Sandcastles vs Virlo: which finds better reel ideas?
Sandcastles follows channels on three platforms. Virlo is an AI assistant with research agents that keep looking. Our team tested both hands-on, next to Aubrium.
If you post the same video to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, two names come up fast when you look for a research tool: Sandcastles and Virlo. Both cover all three platforms. Both hunt for outliers, videos that did far better than their account usually does. And both will write you a script.
That's where the likeness ends. Sandcastles starts from channels. You keep a list of accounts, and it shows you which of their videos took off. Virlo starts from a question. You ask its assistant, or set up an agent that keeps collecting videos on a topic after you close the tab.
So the real question is which way of working fits you, and which one hands you better ideas. Our team studied both apps hands-on in October 2026, with the same keywords in each and the same five reels for their script writers.
We also ran everything through Aubrium, which we make. It only covers Instagram, so it isn't a like-for-like third option for everyone. But if Instagram is where you grow, it belongs in the comparison, and we'll say plainly where it wins and where it doesn't. Both tools also appear in our guide to the best viral reel finders.
For most creators, Virlo is the better of the two. It can hold a search to accounts your size, and its scripts came second of eight in our blind test, where Sandcastles came seventh. Sandcastles suits you if you know whose channels to follow. If you post on Instagram and want ideas from accounts your size, Aubrium beats both: every reel comes from an account with 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
Follows the channels you add across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts and flags their outliers. A global search comes with Pro and up.
A chat assistant that searches its video library and writes for you, plus research agents that collect videos on a topic and alerts when a creator breaks out.
What does Sandcastles do?
Sandcastles is a research tool built around channels. You keep a watchlist of accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, and it lists their recent videos with an outlier score. Its help centre explains the score exactly:
“a video's views divided by the median views of that channel's videos posted in the 90 days up to that video”
When you sign up, it builds a starter watchlist for your niche. You can add channels yourself, and its channel finder can filter them by size, from accounts under 10,000 followers to ones over 5 million.3 From the Pro plan up, a global search looks past your own list, by the words in captions and titles.2
Open any video and Sandcastles writes it up: a summary, the transcript, the hook and its formula, how the story is told and how it's shot. These write-ups are good. Each one costs a credit, and Pro comes with 100 credits a month.1 Its script writer then takes you from a topic to a finished script in four steps.
Plans are $49, $99 or $499 a month, less if you pay yearly.1 New accounts can start on a $5 Starter plan, offered once, without the global search.4 There's no free plan, and no refunds from Pro up.5
What does Virlo do?
Virlo is an AI research assistant for short video on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.6 The front door is Vee, a chat assistant. You ask it for ideas in plain words, and it searches Virlo's library, explains why an idea is working right now, and writes hooks, scripts and captions. It can hold a search to a follower range when you ask. In our tests, chatting with Vee didn't use any credits.
Next to Vee sit the research agents. You describe a topic in a sentence, or give up to 20 keywords, and an agent runs once or keeps searching every day, week or month.7 Each run fills a board with outlier videos, top creators, hashtags and sounds.8
“Set it up once. Your agent keeps finding outlier videos in your niche after you close the tab.”
Around that are the team tools. You can follow a creator and get an alert when one of their videos breaks out, sent to Slack, Discord, email or a webhook.7, 13 There's a trends page that names video formats and shows whether each is rising or fading, built mostly from TikTok. Pro comes with three seats.6
Starter is $49 a month and Pro is $199, with 2,000 and 12,000 credits a month.6 You can try it for 7 days, but once the trial ends, its refund policy says no refunds are issued.9
How are they different?
They overlap less than the platform list suggests. These are the differences you'd feel in your first week.
You build a list of accounts, and it shows which of their videos took off. Its global search reads the words in captions and titles. A full write-up of a video costs a credit, and it can read any reel you paste in. Its scripts come from six hooks, with no caption.
