Exploding Topics tells you what people are searching for more. BigIdeasDB tells you whether anyone is unhappy, whether anyone is paid, and how crowded the software layer is. We tested its trending list against 1M+ complaints.
If you searched for an Exploding Topics alternative, you probably liked the promise: see a market before it goes mainstream. That promise is real for some jobs. The catch for founders is simple. A rising search term is not a pain. It tells you attention is growing. It does not tell you whether buyers are frustrated, whether anyone is already paid to fix it, or whether the software layer is full.
So we tested it. We took the 30 visible entries on Exploding Topics’ public trending software page on September 25, 2026, traced each one to its software category, and checked all 13 categories against BigIdeasDB: 1M+ real complaints from Reddit, G2, Capterra and App Store reviews, 30,000+ companies in the Stripe Index, 8,600+ startups in TrustMRR and 17,000+ funded startups. The result is the finding no trend tool can give you on its own.
The best Exploding Topics alternative for founders is BigIdeasDB. Use Exploding Topics (or free Google Trends) to see what is getting attention. Use BigIdeasDB to decide what to build: it shows whether a category has documented complaints, whether small startups already earn real revenue there, and how crowded the micro-SaaS layer is. In our test, 9 of the 13 categories behind this month’s trending software names failed at least one of those checks.
The rest of this page is the evidence. If you only want the table, jump to the 13-category scorecard or the side-by-side comparison. For the wider field, see our SaaS research tools roundup and the shorter BigIdeasDB vs Exploding Topics help page.
Exploding Topics is a trend-discovery tool. Its pricing page headline is “Discover trends 12+ months before they take off,” and it describes the product as tracking “every topic on the internet to identify under-the-radar trends months or years before they go mainstream.”
In practice you get a searchable trends database, trending products, trending startups, “Meta Trends” that cluster related micro-trends, a channel breakdown and trend forecasting on higher plans. Each trend shows a search volume and a growth percentage. It also publishes a free weekly newsletter and a set of free SEO tools. It is a good product for its job, and it is a different job from idea validation. If you want trend-led lists built on evidence instead, see trending SaaS ideas and micro SaaS trends.
Its methodology page describes three steps: data collection, trend identification and human verification. Sources listed are social media platforms, search engines, online forums and communities, news articles and blogs, e-commerce websites and podcasts. Machine-learning models look for growth patterns and sudden spikes, then analysts review the top-scoring trends and “filter out fads (movies, TV shows, celebrity gossip etc.)”
That is a sensible pipeline for detecting attention. Notice what it measures: mentions, searches and growth. It does not measure dissatisfaction. A product can trend because it is loved, hated, freshly funded or heavily advertised, and the curve looks the same. That gap is where a complaint analysis platform earns its place.
All prices below are monthly, in USD, as listed on explodingtopics.com/pricing and the Semrush checkout page on September 25, 2026.
| Plan | Price | Tracked trends | Trend analyses | Adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entrepreneur | $39/mo | 100 | 10 | Trends database, trending products, Meta Trends, channel breakdown |
| Investor | $99/mo | 500 | 100 | Trending startups, trend forecasting, CSV export |
| Business | $249/mo | 2,000 | 500 | Trend reports |
The honest read: $39 is a fair entry price for a curated database. The features founders usually want for idea scouting (trending startups and forecasting) start at $99 a month, which is $1,188 a year. Compare that with how we think about pricing in SaaS pricing strategies and with our own lifetime pricing.
Older reviews describe a 14-day trial for $1. A December 2023 video review quotes exactly that, alongside annual prices of $468, $1,188 and $2,988. The current pricing page lists a 7-day free trial on every plan. The methodology page still carries an old “Start 14-day trial for $1” button, so expect some confusion.
The practical point: seven days is enough to scan categories, but not enough to watch a tracked trend move. If you trial it, decide in advance which three categories you will check, and run the same categories through our free business idea evaluator the same week.
