Disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. If you buy through one I earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It has not changed a single number below.
Sticker prices in this category are close to meaningless on their own.
What matters is cost per video, and that reorders everything.
The cheapest monthly plan is often the most expensive per video.
Free tools are not free either. They cost time instead of money.
At high volume, time is the more expensive of the two. 💵
Here is every price, the crossover points, and the costs nobody advertises.
🧾 Every Price in One Table
Monthly rates, as published at the time of writing.
| Tool and tier | Mensual | Metering |
|---|---|---|
| Estudio de YouTube | $0 | None, first-party data |
| vidIQ free | $0 | Créditos mensuales |
| TubeBuddy gratis | $0 | Feature limits |
| Tube Buddy Pro | A few dollars | Feature limits |
| Impulso de vidIQ | $16.58 | Credit metered |
| Leyenda de TubeBuddy | $26.39 | Feature limits |
| vidIQ Max | $39 | Credit metered |
| Tube Magic | $47 | Ilimitado |
The metering column matters as much as the price column.
A metered plan that runs out mid-month is not really cheaper.
📉 Cost Per Video Changes Everything
The same prices, divided by how much you actually publish.
📉 Cost per video as output rises
Why both lines fall
A fixed monthly fee spreads across everything you produce.
Publishing more is the only way to lower cost per video.
That is true of every subscription in this category.
It is also why publishing rate decides these purchases.
Why the blue line is misleading
Credits do not scale with your ambition.
Past a certain volume the plan simply stops producing.
The apparent saving disappears when you upgrade or wait.
The honest reading
Below about six videos monthly, cheaper plans win comfortably.
Above about ten, unlimited access wins on both cost and friction.
Between the two it is genuinely close (Product Insight AI, 2026).
🔢 The Numbers, Written Out
Cost per video at five publishing rates.
| Videos monthly | Tube Magic | Impulso de vidIQ | Leyenda de TubeBuddy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $47.00 | $16.58 | $26.39 |
| 2 | $23.50 | $8.29 | $13.20 |
| 4 | $11.75 | $4.15 | $6.60 |
| 8 | $5.88 | $2.07 | $3.30 |
| 16 | $2.94 | Credits exhausted | $1.65 |
On pure arithmetic the cheaper plans win at every row.
The bottom right cell is where arithmetic stops being the whole story.
What the table leaves out
TubeBuddy is not built for generating content at volume.
Comparing its price against a generation tool is comparing different jobs.
Cost per video only helps when the tools do the same work.
Nuestro TubeBuddy comparison covers that distinction.
The correct comparison
Compare generation tools against generation tools.
On that basis, the question is unlimited against metered.
Your publishing rate answers it, and nothing else does.
🕰️ What Free Actually Costs
The column missing from every comparison table.
| Tarea | Acercamiento libre | Extra minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Investigación de palabras clave | Autocomplete by hand | 15 per video |
| control de competencia | Searching manually | 10 per video |
| Script drafting | A free chat model | 5 per video |
| Switching between tools | Several browser tabs | 10 per video |
| Total | Aproximadamente 40 minutos |
Forty minutes per video is the real price of free.
At two videos a month that is cheap. At sixteen it is not.
Putting a number on it
Sixteen videos at forty minutes is more than ten hours monthly.
At $15 an hour that is around $160 of your time.
Suddenly $47 looks like the cheaper option.
At two videos monthly the same maths says the opposite.
Why this reverses the usual advice
Free is genuinely best for low-volume creators.
It becomes the most expensive choice at high volume.
The crossover sits around six to ten videos monthly (Sanish Tech, 2026).
🫥 The Costs Nobody Advertises
Five charges that do not appear on any pricing page.
| Costes ocultos | How it bites |
|---|---|
| Credit top-ups | Mid-month upgrades on metered plans |
| Annual lock-in | Twelve months paid for a tool you dropped |
| Forgotten subscriptions | The most common of all |
| Switching costs | Hours relearning a new interface |
| Stacking tools | Three small fees become one large one |
Forgotten subscriptions cost creators more than any pricing decision.
Twelve months of $47 is $564 whether you log in or not.
The annual discount trap
Annual billing genuinely saves money on a tool you will keep.
It costs you a great deal on one you would have dropped in month three.
Pay monthly until you have used something for a full quarter.
