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Rundown vs vidIQ

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Rundown publishes a starting price ($3.99); vidIQ does not. Both have a free tier.

RundownMonitors YouTube channels in your niche and emails a daily brief of trending topics and summarized new uploads.vidIQYouTube growth analytics with AI ideas, thumbnails and coaching

Side by side

FactRundownvidIQ
CategoryYouTube ToolsSEO Tools
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$3.99 month—
Public APINoNo
PlatformsWebWeb, iOS, Android, Chrome Ext
CompanyTesseravidIQ
Launched—2011
Last verifiedSep 1, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Rundown

Built for tracking a niche over time rather than summarizing one video on demand, which is a different job than most YouTube-summary tools do. The daily email brief and channel-convergence flagging are the actual product; per-video summaries are just the raw material feeding it.

Pros

  • tracks unlimited channels even on the free tier
  • the daily brief surfaces trends and overlap across channels, not just single summaries
  • generates timestamped chapters for every monitored upload

Cons

  • summary volume is capped by plan, so heavy monitoring needs a paid tier
  • no browser extension, so it's a separate destination rather than inline with YouTube
  • company details beyond the name Tessera are unconfirmed

vidIQ

The default second screen for creators who optimise before they publish, and the in-page extension stats are the actual product; the AI layer is a convenience bolted on top. An established channel with an editor and a strategist is mostly paying for numbers YouTube Studio already gives away.

Pros

  • the Chrome extension puts stats directly on YouTube pages, which dashboard-only rivals cannot match
  • the free tier is genuinely usable for keyword and trend checks
  • mobile apps keep the daily-ideas loop going away from a desk
  • channel-aware coaching beats generic prompt-and-hope title generators

Cons

  • credit metering means heavy thumbnail or clipping use drains a month's allowance fast
  • pricing is aggressively localised and promo-driven, so the sticker price is rarely stable
  • no public API
  • AI Coach advice turns generic once a channel has a settled niche

Which one fits

Choose Rundown if you need

  • creators tracking what competitor channels in their niche are publishing
  • marketers wanting a daily digest of trending topics in a specific space
  • researchers monitoring many channels without watching every video

Choose vidIQ if you need

  • solo creators under roughly 100k subscribers who need topic and keyword direction
  • researching competitor tags, upload cadence and outlier videos
  • batch-generating thumbnail concepts and title variants before publishing

More comparisons

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