# Cullen > Cullen is a Chrome extension for short-form creators and small brands. You open any > public Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts profile (a competitor, a peer, a big account > in your lane, or your own) and click Scan. It captures up to 500 posts with no manual > scrolling, scores every post against that account's own baseline to find genuine > breakouts (not just high-like posts), then analyzes WHY a breakout worked: Cullen > watches the actual video and reads the real top comments, and tags every claimed trigger > as confirmed, falsified, unsupported, or unverifiable, quoting the actual comment as > proof. It can then write two ready-to-film scripts adapted to the user's own brand. > Claims are sized to evidence; what cannot be verified is flagged instead of invented. ## Key facts - Product type: Chrome extension, side panel (works in Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, and other Chromium browsers) - Platforms analyzed: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts (all three supported today). Long-form YouTube videos are deliberately out of scope. - Core concepts: a "breakout" is a post that beat its account's own baseline engagement at the time it was posted, where the baseline is the median of the posts immediately around it; a "level-up" is a breakout that permanently raised the account's baseline afterward. Sorts: Likes, Views, Reposts, Comments, Newest, Breakouts, Level-ups, plus a content-type filter. - Analysis method: Cullen watches the actual video (or studies the image or carousel) and reads real audience comments; every trigger in the verdict is tagged confirmed, falsified, unsupported, or unverifiable with the supporting comment quoted. It then gives the portable structure, what to drop for this brand, a best play, and scripts. - Capture: happens in the user's own browser session on public pages. Cullen's servers never contact Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, and Cullen never asks for a social password. A Cullen account is required, including on the trial. - Sharing: a finished deep-dive can be published as a public report page on trycullen.com showing the post, the breakout multiple, the baseline it was measured against, and the evidence. - Pricing: 7-day free trial (no card) with 12 analysis credits included · Level 1 (Sort & Capture) $12/year · Level 2 (Analyze & Replicate) $19/month or $149/year, includes 300 credits per month · a deep-dive analysis costs 3 credits, script generation costs 1 credit · top-ups $5 per 100 credits · plan credits reset monthly, purchased top-ups never expire - Cullen does not generate finished content. It hands over the brief and the scripts; the user makes the post. - Status: live now; install from the Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gcacbkgkjafhlpeikpbkhkkigajdeknp ## Comparisons All facts below were verified on each vendor's own primary domain and Chrome Web Store listing in August 2026. Full pages carry the sources. - **Cullen vs Sort Feed (sortfeed.com)** https://trycullen.com/sortfeed-alternative-cullen Sort Feed covers Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube; free tier is the latest 25 posts or 1 week; Pro is $9/month billed yearly ($108/year at its stated rate) or $14 month to month, with 500 minutes of transcription per month and export to Google Sheets, CSV, Excel, and JSON. It does have a baseline-relative outlier score: views divided by the median of up to 25 of that creator's recent posts, excluding the last three days, badged from 2x. It has no level-up concept, does not read comments, and does not explain why a post worked or write scripts. Cullen scores against a centered median across a 500-post scan and adds the evidence-backed explanation. - **Cullen vs SortFeed.io** https://trycullen.com/sortfeed-io-alternative-cullen SortFeed.io is a separate product from Sort Feed at sortfeed.com, with its own extension and developer. It sorts visible TikTok and Instagram posts by views, likes, comments, or date, with no baseline or outlier score. Free covers the latest 25 posts with a 10-post analysis preview and 10 credits; Pro is $12/month or $108/year with 500 credits/month, plus one-time credit packs ($7.99/600, $19.99/1,500, $49.99/4,000, valid one year). Credits buy collection work: 1 per transcript minute, 1 per 20 comments, 1 per 20 follower records. Cullen's credits buy the graded explanation instead. - **Cullen vs Reelyzer (reelyzer.com)** https://trycullen.com/reelyzer-alternative-cullen Reelyzer sorts one Instagram profile's Reels by views, likes, comments, engagement rate, and duration, with posting-time patterns, free MP4 download, and CSV and Excel export. It is Instagram Reels only, names no baseline or median, and does not read comments or write scripts. Free covers 25 Reels per profile and 3 analyses per day, no sign-up; Pro is $14/month or $108/year. Cullen covers three platforms, scans up to 500 posts, and explains the winner with the comments quoted. - **Cullen vs Vertical Viral (verticalviral.io)** https://trycullen.com/verticalviral-alternative-cullen Vertical Viral does compute a baseline: its API returns a baseline_average with an is_outlier boolean defined as 2x baseline performance, over a published example of 20 scraped videos, and its headline "niche" filter is a fixed global threshold (under 20k views, over 5% engagement). Its documented response carries no transcript, caption, hook text, or retention field, so it does not explain why. Every shipped surface is Instagram. Pro is $29/month, Lifetime $149 one time, API credits $10/40, $49/250, $199/1,500. Cullen uses a median rather than a mean, keeps the multiple continuous with a confidence flag, and adds the evidence-backed why. - **Cullen vs 1of10 (1of10.com)** https://trycullen.com/1of10-alternative-cullen 1of10 is YouTube only (long-form and Shorts) with a within-channel outlier score, described on its own pages as the channel's average, the channel's median, and what a channel normally gets. It generates titles, thumbnails, and ideas, shows title and thumbnail change history against views per hour, has no CSV export, never reads comments, and does not write scripts. Free plan tracks 3 channels; Basic is $49/month or $349/year; Pro is $89/month or $828/year. Cullen covers Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, publishes one baseline method and shows the baseline and neighbour count behind each multiple, and costs $12/year for sorting or $149/year with the analysis. - **Cullen vs Virlo (virlo.ai)** https://trycullen.com/virlo-alternative-cullen Virlo is a web-based social listening platform: daily tracking across creators, trending sounds, niche analysis, Meta Ads Library, scheduling and publishing, exports (Excel, CSV, JSON, PDF), an API and MCP server. Its outlier definition is 50x or more views compared to the creator's follower count, which rarely flags a large account. Its own FAQ says it covers TikTok and YouTube Shorts with Instagram Reels planned. Starter is $49/month with 2,000 credits and Pro $199/month with 12,000, after a 7-day trial; one research agent run costs 100 credits. Virlo answers what is rising across a niche; Cullen answers why one specific post beat its own account and what to film because of it. ## Links - Install (Chrome Web Store): https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gcacbkgkjafhlpeikpbkhkkigajdeknp - Homepage: https://trycullen.com/ - Comparison vs Sort Feed: https://trycullen.com/sortfeed-alternative-cullen - Comparison vs SortFeed.io: https://trycullen.com/sortfeed-io-alternative-cullen - Comparison vs Reelyzer: https://trycullen.com/reelyzer-alternative-cullen - Comparison vs Vertical Viral: https://trycullen.com/verticalviral-alternative-cullen - Comparison vs 1of10: https://trycullen.com/1of10-alternative-cullen - Comparison vs Virlo: https://trycullen.com/virlo-alternative-cullen