Then switch to annual with real evidence behind it.
The stacking problem
A keyword tool, a design tool and a scheduler add up quickly.
Three subscriptions at $20 exceed one at $47.
List everything you pay for once a quarter and cancel the unused.
📅 The Annual View
Monthly numbers hide how large these decisions are.
📅 Twelve months at monthly rates
Why the annual view is the honest one
Forty-seven dollars sounds small and $564 does not.
They describe exactly the same decision.
Creators who review annually cancel far more subscriptions.
What $564 buys elsewhere
A microphone, lighting and a year of occasional thumbnail help.
Those improve every video permanently rather than monthly.
Compare against them before assuming software is the best use.
When the software still wins
When it demonstrably makes you publish more videos.
Output is the thing that compounds on this platform.
If the subscription raises it, the price is easy to justify.
🧮 Working Out Your Own Number
Five lines of arithmetic that settle the question for you.
| Step | What to write down |
|---|---|
| 1 | Videos you actually publish monthly |
| 2 | Divide the plan price by that number |
| 3 | Minutes the tool saves per video |
| 4 | What an hour of your time is worth |
| 5 | Compare the value saved against step two |
Use the number you publish, not the number you intend to.
Intended output is where most of these calculations go wrong.
Being honest about step one
Count your last three months and divide by three.
That figure is far more reliable than any plan you have made.
Tools rarely change publishing rate on their own.
Buy for the rate you have, not the rate you want.
Being honest about step four
If your channel earns nothing yet, value the time modestly.
Aspirational hourly rates make every subscription look justified.
Nuestro pricing breakdown runs worked examples of this.
🧾 The Recommendation by Volume
Compressed, with my commercial interest stated openly.
| Videos monthly | Cheapest sensible option |
|---|---|
| 1 a 2 | Free tools, nothing else |
| 3 to 5 | Free, or a cheap paid tier |
| 6 to 9 | A paid tier, either metered or unlimited |
| 10 to 15 | Unlimited starts winning |
| 16 or more | Unlimited, clearly |
Two of those five rows say spend nothing.
Most readers of any page like this are in those two rows.
What I would do
Start free, count honestly, and upgrade when limits interrupt real work.
Being interrupted repeatedly is evidence. Marketing is not.
Nuestro Resumen de alternativas covers every option in detail.
The one caveat on all these numbers
Prices change without notice and tiers get renamed.
Check the official pages before acting on any figure here.
Everything above was verified on the date shown below (Busy Mom Side Hustle, 2026).
📊 Money Cost Against Time Cost
The comparison that decides this, drawn out properly.
📊 Total monthly cost, counting your time at $15 an hour
Why the free line rises
Every extra video adds forty minutes of manual work.
Nothing about that cost spreads across more output.
It is the only line on this chart that gets worse with scale.
That is the whole argument for paying at volume.
Where the crossover sits
At $15 an hour it lands somewhere near eight videos monthly.
At $30 an hour it moves left, closer to four.
At $0 an hour it never crosses at all.
Why your hourly figure decides everything
A creator earning nothing yet should value the time low.
A creator with a full-time job and four spare hours should value it high.
Those two people get genuinely different answers from the same prices.
🧾 Comparing Like With Like
These tools are not substitutes, and price tables imply that they are.
| Tool | Primary job | Fair comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Tube Magic | Producing new content | Other generation tools |
| vidIQ | Data and ideas | Other research tools |
| TubeBuddy | Managing a library | Other bulk editors |
| A chat model | Drafting text | Generation tools |
| Estudio de YouTube | First-party analytics | Nothing, it is unique |
The last row is worth dwelling on.
No paid tool can supply your own retention data.
Why the wrong comparison costs money
Buying a library tool for a production problem solves nothing.
The subscription runs while the actual bottleneck stays put.
Name the problem before comparing any prices at all.
That single habit prevents most wasted spending here.
The cheapest fair comparison
For generation specifically, a general chat model competes closely.
It costs nothing to $20 and drafts scripts and titles well.
What it lacks is keyword and competition data (Orbit River, 2026).
💳 Reviewing What You Already Pay
Worth ten minutes a quarter, and it usually pays for itself immediately.
| Pregunta | Action if the answer is no |
|---|---|
| Did I open it this month? | Cancel |
| Can I name what it did for me? | Cancel |
| Would I notice losing it? | Cancel |
| Is a free tier enough now? | Downgrade |
| Has my publishing rate dropped? | Downgrade or cancel |
Three of those five questions point straight at cancelling.
