vidIQ Pricing 2026: Free, Boost and Max Plans
Nov 13, 202614 min read
vidIQ is a YouTube growth and keyword research tool, and it has a free plan plus two paid tiers, which creators often pair with automation setups built in Activepieces to handle the repetitive work around publishing.
Compare vidIQ's current pricing plans
Boost costs $228 a year billed monthly or $199 billed annually ($19 a month). Max costs $588 monthly-billed or $468 annual ($49 a month), nearly 2.6 times the monthly cost.
The plan table
On annual billing, the gap between Boost and Max is about $20 a month. The table shows the price of each tier under both billing choices. The free plan costs nothing, so feature requirements rather than price should determine which tier you select.
Where I couldn't confirm a cell on the check date, it is marked "Unverified" rather than guessed.
| Plan | Monthly price | Yearly price | Effective monthly on annual | AI credits per month | Keyword and channel limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 | Unverified | Unverified |
| Boost | $19 | $199 | about $16.58 | Unverified | Unverified |
| Max | $49 | $468 | $39 | Unverified | Unverified |
You can't say which tier's limit you'll hit until you see the exact credit and keyword caps for your own account, and that's the only reason to pay for one.
I read vidIQ's pricing page on 13 November 2026. The monthly figures are the yearly totals divided by twelve. They reflect what the page charges rather than a promotional rate. Plans change, so check the page again before you pay.
vidIQ monthly vs yearly billing savings
Pay yearly and Boost saves you $29, about one and a half months of the monthly rate. On Max it saves $120, roughly two and a half months free. That makes the commitment cheap to take on Boost and meaningful on Max.
A year up front only pays off if you'll still be using the tool in month twelve, so test on the free plan first.
Anything you later automate around vidIQ, such as publishing, is a separate job, and no vidIQ tier covers it. Activepieces does, and its MIT-licensed core and 747 integrations are listed in its public GitHub repository.
If you are running this arithmetic for your own team, see what the same workload costs on Activepieces.
What the free plan offers
If you want to know whether vidIQ changes your video decisions, the free plan is enough. It lets you run real searches and read real scores, but it rations how much you can run through it.
What is unlocked for free
You get working access to the core of the tool: keyword research, the scoring that rates a topic, and the AI suggestions for titles and ideas. That's everything you need to run one test.
Pick your next three video topics, let vidIQ rank them, and see whether its pick differs from yours. If it never does, the paid tiers have nothing to sell you.
vidIQ free plan limits and locked features
Where a channel stops being a test and starts being a workload, the free limits show it. Read each one as a question about how you work.
The monthly allowance of AI credits runs out early only if you're generating more ideas than you can publish.
Keyword results come as a short list per search, so you see the top of the field and not the long tail, and niche-hunting is where you'll feel it first.
Hit a cap weekly and it is the reason to upgrade, while a cap you never reach costs you nothing.
Competitor tracking is locked outright. Watching rival channels over time is a paid feature, so a creator who only checks competitors occasionally can do that by hand.
I'm not stating a trial length or refund window here, because I have no confirmed terms to quote. Check the pricing page and the checkout screen for both before you enter a card.
The free plan is the trial that matters: use it until one specific limit stops you, then pay for the tier that lifts that limit.
The case for the top plan
On a monetized channel, one better title can repay a full year of a paid tier, and that is the best objection to staying on the free plan. The higher tiers also cut research time.
use it until one specific limit stops you, then pay for the tier that lifts that limit.
Does vidIQ pay for itself? Break-even math
Run it before you pay, because the arithmetic uses only your own numbers:
- Write down the yearly plan cost, using the yearly price the maker states.
- Enter your RPM, the revenue you earn per 1,000 views.
- Enter your monthly views.
- Estimate the lift, in percent, from one better title.
- Multiply views by RPM and by the lift, then by twelve, and compare that added revenue to the plan cost.
