Which trend research tools can Claude or ChatGPT use through MCP?

The seven, side by side

Every cell is what the vendor’s own page said on 8 November 2026, signed out. Prices are the monthly list price in the vendor’s currency; vendors change them, and some show a local price at checkout.

Two filters people ask for are uneven. A language filter is documented by Eden (in its API) and by 1of10; vidIQ, Sandcastles and OutlierKit list their filters without one. A country filter is documented only by Virlo, for its topic trends.

Why the same video gets different scores

An outlier is a video that did far better than its creator usually does, and the tools disagree on what “usually” means. The arithmetic and its trade-offs are in What is an outlier video?; here is what it does to a comparison.

• Median against average. Eden and Sandcastles divide by a median. 1of10 says it measures against the channel’s average, and ViralMaxing’s documentation says the same of its multiplier. One earlier hit pulls an average up, so the same video scores lower against an average than against a median.
• The window. Sandcastles counts only the channel’s videos from the 90 days before the one being scored, so the baseline moves with the channel. A tool with a longer or undated baseline gives an older channel’s new video a different score.
• Views against followers. Virlo compares views with the creator’s follower count, not with past views. A large account whose videos usually reach a fraction of its followers can look ordinary there and still be an outlier in a median-based tool.
• What counts as a video. Sandcastles leaves out long YouTube videos; 1of10 and OutlierKit are YouTube only. A “top outlier this week” list from one tool is a list from its own index, not from the whole network.

What a free source gives an agent instead

An agent can do part of this without any of the seven, from the networks’ own sources, within their limits:

• YouTube. The Data API’s search has its own daily allowance of 100 calls, and view counts come from separate calls against a 10,000-unit daily quota (quota calculator). YouTube’s policies restrict derived metrics such as a views-to-median ratio; the details are in the YouTube Shorts trends answer.
• TikTok. The Creative Center ranks hashtags by country for the last 7, 30 or 90 days; signed out it shows the top three (Trends). More in How do you find trends on TikTok?.
• Instagram. Meta’s official hashtag search allows 30 different hashtags in a rolling 7 days, needs App Review, and its recent list covers 24 hours (Hashtag Search). There is no official list of other people’s popular reels; see How do you find trending reels on Instagram?.

What their terms say about reusing results

If you build an agent that passes results on to other people, read the vendor’s terms first. vidIQ forbids reselling, sublicensing or commercially redistributing its service or materials (terms); Eden says plainly not to scrape or resell it (terms); Virlo forbids scraping, reselling or redistributing its data outputs outside a paid API licence (terms); ViralMaxing forbids mass scraping through its API and building competing services (terms).

Where Mellow Hub fits

Since 8 November 2026, Mellow Hub has its own two trend tools on the same MCP server it publishes through: trends_search (a topic on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, over a period you choose) and trends_breakdown (why one video worked, and your version with a caption). A YouTube search is free and shows YouTube’s own figures; a new TikTok or Instagram search costs 2 AI credits and carries ×N. They are not in the table above because the seven were compared on 8 November, before Hub’s shipped. Hub is also the step after: once you have made your own post from what you learned, Hub checks it against each network’s rules and publishes or schedules it to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and the other networks you connect, through its own MCP server or REST API. vidIQ notes that its directory and key connections are read-only, which is typical: the research tools read, a publishing tool writes.

The two are separate connectors in the same client: one to research, one to publish. In Claude, check your plan first: Free allows one custom connector. The setup for Hub is in the social media MCP guide.

Hub has no free plan: a new account starts with a 7-day free trial of a monthly plan. Starting it takes a card, and $0 is charged that day; cancel before the 7 days end and nothing is charged. After the trial the plan renews monthly, from $19 a month (Solo), and the first paid month is 20% off. A yearly plan is charged on the day you choose it, with no free trial. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.