Exploding Topics Platform Review | TickerTrends Comparison
Looking for the best platform to spot market trends? Here's a quick breakdown:
Exploding Topics: Ideal for spotting early trends up to 6 months in advance. It uses AI, human validation, and a database of over 1.1 million trends. Plans start at $39/month.
TickerTrends: Focuses on real-time data like social sentiment, web traffic, and app usage. It's perfect for instant market insights. Plans start at just $19/month.
Quick Comparison
Primary Focus:
Exploding Topics: Early trend detection
TickerTrends: Real-time market signals
Data Sources:
Exploding Topics: Search engines, social media, e-commerce
TickerTrends: Social media, web traffic, app usage
Update Frequency:
Exploding Topics: Daily updates
TickerTrends: Real-time updates
Price Range:
Exploding Topics: $39–$249/month
TickerTrends: $19–$89/month
Key Strength:
Exploding Topics: Long-term trend forecasting
TickerTrends: Real-time alternative data insights
Choose Exploding Topics for identifying future trends early. Opt for TickerTrends if you need real-time data for quick decisions. Or use both together for a complete market analysis toolkit.
Exploding Topics Platform Details
Main Features
Exploding Topics uses AI and machine learning to sift through millions of data points, identifying trends up to six months before they become widely recognized [2]. Its strength lies in pinpointing trends with steady, long-term growth instead of fleeting popularity.
The platform boasts a database of over 1.1 million emerging markets, products, and investment opportunities [3], spanning 31+ categories such as AI, technology, marketing, gaming, and design [2]. Here’s a quick breakdown of its standout features:
Standout Features
Meta Trends: Groups related trends into broader categories, helping to spot niches within larger markets
Trending Products: Tracks rising products across industries to identify early-stage product opportunities
Trending Startups: Highlights up-and-coming companies, uncovering investment prospects
Reports Library: Offers weekly trend analysis reports for in-depth market insights
Trend Forecasting: Predicts future trend trajectories, aiding in proactive investment planning
These features are supported by a detailed, three-step data collection and analysis process.
Data Collection Methods
Exploding Topics uses a layered approach to identify and validate trends:
Data Collection
Tracks data from various sources, including:
Social media
Search engines
Online forums
News outlets
E-commerce platforms
Podcasts [1]
Processing and Analysis
Machine learning processes historical data, filtering out short-lived fads. Each trend comes with metrics like channel breakdowns and key performance indicators [1].
Human Validation
Analysts review machine-identified trends to ensure they are accurate and relevant for investors. Josh Chapman, Managing Partner at Konvoy Ventures, highlights the importance of this process:
"As a VC, I try to see around corners. Which can be extremely challenging. Exploding Topics Pro helps me identify trends that no one else is highlighting. Which is extremely valuable to me as an investor." [3]
Cost and Plans
Exploding Topics provides three subscription tiers, tailored to different types of users:
Entrepreneur Plan ($39/month): Includes 100 tracked trends and 10 trend analyses, ideal for early-stage investors
Investor Plan ($99/month): Includes 500 tracked trends, 100 trend analyses, trending startups, trend forecasting, and CSV export, suited for active investors
Business Plan ($249/month): Includes 2,000 tracked trends, 500 trend analyses, trending startups, trend forecasting, CSV export, trend reports, and API access, designed for professional firms
All plans grant access to the trends database, trending products, and meta trends analysis [3]. The Business plan goes further, offering trend reports and API access - ideal for firms needing integration with existing tools.
Heini Zachariassen, Founder and CEO of Vivino, emphasizes its importance:
"Getting data first can make or break a business. Exploding Topics Pro helps you see what's coming next before anybody else. That way, you know where to best invest your time and resources." [3]
TickerTrends Platform Details
Platform Features
TickerTrends is often referred to as the "Bloomberg Terminal" for alternative data, catering to professional quants, analysts, and investors [5]. The platform processes over 10,000 daily signals and supports clients managing more than $30 billion in assets under management (AUM) [5].
Here are some of its standout features:
Data Terminal: A real-time analytics dashboard for instant market insights
Exploding Trends: Discover tool to uncover new ideas within data
Summary Page: A centralized search tool for signals, enabling quick company and competitor analysis
AI-Powered Analysis: Machine learning algorithms for automated trend identification
Social Arb Trend: A proprietary scoring system that models unreported revenue periods
Investor Expectations: Sentiment analysis tracking retail and media saturationThe
Summary Page is a key tool, acting as a central hub for users to search terms or tickers. It provides AI-driven insights like similar stocks, historical metrics, and discussions from social platforms [6].
In addition to its core features, TickerTrends integrates a wide range of data sources to fuel its analytics.
Exploding Trends
Exploding trends allows TickerTrends users to discover and uncover recently trending actionable ideas from a variety of data sources.
In addition, every exploding trend is labeled with impacted public and private businesses allowing for easy identification of actionable investments or opportunities from the trend.
Here we can see an example of the same information provided for websites and not just search keywords.
Data Sources
TickerTrends pulls data from a broad network of sources, offering users a detailed view of market trends. It processes over 10 million data points across multiple channels [7]:
Web Traffic
TikTok Mentions
Google Search
Reddit Posts
Mobile App Usage
Amazon Search
YouTube Trends
Google Trends
Web Traffic Share Data
Amazon Data
Wiki Data
SEO and Popular Web Data
TikTok Data
Instagram Data
YouTube Social Media Data
Baidu Search Trends
Reddit Subscribers Data
Reddit Posts Data
And more!
Using advanced machine learning, the platform links keywords and social media terms to market tickers, creating a powerful tool for trend analysis [7].