Most creators find at least one subscription that fails all three.
Why publishing rate should trigger a review
These plans are priced for a level of output you may no longer have.
A quiet quarter turns a good deal into a bad one automatically.
Nothing tells you this except a deliberate check.
Diary it rather than trusting yourself to notice.
How to cancel cleanly
Export anything you want to keep first.
Then cancel through the account area rather than by ignoring it.
Keep the confirmation until the next billing date passes.
📉 A Worked Example
One creator, real arithmetic, from first principles.
| Input | Valor |
|---|---|
| Vídeos publicados mensualmente | 6 |
| Plan price | $47 |
| Cost per video | $7.83 |
| Tiempo ahorrado por vídeo | 45 minutes |
| Hourly value of time | $15 |
| Value saved per video | $11.25 |
| Veredicto | Pays, with room to spare |
Change one input and the verdict flips.
At three videos monthly the same figures fail clearly.
Running your own version
Substitute your actual output and your honest hourly value.
The whole calculation takes under two minutes.
It is more reliable than any recommendation, including mine.
Write the result down so you can revisit it in three months.
What would change the answer later
A drop in publishing rate, or a better free alternative appearing.
Both happen regularly in this category.
Recheck each quarter rather than assuming it still holds (Product Insight AI, 2026).
🏷️ Discounts That Are Genuinely Worth Taking
Not all of them are, and the difference is easy to spot.
| Descuento | Worth taking? | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Small channel pricing | Sí | Menos de 1.000 suscriptores |
| Facturación anual | Yes, after a quarter | Once you know you will keep it |
| Launch or seasonal offers | Sometimes | Only if you already decided |
| Bundle with a course | Casi nunca | Judge each purchase separately |
| Countdown timer pricing | Ignore | Refresh and watch it reset |
TubeBuddy’s small channel discount is the strongest one in the category.
It roughly halves lower tiers for the stage most people are at.
Why timing an offer badly costs money
A discount on something you would not otherwise buy is not a saving.
It is a smaller version of an unnecessary purchase.
Decide first, then look for a discount on that decision.
Doing it the other way round is how subscriptions accumulate.
The bundle question
Bundled software and courses are priced to look like value.
You often only need one half of the bundle.
Price the half you want on its own before comparing (Busy Mom Side Hustle, 2026).
🧮 Cost Per Published Video, Not Per Draft
A distinction that changes several of the numbers above.
| Medida | What it counts | Por qué es importante |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per draft | Everything you generate | Flatters unlimited plans |
| Cost per published video | What actually went out | The honest measure |
| Cost per view | Depends on performance | Too noisy to use monthly |
| Cost per hour saved | Time, not output | Useful secondary check |
Generating forty drafts and publishing four is not a bargain.
Count what you shipped, not what the tool produced.
Why unlimited plans invite this error
Removing the meter makes generation feel free.
Volume of drafts then rises without output following.
The dashboard looks busy while the channel does not change.
Judge on published videos and that illusion disappears.
The secondary check
Cost per hour saved is useful when output is stable.
If you publish six videos either way, hours saved is the whole benefit.
Value those hours honestly and the answer follows (Orbit River, 2026).
📌 The Summary Table
Everything on this page, in the order that matters.
| Pregunta | Respuesta corta |
|---|---|
| Cheapest sticker price | Free plans, then TubeBuddy Pro |
| Cheapest at low volume | Herramientas gratuitas |
| Cheapest at high volume | Unlimited, once time is counted |
| Most expensive monthly | Tube Magic at $47 |
| Biggest hidden cost | Subscriptions you forgot |
| The number that decides it | Videos you publish monthly |
The last row is the only input most people need.
Count it honestly and the rest of this page becomes arithmetic.
What I would tell a friend
Publish on free tools until a limit interrupts you repeatedly.
Then buy the cheapest plan that removes that specific interruption.
Review it every quarter and cancel without sentiment.
That approach has never cost anyone money.
❓ Preguntas frecuentes
Which YouTube AI tool is cheapest?
By sticker price, TubeBuddy’s entry tier, especially with the small-channel discount.