Take a channel with $4 RPM and 50,000 monthly views, which means roughly $200 per month. A 5% lift adds $10 a month, or $120 a year, so a plan costing more than that doesn't break even on titles alone.
The lift has to be larger, or the channel bigger, before the sum turns positive.
Step two is where it breaks. Revenue per view only exists once a channel is monetized, and Creatorly Media shows few channels ever pass 1,000 subscribers.
Most readers aren't there yet, so their RPM is zero and the break-even sum can't come out in the plan's favour.
How vidIQ saves time on keyword research
Then there is the second half of the objection: hours, not revenue. If a higher tier replaces an evening of keyword and competitor digging each week, you're buying time, and for a channel on a publishing schedule that time is real.
Value it the same way as the titles. Estimate the hours saved per month, multiply by what an hour of your time is worth, and set the result against the plan cost.
If you can't name the specific research task the tier removes, you're paying for a feature you haven't hit the limit of. The free plan is still doing the job.
Why the cheaper plan usually wins
AI credits are the limit that matters most, and most channels never reach the volume at which they become a problem. That is why the cheaper plan wins. Each tier is sized for a different publishing pace.
Limits that force the next plan
Free gives you 150 AI credits per month, enough to test whether the AI tools change a title or an upload decision. Boost raises that to 2,000, so you hit the ceiling only when you run AI on every upload for a weekly schedule.
6,000 credits is what Max allows, three times Boost, which matters only if several channels draw on the same pool. Count how many credits your last month of work used. If it was nowhere near the allowance, the next tier buys you nothing.
Yearly billing commits you for twelve months before you know whether the extra credits go unused.
Check what the renewal charges before you accept the yearly option, and set a reminder to review your credit use before that date.
Cost at three usage profiles
Read the table below as a rule of thumb: the upgrade trigger is the credit allowance, not the profile's ambition. It sets three common profiles against the plan that fits each and the limit that would push them up.
| Profile | Monetized | Channels | Plan that fits | Limit that forces an upgrade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobbyist | No | 1 | Free | Running out of the 150 monthly credits |
| Weekly solo creator | Yes | 1 | Boost | Using up the 2,000 monthly credits |
| Agency | Yes | Several | Max | Exceeding the 6,000 monthly credits shared across clients |
Wait, as a hobbyist, and you pay nothing and lose nothing. The solo creator pays once a schedule makes the tools a weekly habit.
The agency pays for Max only when pooled credit use proves Boost too small, so start each profile one tier lower and move up when the limit actually stops you.
Worth checking against a plan that does not meter every step: one credit covers a whole run on Activepieces.
How vidIQ compares to TubeBuddy and alternatives
Starting each profile a tier lower works because vidIQ and TubeBuddy sell near-identical tiers, so the deciding factor is which limit you hit, not which brand you pick. YouTube Studio alone is enough until you need keyword research or bulk help.
VidIQ versus TubeBuddy
Because both vendors change their prices, the table below leaves them out and compares the three tools on the dimensions that decide a purchase. The figure that counts is the one on their pricing page the day you buy.
| Entry price | Yearly price | Free plan | AI features | Multi-channel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vidIQ | Paid tiers sit above the free plan | Billed yearly at a discount on the vendor's page | Yes, with capped research and AI | Credit-based, rising by tier | Higher tiers, as the agency case shows |
| TubeBuddy | Paid tiers sit above the free plan | Billed yearly at a discount on the vendor's page | Yes, with a reduced toolset | Added to paid tiers | Priced by channel count |
| YouTube Studio analytics | None | None | Entirely free | Limited built-in suggestions | Switch between channels you manage |
Since both tools overlap on keyword scoring, title testing and competitor tracking, a trial of each costs you an afternoon, not a commitment. Choose the one whose free plan answers your question first. If neither changes a decision you made this month, stay free.
Free alternatives inside YouTube Studio
When your questions are about your own channel, Studio analytics is enough: which videos hold viewers, where traffic comes from, and what your audience watches next. It can't tell you how hard a keyword is or what a competitor's video is doing.
