YouTube established itself as an indispensable digital marketing platform in the early 2010s. Since traditional marketing is declining, and online video content is becoming more popular, YouTube has become the primary video-sharing platform, boasting more than 2 billion active users. On the one hand, this large audience provides creators and businesses with numerous reach potentials. However, with more than 3.5 million videos uploaded every day, it is incredibly difficult to stand out.
It is therefore essential that YouTube videos are properly optimized and targeted, no matter if they are created by influencers or brands. This is where YouTube analytics tools - whether paid, free, integrations, or extensions - come into play. With a wealth of information and insights, they enable marketing teams and companies of all sizes to evaluate their channel and video performance, track their competitors, and monitor trends. Analytic tools can lend a helping hand to businesses that regularly collaborate with influencers by identifying individuals with high engagement levels and quality content. Ultimately, tools ensure brands achieve their goals and improve their marketing efforts.
In our blog post, we list some of the best YouTube analytics tools that help users produce and optimize content and measure its impact. We’ll also mention several of the best free YouTube analytics tools for those who are conscious of their budgets. After reading this article, you will have the knowledge to choose the right YouTube analytics tool for analyzing your video's performance and audience and optimizing your content strategy.
VidIQ
VidIQ is one of the most powerful YouTube analytics tools known among creators and video marketing professionals for its unique and diverse functionalities. It is a full-fledged platform offering content optimization, competitor analysis, and channel evaluation features.
Lately, VidIQ released a collection of AI tools that allow users to generate titles and video ideas, plus it suggests keywords. All tools are available online and free to use. Based on the topic of your video, the AI content generator suggests a title, tags, and description, and also provides a script and thumbnail images. Additionally, VidIQ’s AI tools can help budding influencers and newbies come up with compelling channel names, hashtags, and descriptions.
Price and plans
VidIQ has three subscription plans (Pro, Boost, and 1-on-1 Coaching) and a free plan (Basic). Pro, the smallest paid plan, starts from $10/month if billed monthly, but subscribers can save 50% of the price if they choose annual billing.
Key features
All four plans provide trend alerts, competitor analysis, and daily ideas; understandably, the free plan contains the least.
The platform’s scorecards offer video, audience, and engagement insights in an instant.
Has a Chrome and Firefox extension.
Free online AI-driven tools for improving content.
Strengths
Provides daily ideas based on your topic.
Has a free plan, which includes quite neat features.
TubeBuddy
YouTube analytics tool TubeBuddy is ideal for both small brands just starting with YouTube marketing and businesses that have extensive experience creating content for a video sharing platform. Just like any marketing tool these days, TubeBuddy offers several AI-powered tools, such as thumbnail analyzers and title generators. However, this is only one of many features available on the platform. You needn't worry though, we'll highlight the most important ones.
Price and plans
TubeBuddy has two paid plans (Pro and Legend) and a free plan. The Pro plan is the smallest and most popular one and costs $4.99/month if billed monthly. Businesses that choose the yearly billing can save 20% from the total price. TubeBuddy offers a 50% discount on the Pro plan’s price if the user has less than 1,000 YouTube subscribers.
Key features
All plans have video topic planners, thumbnail generators and analyzers, keyword explorers, channel valuation, and competitor video analytics among others.
Channel performance and health check.
Competitor analysis and benchmarking.
Strengths
A/B testing for titles and thumbnails.
Channel valuation to understand your channel’s worth.
The Demonetization audit reveals whether you use risky keywords and tags.
Tubular Labs
Tubular Labs is not a mere analytics tool, but a platform that provides rich data for video performance across multiple social media channels, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter. Tubular aims its core products and services, namely Tubular Intelligence, Audience Ratings, Consumer Insights, Dealmaker, and Insights & Strategy primarily to agencies, brands, and media companies who want to get a comprehensive understanding of their video content and target audience.
Price and plans
There is no information about prices and plans on Tubular Lab’s website.
Key features
Users can use the platform to scan the whole social video universe.
In-depth analytics on video views and engagement, your audience’s interests and behaviors.
Tubular’s suite categorizes videos based on their topics.
The tool helps you map out your customers’ journey and understand the connection between video viewing and online buying habits.
Strengths
Robust tools using AI and machine learning.
Web-based application and API.
Consultation with Tubular’s social video experts.
Quintly
Quintly is a powerful social media analytics platform that includes a YouTube analytics feature. The YouTube analytics tool offers customizable metrics, benchmarking features, as well as reporting functionality. Using the tool, you can view and analyze data generated since your channel was created allowing you to see your entire progress and make data-driven changes in your YouTube strategy.
Price and plans
Quintly offers one plan with all the features for the flat price of €315/month. This plan includes 3 social media profiles and 1 user and grows gradually as you add more to it.
Key features
You may analyze your channel and video with the help of more than 100 metrics.
Advanced reporting features.
Integrates with Google Data Studio and Tableau.
Strengths
Analytics of YouTube Premium users’ views.
Data gets refreshed in 6 hours.
