7 Top Glimpse Trends Alternatives (2023)
Glimpse Trends, also known as Meet Glimpse, is a newsletter service that delivers new trends to your inbox.
Glimpse gets its trend data from a variety of sources, including websites, Google searches, social media platforms, and more.
When you look at a Glimpse Trends graph, you’ll see a typical Google Trends-style chart overlaid with actual search volumes. This gives you an idea how interest in search relates to broader trend patterns.
The Glimpse team also explains what the trend is about and gives a quick written summary of its growth.
While the company offers a limited selection of trends in 13 core categories for you to browse on their website, the bulk of Glimpse’s data is only for newsletter subscribers.
You can get two trend updates per month for free. To receive more, you’ll need to choose a paid plan.
If you work in an industry that Glimpse covers, then a subscription could be useful. There are several Glimpse competitors that cover more industries at different price points, though—including for free.
We’ve compiled a list of the seven best alternatives to Glimpse to help you decide which tool is right for your needs.
1. Exploding Topics
Exploding Topics is a trend spotting platform that makes it easy to research trends in 30 different categories.
You don’t have to wait for an email to research trends, either—though we do send a weekly email summarizing the top trends you need to know about.
Instead, you can access Exploding Topics’ trend database at any time. With trends organized by status (peaked, regular, or exploding) and category, it’s easy to find the top trends that relate to your work or research.
Once you find a trend you’re interested in, you can take a closer look to learn more about:
- How the trend’s popularity has fluctuated over the past 15 years
- Typical search volume for the trend
- The trend’s growth rate
- Whether the trend has peaked, is holding steady, or is exploding in popularity
- Other trends related to this topic
What really makes Exploding Topics stand apart from Glimpse’s competitors, though, is how quickly we can identify trending topics. We do this through a mix of AI tools and expert human data analysis.
This combination allows us to find trends early, analyze their importance, and update our database every day.
If you want to take your trend research even further, you can do so with an Exploding Topics Pro subscription. Starting at $39 per month (billed annually), you can get access to:
- The complete Exploding Topics database
- A meta trends analysis tool that improves your trend research ability
- Even more weekly trend updates
- Instant trend alerts for the topics you need to know about right away
- All of our previous trend reports
- The Exploding Topics API
Glimpse vs. Exploding Topics: At a Glance
| Glimpse | Exploding Topics Pro | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Free |
| Industries in database: | 13 | 30+ |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, news outlets, web pages, and more |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Google Trends Supercharged Chrome extension | Complete trend report library, meta trends analysis, trend search, instant trend alerts, trending startups list, and trending products list |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, digital marketing strategists, business leaders, and journalists | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists, SEO professionals, and others |
2. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free service that visualizes the popularity of top Google searches around the world.
When viewing a trend, you can see its:
- Popularity in search over time, represented on a scale of zero (lowest historical interest) to 100 (highest interest to date)
- Popularity in Google News or YouTube searches
- Popularity by region
- Related keywords and search trends
You can also compare multiple trends side by side in the same graph, which is a nice touch.
Because Google Trends pulls its data points from a vast array of search queries, you aren’t limited to specific industries when browsing trends. To make things easier, though, Google offers 25 broad suggested categories to help guide your research.
You’ll need to be fairly self-directed when using this tool. You won’t find the same level of project management or alerting features in Google Trends that you’ll see in other Glimpse alternatives.
So, if you’re looking for more guided insights around key market trends, or tools to help you organize your trend research, one of the paid options on this list might be a better fit.
Glimpse vs. Google Trends: At a Glance
| Glimpse | Google Trends | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Free |
| Industries in database: | 13 | 25+ |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | No |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | No |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Google search, Google News, YouTube |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Data visualization, trend popularity by region |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Entrepreneurs, journalists, students, marketers, and influencers |
3. Treendly
Treendly is a trend spotting website that works similarly to Google Trends and Glimpse.
You can use the Treendly tool to see:
- How a trend’s popularity has changed over the past five years
- Current estimated monthly searches for a trend
- Whether they expect a trend to grow in popularity
Treendly also offers a Chrome extension that adds trend graphs to Google SERPs.
There’s no cost to search for trends, view graphs, and receive Treendly’s basic trend newsletter. You’ll need a paid plan to access the following, though:
- Trend forecasts
- Additional trend data
- Expanded trend newsletters
- Trend alerts for more than one trend
Subscription options start at $99 per year.
Glimpse vs. Treendly: At a Glance
| Glimpse | Treendly | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Free |
| Industries in database: | 13 | 15+ |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Google searches |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Chrome extension |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Marketers, business leaders, and journalists |
4. JungleScout
JungleScout is an Amazon sales optimization platform that includes a product trend spotting tool.
