YouTube competitor analysis
YouTube competitor analysis that starts with the competitors you don't know yet
A YouTube competitor analysis usually starts with a list you already have. Peerfield starts from your channel instead: it compares your videos with up to 1,000 creators and brands, ranks them by how closely they compete for the same audience, and researches how each one makes money from public sources. Your 5 strongest competitors are free.
What a real competitor analysis found
One of our sample maps, read live from our research. Every count shows its base, because website and ad checks fill in over days.
Live example
Alex Hormozi
4,540,000 subscribers ·
You probably know a handful of your competitors. Around Alex Hormozi, Peerfield researched 1,000 creators and brands.
The field in numbers
- Sell their own products or services334 of 817 checked (41%)
- Advertise on Google / YouTube151 of 697 checked (22%)
- Run dedicated landing pages27 of 817 checked (3%)
Strongest competitors on this map
Peer relevance- 1
Dan Martell100 percent peer relevance, relative to your strongest peer. This is a modeled relevance score, not a measurement of shared viewers or audience overlap.
- 2
GaryVee98 percent peer relevance, relative to your strongest peer. This is a modeled relevance score, not a measurement of shared viewers or audience overlap.
- 3
Myron Golden97 percent peer relevance, relative to your strongest peer. This is a modeled relevance score, not a measurement of shared viewers or audience overlap.
- 4
Dean Graziosi97 percent peer relevance, relative to your strongest peer. This is a modeled relevance score, not a measurement of shared viewers or audience overlap.
One matched video pair
98% topic match
Video of Alex Hormozia video to watch if you're ambitious and in your 20s or 30s
Video of Dan MartellIf you’re ambitious but lazy, please watch this…
Pairs like this are the evidence behind a match: the same topic, not shared viewers.
Read from our current research data. A competitor whose website or ads were not checked yet never counts as a "no".
See the full example mapSimilar channels are not the same as competitors
Most tools that promise competitors return channels that look like yours: the same keywords, the same category, similar titles. A useful start that misses much of the field. A channel competes with you when it wins the attention, the trust or the money of the audience you want, whether or not it looks like you.
A fitness creator competes with the brand that sells the same training plan, with the far bigger channel their audience compares them with, and with the nutrition channel next door. Peerfield ranks by that kind of competition and calls it peer relevance: how closely a channel competes with yours, modeled from topics, formats, positioning and commercial signals, not from shared viewers.
Four kinds of YouTube competitor
In Peerfield every competitor is a peer: a creator or brand competing for the same audience, a competitor in plain words. Each peer is tagged with the way it competes; some carry two tags.
- Direct Peer
A direct competitor: same topics, same kind of audience, comparable scale.
The channels you would name yourself, plus the ones of the same kind you had not come across.
- Adjacent Peer
A competitor from a neighboring topic or format.
A talk format next to your tutorials, or a neighboring niche that answers the same questions. Often the least obvious names on a map.
- Aspirational Peer
A bigger channel on the same topics: the reference your audience compares you with.
Worth studying for what it sells and how it presents it, more than for its subscriber count.
- Commercial Peer
A brand or business marketing to the same audience.
A software company, a supplement brand, a course provider: it competes for the same attention with a marketing budget.
What a complete competitor analysis contains
Every item below is a section the product shows today, filled where a public record exists. Where a source is empty or not checked yet, the map says so instead of guessing.
Free, for one channel
- Your 5 strongest competitors, ranked by peer relevance, each with the reason it competes with you and an evidence label
- How many more relevant competitors the research found
- What the wider field sells and where it advertises, in aggregate
Complete Peer Map, once per channel
€79 one-time for the channel you analyzed.
- Up to 1,000 researched creators and brands, each tagged with its peer type and ranked by peer relevance
- Why each one competes, with every piece of evidence, its source and the date it was seen
- Matched video pairs: your video next to theirs, on the same topic
- Profile facts: subscribers, videos, niche and country, plus website and linked social profiles
- Google and YouTube ads from the public ad library: whether they run, since when, how many, and the ads themselves with headline, text and destination
- LinkedIn ads: whether they run and how many, without the ad texts
- How each one makes money, every signal with its source, and the offers we observed, with prices where they are public
- Their websites and landing pages: address, type, title, headline and call to action where the page shows them
- The whole map as a filterable table and as a CSV download
The complete map is checked by a researcher before it is released. Your free 5 are ranked automatically.
YouTube channel analysis vs. competitor analysis
The two answer different questions. If you came for statistics about one channel, this tells you where to look.
A channel analysis looks at one channel
- Views, subscribers and upload rhythm
- Best-performing videos and growth over time
- Suggestions for titles, tags and thumbnails
YouTube Studio and statistics tools do this well; Peerfield tracks no views over time and scores no titles.
A competitor analysis looks at the field around it
- Who else competes for that audience, and how closely
- What each competitor sells, with the price where it is public
- Who advertises to that audience on Google, YouTube and LinkedIn
That is Peerfield's job. Many creators use both: one to improve what they publish, the other to understand whom they publish against.
Three decisions a competitor analysis helps you make
Where to position your next series
When your direct competitors all cover the same angle, their matched video pairs show it plainly. The neighboring topics your adjacent peers own are where a new series can stand out instead of competing head-on.
What to sell, and at which price
If most competitors who sell something sell courses and a few sell software, you know which offers your audience already buys. Observed prices, where they are public, give you a range to test against before you set your own.
Whom to learn from, and whom to approach
Aspirational peers show where the next level is. Adjacent peers reach your audience from another angle, which makes them natural collaboration partners. Commercial peers are brands that already market to your audience: a starting point for sponsorship conversations, not a list of sponsors.
How Peerfield finds your competitors
Research starts from the channel you paste. Peerfield reads its public profile and recent uploads, maps what it is about (topics, formats, the questions it answers) and looks for creators and brands reaching the same kind of audience.
Each candidate is ranked by peer relevance, tagged with its peer type and researched from public sources: YouTube itself, the public Google and LinkedIn ad libraries, websites and public offers. Every claim carries its evidence class: Observed, Estimated or Inferred.
What this does not tell you
Knowing where a competitor analysis stops is part of reading it well.
- Which viewers you share. Peer relevance is modeled from public signals; it is not a measurement of shared viewers or subscribers.
- Anything from YouTube Analytics. Peerfield never asks for your YouTube login or Analytics access; you sign in by email link.
- Meta, Instagram or TikTok ads. Advertising comes from the public Google / YouTube and LinkedIn ad libraries; LinkedIn shows whether ads run, not the ads.
- Sponsor rates, sponsorship history or contact details: no fees, no record of who sponsored whom, no email addresses, no media kits.
- Prices that are not public. An offer carries a price only where a public page shows one; otherwise the price reads unknown.
- Revenue. The map shows how competitors make money, not how much they earn.
Questions
Questions about YouTube competitor analysis
Is Peerfield a YouTube analytics tool?
Does it need my YouTube login?
Can it see which viewers we share?
How many competitors does it find?
Can I analyze a channel that isn't mine?
What does a competitor analysis cost?
Find your YouTube competitors
Paste your channel. Your 5 strongest competitors are free, without an account.