Unmetric
The YouTube analytics tool is one of the many solutions Unmetric offers for users besides Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram tools. Data accumulated by the platform is the major source for its competitor analysis, benchmarking, report generation, and content ideation features. Businesses and agencies can improve their marketing strategy and content by monitoring a variety of metrics, keywords, hashtags, and other data.
Price and plans
Unmetric’s website doesn’t display plans and prices. Those interested in their service need to book a demo and pricing is established based on individual requirements.
Key features
Detailed competitor evaluation including the number of uploads, views, view and subscriber growth, etc.
Channel analytics.
Automated analytics reports.
Strengths
The platform's competitor analysis tool combines analytics with social listening. With the help of the subtle competitive intelligence feature, brands can gain valuable insights into other industry players' campaigns and the kinds of content that are successful in their sector.
Tubics
Tubics operates as a YouTube marketing agency and provides software for YouTube growth as well. They leverage artificial intelligence in several of their tools, like many other marketing platforms. They use AI technology for their video content ideation tool, script generator, and SEO solution.
Price and plans
Tubics doesn’t feature prices and plans on its webpage. If someone is interested in their suite, they offer a 7-day trial. Otherwise, brands and marketers have to contact sales.
Key features
Analytics and reporting.
AI-generated content optimization with scriptwriter and SEO tools.
Strengths
As an agency, they offer YouTube strategy optimization and video distribution assistance among others.
ViralStat
Through ViralStat, brands and agencies can track and analyze social video content across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. ViralStat places a high emphasis on spotting trends and challenges and discovering viral videos and memes. A feature like this is a must-have for brands that operate in a market where audience preferences fluctuate frequently or have to maintain their competitive edge. The suite offers brands a creator discovery tool for finding and analyzing YouTube content creators.
Price and plans
ViralStat has four subscription plans: Basic, Professional, Corporate, and Enterprise. The Basic plan is $29/month and allows the tracking of 1,000 profiles or videos, hashtag tracking, email alerts, and access to the trending section and analytics and reporting. ViralStat has no free plan but it offers a 7-day trial.
Key features
Leaderboards featuring top trending YouTube influencers, hottest topics, and music.
Analytics and reports.
Mail alerts.
The tool enables users to develop better content by analyzing industry and competitor videos.
Strengths
The YouTube Ads tool helps businesses identify the best videos for brand promotions.
It includes an influencer research feature for finding the ideal influencers.
TuBeast
TuBeast is the tool you need if you're interested in optimizing your YouTube content with analysis and utilizing the latest trends. TuBeast offers three market research tools for searching relevant keywords, a feature for suggesting phrases you must mention in your content to reach your audience, and a custom alert and tracker tool for monitoring trends and your competitors. Apart from this, its AI tool analyzes videos and thumbnails; plus the suite offers video, channel, and metatag evaluation.
Price and plans
TuBeast has a free plan (Starter) and three paid plans (Standard, Premium, Beast). The Standard plan costs $47/month. The free plan has some very clever functions but lacks channel and video analytics.
Key features
The paid plans contain unlimited keyword research on YouTube.
Analytics and AI-driven video and thumbnail analysis with detailed reports.
Chrome extension includes video SEO and analysis, and in-depth channel reports.
Strengths
The Keyword tool enables users to access crucial data related to their target keywords, including search volume and views.
The Advanced Topic Research tool identifies critical keywords and phrases you need to use in your content, plus suggests additional topic ideas.
Social Insider
Continuing our list of YouTube analytics tools with Social Insider. Social Insider is another social media analytics tool providing competitive insights, content evaluation, channel analytics, and benchmarking features across six social media networks. Judging from its subscription plans and feature list, this platform is the go-to tool for brands that actively create content and run campaigns on multiple platforms and want to see the overall impact of their multi-channel marketing efforts.
Price and plans
Social Insider has three fixed-rate plans (Adapt, Optimize, and Predict) and a customizable Enterprise plan for large companies and agencies with many requirements and enormous needs. It doesn’t have a free plan but offers a 14-day trial. Adapt, the smallest plan of them offers a range of handy functions for $99/month with monthly billing. As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, Social Insider is a social media analytics tool, so users can track profiles and content across six different social networks.
Key features
Channel performance metrics.
Detailed analytics for long-format videos and YouTube Shorts.
Benchmarking key KPIs against major competitors.
Automated reporting.
Historical data varying between 3-12 months for the fixed rate plans; and custom date range for the Enterprise plan.
Strengths
Cross-network evaluation and reporting.
Unbox Social
As its name suggests, Unbox Social was designed to uncover key social media metrics. It excels in social media analytics across several platforms, thus helping businesses and influencers to improve their content strategy and efforts. Among other things, the tool provides detailed information about video performance and insights into the channel's subscriber count changes, as well as viewer interests and demographics. Besides analytics, it offers numerous formats for scheduled and custom reports.
Price and plans
Unbox Social offers four paid plans (Starter, Unbox Basic, Unbox Pro, and Unbox Enterprise). The Starter plan is $9/month if billed monthly and has all the features the bigger plans have except for Influencer Tracking.