That gap is the trigger. The moment you're choosing topics by search demand instead of by past performance, a free vidIQ or TubeBuddy plan starts earning its place. Before that, it adds a dashboard you won't open.
If you run one channel, ignore the table's last column, where the paid plans separate: multi-channel handling.
Automate the repetitive work around a YouTube channel with Activepieces
Activepieces connects the apps around a channel through trigger-and-action workflows, across 747 integrations. It handles the publishing admin that vidIQ never touches: logging each upload, telling the client, and passing along captions or files.
vidIQ helps you decide what to make; once the video is live, someone still has to copy the link into a tracker and send the same email again.
That second job is the one worth automating, and it's the same on the free plan as on a paid one.
A new-upload workflow, step by step
One workflow covers the routine. The client gets an email or Slack notice, and the captions or files are handed off.
Read it as a chain where each box needs the field before it. The sheet row has to carry the video URL or the notice has nothing to link to.
- Set the trigger to the YouTube integration's new-upload event on your channel, and test it against a real video so you see which fields come back.
- Add a Google Sheets step that appends a row, mapping title, URL and publish date to named columns.
- Add an email or Slack step to the client, pulling the URL from the sheet step rather than retyping it.
- Add the handoff step, which either sends the caption file or drops the exported files into a shared folder the client already uses.
Check the field mapping in step two before anything else. Most failures in workflows like this come from a column mapped to the wrong field, not from the trigger.
With the chain laid out, the next question is where it stops being enough.
What it does not replace
Don't expect this workflow to choose titles, judge thumbnails or tell you which topic to make next; that stays with vidIQ and with you.
It also won't write captions on its own. It moves a caption file you already produced, so the transcription step sits outside it.
Activepieces' published pricing page lists 1 credit per flow run, however many steps the flow has, so the four-step chain above costs 1 credit a run, and the free plan includes 1,000 credits a month with unlimited flows.
Zapier's pricing page bills per task and Make's bills per module, so on those the same chain is metered step by step.
If the workflow runs once per upload, you'll feel any limit only when your publishing schedule grows.
Frequently asked questions
Those limits are the reason to check a few billing details before you pay for any tier.
Is vidIQ free to use? Yes, vidIQ has a free plan that you can use without paying, and it's enough to test whether the tool changes what you title, tag and publish.
Paid tiers lift limits on that free version. If you never hit one of those limits, you have no reason to upgrade yet.
Can I cancel vidIQ or get a refund?
You can cancel a paid plan from your account settings, but refund terms are set by vidIQ's own policy and I won't paraphrase them from memory. Read the refund wording on vidIQ's billing and terms pages before you enter a card.
Cancelling normally stops the next charge and doesn't return the one already taken, so decide before the billing date, not after.
Does vidIQ work for more than one channel?
It works with the YouTube channels you connect to your account, but how many a given plan covers is a plan-level limit, and it differs between tiers. If you run a main channel and a side channel, check that line on the pricing page first.
Cover only one channel and you pay twice or pick one, and that's a concrete limit worth paying to lift.
Is vidIQ worth it for a channel that isn't monetized yet? Usually not on a paid plan, because there's no revenue for the subscription to protect or grow.
Use the free plan, log the decisions it actually changed, and upgrade only when a specific cap slows a real upload. Once a channel earns money or publishes on a fixed schedule, the same cap costs you time you can price.
Does vidIQ change its prices often?
Treat any figure in an article, this one included, as a snapshot, because plan names, bundles and prices have shifted over the years. The pricing page is the only source that is current on the day you buy.
Check it again at renewal, because a yearly plan renews at whatever the page says then, not at what you first saw.
Related reading
References
Running the numbers
See what the same workload costs here.
Free forever plan, and every paid plan self-hosts at no extra cost.
See pricing Talk to sales