Two caps matter. Tracked trends is how many terms you can watch. Trend analyses is how many deep-dive reports you can open. On the $39 plan that is 10 analyses. If you are comparing ideas, you will hit that cap fast, which is the same per-idea math we flagged in our report-tool comparison.
BigIdeasDB has no per-idea cap on Pro. You can query the pain points database, the Stripe Index and TrustMRR as often as you like, including through the BigIdeasDB MCP server inside Claude or ChatGPT.
Exploding Topics’ About page says it “was acquired by Semrush in 2024.” Checkout, login and support now run through Semrush, and the site footer reads “Exploding Topics is a Trademark of Semrush Inc.” Its recent blog posts lean toward SEO and AI-search workflows.
That is not a knock. It tells you who the product is increasingly built for: marketers and SEO teams hunting topics. If you are a founder hunting problems, you want a tool built around finding problems worth solving.
The pricing page describes “an ever-expanding database of 1.1M+ under-the-radar markets, products, and investment opportunities.” The same December 2023 review counted around 24,000+ trends in the database at the time. Either way, it is a big library of names.
BigIdeasDB’s headline number is also 1M+, but it counts something different: complaints. Each row is a person describing what is broken, in their own words, tied to a product and a category. A million trends tell you where to look. A million complaints tell you what to fix. Our complaint database comparison explains why that unit matters.
A reviewer summed up the limit fairly, even while recommending the tool:
“not all Trends may lead to success even if the information was 90% accurate” – YouTube review of Exploding Topics Pro
A trend answers “is attention growing?” A buildable idea needs three other answers: is someone unhappy, is someone already paid to fix it, and is there room for a small tool. Those are the checks behind our multi-signal validation method.
CB Insights lists lack of market need among the top reasons startups fail. A trend can make a market look needed when it is only visible. Our why startups fail analysis and startup failure statistics find the same pattern. One founder described the real frustration of validation in one line:
“I think is to notice that your idea is not something that users wants” – r/microsaas
On September 25, 2026, the public trending software page showed 30 entries on its first page (more sit behind “Members Only” rows and later pages). 28 were named companies or products: NinjaOne, Vanta, Workable, SmartRecruiters, Lodgify, vidIQ, Kore.ai, Frontegg, DNSFilter and others. Two were generic terms: “Customer Success manager” and “Wireframe.”
That matters for founders. A company name trending means a company is winning attention. It does not tell you what its customers hate, which is where a wedge comes from. Recruiting alone appeared four times (hireEZ, SmartRecruiters, Workable, JoinedUp). So we did the step a trend list skips: we mapped every name to the job it does, which gave us 13 software categories, and ran each one through BigIdeasDB. It is the same move we recommend in competitive landscape analysis: competitors point at the category, reviews point at the gap.
Each category got three pass or fail checks. Complaints: 100+ Capterra pain points or 500+ G2 reviews in the category. Money: at least 3 startups in TrustMRR at $1K+ MRR. Room: 100+ Stripe Index companies with micro-SaaS density at or below the directory average of 6.6%.