A good fit if you already know whose videos to follow.You ask its assistant, or set an agent on a topic, and it brings videos back. It can hold a search to a follower range, and it sends alerts. It writes hooks, a script and a caption, but it can only read a reel from its link if that reel is already in its library.
A good fit if you want research done for you, or work in a team.How we tested them
We didn't stop at each tool's website. Our team used both apps the way a creator would, from the inside, in October 2026. Each one was measured the way its own search works, because the two search very differently.
In Sandcastles, we ran 147 keywords through its global search, sorted most viral first, and kept the first 100 results of each. Virlo has no search box outside its assistant, so we asked the assistant to run 149 searches for Instagram reels from accounts with 1,000 to 100,000 followers, most viral first, and kept the top 20 of each. We also ran Virlo's research agents on two topics. For the writing, both tools got the same five viral reels as six other tools, and AI reviewers, software that reads text and scores it, marked every script blind.
Sandcastles vs Virlo vs Aubrium at a glance
Here's how the three line up on what creators ask about most. The detail behind each row follows.
| Feature | Sandcastles | Virlo | Aubrium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Yes: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts | Yes: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts | Partly: Instagram only |
| How it finds reels | Partly: Channels you follow, plus a caption search from Pro up | Partly: An assistant you ask, plus agents that collect on a topic | Yes: A library you search and filter, plus rivals you track |
| Reels from accounts your size | No: No size filter on videos | Partly: If you ask the assistant for a follower range | Yes: Every account has 1,000 to 100,000 followers |
| Results about what you searched | Partly: The words in captions and titles | Partly: An AI summary of each video | Yes: Posts filed by what they're about |
| Where the creator is | No: Not shown, and no filter | Partly: A region on 4% of Instagram results | Yes: On 96% of posts, with a country filter |
| Hook type and format on every post | Partly: After a paid write-up | Partly: On some of what agents collect | Yes: Yes, with filters |
| Reads any reel from its link | Yes: Yes, for a credit | No: Only reels already in its library | Yes: Yes |
| Your own version of a reel | Partly: A script from six hooks, no caption | Yes: Hooks, a script and a caption | Yes: A script, hooks and a caption |
| Alerts and team seats | Partly: Guest seats on the top plan | Yes: Alerts, and three seats on Pro | Partly: Rival tracking, no team seats |
| Inside ChatGPT and Claude | Partly: Pro and up | Partly: Through its pay-as-you-go API | Yes: Yes |
| Blind script score, out of 35 | 19.6 | 29.3 | 29.7 |
What we found when we tested them
Features only tell you so much. Here's what happened when we used the two side by side, with Aubrium beside them.
Whose reels does each one show you?
Because each tool was searched its own way, read this table one row at a time. The rows aren't one race.
| Tool | How we searched | What came back |
|---|---|---|
| Sandcastles | Its global search, 147 keywords, most viral first, first 100 results. It has no follower filter for videos. | Typical account: 125,849 followers. 58% over 100,000, 9% over a million, 6% under 10,000 |
| Virlo | Its assistant, 149 keywords, Instagram reels from accounts with 1,000 to 100,000 followers, top 20 | Sized by the filter we asked for. Its agents don't hold to a size: our beauty agent pulled in accounts with millions of followers, big brands among them |
| Aubrium | Its library, the same 147 keywords as Sandcastles, most viral first, first 100 results | Typical account: 5,607 followers. None over 100,000, two in three under 10,000 |
Age matters too. In Sandcastles, 24% of those top results were posted before 2024. In Aubrium, 4% were. Virlo's agent boards reached back years as well: one set to collect this month's videos came back with some from 2022. To be fair to Virlo, its free outliers feed for Reels was fresh, every one from the past week, though that feed has no search.
Did their "viral" reels really beat their account?
This is where both tools slipped, in different ways.
