Top 6 YouTube Keyword Tools (2025)

Growing a YouTube channel is a lot like growing a brand’s website in many ways.

Without a proper SEO strategy, it’s difficult to get noticed or beat competitors that are prioritizing YouTube SEO on top of creating great content.

This includes optimizing videos with popular keywords, titles, tags, and descriptions that match intent and bring in viewers who are your target audience.

To get started with YouTube SEO, you need a dedicated YouTube keyword research tool.

Search interest for “YouTube keyword research” has risen 110% in the past five years.

With that, here are the six best YouTube keyword tools you can use to find new YouTube keywords, track trending topics, and analyze competitors.

1. Keyword Analytics for YouTube: Best overall YouTube keyword research tool

Keyword Analytics for YouTube is Semrush’s dedicated YouTube keyword research tool built to analyze popular and trending keywords.

After typing a new keyword into the search bar, you’ll see that keyword’s search volume, Competitive Rate (similar to keyword competition in SEO), and related terms.

On top of that, most keywords include a “top popular video” tab underneath the keyword data, with recently high-performing YouTube videos on that topic.

You can also use this keyword tool to uncover trending YouTube topics that aren't overly saturated yet. In the “fast-growing keywords” tab, you’ll see keywords, trend charts, the change in search volume, and total search volume (by day, week, or month).

It’s possible to click on any of these keywords to analyze them in more detail to find their competitive rate and related keywords.

If you’re struggling to think of ideas, consider using the “most viewed videos” feature to reverse engineer your keyword research. This tab shows you the most viewed videos based on the filters you set. That includes setting the location and time frame (day, week, or month).

This YouTube keyword tool is perfect for bulk keyword research, generating new creative video ideas, and tracking actual video performance. It doesn't offer a browser plug-in that directly integrates with YouTube, but it provides the most accurate search volume data of any tool on the market.

It’s also extremely affordable. All new users can get started with a 7-day free trial. After that, it’s $10/month billed monthly.

2. YouTube’s Search Bar: Best free YouTube keyword research tool

YouTube’s Search Bar (also known as search predictions) is an under-the-radar keyword research tool.

It's the built-in feature on the platform that provides autocomplete suggestions based on popular user searches. It helps creators quickly identify trending topics and keywords relevant to their content directly on the platform.

For example, if you’re a marketing professional looking for new SEO-related video topics, you could quickly find new potential ideas. Just start by typing “best SEO” into the search bar and see what comes up:

Similar to a Google search, you’ll see a list of new, relevant long-tail keyword variations. While you won’t find any useful data, such as keyword volume or competitive scores, it’s still a helpful tool for ideation.

The other great thing about using the YouTube search bar is that it's completely free and requires no additional software to access.

3. Keywords Everywhere: Best for detailed YouTube keyword insights

Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension (available for Chrome and Firefox) that integrates keyword data into YouTube and Google searches. It displays metrics like search volume, CPC, and competition in a sidebar.

It’s user-friendly and shows trend graphs and related keywords, so you don’t need to even leave the platform to see the data. It offers four key features:

• Search Volume: Shows monthly search volume, CPC, competition, and 12-month trend data for YouTube searches.
• Search Insights Widget: Analyzes data for all video results on a search page, with a “Detailed Breakdown” link for individual video metrics.
• Trend Chart Widget: Displays historical search trends from 2008, with exact volumes for paying users.
• Tag Widget: Lists all tags for a viewed video, including search volume, CPC, competition, and trends.

The browser extension also means you’ll never have to switch back and forth between multiple tools. All keyword-related data gets shown in a sidebar on YouTube, plus total search volume, CPC, and competition scores are shown under the keyword in the search bar.

Here’s an example for “AI SEO” YouTube search:

If you want to find more keywords, click the “Find YouTube keywords for AI SEO” button on the right side of the screen. This brings you to a new page with additional related keywords, more search filters, and in-depth data.

While Keywords Everywhere is relatively affordable, especially for entry-level plans, its credit-based system can be restrictive for heavy users. Here's a look at the exact pricing plans:

• Bronze Plan: $2.25/month ($27/year), 100,000 credits/year, 1 user seat, top 1,000 keywords & backlinks per website.
• Silver Plan: $6/month ($72/year), 400,000 credits/year, 5 user seats, top 2,000 keywords & backlinks.
• Gold Plan: $25/month ($300/year), 2 million credits/year, 20 user seats, top 5,000 keywords & backlinks.
• Platinum Plan: $80/month ($960/year), 8 million credits/year, 100 user seats, top 10,000 keywords & backlinks.