| Category (trending names) | Capterra pain points | G2 reviews | Stripe cos | Micro-SaaS density | TrustMRR $1K+ | Funded | Checks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compliance (Vanta) | 220+ | 6,800+ | 1,000+ | 5.5% | 3+ | 300+ | 3/3 |
| Construction management (Knowify) | 630+ | 850+ | 890+ | 4.7% | 4+ | 200+ | 3/3 |
| Appointment scheduling (MY Appointment) | 670+ | 3,000+ | 4,800+ | 4.0% | 7+ | 120+ | 3/3 |
| Legal and contracts (Robin AI) | 340+ | 920+ | 520+ | 6.1% | 4+ | 120+ | 3/3 |
| Recruiting and ATS (hireEZ, SmartRecruiters, Workable, JoinedUp) | 290+ | 750+ | 420+ | 6.9% | 13+ | 240+ | 2/3 |
| Chatbots and conversational AI (Kore.ai) | 400+ | none in sample | 130+ | 12.9% | 6+ | 75+ | 2/3 |
| IT management and RMM (NinjaOne) | 90+ | 560+ | 25+ | 3.8% | 0 | 20+ | 1/3 |
| Vacation rental (Lodgify) | 0 (coverage gap) | 80+ | 410+ | 1.7% | 0 | 10+ | 1/3 |
| Employee recognition (Awardco) | 120+ | 55+ | 10+ | 0% | 1 | 15+ | 1/3 |
| Authentication and identity (Frontegg, Akeyless) | 230+ | none in sample | 40+ | 14.6% | 0 | 40+ | 1/3 |
| YouTube tools (vidIQ) | 0 (coverage gap) | none in sample | 55+ | 22.8% | 15+ | 40+ | 1/3 |
| DNS and web security (DNSFilter, Guardz) | 20+ | none in sample | 2 | n/a | 0 | 0 | 0/3 |
| Web scraping and proxies (Smartproxy) | 0 (coverage gap) | none in sample | 20+ | 14.3% | 2 | 8 | 0/3 |
The headline: only 4 of 13 categories behind this month’s trending software names cleared all three checks. Two more cleared two. Seven cleared one or none. Every one of the 13 was “exploding” by search growth. Most were not a buildable opportunity for a small team, at least not yet. For the full saturation picture, see the state of micro-SaaS competition.
Compliance is the loudest: 6,800+ G2 reviews and 220+ Capterra pain points, a 5.5% micro-SaaS density across 1,000+ Stripe companies, and 300+ funded startups. The complaints are about setup burden, not the idea of compliance:
“It felt overwhelming at first. The number of tasks for HIPAA compliance was daunting.” – Capterra review
“Data entry is tedious and often takes away from the focus on production.” – Capterra review
“I spend more time doing international compliance research than actual client work nowadays” – r/digitalnomad
Construction management had 630+ Capterra pain points and a 4.7% density across 890+ Stripe companies. Field access and clunky tools dominate:
“Would love to have a mobile application rather than a web browser version.” – Capterra review
“The spreadsheet is glitchy at times. Freezes sometimes. Difficult to tell source of data in some of the reports.” – Capterra review
“It's clunky - things aren't intuitive for the novice OR advanced user.” – Capterra review
“Versatile and Customizable, But Buggy” – G2 review
Appointment scheduling is the biggest market in the set (4,800+ Stripe companies) with the lowest density of the passes (4.0%) and 670+ Capterra pain points:
“Does not integrate as well as desired with Google calendar.” – Capterra review
“The support is only through email, their website chat functionality doesn’t work.” – Capterra review
“Client communications are littered with bugs now, especially in payment processing.” – Capterra review
“Using platform for 2 years w/ persistent problems that are unaddressed by support + customer success” – G2 review
Legal and contracts rounds it out: 340+ Capterra pain points, 920+ G2 reviews, 6.1% density and startups already past $1K MRR:
“The need to input duplicate information across various parts of the software is tedious and frustrating.” – Capterra review
“Data storage security failed us - they lost all data entered for an entire case and could not recover it.” – Capterra review
“No one answers the phone for technical support anymore, and support has greatly gone down over the years.” – Capterra review
These four fit the pattern in our small business software pain points research: boring, regulated, operational categories where buyers already pay and still complain. That is also why they show up in B2B SaaS ideas and low-competition SaaS ideas.