Key features
Its analytics feature measures content, channel, account, and campaign performance.
Hashtag and engagement evaluation.
Customized reports with visuals.
Competitor analysis and benchmarking.
Strengths
As a social media tool, Unbox Social provides social media content scheduling and publishing features.
The Basic, Pro, and Enterprise plans include creator evaluation and brand safety analysis.
Cyfe
Cyfe is neither a social media nor a YouTube analytics tool, but rather a business dashboard app. It enables individuals and companies to monitor their data scattered across numerous channels in one place. Cyfe’s service isn’t limited to social media though. Users can link accounting and billing services like Stripe and Xero, CRMs like HubSpot and Highrise, or SEO tools like Moz and Google Search Console to it.
Price and plans
Cyfe offers four fixed-rate plans (Starter, Standard, Pro, and Premier) and an Agency plan that is customizable. The Starter plan includes 2 dashboards and 1 user and costs $19/month. Cyfe doesn’t have a free plan but offers a 14-day trial.
Key features
The YouTube dashboard displays key metrics such as views, average view time duration, engagement metrics, subscribers gained, traffic source, etc.
All plans include unlimited history, embedded analytics, unlimited data exports, custom logo, and custom SSL domain among others.
Strengths
Provides a complete view of social media, SEO, and web performance and a deeper understanding of audience behavior in one place.
YouTube Studio
Let’s not forget about YouTube Studio, YouTube’s own platform designed for content creators actively posting on YouTube and businesses that leverage the video-sharing platform for marketing, educational, or entertainment purposes. YouTube Studio allows users to upload, edit, and analyze videos, thus bettering their content and growing their channel.
Price and plans
The tool is completely free. Anyone can use it who has a YouTube channel, be it a YouTube creator or a business and organization from any sector.
Key features
Numerous dashboards where users can check how their content was received, study channel analytics and engage with their audience.
Monetization feature for video content creators.
Video organization into categorized playlists.
Managing and analyzing YouTube Shorts and Live Streaming videos.
Privacy and visibility settings.
Strengths
Copyright-free music library.
Adding auto-generated or manually inserted subtitles to videos to expand global reach and ensure viewer retention.
Available on mobile.
Now let’s look around at some of the top free YouTube analytics tools!
Free YouTube Money Calculator
The YouTube Earnings Calculator is one of the most popular and best free YouTube analytics tools by HypeAuditor. It was designed primarily for influencers to estimate their value and determine how much to charge for collaboration, but brands can also take advantage of it.
Firstly, the tool assists companies in planning their budgets. They can get an idea of how much they can expect from the influencer even before they contact them.
It also helps brands gauge influencers' market value and benchmark them against similar influencers based on their performance and asking price.
Finally, all this information aids businesses when they begin negotiating with creators since it can be used as a reference point if an influencer asks for an unreasonable price.
Free YouTube Subscriber Count Checker
Another free analytics tool by HypeAuditor is the Subscriber Count Checker for YouTube. The tool shows a YouTube channel’s subscriber count and calculates the follower growth for the past 30 days. Checking the number of subscribers can be beneficial in two ways for companies.
Brands that plan to build an influencer marketing campaign must consider the influencer's audience size to determine their campaign's potential reach. Additionally, a steady increase in follower growth indicates that the influencer is active on the platform and publishes engaging videos. This foreshadows a potentially long-term partnership between the brand and the content creator on YouTube.
It can also be used as part of a competitor analysis. Businesses can monitor other industry players' subscriber growth and take action if their competitors' follower growth stagnates. Similarly, rapid growth may suggest that one of their videos has gone viral or that they have worked with influencers to gain more exposure.
Free YouTube Channel Audit Tool
The YouTube Channel Quality Analyzer tool stands out from the ocean of free tools since it estimates the overall quality of a YouTube channel. The Channel Quality Score (in short CQS) is HypeAuditor’s proprietary metric developed to rank YouTube channels by the number of their subscribers and the level of engagement their contents receive. You can find the best creators and benchmark your channel against others with this free analytics tool.
Use the channel audit tool, if you want to see the possible success of your influencer promotions in terms of engagement. Choose creators whose CQS is marked as Good or Excellent. This indicates that the majority of their audience is real and relevant to their niche, thus they are interested in their content.
Compare YouTube channels similar to yours to see how the channel of other businesses in your sector performs.
Grow Your Channel with YouTube Analytics Tools
After reading our article, you've probably realized that analytics tools can help you in many areas of YouTube marketing. They ensure that your content is relevant to your niche and caters to your audience. They help your content rank higher on the platform, which will in turn enable you to widen your subscriber base. They provide you with valuable insights into your channel performance and can help you adjust your video content strategy. Moreover, they keep you up-to-date on industry trends and news so that you maintain your authority and competitive edge.
Several YouTube Analytics tools, extensions, and other solutions are available on the market. Most of these offer trial periods or free plans. We have even listed free tools that will help you make data-driven decisions and increase your video marketing success.
Now it's your turn to pick wisely and step up your YouTube marketing game!
