A functorial and categorical defined cyclotomic trace is given, extending the usual one for rings to ring spectra. There are two ingredients to this: first a cyclotomic trace is needed that accepts a categorical input with few restrictive assumptions. This is important in its own right, since this allows one to transport rich structures through the cyclotomic trace. Secondly, a sufficiently nice model is needed for the category of finitely generated free modules which is functorial in the ring spectrum.