Recruiting had everything except room. 290+ Capterra pain points, 13+ startups at $1K+ MRR, 240+ funded companies, but a 6.9% micro-SaaS density, just above the 6.6% average. Plenty of small tools already chase this buyer. The complaints still point at gaps:
“Powerful automations, but missing key ATS basics and a flexible onboarding module” – G2 review
“Average product coupled with terrible customer service” – G2 review
“Lack of a technical database and many profiles are outdated.” – Capterra review
“I wish there were more automation and coordination between workday and Phenom.” – G2 review
Chatbots and conversational AI had 400+ Capterra pain points and paying startups, but a 12.9% density, nearly double the average. That is a crowded micro layer, consistent with what we found in AI SaaS ideas. The complaints are sharp:
“They never converted even one lead out of thousands.” – Capterra review
“Support teams were lethargic and only want to respond via email.” – Capterra review
A competitor being present is not a kill. As we argue in SaaS market saturation, competition validates the market. The question is whether you have a wedge the reviews point to.
DNS and web security and web scraping and proxies scored 0 of 3. DNS filtering had 20+ Capterra pain points, two Stripe companies and no TrustMRR revenue. That does not mean nobody needs it. It means the trend is a company’s growth curve, not an open problem a small team can see and price.
Five more scored 1 of 3. IT management has real G2 complaints but no small startups earning in TrustMRR. Employee recognition and authentication have complaints but too few Stripe companies to judge room. YouTube tools make money for indie founders (15+ at $1K+ MRR) but at a 22.8% density, the most crowded micro layer in the set. Treat these as watchlist items, and check them again with the market size guide before committing.
Employee recognition shows why complaints alone are not enough. The pain is real, the buyers are few:
“The software needs to have some built-in moderation to identify 'fake' recognitions.” – Capterra review
“It's a little costly. If the cost was down a little, more companies might have the opportunity.” – Capterra review
One honest caveat: some zeros are our coverage, not the market. Our Capterra scrape thins out late in the alphabet, so Vacation Rental, Video Marketing and Web Scraping have zero Capterra companies. We marked those as coverage gaps rather than counting them as fails.
Here is the clearest example of why a trend and a pain are different signals. Lodgify appears on the trending software list at +116% growth and 40.5K monthly searches. In our G2 corpus, vacation rental software reviews include these titles, one of them about Lodgify itself:
“Customer service is TERRIBLE, website doesn't really work, no IT department” – G2 review
“they got expensive. they are not transparent in costing.” – G2 review
“Absolute waste of time and money due to lost bookings” – G2 review
“Solid Features Overshadowed by Poor Support” – G2 review
Growth and dissatisfaction can rise together. A trend tool shows you the first. Only reviews show you the second, and the second is where your product spec lives. Vacation rental also has the thinnest micro-SaaS layer in the set (1.7% across 410+ Stripe companies). Our niche SaaS opportunities by industry list works the same way. That combination is worth a closer look, and it is exactly the workflow in turning G2 reviews into SaaS ideas.
| Dimension | BigIdeasDB | Exploding Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Core question | Is this a documented, paid-for problem? | Is attention on this term growing? |
| Unit of data | Complaints, companies, revenue | Trends (search terms, products, startups) |
| Headline size | 1M+ complaints | 1.1M+ trends |
| Saturation | Micro-SaaS density across 30,000+ Stripe companies | Not measured |
| Revenue | 8,600+ startups in TrustMRR | Not shown for software |
| Funding | 17,000+ funded startups | Latest round on trending startups ($99+ plan) |
| Verbatim quotes | Yes, from Reddit, G2, Capterra, App Store | No |
| Best for | Choosing what software to build | Spotting consumer products, topics, startups |
| Price | $29 or $49/mo, or $349 lifetime | $39, $99 or $249/mo |
| Free option | Free idea evaluator and calculators | Limited public pages, 7-day trial |
| AI access | AI research chat and MCP server | Trends API (listed as a feature) |
A complaint is a product spec written by the buyer. “Does not integrate as well as desired with Google calendar” tells you the integration to build first. A trend line never will. BigIdeasDB’s corpus holds 270,000+ Capterra reviews, 150,000+ G2 reviews and 130,000+ App Store and Google Play reviews, with 39,000+ structured Capterra pain points scored for severity, as of September 2026.
