TEARDOWN 37 · REVIEWED 2026-08-21
Exploding Topics
Exploding Topics tracks search, social media, forums, news, and e-commerce signals across the internet to surface emerging trends, products, and startups before they go mainstream, organized into a database of 1.1M+ tracked topics. It was acquired by Semrush in 2024 but still sells and operates as its own separately branded product.
Exploding Topics has spent years continuously monitoring search, social, forum, and e-commerce signals into a database of 1.1M+ trends enriched with real product sales and startup funding data — a trend-scoring script built today, however good, still starts with zero history behind it.
What you lose building it yourself
- ✕Years of historical trend curves already tracked — a new pipeline starts from zero
- ✕Per-product enrichment (monthly sales, price range, review scores) it says it sources separately
- ✕Per-startup enrichment (funding round, headcount, location) it says it sources separately
- ✕Human analyst curation that filters real trends from passing fads
BUILD YOUR OWN · NOT OFFERED
There's no real build-your-own path here: the product's value is years of continuous monitoring across dozens of platforms, already curated by human analysts into a 1.1M+ trend database and enriched with real product-sales and startup-funding data. An AI coding tool wired to Google Trends, Reddit, or X's own APIs can approximate live trend-scoring starting today, but it can't retroactively produce the multi-year historical baseline this product has already built.
Similar tools
Free alternative: Google Trends — free and shows real-time and historical search interest for any term, but only covers Google search volume — no cross-platform (social/forum/e-commerce) signal blending, no human-curated trend database, and no product-sales or startup-funding enrichment.
Vendor's own claim
"We track every topic on the internet to identify under-the-radar trends months or years before they go mainstream."
explodingtopics.com/pricing · RETRIEVED 2026-08-21
QUESTIONS
Is Exploding Topics still a separate product from Semrush?
Yes — it's sold and branded separately with its own pricing page, though it was acquired by Semrush in 2024 and its support email now routes through a Semrush address.
Does Exploding Topics use AI to find trends?
Yes, per its own methodology page — machine learning models score and forecast trend trajectories from the raw data collected, but a human analyst team reviews and curates the results before they're published.
Is there a free way to try it?
All three paid plans include a 7-day free trial; Exploding Topics also lists separate standalone free tools (an AI-visibility checker, SEO checker, and others) that aren't the core trends-database product this entry covers.