Hook & Virality Scorer - Rank Titles Before Posting

Score and rank your video titles and hooks before you post: send it the five titles you are arguing about and get each one back with a 0-100 score, an A to F grade, a six-part breakdown of where the points came from, the exact words it matched, and concrete suggestions for the parts that scored low. Send a batch and it ranks them best first.

It is a rules engine, not a model. It counts curiosity phrases, emotion words, power words, numbers, questions and "you" or "I" framing, in English. It will not tell you whether your idea is any good, and a high score is not a forecast of views.

Input	Titles, hooks or scripts, as text
Output	One row per text: score, grade, rank, a six-part breakdown, the words it matched and tips
Ceiling	No cap on how many texts you send in one run
Account needed	None, and no AI key
Price	$3.00 per 1,000 hooks on the Free plan, a little less on paid plans. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 1,650

🔍 What Hook & Virality Scorer does

The same text always gets the same score. There is no model call, nothing random and nothing that drifts between runs, which is the point: you can rewrite a title, score it again, and the difference in the number is a real difference in the text rather than a different mood on a different day.

Six dimensions make up the score: curiosity, emotion, power words, specificity, relatability and length. breakdown shows what each contributed and signals shows exactly which words and patterns it matched, so a score you disagree with is always traceable to something you can point at.

Length is scored differently for a title and for a script. In auto, anything up to 18 words is treated as a title, and titles do best between about four and eleven words. Scripts do best between 20 and 250 words. Set type yourself if auto guesses wrong for your format.

📋 What data you get from each title or hook

What you get	Field
The 0 to 100 score and its letter grade	score, grade
Its place in the batch, 1 being the best	rank
Points from each of the six dimensions	breakdown
What it matched: word count, number, question, "you", first person, and the power, curiosity, emotion and filler words found	signals
Rewrite tips for whatever scored low	suggestions
The text you sent, trimmed	text

▶️ How to score titles and hooks before you post

1. Open Hook & Virality Scorer and click Try for free.
2. Replace the examples in Texts / variants with your own, one per entry.
3. Leave Type on auto unless you are scoring a long script.
4. Click Start.
5. Read the ranked rows, or download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

💰 How much does it cost to score titles and hooks?

$3.00 per 1,000 hooks, which is $0.003 each on the Free plan. Paid plans pay a little less: $2.95 on Starter, $2.90 on Scale and $2.85 on Business. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 1,650 hooks.

You pay per text scored. Twenty title variants in one run is six cents. The same text sent twice is scored twice and counted twice, so strip duplicates before a large batch.

📥 What you give it

{
  "texts": [
    "I tried the viral 5am routine for 30 days",
    "You won't believe what happened when I confronted my MIL",
    "My morning routine"
  ],
  "type": "auto",
  "rankResults": true
}

Field	Default	What it is
texts	none	The titles, hooks or scripts to score. Plain strings, or objects with a title, hook, text or scriptText key, read in that order. The box starts with three examples in it, which are suggestions and not defaults.
text	none	One string, as an alternative to the array.
type	auto	auto, title or script. This only changes how length is scored.
rankResults	true	Sort the output best first and add a rank. Turn it off and rows come back in the order you sent them, with no rank field.

At least one of text or texts has to resolve to a non-empty string. With neither, the run fails rather than returning an empty dataset.

📤 What you get back

A real row:

{
  "rank": 1,
  "text": "I tried the viral 5am routine for 30 days",
  "score": 36,
  "grade": "D",
  "breakdown": {
    "curiosity": 0,
    "emotion": 0,
    "powerWords": 0,
    "specificity": 12,
    "relatability": 4,
    "length": 8
  },
  "signals": {
    "wordCount": 9,
    "isTitle": true,
    "hasNumber": true,
    "isQuestion": false,
    "addressesYou": false,
    "firstPersonStory": true,
    "powerWords": [],
    "curiosityPhrases": [],
    "emotionWords": [],
    "fillerWords": []
  },
  "suggestions": [
    "Open a curiosity gap...",
    "Add an emotional or high-stakes word (shocking, heartbreaking, insane)."
  ]
}

The first suggestion is cut short here; the real one carries a full rewrite tip.