The method is in mining Capterra reviews for SaaS ideas, finding ideas in negative reviews and who complains about what in software reviews. The product walkthroughs are the Capterra analysis guide and the G2 analysis guide.
“Integration worked sometimes, but needed a frequent 'resync' to show the latest devices.” – Capterra review
“Some processes can't be automated and you can't cc people in emails.” – G2 review
“The third-party cookies solution is confusing.” – Capterra review
A trend tool counts searches. Counting competitors is the next instinct, and it misleads. Appointment scheduling has 4,800+ Stripe companies, which looks saturated. But only 4.0% are micro-SaaS, below the 6.6% directory average (2,000+ micro-SaaS among 30,000+ companies). The market is full of operators and thin on small software.
YouTube tools look tiny at 55+ companies, but 22.8% are micro-SaaS. That is the crowded one. Our Stripe Index database guide and companies using Stripe explain the density method, and the Stripe Index MCP tools let you run it from an AI assistant.
The third check is money. Across TrustMRR, 3,700+ startups report revenue above $0, the median is $145 MRR, and 23.6% clear $1K MRR, as of September 2026. So a category with several startups past $1K is doing better than the typical indie product.
Recruiting (13+ startups at $1K+) and YouTube tools (15+) led the set on this check. IT management and vacation rental had none. See SaaS revenue benchmarks by category, TrustMRR revenue benchmarks and the state of indie SaaS revenue, or read the TrustMRR guide.
Exploding Topics’ trending startups feature shows the latest funding round. That is useful context and a weak demand signal. In our set, compliance (300+ funded startups) and recruiting (240+) drew the most venture interest, and both also had documented complaints. DNS security had zero funded matches and zero evidence elsewhere.
Money flowing in tells you investors believe in a market (see startup funding trends). It does not tell you buyers are unhappy with what exists. Use the funded startups database, the Funded DB and the Funded DB MCP tools as one input, and read how to find startup ideas that get funded for the pattern.
Trends are about timing: get in before the peak. Complaints are about durability: a problem that has annoyed buyers for years tends to keep annoying them. The HIPAA setup burden and duplicate data entry quoted above are not fads.
Search interest moves fast. On Google Trends, worldwide interest in the term “google trends” itself swung from a peak in August 2025 to 31% of that peak by September 2026. Build on what lasts, then use a trend to decide when to push.
Search volume counts curiosity. Complaint volume counts people who bought, used and got frustrated. The second group is smaller and far more valuable, because they already pay.
Many of the trending names are enterprise tools, where the people who search are not the people who sign. A founder who reads 50 complaints learns more about a software market than one who watches a volume chart for a month. Our state of SaaS pain points report ranks the loudest ones.
Consumers search for products. B2B buyers search for vendor names, then complain in reviews. That is why most of the trending software list is company names, and why review sites carry the B2B signal. Our 88,000+ Capterra companies and G2 corpus are B2B by nature.
“Poor integration with IT Glue which led to a loss of data.” – Capterra review
“Reminders cannot easily be migrated between users.” – Capterra review
“Customer support is non-responsive when urgent queries arise.” – Capterra review
If you build for businesses, start from business pain points and validating a SaaS idea with real reviews, not from a trend chart.
Be fair to the tool. For physical products, search interest tracks demand closely, and Exploding Topics enriches trending products with monthly sales, price range, review scores, best-selling SKUs and top brands. A dropshipper or DTC founder gets more from that than from a software complaint database. Its public front page on September 25, 2026 led with consumer terms like remineralizing gum (+5100%) and GLP-1 supplements (+1150%).
If your idea is an app rather than a product, our App Store corpus is the closer match. See the App Store database guide.
For writers and SEO teams, a rising topic is the whole point. Publish before the term peaks and you win the traffic. That is a legitimate use, and the Semrush connection makes it stronger. An r/SaaS SEO thread put it plainly:
“Targeting trending topics is the best way to get quick and easy traffic with SEO.” – r/SaaS
Traffic is not revenue, though, which is why revenue intelligence sits next to complaints in our stack. For a product, you need the pain behind the topic. Our AI market research guide covers how to get from a topic to a problem.
