |
| Hand2Note | Subscription only, billed annually, no lifetime licence offered | 14 day free trial, capped at a five million hand database, no custom report filters | The Learner tier caps the database at 200,000 hands and restricts you to the smallest cash stakes and the lowest tournament buy-ins. The tier above it removes those limits. Seven day money-back guarantee. |
| Pokiq | Subscription, with a free tier | Free tier, no payment details | Not a tracker. No live HUD, no database you query yourself. It reads exported hands, names the leak that repeats, and costs it out per hundred hands. |
Sources, all read on 30 August 2026: pokertracker.com/products/PT4/, holdemmanager.com/hm3/, hand2note.com/Purchase, this site. What each product covers, how it is licensed and which trial it offers comes from those pages. Products change and this page does not update itself.
check this first
Your room decides, not the vendor
Rooms set their own rules about third-party software, and some of the largest ones ban trackers outright. GGPoker's security and ecology policy is explicit that solvers, charts or HUDs are prohibited while you play, alongside real-time assistance and bots. The same policy places restrictions on what you may do with your own PokerCraft data and hand histories, including sharing them with another party.
That last point is easy to skim past and worth reading properly at the source, because it applies to your own hands and not only to data about other players. Read the policy on GGPoker's own site before you export anything anywhere, including to us, and treat the rules of whichever room you actually play in as the deciding vote.
The practical consequence is simple. A tracker licence buys you nothing if the room you play in does not permit it, and no vendor refunds you for that.
Where a tracker beats anything we do
Opponents. A tracker builds a profile of every player it has seen across every session, and nothing that reads your hands after the fact can replicate that. If you play in a pool small enough that you meet the same people repeatedly, and your room allows it, that profile is worth real money and you should buy the software.
Volume filtering is the second thing. Wanting to see every hand where you three-bet from the big blind against a late-position open and then faced a raise is a database query, and a database is what a tracker is. Our leak finder answers a different question: not what happened, but which repeated mistake is costing the most. The example report shows the difference better than another paragraph would.
A note on sample sizes, whichever tool you end up with. A few hundred hands tells you almost nothing about your own frequencies, and a run of variance will happily produce a win rate that says the opposite of the truth. Export more than you think you need.
questions
Fair questions.
What does a poker tracker actually do? +
It imports the hand histories your poker client writes to disk, stores them in a database, and computes statistics on you and on the opponents it has seen. Most trackers also render a heads-up display, an overlay that puts those statistics on the table while you play.
Is Pokiq a poker tracker? +
No. There is no live heads-up display and no database you query yourself. Pokiq reads hands you export and looks for the mistake that repeats, which is a different job from tracking. If you want the overlay, buy a tracker.
Can I run a tracker on any poker site? +
No, and this is the part people find out too late. Third-party software rules are set per room and several major rooms prohibit trackers and heads-up displays entirely. Read the rules of the room you play in before you buy a licence, because the licence is not refundable on the grounds that your room does not allow it.
What is the difference between a one-time licence and a subscription? +
A one-time licence is bought once and usually carries a fixed window of updates, and a tracker that stops being updated slowly stops parsing new hand history formats. A subscription keeps the updates coming for as long as you keep paying. Which model suits you depends on how long you expect to keep playing.
Do I need a tracker to find my leaks? +
No. A tracker shows you numbers and leaves the interpretation to you, which is why so many databases go unread. Exported hands plus something that names the mistake for you gets to the same place with less work, though a tracker will always tell you more about your opponents.
How current is this page? +
What each product covers, how it is licensed and which trial it offers was read from the vendor pages on 30 August 2026. Products change and this page does not update itself, so confirm with the vendor before you buy.
next step
Get your hands out of the client
Every tool on this page is worthless without your own hands, and the export costs nothing. Check your room's rules on third-party software first, then follow the steps.
Export instructions →