Frequently asked questions

A video's Outlier Score is its views-per-day divided by the median views-per-day of that same channel. A 6x score means the video is pulling views six times faster than that channel's normal — regardless of whether the channel is huge or tiny. Details that keep the number honest: Shorts and long-form videos are scored against separate medians (Shorts routinely get 10–100x the views, so mixing them would poison both numbers), and videos younger than 3 days aren't scored at all — every upload gets an initial burst, and scoring it too early would just measure "newness." Separately, a velocity reading tracks what a video gained in roughly the last 48 hours vs. that same median, which is how the Rising feed catches videos while they're actively taking off.

Because raw totals mostly measure time, not performance. A mediocre video from three years ago has had a thousand days to collect views; a genuine breakout posted last week hasn't. Tools that rank by raw views (or raw views ÷ median views) crown old back-catalog hits and keep a real breakout invisible for months — exactly backwards from what you need when deciding what to film next. Dividing by time and comparing each video to its own channel's pace is what lets a 40K-view video on a small channel correctly outrank a 2M-view video on a big one.

Every tracked channel — yours and your competitors' — syncs automatically once a day. Growth-plan channels sync every 6 hours. You can also hit "Sync Now" on any tracked channel at any time, and connecting or adding a channel syncs it immediately, so you're never waiting a day to see first data. Velocity readings ("pulling Nx right now") need at least ~20 hours of snapshot history for a video, so brand-new additions show outlier scores immediately and grow into velocity data by the next day.

One credit = one AI answer (a "why did this break out?" teardown or an AI Coach question). Free includes 5 per month, Pro 300, Growth 1,500. The counter resets at the start of each calendar month and unused credits don't roll over. You can always see your remaining balance — the ⚡ counter next to any AI button — and every AI button says it costs a credit before you click, so you'll never burn one by surprise.

No — and we'd rather tell you exactly what it does see. The AI reads the video's transcript with timestamps (when captions exist), its public stats, how fast its views arrived versus the channel's normal pace, and the channel's other videos as a baseline. That's enough to quote the hook lines with timestamps and name what the video did differently. What it can't see: retention graphs, click-through rates, or anything private to the creator — so treat every teardown as a well-grounded hypothesis, not gospel. When a video has no captions, the analysis says so plainly and sticks to packaging and baseline comparisons instead of inventing quotes.

No. Tracking a competitor only reads their public data through YouTube's official API — the same numbers anyone can see on their channel page. There's no notification, no follow, no interaction with their channel, and nothing for them to detect. Your tracked list is private to your account.

Nothing breaks — it just won't generate much signal. Its catalog still gets scored, and if one of its old videos suddenly starts pulling views again (it happens — search traffic, an algorithm re-push), the velocity tracking will catch the resurgence and surface it. But a dormant channel produces no new breakouts to learn from, so your tracking slots are usually better spent on channels posting weekly in your niche. Swap channels any time — removing one frees the slot instantly.