Exploding Topics’ Investor plan adds trending startups with headcount and latest round, which is a reasonable scouting feed. For due diligence on a specific market, pair it with complaint and revenue data. The due diligence guide shows how, and SellSide adds real acquisition listings.
Founders are skeptical of paying for trend-based ideas. In an r/SideProject thread asking whether people would pay for a tool that surfaces startup ideas from Google Trends, X and Reddit, the replies were blunt:
“No. Ideas are never the problem. It's always execution.” – r/SideProject
“Maybe, I will use it for the first month to get enough traction and then unsubscribe” – r/SideProject
“scrapes for trends -> market research on trend -> surface an MVP you can execute on.” – r/SideProject
That last reply is the workflow this page recommends. A high-voted r/AI_Agents post warned about the other risk of building on what is visibly trending:
“Big companies just look at what’s trending, what indie developers are selling, and they add it as a feature in their billion-dollar platforms.” – r/AI_Agents
And a founder asking the right question, one step too early:
“I know Google Trends is one place to start, but how do people actually validate an idea like this?” – r/creativesmallbusiness
The answer from a validation community reads like our checklist:
“Google Trends for the terms, `site:reddit.com` searches for people describing the pain, 1 and 2 star reviews of adjacent tools, and Product Hunt comments for the category.” – r/ValidateThisIdea
For live monitoring, the Reddit market research guide helps. For more on how founders research, see finding business ideas on Reddit and the Reddit validation guide.
For a single tool that runs these checks, see the SaaS idea validation tool page. The full framework is in the 8-stage validation framework and the validation checklist. If you have several candidates, how to choose between startup ideas walks through ranking them.
Exploding Topics’ $39 plan includes 10 trend analyses a month, about $3.90 per analysis, and none of them tell you about complaints or revenue. The $99 plan unlocks startups and forecasting, $1,188 a year. BigIdeasDB Basic is $29 a month, Pro is $49 a month with unlimited queries, and Pro Lifetime is $349 once, less than four months of the Investor plan.
The bigger cost is building on the wrong signal. Months spent on a trend with no documented pain cost far more than any subscription. See how much it costs to start a business and our pricing page.
If you want a trend signal without paying, Google Trends is free and covers most of what founders need: direction, seasonality and comparison of up to five terms. Its limit is that it is relative, 0 to 100 against the query set’s own peak, so it never gives absolute volume. Over five years of worldwide data, the term “exploding topics” never rose above 2 on a scale where “google trends” peaked at 100.
Our Google Trends for SaaS idea validation guide covers how to read it without fooling yourself, and SaaS market trends 2026 shows where the data points this year.
Connect BigIdeasDB to Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP setup guide, and try our AI prompts for business ideas.
The strongest workflow uses a trend tool for attention and BigIdeasDB for evidence. Spot a category getting attention, run the three checks, and only then talk to customers. The trend picks the neighborhood. The evidence picks the house. Our BigIdeasDB alternatives page covers how other tools slot in, and market research tools for startups and competitor research tools cover the wider stack.
Start with the discovery tool, the startup ideas guide, browse SaaS ideas or micro SaaS ideas, and read the guide to finding SaaS ideas.
A trend feed updates daily. BigIdeasDB does not, and we publish every source date so you can judge. The same per-source honesty runs through our other alternatives pages. As of September 25, 2026:
| Source | Size | Last added |
|---|---|---|
| Reddit pain points | 2,300+ | September 13, 2026 |
| App Store and Play reviews | 130,000+ | August 10, 2026 |
| G2 reviews | 150,000+ | July 25, 2026 |
| TrustMRR startups | 8,600+ | July 1, 2026 |
| Stripe Index companies | 30,000+ | June 27, 2026 |
| Funded startups | 17,000+ | June 12, 2026 |
| Capterra reviews | 270,000+ | December 4, 2025 |
Complaints about setup burden or missing integrations stay true for years, so older rows still carry signal. For anything time-sensitive, pair them with a trend check.