By cost per video at high volume, unlimited plans win.
¿Cuánto cuesta Tube Magic?
$47 a month on a single plan, with no free tier.
There is a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.
Is vidIQ cheaper than Tube Magic?
Yes on monthly price, at $16.58 for Boost and $39 for Max.
Its credits are metered, which matters above roughly ten videos monthly.
Are the free plans genuinely usable?
Yes. vidIQ and TubeBuddy both offer free plans with no expiry.
They cover most small channels completely.
What does free actually cost?
Around forty extra minutes per video in manual work.
That is cheap at two videos monthly and expensive at sixteen.
Where is the crossover point?
Roughly six to ten videos a month.
Below it, cheaper plans win. Above it, unlimited does.
Should I pay annually?
Only after using a tool for a full quarter.
Annual billing on an untested tool is where money gets wasted.
Do these tools have hidden fees?
Not fees exactly, but credit top-ups and forgotten renewals cost real money.
Review your subscriptions quarterly.
Can I run more than one tool?
You can, and it usually costs more than one better-chosen plan.
Most creators need one paid tool at most.
Does a higher price mean better results?
No. Price reflects what is included, not what your channel will do.
Consistency and packaging drive results.
What is the total annual cost of Tube Magic?
About $564 at the monthly rate, before any annual discount.
Judge it against that figure rather than against $47.
How often do these prices change?
Often enough that you should verify before buying.
Every figure here was checked on the date noted below.
Do prices differ by country?
Sometimes, through local currency conversion and tax handling at checkout.
Check the final figure on the payment screen rather than the headline price.
Is there a student or creator discount?
The only reliable size-based discount here is for channels under 1,000 subscribers.
Treat any other claimed discount as a normal promotion (Futurepedia, 2026).
What happens if I cancel mid-month?
You usually keep access until the end of the paid period.
Cancel early rather than on the renewal date to avoid an accidental month.
Are credits carried over between months?
Assume not unless the plan explicitly says so.
Unused credits expiring is the normal arrangement on metered plans.
Should I pay for two tools at once?
Only during a deliberate comparison month, and never as a permanent setup.
Two overlapping subscriptions almost always means one is unused (OutlierKit, 2026).
What is the single cheapest workable setup?
YouTube Studio, autocomplete and a free chat model, at zero cost.
It costs you time instead, which is the right trade below six videos monthly.
Does a refund guarantee count as a discount?
No, it lowers the risk rather than the price, and only if you actually use it.
Treat it as a testing window with a deadline attached, not as money saved.
How much should tools cost as a share of channel income?
A common rule is under a fifth of what the channel earns each month.
Below that, spending stays proportionate as the channel grows or shrinks.
Is it cheaper to hire someone instead?
Never cheaper, but often better value, because an editor saves two or three hours per video.
Software saves about one, at a fraction of the cost.
📚 Referencias
Inteligencia Artificial para el Análisis de Productos. (2026). ¿Qué es TubeMagic? Análisis honesto y precios.Recuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://productinsightai.com/what-is-tubemagic-ai-review-pricing/
Futurepedia. (2026). Análisis de TubeMagic AI: casos de uso, precios y alternativasRecuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://www.futurepedia.io/tool/tubemagic
Río Órbita. (2026). Análisis de Tube Magic 2026: Herramientas de IA para el crecimiento en YouTubeRecuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://orbitriver.com/tool/tube-magic-ai-review-2026/
OutlierKit. (2026). vidIQ vs TubeBuddy: desglose de funciones y preciosRecuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://outlierkit.com/resources/vidiq-vs-tubebuddy/
Trabajo secundario de una madre ocupada. (2026). Reseña honesta de Tube MagicRecuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://busymomsidehustle.com/tube-magic-review/
Sanish Tech. (2026). Análisis de TubeMagic: características, precio, ventajas y desventajasRecuperado el 22 de agosto de 2026, de https://sanishtech.com/reviews/tubemagic-review/
Lecturas relacionadas en este sitio
Nuestro revisión completa de Tube Magic covers the product. See also our small channel guide y el guarantee testing method. See also whether a discount code is available.
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This page earns affiliate commission on the most expensive option listed and still recommends free tools for low-volume creators. Prices were checked on August 22, 2026 and change frequently, so verify on the official pages before buying.
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