4. VidIQ: Best for finding niche YouTube topics

VidIQ is a comprehensive YouTube SEO and marketing platform.

It's built for creators to grow their YouTube audience, offering various tools for keyword research, channel analytics, and competitor analysis to discover niche topics.

To find trending search terms, navigate to the “Keywords” tab, enter a seed keyword like “AI SEO tools,” and VidIQ provides search volume, a competition score, and the overall score of the keyword.

You can also view related keywords, matching terms, and related questions to your seed keyword. This is where creators tend to find the best niche topics for new video ideas, especially when using broader seed keywords with higher volume.

The platform also includes various free tools for users, including an AI Keyword Generator.

This allows users to quickly create related keyword lists to find niche topics. In my experience, VidIQ is best for competitor research and finding underserved YouTube topics.

You can even set up keyword and trend alerts, so VidIQ will notify you when specific channels, topics, or keywords reach a pre-determined views-per-hour (VPH) threshold.

But in order to unlock complete data, such as search volume or competition score, you’ll need to create a premium account. Pricing is tiered, including the following plans:

• Boost: $16.58/month billed annually ($19.99/mo billed monthly) with a 7-day free trial
• Coaching: $99/month billed annually ($199/mo billed monthly), includes access to a 1-on-1 coach, personalized channel audits, growth plans, etc.

5. TubeBuddy: Best for YouTube SEO optimization

TubeBuddy is a YouTube-certified browser extension and mobile app designed to optimize videos for better search rankings and channel growth.

The platform's SEO Studio and Keyword Explorer provide search volume, competition scores, and weighted rankings so you can:

• Discover new YouTube keyword ideas
• Analyze keywords and generate lists of related topics
• Optimize your channel's SEO with new titles, tags, and descriptions
• Audience intelligence features to analyze customer behavior

Once you download the extension, sign-up, and sync your YouTube account with your TubeBuddy account, you can access the SEO Studio and Keyword Explorer.

The Keyword Explorer includes in-depth details about keywords, including monthly search volume, total videos, competitor scores, and much more.

I searched “SEO strategies" and learned a few things. First, this search gets about 46.7K monthly searches. Second, while it’s not super competitive, the channels ranking near the top for the keyword are optimizing well, which means outranking them is harder to do compared to other similar keywords.

This tells me that if I were new to YouTube or my channel didn't have a ton of authority yet, I should probably aim for some lower competition keywords first. There’s also a sidebar with important Keyword Explorer metrics that appears every time you type a new query into the YouTube search bar.

Pricing plans:

• Pro: $7.50/month billed monthly ($6/mo billed annually)
• Legend: $32.99/month billed monthly ($26.39/mo billed annually)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

6. Keyword Tool: Best for generating long-tail keyword suggestions

Keyword Tool is a YouTube keyword tool that allows users to quickly generate hundreds of long-tail keyword suggestions.

It allows users to filter results by location, or you can view additional results by Questions, Prepositions, or Hashtags. This is strictly to view long lists of keyword suggestions, which can be useful if you want to think of new ideas.

Additionally, the platform includes search volume data, competition scores, CPC information, and the recent growth or decline of a specific keyword.

However, you’ll need to upgrade to Keyword Tool Pro to unlock this data. They offer a limited view of information for free users. Paid members can also access the bulk search volume feature, which allows you to upload a list of up to 1,000 keywords to retrieve estimated search volume by location.

Keyword Tool Pro pricing plans:

• Pro Basic: $69/month (billed annually), includes search volume, more keywords, bulk search volume analysis, 1 user account.
• Pro Plus: $79/month (billed annually), adds CPC and competition data, supports 5 user accounts.
• Pro Business: $159/month (billed annually), includes all features, 50 API requests per day, 10 user accounts.

Start Your YouTube Keyword Research Today

Discovering high-impact YouTube keywords is one of the best ways to boost your channel’s visibility and growth.

The right keywords can drive targeted views, increase engagement, and help you connect with your ideal audience.

Try the Semrush Keyword Analytics for YouTube app to uncover trending terms, optimize your videos, and stay ahead of the competition.