Export your tracked trends (CSV export is on the $99 plan and up) or copy the list. Map each name to its category, then run the workflow above. Most founders end up with a watchlist of 20 names and a shortlist of three categories. If something is missing from our data, you can request custom data, and the documentation covers every dataset.
Pass all five and you are ready for customer validation and product-market fit work.
Exploding Topics is a well-made trend tool with honest methodology and real strengths in consumer products, content and startup scouting. For $39 a month it shows you where attention is going.
For founders deciding what to build, BigIdeasDB is the better tool and the #1 alternative. It answers what a trend cannot: is someone unhappy, is someone already paid, and is there room for a small product. In our test, only 4 of 13 trending software categories passed all three. That is the difference between a watchlist and a decision.
Stop building on search spikes. Check every trend against 1M+ real complaints, saturation density and verified revenue on BigIdeasDB.
Exploding Topics facts come from its pricing, About, methodology and trending software pages and the Semrush pricing page, all fetched on September 25, 2026. Older pricing and database size come from a December 2023 YouTube review and are labeled as such. BigIdeasDB prices come from the live pricing configuration in our codebase the same day.
We recorded the 30 visible entries on explodingtopics.com/software-topics and classified each as a named company or product, or a generic term. We mapped named entries to 13 software categories by the job each product does, and grouped related names (four recruiting tools became one category). For each category we ran read-only SQL with case-insensitive keyword patterns: Capterra pain points and G2 reviews by category name, Stripe Index companies by subcategory, problem and keyword text, TrustMRR startups with revenue by description and category, and funded companies by one-liner and description. Micro-SaaS density is micro-SaaS companies divided by all matched Stripe companies. Keyword matching over-counts some unrelated uses and misses some synonyms; small TrustMRR counts are directional. Counts are rounded down with a plus sign; percentages are exact. Quotes are verbatim, attributed to platform or subreddit only.
| Source | What it contributed | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| explodingtopics.com pages | Pricing, plan limits, methodology, trending software list | Public list shows 30 entries; the rest are Members Only |
| December 2023 YouTube review | Old trial terms, old annual prices, old database size | Dated and affiliate-linked; used only for history |
| BigIdeasDB pricing config | Our plan prices | Promotions and coupons can change the price paid |
| Capterra pain points and reviews | B2B complaint volume, severity, quotes | Last ingested December 2025; coverage thins late in the alphabet |
| G2 reviews | Second B2B complaint corpus, review titles | Last added July 2026; some categories absent from our sample |
| Reddit and live threads | Founder language on trend tools and validation | Vocal users over-represented; small samples |
| Stripe Index | Company counts, micro-SaaS density | Keyword-bounded directory sample, not a census; no revenue |
| TrustMRR | Startups at $1K+ MRR by category | Self-selected founders; small counts per category |
| Funded startups | Where venture capital is present | Funding amounts and dates not used; last update June 2026 |
| Google Trends | Relative search direction | Indexed 0 to 100, never absolute volume |
| CB Insights | Startup failure reasons context | Third-party study; methodology set by its publisher |
BigIdeasDB, if your goal is deciding what to build. Exploding Topics shows which search terms are rising. BigIdeasDB shows whether a problem is documented and paid for: 1M+ real complaints from Reddit, G2, Capterra and App Store reviews, 30,000+ companies in the Stripe Index for saturation density, 8,600+ revenue-verified startups in TrustMRR and 17,000+ funded startups, as of September 2026.
Per explodingtopics.com/pricing on September 25, 2026: Entrepreneur $39 a month (100 tracked trends, 10 trend analyses), Investor $99 a month (500 tracked trends, 100 analyses, trending startups, forecasting, CSV export) and Business $249 a month (2,000 tracked trends, 500 analyses, trend reports). Each plan lists a 7-day free trial.
