Count is a software package for the analysis of numerical profiles on a phylogeny. It is primarily designed to deal with profiles derived from the phyletic distribution of homologous gene families, but is suited to study any other integer-valued evolutionary characters. Count performs ancestral reconstruction, and infers family- and lineage-specific characteristics along the evolutionary tree. It implements popular methods employed in gene content analysis such as Dollo and Wagner parsimony, propensity for gene loss, as well as probabilistic methods involving a phylogenetic birth-and-death model.