Field	How to read it
score	Useful for ranking your own variants against each other.
grade	The score in bands, so you can gate on a letter instead of arguing about two points.
breakdown	A zero tells you which lever has not been pulled at all.
signals	Empty arrays mean it found none of that kind of word.
suggestions	It tells you what is missing. It does not write the new title for you.

🧾 Reading the output

Every row is a scored text. There are no sample rows and no diagnostic rows in this one, so the dataset is exactly as long as the list you sent.

grade	score
A	80 and above
B	65 to 79
C	50 to 64
D	35 to 49
F	below 35

The row above scores 36 with a D, and breakdown says why: full marks on specificity because it carries a number and enough words, nothing at all on curiosity, emotion or power words. That is a title stating a fact rather than opening a loop, which is exactly what the two suggestions are pointing at.

Read breakdown and signals together. A dimension at zero with an empty array beside it in signals means it genuinely matched nothing, not that it scored badly.

💡 What people use it for

• Settling the five-title argument in thirty seconds, with a number and a reason instead of an opinion.
• Scoring a back catalogue of your own published titles to see which hooks actually carried the good posts.
• A pre-publish gate: anything below a C goes back for a rewrite.
• Measuring a rewrite. Score the old title, score the new one, and the gap is real because the scoring does not move.
• Checking the first twenty words of a script, which is the part people decide on.

From a story to a cover with the best title on it, in three runs:

1. Rewrite the story with Story to Script Rewriter.
2. Put its rows into Texts / variants here. It scores the title on each row.
3. Put the top-ranked title into Title / headline on AI Thumbnail Generator.

🚧 What it does not do

• No AI and no model call. Word lists and patterns, nothing more. It cannot judge whether your idea is interesting, only whether the wording carries the signals it looks for.
• English only. The word lists are English, so a title in another language scores near zero for reasons that have nothing to do with the title.
• Not a prediction. It ranks your variants against each other. It does not forecast views, and nothing here has been checked against real performance data.
• No platform context. A hook for TikTok and a hook for a newsletter are scored the same way.
• Three or more capitals in a row read as shouting. Acronyms like AITA, MIL or NBA cost points and can trigger a "reduce ALL-CAPS" suggestion, which is worth knowing before you take it.
• It rewards the usual viral vocabulary, so it will happily mark a clickbait title above a careful one. Use it as a first pass, not as an editor.
• No rewriting. suggestions names what is missing. Writing the better line is still your job.
• Every text you send is scored, duplicates included.
• It is not an official tool of any platform or company named on this page. Dami's Studio is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

🧭 Which creator tool do you need?

If you want	Use
To score and rank titles before posting	This one
Titles and hooks written for you from a story	Story to Script Rewriter
A thumbnail with the winning hook burned on	AI Thumbnail Generator
A long video cut into ranked short clips	AI Viral Clip Cutter
A story turned into a finished faceless short	AI Faceless Video Generator
A video's subtitles as plain text	YouTube Transcript Scraper
What people are actually searching for	Google Trends Scraper

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an OpenAI key or any other AI key?

No. There is no model behind this, so there is nothing to connect and no second bill.

Will a high score make my video go viral?

No, and nobody should sell you that. It tells you which of your own drafts carries more of the signals it looks for. The idea underneath still has to be worth watching.

Why did my title score badly?

Read breakdown for the dimension at zero and signals for what it matched. It is usually curiosity: a title that states the outcome leaves nothing to open.

Does it work in French or Spanish?

Not usefully. The word lists are English.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/hook-virality-scorer. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the text you scored and the run ID. A score you think is wrong is worth reporting too, with the breakdown and signals from that row.