Partly. The public site shows a limited view of trending topics by category and a weekly newsletter, and some rows are locked behind 'Members Only'. Full database search, tracking and analyses need a paid plan after the 7-day trial.
Semrush. Exploding Topics' own About page says it was acquired by Semrush in 2024. It was co-founded by Brian Dean (CEO) and Josh Howarth (CTO), and checkout now runs through Semrush.
For spotting consumer products, content topics and fast-growing startups, it can be. For choosing a software idea it is incomplete, because a rising search term does not tell you whether buyers are unhappy or paying. In our September 2026 check, only 4 of 13 software categories behind its public trending list cleared complaint, revenue and saturation checks.
No. A trend measures attention. Validation measures pain and willingness to pay. A term can triple in search volume because a company raised money or ran ads, with no documented complaint behind it. Pair every trend with complaint volume, saturation density and revenue before building.
Google Trends is free and shows relative interest on a 0 to 100 scale for terms you already know. Exploding Topics curates a database it says holds 1.1M+ trends, shows absolute search volume and growth, and surfaces terms you did not know to search. Neither tells you what users complain about.
Its methodology page lists social media platforms, search engines, online forums and communities, news articles and blogs, e-commerce websites and podcasts, scored by machine-learning models and then reviewed by human analysts who filter out fads.
Mostly company names. On September 25, 2026, 28 of the 30 visible entries on its public trending software page were named companies or products (for example NinjaOne, Vanta, Workable, Lodgify). Only two were generic terms. That makes it a list of winners, not a list of problems.
It tracks the things a trend cannot show: complaint volume and severity, micro-SaaS density per category, verified revenue, and where venture money is going. For raw search direction, use Google Trends for free alongside it.
Less real-time, and we publish the dates. As of September 25, 2026, Reddit pain points were last added September 13, 2026, App Store reviews August 10, 2026, G2 reviews July 25, 2026, TrustMRR July 1, 2026, the Stripe Index June 27, 2026 and Capterra reviews December 4, 2025. Complaints age slower than search spikes, which is why this matters less than it sounds.
BigIdeasDB Pro Monthly is $49 a month and Pro Lifetime is $349 once. Exploding Topics starts at $39 a month for 100 tracked trends and 10 trend analyses, and its startup and forecasting features start at $99 a month. Over a year, the entry plan alone is $468.
Yes. Use a trend tool or Google Trends to spot a market that is getting attention, then use BigIdeasDB to check whether the category has documented complaints, a thin micro-SaaS layer and startups already earning $1K+ MRR. The trend picks the neighborhood; the evidence picks the house.
It is better at consumer and e-commerce signals, where search behavior tracks demand closely. B2B buyers search less and complain in reviews instead, which is why BigIdeasDB's Capterra and G2 corpora (270,000+ and 150,000+ reviews as of September 2026) are the stronger B2B signal.
Google Trends for search direction, raw Reddit search for audience language, and ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity for summarizing what you find. BigIdeasDB also has a free business idea evaluator with no signup. None of the free generalist tools hold a structured complaint or revenue database.
Two reasons. Some are genuinely thin (DNS filtering showed almost no complaint evidence). Others are coverage gaps: our Capterra scrape thins out late in the alphabet, so categories like Vacation Rental, Video Marketing and Web Scraping have zero Capterra companies. We say so in the scorecard rather than count a gap as a pass or a fail.
Export or list the trends you are tracking, map each to the problem category behind it, then check that category in the pain points database, the Stripe Index and TrustMRR. It takes about 15 minutes per category and turns a watchlist of names into a shortlist of problems.
BigIdeasDB Research. (2026). Exploding Topics Alternative: A Rising Trend Is Not a Pain (Here Is the Data). BigIdeasDB. Retrieved from https://bigideasdb.com/exploding-topics-alternative