One of the biggest questions that new YouTubers have is, “Is TubeBuddy worth it? Is it worth spending my money to use it? Aren’t there a lot of analytical tools that I can use right inside of YouTube studio?”.

The answer is yes, there are. So, let’s find out if TubeBuddy is worth it. In fact, I’m going to do a comparison of TubeBuddy versus YouTube Studio to find out if it’s worth it?

What Is YouTube Studio?

YouTube studio is where you upload your videos and you’ll also find all the analytical tools there. But is there something that we’re getting from TubeBuddy that’s not there or are they both the same?

So, the first thing we’re going to do is choose four different things to check.

• Keyword Explorer
• Tag Lists
• Health Report
• Bulk Processing

These are four features that I know TubeBuddy has. So, we’ll go through these features and then turn TubeBuddy off. I can’t do a back-to-back comparison of these features because it requires taking TubeBuddy out and putting it back in again and this would take a lot of time.

So, we’ll look at these four features, first with TubeBuddy turned on and then, we’ll turn it off and see whether these features are also available in YouTube Studio.

1. Keyword Explorer In TubeBuddy

To start with we’re going to look at one of my videos – What Are Badges On Parler? As you can see, my TubeBuddy is already loaded so let’s look at the Keyword Explorer feature.

The video that I’m looking at has 2 questions that I answer. These are – “What are badges on Parler?” And, “How to get verified on Parler”.

So, what we want to do is look for more keywords around those questions.

Results For What Are Badges On Parler?

If you don’t know what Parler is, it’s a new social media platform so a lot of people don’t know about it yet. But, it is becoming more popular because this video has done pretty well. In fact, there are over 8,000 videos created around this topic.

Results For What Are Verification Badges

As you can see, this keyword is bringing back slightly better results and, therefore, it might be the one that’s driving my traffic. However, the search volume is still poor on this keyword and it has a fair bit of competition. But, there are 110,000 videos created around this keyword. This tells me that the keyword is worth going after.

I’ve already done with a number of videos. Here are the search terms that I’m using:

So, that’s one thing that TubeBuddy will do. I usually run this when I upload a brand new video and I might change my title and look for keywords according to what my rating is in TubeBuddy. So Keyword Explorer is very useful in TubeBuddy. Now, let’s look at tag lists.

2. Tag Lists In TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy allows you to make folders to keep your tag lists in. To be honest, this is not a feature I use because I prefer to keep my lists in OneNote. So, that’s also something that you could consider.

But, I want to show you how this feature works, so I’m going to create a tag list.

To start off a list, I added the tag “Parler”. These tag lists can be very useful if you’re talking about four or five subjects in the same niche on a regular basis. You can just grab your tag list quickly and easily with TubeBuddy.

3. Health Report In TubeBuddy

When you select the Health Report, it’s going to take you right into the TubeBuddy account. Therefore, you have to sign in. You select “health report” from the left-hand menu and then TubeBuddy will generate the report.

This report tells me how my channel has been performing in the last 30 days. It tells me how many views I’ve had, how many subscribers and what my engagement is.

I do know for a fact, that if you’re on YouTube, you can select seven days, 28 days or 90 days. So between you and I, I like knowing what’s going on in the last 30 days. This is because once you’re monetized, you’re usually paid on a 30 day period. Therefore, it gives you more of an accurate idea of where you’re at.

The numbers in this report look great compared to what is currently showing on YouTube. This is because on YouTube, we’re only looking at the past 28 days.

This report also gives me an idea of how many views I’ve had on different videos. Some of them are operating the way they have been in the last 30 days. Some of them have gone up and then some of their search terms have gone down.

The search terms shown are ones on YouTube and they’re related to a lot of my videos. This means that these terms are driving traffic to some of my videos.

If you scroll down further on the report, you can also see audience statistics and demographics. Plus, you can see engagement scores as well.

4. Bulk Processing In TubeBuddy

This is a feature that I love in TubeBuddy. To see how it works, we need to go back to Youtube Studio. Then, with TubeBuddy turned on, we click on the dropdown for “Bulk & Misc Tools”.

As you can see from the dropdown, there are a lot of things I can do with Tubebuddy including:

• Find and replace text in the descriptions
• Change thumbnail overlays
• Update, copy or delete my cards in bulk
• Copy, update or delete my end screens in bulk

For this exercise, I’m going to change some text in the descriptions. So I select “Find & Replace Text”.

This is actually a feature I use a lot because it saves me heaps of time. Let’s say I changed my Instagram account and want to update the info for all of my videos. I would put Instagram into the “find” box and let TubeBuddy go to work and search for all the instances of “instagram” in both my video titles and descriptions.

This is a great feature because you don’t always want to replace your entire description because the top of it is usually specific to just that one particular video. However, I do have a section of my descriptions that is the same for every single video. I usually have a “marker” that lets me know when the general part of my description begins.

Here’s a selection of videos that Tubebuddy has found with the word “instagram” in the title or description. I have the option of selecting just one of these to make changes to or I could select as many as I want, even all of them.

Can you imagine how much time this will save you, instead of having to go through each individual video one by one? Especially if you have over 400 videos, like I do.

Does YouTube Studio Have These Same Features?

Now, let’s turn off TubeBuddy and examine YouTube studio to see whether we can find the same features and results.

1. Keywords In YouTube Studio

To find my keywords, we’re going to look at the same video we looked at earlier and scroll right down, after clicking on “show more”.

While this does show me what all my keywords are, it doesn’t show me where they rank. Therefore, I would probably have to purchase an outside search engine optimization tool to help me find this information. So, TubeBuddy definitely wins with this feature.

2. Tag Lists In YouTube Studio

In YouTube Studio there is nowhere where I can create tag lists. In all fairness, I don’t use TubeBuddy for my tag lists because I keep them in OneNote. So, this is a feature you could do without.

3. Health Report In YouTube Studio

To find my health report in YouTube Studio, I have to go into my analytics.

Remember, this only shows stats for the last 28 days. Therefore, the numbers are a little lower than they were on TubeBuddy.

I can see my top videos for this period but to find out which videos were coming up for which search terms, I have to look in another section. You have to click on “Reach” and scroll down until you find “YouTube Search”.

This will show you the terms that people are searching for on YouTube.

So, as far as the Health Report goes, I do believe that I can find everything that I need on YouTube Studio. However, it’s not in a nice clean package like it is in TubeBuddy.

In saying that though, I do think that YouTube wins with the health report because there’s a lot more information if I go and search for it. So, TubeBuddy gives me a quick health report whereas in YouTube Studio, I can get a lot more information when I go and search for it.

4. Bulk Processing In YouTube Studio

Unfortunately, in YouTube Studio, I can’t find anywhere that I can easily do bulk processing. If you do know how to do this in YouTube, please let me know.

Final Verdict

So, for this exercise, my final verdict is:

1. Keywords – TubeBuddy

2. Tag Lists – TubeBuddy

3. Health Report – YouTube Studio

4. Bulk Processing – TubeBuddy

Therefore, TubeBuddy wins three to one. So, from this exercise, I would say that TubeBuddy is definitely worth it. What do you think?

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