My YouTube Channel Scored 20/100 — So I Built a Free Tool Instead of Paying TubeBuddy
Six days ago I launched a YouTube channel. Five days in, I had a sobering little ritual: I sat down with my own channel's analytics and graded it the way one of those $19–33/month growth tools would. The verdict was a 20 out of 100.
Here's the part that stuck with me: I built software for a living, and the honest next step was supposed to be "pay TubeBuddy or vidIQ $20 a month to tell me what I did wrong." I did the math instead. $20–33/month is $240–400/year — for advice. And most of the advice I already knew: my videos had zero search demand behind them (five of six videos were demos of products nobody was looking for), my click-through rate was 0.0% on 111 impressions, and my entire unique audience was two people. Two.
So I did the thing I always do: I built the tool myself — and then I thought about what to charge for it, which is where it got interesting.
The uncomfortable question
Every growth tool charges rent. TubeBuddy, vidIQ — they're fine products, and their free tiers are deliberately throttled so you feel the paywall every week. The pricing isn't evil; it's just the business model. But it means a creator starting from zero pays a monthly fee for the privilege of finding out why nobody is watching.
That felt backwards. So here's my experiment: a YouTube growth tool you buy once, or use free forever.
OnyxIQ is a browser extension (no store page yet — it installs from one link in two minutes). It plugs into your channel's real data through YouTube's own API, explains every score with the formula that produced it — no black boxes — and works in three ways:
- Demo mode — install it and see the whole thing working instantly, no sign-in, no key. Sample data, full UI.
- Your own free YouTube API key — five minutes of setup, and the Channel X-Ray, Keyword Lab, Competitor Compare, Thumbnail Feed-Test and Upload Checklist run on real public data.
- Sign in with YouTube — unlocks the 90-day analytics checkup, per-video audits, and a Coach feed of fixes. (Fair warning: Google shows an "unverified app" screen because verification is pending — click through Advanced and it works fine.)
The Basic version is free. The Prime version is a one-time $49 — one payment, a license key, no subscription, no credit meter. It adds the full channel checkup with 90-day analytics charts, an outlier engine, rank tracking, bulk editing, category competitors, and a 30-day strategy built from your channel's own numbers.
There's no OnyxIQ server. There never will be — the zero-server-cost rule is the whole reason this exists. Your data never leaves your browser; the only network calls go to Google's APIs.
What I ran it on
The first channel it ever audited was my own: Onyx AI, six days old, 0 subscribers. The X-Ray gave it 20/100 and told me, in plain language, what I already suspected — zero-demand catalog, 0.0% CTR on 111 impressions, healthy retention (52.5%) on the one video people actually searched for. I filmed the whole audit and put it on YouTube this morning: "Stop Paying for TubeBuddy — I Found a Free Alternative (Full Audit)". Showing your own 20/100 on camera is a specific kind of humbling. It's also the only honest way to demo a growth tool.
The honest part
This launched today. No customers yet. No reviews. The free tier exists because I'd rather have a hundred creators trying it free than ten paying for a promise. If the one-time model turns out to be a beautiful anachronism and everyone genuinely prefers renting their tools by the month, I'll learn that in public and say so.
If you want to look: the free version is here, Prime is here, and the full self-audit video is linked above.
Honest question for the comments: what's the most overpriced monthly subscription in your creator toolkit right now — and would you trust a buy-it-once replacement?
Top comments (2)
Showing your own 20/100 takes some courage 😅 I appreciate seeing an actual starting point instead of another success story with all the awkward bits left out. Hope the channel and the tool both grow
Andrew, thank you — that honestly means a lot. I almost didn't publish the score because showing a 20/100 next to creators posting 90s is embarrassing. But the awkward starting point is the only part of the story that might actually be useful to someone, so it went in. And yes — both growing, slowly, which is fine. Appreciate you stopping by.