It allows you to see:
- Top product trends by Amazon category or subcategory
- Historical sales performance for the top 100 products in each category
- Purchasing trends by day
- How much a product typically sells for
- Product ratings
If you sell on Amazon, you can use this data to:
- Help you plan a successful product launch
- Keep tabs on competitors
- Develop your own forecasts about future trends
- Choose a new category to enter
JungleScout only provides data analytics about Amazon product trends, though. If you’re selling on another e-commerce platform or are interested in trend research for other purposes, you’ll probably be better served by a different tool.
There isn’t a free JungleScout plan—to use the service, you’ll need to opt in to a subscription starting at $29 per month.
Glimpse vs. JungleScout: At a Glance
| Glimpse | JungleScout | |
| Starting cost: | Free | $29 per month |
| Industries in database: | 13 | 29+ |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | No |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | No |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Amazon sales data |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Chrome extension |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Amazon retailers |
5. Trends.co
Trends.co is a HubSpot-owned platform for trend hunters.
There are two main elements of the service:
- A trend database
- A community for professionals interested in trend discovery
While anyone can join Trends.co, it’s very focused on first-time entrepreneurs. Community membership includes training sessions most likely to interest this group, and Trend.co case studies often highlight B2C, DTC, and SaaS brands.
The platform gets much of its data manually, relying on analysts, journalists, data scientists, and business owners. This might slow down the speed at which you can discover some new trends—but if you want to join a community, then the potential tradeoff may be worth it.
Trends.co is only accessible to paid members, and its pricing is not public. Anyone interested in using Trends.co can start by signing up for a 14-day trial period—it costs $1.
Glimpse vs. Trends.co: At a Glance
| Glimpse | Trends.co | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Member-only pricing |
| Industries in database: | 13 | Undisclosed |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Data scientists, analysts, journalists, and business owners |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Trend spotter community, training sessions |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Entrepreneurs and investors |
6. TrendWatching
TrendWatching is a trend monitoring service that develops curated reports on 15 core topics shaping consumer sentiment.
They call these topics “mega trends”—each one is made up of a variety of connected, smaller trends that relate to real-world human and environmental needs.
You can also browse the entire TrendWatching database of over 230 trend subtopics—each of which link to a mega trend—and filter the data by industry, location, and region.
TrendWatching has created a community that it uses to crowdsource trend data. They glean additional metrics from a mix of AI and human data analysis.
You can sign up for free TrendWatching reports to get an idea of what the company offers. Complete access to their trend database, called Amplify, requires a paid plan.
Glimpse vs. TrendWatching: At a Glance
| Glimpse | TrendWatching | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Custom quotes only |
| Industries in database: | 13 | 15 |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | Trend spotting community members and data analysts |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Chat with an analyst, TrendWatching Academy training, region-specific trend portals, downloadable trend reports, and prepared slide decks |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, and journalists |
7. Trends.vc
Trends.vc is another trend spotting community, similar in some ways to the Trends.co platform.
Trends.vc community markets their community to entrepreneurs and founders looking to start or grow their business. Paid members get access to:
- Trend reports
- Community insights
- Newsletters
- Networking events
- Daily standup meetings with other members
- Mastermind groups
If you want to get access to some of the same insights as Trends.vc Pro members but aren’t ready to join, you can sign up for free and get a more limited version of the group’s trend insights.
Free subscribers can also opt to purchase some Trends.vc publications that round up popular reports and key insights from the community.
Everything that Trends.vc releases has a definite business focus. While its insights could be useful for both entrepreneurs and investors, anyone interested in trend research for other reasons—like marketing and journalism—might be better served by another Glimpse alternative that has a searchable trend database.
Glimpse vs. Trends.vc: At a Glance
| Glimpse | Trends.vc | |
| Starting cost: | Free | Free |
| Industries in database: | 13 | Not applicable |
| Trend newsletter: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend forecasting: | Yes | Yes |
| Trend sources: | Blogs, forums, search engines, social media platforms, web pages, and more | News outlets, companies, and the Trends.vc community |
| Additional features: | Limited historical trend reports, Chrome extension | Daily standup meetings, masterminds, online networking events |
| Useful for: | Entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, business leaders, journalists | Entrepreneurs and business owners |
Conclusion
Trend spotting is useful across so many industries, so it makes sense there’s a diverse array of platforms you can use in your research.
If you’re looking for a community that you can bounce ideas around with, then a service like Trends.vc or Trends.co might be a great fit.
And if you want to do keyword research or market research, a searchable database like those you’ll find through tools like Glimpse and Treendly will be invaluable.
Above all else, though, you want to make sure that the tool you choose can help you forecast how trends might change in the future. Access to this kind of expert trend forecasting can support all of your business initiatives, from product development to investing or marketing.
Exploding Topics Pro is one of the best ways to get a handle on what’s trending now, and what it means for the future. With our meta trends analysis feature, weekly reports, and instant alerts, you’ll always be prepared with details on the top trends you need to watch.
Try it out now and see its value in action—it’s just $1 for your first two weeks of Exploding Topics Pro access.
