You have ten competitor tabs open and a spreadsheet that is already wrong.
That was me every time I tried to research a YouTube niche. Open a channel, manually note the view counts, switch tabs, lose track, start over. It was embarrassing how much time I was burning just to answer a basic question: what's actually working here?
So I built ChannelSpy — paste any YouTube channel URL and get a full analytics report in seconds.
What you actually get
No fluff. Here's what the report gives you:
- Quick Read cards — plain-language summary of the channel's strengths and weaknesses. No jargon.
- KPIs that mean something — typical views, engagement rate, momentum, estimated earnings per video
- Trend charts — visualize upload consistency and performance over time
- Sortable video grid — filter by Long-form vs Shorts, sort by performance score, spot the patterns fast
- CSV export — decision-ready, Excel-compatible, includes estimated earnings per video
The part I'm most proud of: honest baselines
Most analytics tools show you averages. Averages lie.
One viral video can make a 500-subscriber channel look like it consistently pulls 200k views. ChannelSpy uses a median-first baseline with IQR outlier detection — so the "typical views" number actually reflects what a channel normally does, not what it did once on a good day.
Viral outliers get tagged as "Unusual spike" so you can see them without letting them distort the picture.
Estimated earnings
Every video and every channel gets a tiered CPM earnings estimate ($1.50–$5.50 based on view count). It's clearly disclaimed as an estimate — because public CPM averages are the best anyone outside the channel can do — but it's a genuinely useful signal when you're sizing up a niche.
Built with
- Next.js 16 (App Router) + TypeScript
- Recharts for trend visualization
- YouTube Data API v3 — playlist-first ingestion to keep quota predictable
- API key lives server-side only — never exposed to the browser
- 17 passing unit tests on core analytics helpers
Try it
Paste any YouTube channel handle, channel ID, or full URL. No login, no credit card, no setup.
If you're a creator, indie hacker, or someone building in a niche where YouTube matters — I'd genuinely love to know what you think.
What data would make this more useful for you? Drop a comment. I'm actively building based on real feedback.
What's coming next
- Weekly email digest of tracked competitor activity
- Trend alerts when a competitor video is gaining unusual traction
- Niche benchmarks — how does a channel stack up against its category?
The repo is open: github.com/rrubayet321/ChannelSpy
Give it a ⭐ if it's useful. And seriously — tell me what you'd want it to do.
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