Pricing Options
TickerTrends offers flexible pricing plans to suit different user needs:
Free Plan ($0/month): Includes a limited preview with API credits available for purchase
Pro Plan ($19/month): Includes 25,000+ tickers, basic charts, and Google Trends access, suitable for individual investors
Max Plan ($89/month): Includes extended data, a 5-year historical range, and 10 alerts, ideal for active traders
Enterprise Plan (Custom Pricing): Offers unlimited features, Gen AI tools, and training calls for professional firms
The Max plan is particularly appealing for its broad coverage, including subdomain website data, Amazon metrics, and mobile app statistics [5]. Enterprise users receive premium features like Social Blade data and unlimited alternative data charts [5].
"TickerTrends has set out to create the 'Bloomberg Terminal' of alternative data by creating a customizable, dynamic and easy to use comprehensive service and platform." [7]
Direct Platform Comparison
Trend Analysis Tools
Exploding Topics taps into a massive database of over 779,000 trends, using a mix of analytics and machine learning to identify trends up to 12 months in advance. On the other hand, TickerTrends relies on its AI-powered engine to monitor real-time price movements and generate trade ideas for stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies [9][10].
Key Differences:
Data Sources:
Exploding Topics pulls from search engines, social media, e-commerce, and podcasts
TickerTrends relies on web traffic, social platforms, app usage, and search trends
Update Frequency:
Exploding Topics updates daily with a 15-year historical range
TickerTrends updates regularly with at least one year to 15 years of historical data
Analysis Method:
Exploding Topics uses hybrid AI and human validation
TickerTrends relies on AI-driven analysis
These differences in data sources and methods directly shape how investors interpret trends and make decisions. Each platform's approach also influences the way their data is presented.
Charts and Reports
Both platforms use visual tools to make data easier to understand, which is crucial for informed decision-making. Research shows that 77% of organizations report better decisions when they use effective data visualization [11].
TickerTrends provides an interactive dashboard with customizable charts that track metrics like social sentiment and web traffic. These features make it easier to spot market patterns that traditional financial tools might miss.
Exploding Topics emphasizes long-term trend forecasting, using growth charts to highlight sustainable patterns. This helps investors separate true market opportunities from short-lived spikes in interest.
Next, let’s look at how their API capabilities stack up for technical integration.
Technical Integration
The API offerings from these platforms cater to different needs:
Exploding Topics API:
60 requests per minute rate limit
15 years of historical data
Best for trend research
TickerTrends API:
Custom rate limits
Over one year of historical data
Best for real-time analysis
Exploding Topics' API is designed for building custom dashboards and automating workflows [2]. TickerTrends, however, includes specialized API endpoints for accessing alternative data metrics, such as the Social Arbitrage Score and Investor Saturation Score [8].
These features are especially useful for investors relying on automated trading systems that need real-time data feeds.
Related video from YouTube
Investment Applications
Both Exploding Topics and TickerTrends offer tools to help investors analyze markets and make informed decisions by identifying and validating trends.
Finding New Market Trends
Exploding Topics and TickerTrends take different but complementary paths to uncover market opportunities. Exploding Topics boasts a database of over 779,000 trends, helping investors spot potential breakout opportunities well before they gain widespread attention. For example, the rise of the "nattokinase supplement" was identified up to 12 months ahead of mainstream adoption [9]. On the other hand, TickerTrends focuses on real-time signals, such as social media sentiment, web traffic, app usage, and consumer spending, to confirm emerging trends. This process lays the groundwork for testing these insights in actual market scenarios.
Testing Investment Ideas
The platforms also differ in how they validate investment ideas. Exploding Topics uses a mix of AI and human analysis to categorize trends into broader industries like business, technology, and health, as well as more specific niches like CPG, AI, and fitness [1].
"Market intelligence can help you understand your market better to run a more profitable business." – Business News Daily [4]
TickerTrends offers additional support with its Social Arbitrage Score and detailed alternative data metrics, which benchmark investment ideas against real-world market behavior. The platform indexes data from over 25,949 companies, providing a strong foundation for deeper market analysis [7].
Market Behavior Analysis
To understand shifts in consumer preferences, Exploding Topics analyzes unstructured data from sources like social media, search engines, and e-commerce platforms [9]. TickerTrends complements this by delivering quantitative insights through real-time tracking of social sentiment, web traffic, and consumer behavior metrics. Together, these tools give investors a comprehensive market perspective: Exploding Topics highlights emerging trends, while TickerTrends validates them with hard data.
Conclusion
Platform Differences
Exploding Topics focuses on identifying trends well before they hit the mainstream, often spotting them up to six months in advance.
TickerTrends, on the other hand, offers real-time alternative data for just $19/month. With features like the Social Arbitrage Score and access to data from platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, and Google Search, it provides instant insights that pair well with Exploding Topics' forward-looking capabilities.
Primary Focus:
Exploding Topics: Early trend detection
TickerTrends: Real-time market signals
Data Sources:
Exploding Topics: Search trends, social media, news
TickerTrends: Social media, web traffic, app usage
Price Range:
Exploding Topics: $39–$249/month
TickerTrends: $19/month
Key Strength:
Exploding Topics: Predicting future trends
TickerTrends: Aggregating alternative data
Together, these platforms offer complementary tools for effective market analysis.
Platform Selection Guide
When deciding between these platforms, think about your specific needs:
Go with Exploding Topics if you’re looking to identify opportunities early, need organized trend categories, or want historical context for your trend analysis.
Opt for TickerTrends if real-time insights, social media sentiment, or cost-effective access to diverse data sources are your priorities.
For the best results, consider using both platforms together. Exploding Topics, with its $3.2 million annual recurring revenue [2], excels at forecasting future trends. When combined with TickerTrends’ real-time data, you get a well-rounded market intelligence solution.