Retti vs vidIQ: discovery tool or retention tool?
vidIQ answers "what should I make and how do I get it found?" Retti answers "why do viewers leave my videos, and how do I make them stay?" Those are different stages of the same pipeline — here is how to pick.
Updated June 2026 · By the Retti team
The one-paragraph answer
vidIQ is a research and ideation platform: keyword and trend research, daily personalised video ideas, an AI coach, thumbnail generation, and channel auditing. Retti is a retention platform: it reads the audience-retention curve of real videos beat by beat, reviews your edits before upload, plans voiceovers, and writes scripts against the measured retention patterns of your niche. vidIQ optimises what happens before the click. Retti optimises what happens after it.
What each tool is for
| Job | vidIQ | Retti |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword and trend research | Yes — core feature | No |
| Daily video ideas | Yes | Partial — outlier research, not idea feeds |
| AI thumbnail generation | Yes | No (free thumbnail preview tool only) |
| Channel audit / scorecard | Yes | Yes — retention-focused channel dashboard |
| Beat-by-beat retention analysis | No | Yes — timestamped drop diagnosis on any video |
| Pre-upload edit review | No | Yes — frame-accurate notes before you publish |
| AI scriptwriting | Generic AI tools | Retention-calibrated: beats planned against niche curve data |
| Voiceover planning on rough cuts | No | Yes |
| MCP server (works inside Claude/ChatGPT) | No | Yes — Retti exposes its analysis tools to AI assistants |
Where vidIQ is strong
vidIQ is one of the two long-standing YouTube growth suites (the other is TubeBuddy — see our vidIQ vs TubeBuddy comparison). If you don't know what to make next, vidIQ's trend research and idea feeds are genuinely useful, and its free tier is a reasonable starting point. Current plans are on vidiq.com.
Where Retti is strong
Retti assumes you already publish videos and asks a harder question: why do viewers leave? Every Retti tool hangs off measured retention behaviour — a corpus of real, creator-submitted retention curves, refreshed as new analyses come in.
- Retention Lab — paste a YouTube URL, get a beat-by-beat diagnosis: where the curve drops, what was on screen, and the structural cause. See Retention Lab.
- Editing Lab — upload a rough cut before publishing; get the notes a retention-literate editor would leave, timestamped to the cut. Includes a voiceover mode that finds context gaps and writes the missing lines. See Editing Lab.
- Script Lab — a script writer that plans story beats against your niche's drop patterns before writing, instead of generating generic copy.
Pricing
Retti: free tier (one full analysis plus free tools), then $19/month Creator and $49/month Pro — details on the pricing page. vidIQ: free tier with paid plans on top (Boost and Max, plus enterprise); see their site for current rates.
Find out why viewers leave your videos
One free analysis. Paste a URL, get a beat-by-beat retention diagnosis in minutes.
Analyse a video freeThe honest recommendation
If your problem is "I don't know what to make and nobody finds my videos", start with vidIQ. If your problem is "people click but don't stay" — flat AVD, an ugly opening cliff on every retention graph, impressions that dry up after 48 hours — that is retention, and it is the part vidIQ does not touch. By the midpoint the median video has lost well over half of its audience; the difference between that and the strongest videos is script and edit structure, not metadata.
Plenty of channels run both: vidIQ to decide what to make, Retti to make it hold attention.
Frequently asked questions
Is Retti a vidIQ alternative?
For ideation and keyword research, no — vidIQ is the stronger pick there. For retention analysis, pre-upload edit review and retention-calibrated scriptwriting, vidIQ has no equivalent; that is Retti’s core. They cover different stages: vidIQ before the click, Retti after it. See our full list of vidIQ alternatives if you want the wider landscape.
Does vidIQ analyse audience retention?
vidIQ surfaces channel analytics and gives AI coaching tips, but it does not perform beat-by-beat retention diagnosis — mapping each drop in the curve to the specific moment and structural cause in the video. That deep retention layer is what Retti is built around.
Which should a faceless channel use?
Faceless and documentary-style channels live or die on script structure and pacing, which makes retention tooling unusually valuable for them. Retti’s script and editing tools are calibrated on real long-form retention curves. vidIQ still helps with topic selection, but the watch-time problem is structural.
Can Retti and vidIQ be used together?
Yes. A common setup: vidIQ for trend research and topic validation, Retti for scripting the video, reviewing the edit before upload, and diagnosing the retention curve after publish. The overlap is minimal, so you are not paying twice for the same job.
Does Retti have a free plan?
Yes — a free full analysis plus permanently free tools (outlier finder, thumbnail tester, idea dump). Paid plans start at $19/month. The free analysis is the fastest way to see whether retention diagnosis is worth it for your channel.