vidIQ
Verified Oct 24, 2026 ActiveYouTube growth analytics with AI ideas, thumbnails and coaching
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Freemium
Plans are metered in monthly AI credits: Free has 150, Boost 2,000 and Max 6,000, with paid plans billed yearly; the plans page localises prices by visitor country and did not render USD amounts for Boost or Max when fetched. Enterprise is on request.
Use tool ↗About vidIQ
vidIQ layers keyword research, competitor tracking and channel diagnostics onto YouTube, delivered mainly through a browser extension that annotates videos and search results in place. Newer versions centre on an AI Coach that reads a channel's own history to suggest titles, thumbnails and topics, plus clip extraction from long uploads. Paid tiers are metered in monthly AI credits rather than seats, and there is a parallel offering for Instagram.
- Platforms
- Web · iOS · Android · Chrome extension
- API
- Not confirmed
- Last verified
- Oct 24, 2026
Verified sources
- Plans page shows Free $0 with 150 AI credits a month, Boost 2,000 and Max 6,000 credits, both 'Billed yearly. Cancel anytime'; Boost and Max dollar amounts did not render (15 October 2026)vidiq.com ↗
- Home page lists the browser extension, YouTube coaching, iOS and Android apps, vidIQ for Instagram and a vidIQ MCP; footer '© 2026 vidIQ' (15 October 2026)vidiq.com ↗
Is vidIQ legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Feb 3, 2006 (20 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar eNom, LLC, looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Let's Encrypt, valid until Dec 18, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 24, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 24, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2011The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- vidIQ, United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of 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 found; outside data access goes through an MCP connector for AI assistants
- AI Coach advice turns generic once a channel has a settled niche
Best for
- 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
Not for
- teams with an existing analytics stack that only need reporting
- platforms other than YouTube, since the Instagram side is thin by comparison
Watch out: Boost and Max are quoted as monthly figures but billed a year up front, so the headline price is not what you pay if you want to leave after a month.
Alternatives to vidIQ
vidIQ head-to-head
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