YouTube Breakout Alerts

Find out when a YouTube video takes off, while there's still time to act on it. Add the channels you follow, schedule the Actor, and get a Slack or Discord message that explains what's happening.

No YouTube API key, no login and no setup beyond pasting your channels.

Why use this Actor?

• Fair comparisons. A 12-hour-old video is compared with what that channel's videos usually have at about 12 hours, not with their lifetime totals. Shorts are compared only with Shorts.
• Useful from the first run. Scores start right away using an estimate, and improve as the Actor measures a channel over time.
• Alerts built in. Send to Slack or Discord without another automation tool. Each video alerts once.
• Plain-English results. Every video comes with a sentence explaining how it's doing.
• No surprise charges. You pay per channel successfully checked. Alerts, test alerts, skipped channels, duplicates and accidental re-runs within 30 minutes have no channel charge, and runs stop at your spending limit.
• A visual report. Every run creates a page of video cards, with breakouts at the top.

Who is it for?

• YouTube creators spotting what's working in their niche
• Marketing teams tracking competitors
• Agencies watching channels for several clients, with one watchlist each
• Sponsorship teams finding creators who are gaining momentum

How to use it

1. Add your channels as links, @handles or channel IDs.
2. Optional: paste a Discord or Slack webhook URL, turn on Send a test alert, and run once to check it. Then turn the test off.
3. Click Schedule and choose how often to check. Every 6 hours suits most channels, and once a day costs the least. See Pricing below before you choose.

Keep Watchlist name the same between runs, because that's where history is saved.

Pricing

This Actor charges per channel successfully checked, plus a very small fee each time a run starts. Platform usage is included. See the Pricing tab for the current rates. Your cost depends mostly on how often you check, so choose your schedule first. Here's what 20 channels would cost at $0.011 per channel:

Schedule	Checks a month	Approximate cost a month
Once a day	600	$6.60
Every 6 hours	2,400	$26.40
Every hour	14,400	$158.40

Prices can change, so check the Pricing tab for the current rate. For most channels, checking more than every 6 hours adds cost without adding much. To estimate your own usage, multiply channels × runs per day × 30.

Output

Example values:

{
  "title": "Example video",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "channelTitle": "Example channel",
  "format": "long",
  "isBreakout": true,
  "why": "Taking off! It has 200K views after 42 hours. This channel's videos usually have about 50K by this age, so this one is at 4 times the usual. It's gaining about 2.1K views an hour right now.",
  "score": 4,
  "views": 200000,
  "expectedViews": 50000,
  "viewsPerHour": 2100,
  "velocitySource": "measured",
  "baselineSource": "age-curve",
  "ageHours": 42,
  "likes": 9000,
  "likeRate": 4.5,
  "publishedAt": "2026-11-03T14:00:00+00:00"
}

Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or use the Apify API. Each run's log and Output tab also link to the visual report.

How the score works

score is the video's views divided by the views expected at its age. A video is a breakout when it reaches your threshold, is at most 7 days old, and has at least your minimum views.

• age-curve: an estimate from the channel's videos over a week old, adjusted for age with a square-root curve. It's a rule of thumb, not YouTube data.
• tracked-peers: what at least 5 earlier videos really had at this age, measured by this Actor over time. It takes a while to build up.
• none: there aren't enough earlier videos in that format to compare with.

Videos under 2 hours old aren't scored.

Limitations

• Data comes from YouTube's public channel feeds, which list each channel's latest 15 uploads. A channel posting more than that between runs will have some missed.
• Channels that mix formats may have too few long-form videos or Shorts in those 15 to score both.
• YouTube doesn't update feed counts constantly, so viewsPerHour can show 0 when runs are close together. Runs a few hours apart work better.
• A score is a signal, not a guarantee.
• This Actor reads public video statistics only. It doesn't collect comments, emails or viewer data. You're responsible for using the results in line with the terms and laws that apply to you. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube.

FAQ

Why did I get no alerts? Most runs find no breakouts, which is normal. Lower the threshold if you want more.

Something's wrong? Open an issue on the Issues tab with your run link.