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Business Intelligence · head to head

Quid vs YouScan

Quid logo

Quid

Business Intelligence

Consumer and market intelligence combining social listening with unstructured text network analysis

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
YouScan logo

YouScan

Social Media

Social listening with image recognition, priced from $499 a month with a hard limit on search topics

From
$499/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Quid the company has changed name twice, from NetBase to NetBase Quid to Quid, which fragments documentation, third-party comparisons and support material across three brand identities and makes older guidance unreliable.; YouScan the binding constraint on the published plan is search topics, not mentions: three topics on Starter 3 forces agencies to merge unrelated clients into a single query, which corrupts reporting and pushes them to the quote-only tier.
  • They diverge on capability: Quid covers Social listening, YouScan covers Visual Insights.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Quid and YouScan actually diverge.

Attributes where Quid and YouScan differ
AttributeQuidYouScan
Starting priceOn request$499/month
Pricing modelquotePer month by mention volume and search topics
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceSocial Media

Identical on both: free tier (No), platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Quid

  • Social listening
  • Network analysis
  • Non-social data sets
  • Quid Terminal
  • Quid Monitor
  • AI agents
  • Image analytics
  • API access

Only in YouScan

  • Visual Insights
  • Insights Copilot
  • Audience Insights
  • Auto-Categories
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Audio and video monitoring
  • Smart alerts and automation
  • Social Intelligence API

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Quid

  • A corporate strategy team mapping which technology clusters in a patent set are accelerating and which companies own them, before an acquisition decisionnot YouScan
  • A consumer insights function that wants to know what themes drive negative sentiment about a category rather than counting mentions of its own brandnot YouScan
  • An innovation group scanning research literature and startup activity for adjacent white space it has no internal expertise innot YouScan
  • A brand tracking how a reputational incident propagates across news, social and forums with sentiment broken down by theme rather than by channelnot YouScan

YouScan

  • A drinks or snack brand that needs to find product placement in user photos where nobody typed the brand name.not Quid
  • A consumer marketing team wanting demographic profiles of who is discussing a campaign, not just how many mentions it generated.not Quid
  • A support operation routing complaints found on social straight into Zendesk or Freshdesk as tickets.not Quid
  • A brand tracking sentiment across several languages in Central and Eastern Europe where larger vendors have thinner source coverage.not Quid

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Quid

  • The company has changed name twice, from NetBase to NetBase Quid to Quid, which fragments documentation, third-party comparisons and support material across three brand identities and makes older guidance unreliable.
  • Nothing is published on price and contracts sit well above ordinary listening tools, so the evaluation cost is high before you know whether the network analysis will actually be used.
  • The network maps require an analyst who knows how to interpret them; teams without a dedicated insights person tend to use the platform as an expensive listening tool and never touch the capability they paid for.
  • Historical data depth and source coverage are scoped per contract rather than included, so a question that needs five years of back data can require a contract amendment mid-project.
  • Social platform access is subject to the same API restrictions that affect every listening vendor, and coverage of closed networks is thinner than the marketing implies, which matters if your category lives in private communities.

YouScan

  • The binding constraint on the published plan is search topics, not mentions: three topics on Starter 3 forces agencies to merge unrelated clients into a single query, which corrupts reporting and pushes them to the quote-only tier.
  • Unlimited means sampled, not complete: high-volume topics collect every nth mention and analytics are extrapolated, so the top tier structurally cannot deliver exhaustive capture for legal or crisis forensic use.
  • Sampling frequency is fixed at topic creation and cannot be changed, so a wrong initial choice means building a new topic and losing historical continuity in the data you have already paid to collect.
  • Instagram coverage is structurally partial because it depends on hashtags being present, and channel-based Instagram history is capped at twelve months back, so caption-free visual mentions are undercounted.
  • Visual Insights and Audience Insights, the two capabilities that most differentiate the product, are only included on the quote-only Unlimited tier, so the published $499 price does not buy the reason you came.
  • Billing is annual only at the published tier with no monthly-rolling option and no published overage schedule, so the cost of a volume spike is unknown until you negotiate it.
  • X coverage now depends on constrained paid API access, which combined with sampling makes historic post depth the weakest part of the archive relative to Brandwatch or Talkwalker.

Pricing, plan by plan

Quid

On request
  • Quid$undefined/year
    • Quid Terminal analyst workspace
    • Social listening and sentiment
    • Network analysis over patents, filings, news and research

YouScan

$499/month
  • Starter 3$499/month
    • Billed annually
    • Up to 15,000 mentions per month
    • 3 text search topics
  • Unlimited$undefined/month
    • Unlimited sampled mentions
    • Unlimited search topics, users and alert rules
    • Visual Insights included

Which should you pick?

Choose Quid if

  • You need social listening.
  • You also want network analysis.
Quid review

Choose YouScan if

  • You need visual insights.
  • You also want insights copilot.
YouScan review

Questions people ask

Is Quid or YouScan better?
Neither clearly leads. Quid starts at On request and YouScan at $499/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Quid or YouScan?
Quid starts at On request and YouScan at $499/month.
Does Quid or YouScan run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Quid best used for?
Quid is most often used for a corporate strategy team mapping which technology clusters in a patent set are accelerating and which companies own them, before an acquisition decision, a consumer insights function that wants to know what themes drive negative sentiment about a category rather than counting mentions of its own brand, an innovation group scanning research literature and startup activity for adjacent white space it has no internal expertise in, a brand tracking how a reputational incident propagates across news, social and forums with sentiment broken down by theme rather than by channel. Of those, a corporate strategy team mapping which technology clusters in a patent set are accelerating and which companies own them, before an acquisition decision and a consumer insights function that wants to know what themes drive negative sentiment about a category rather than counting mentions of its own brand are not what YouScan is typically brought in for.
What can Quid do that YouScan cannot?
Quid covers Social listening, Network analysis, Non-social data sets, Quid Terminal. YouScan covers Visual Insights, Insights Copilot, Audience Insights, Auto-Categories.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Quid: Is this the same company as NetBase?

Yes. NetBase and Quid merged in 2020, traded as NetBase Quid, and now sell under the single Quid brand.

YouScan: Does the Unlimited plan really collect every mention?

No. It collects a sample of high-volume topics and extrapolates the analytics. Ask for the sampling ratio in writing if completeness matters.

Quid: Is it a social listening tool?

It includes social listening, but the reason to buy it is the network analysis over patents, filings, news and research. If you only need social listening, cheaper tools cover it.

YouScan: Is Visual Insights on the $499 plan?

No. Visual Insights and Audience Insights are included on the Unlimited tier only, which is quoted rather than published.

Quid: What does it cost?

Not published. Expect an annual enterprise contract priced by seats, data sources and historical depth.

YouScan: Was YouScan affected by the war in Ukraine?

It was founded in Kyiv but contracts through a Cyprus entity and moved infrastructure to Azure West Europe. It exited the Russian market entirely, liquidating both Russian entities by mid-2024, and now contractually bars customers with Russian Federation connections.

Quid: Who uses it day to day?

Corporate insights, strategy and innovation analysts more often than social media managers. It rewards someone trained in analysis.

YouScan: Can I pay monthly?

Not at the published tier. Starter 3 is $499 a month billed annually.

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