What we found when we checked the numbers
- No: Sandcastles: 7% of its outlier scores were broken, with the score equal to the view count, and sorting by score puts them first
- No: Sandcastles: in its default order, newest first, 58 of the first 100 pilates results did worse than their account usually does
- No: Virlo: in 28 of 149 assistant searches, the typical reel in the top 20 had fewer views than its account has followers
- No: Virlo: 87% of the Instagram reels its beauty agent collected had fewer views than the account has followers, and 76% for pilates
- Yes: Aubrium: every reel reached far more people than its creator has followers, and the typical one reached 18 times
Sandcastles' problem is a score that breaks when a channel has no recent baseline. One post from 2018, by an account with 10.8 million followers, showed up as 1,217,419 times its usual. Virlo's problem is different: its agents collect everything that matches a topic, and on Instagram most of it was ordinary reels.
Does the search find what you typed?
Sandcastles reads the words in a video's caption and title. It doesn't know what a video is about, or how its hook works, until someone spends a credit on a write-up. So a search is only as good as the words people typed under their posts.
Virlo goes the other way. It matches an AI summary of each video, so it can find posts about your topic even when the caption says something else. The cost is looseness. Half of its results didn't have the keyword in the caption, and a search for "highlighter" returned 47,097 reels, where only 1 of the top 20 we checked was about highlighter.
Instagram is also the smaller part of Virlo. In the ten niches we checked, it made up only 10% to 17% of Virlo's videos, and Reels was still marked as a beta.
Neither tool can tell you much about where a creator is. Sandcastles shows no country at all. Virlo had a region on 4% of its Instagram results, so filtering to the US left between 3 and 36 reels in each niche we tried. Aubrium knows the creator's country for 96% of its posts, across 200 countries, and lets you filter by it.
Whose scripts are better?
Both tools got the same five reels as six other tools that write: a face-wash ranking, a tinted sunscreen launch, a pilates class in a parking lot, a run of baking fails and a coffee cart's first quote. Six reviewers, in two rounds of three, scored every script without knowing which tool wrote it.
Between these two, the clearest gap was honesty. The reviewers scored each script out of 5 for sticking to the facts. Virlo scored 4.67. Sandcastles scored 1.4, the lowest of all eight.
Statistics that weren't in the reels, like "up to 20% more endorphins than working out alone" and "Over 60% of tinted sunscreens come in one shade". Its scripts ran 75 to 95 seconds for reels of a minute or less. Five of its six hooks were the same stock templates on every reel, and there was no caption.
Claims you'd have to check before you say them on camera.Careful scripts with timed beats, words for the screen and a caption. Where it didn't know a number, it left a gap instead of guessing, and its scripts were the easiest to film of all eight. It was more general than the reels, though, and wrote from the topic when a reel wasn't in its library.
Second overall, and top marks for being easy to film.To be fair to Sandcastles, its write-up of a single video is good. It explains the idea, the common belief the reel turns on its head, and how you could adapt it to your niche. It's the scripts that need checking.
Is there a better option than both?
If you post on Instagram, yes. Aubrium is a library built only from accounts your size, and it did better than both on the things a smaller creator needs most.
There are more than 260,000 posts in it today, from more than 190,000 creators. Every account has between 1,000 and 100,000 followers, and two in five posts come from accounts under 10,000. Each post is filed into every one of the 350+ niches it fits, with its hook type, its format and the creator's country.
Aubrium's own database, read 23 October 2026.
Against the two tools, the gap was wide. In the same 147 searches, the typical account behind Aubrium's top results had 5,607 followers, to Sandcastles' 125,849. And on 49 of 60 niche names, Aubrium held more viral reels than Virlo found Instagram reels of any kind from accounts the same size. Virlo's pool is deeper for broad words like skincare and travel, but most of it is everyday reels: the typical one in each niche had between 3,700 and 18,000 views.
The writing held up too. Aubrium came first in both rounds, just ahead of Virlo, and no reviewer scored another tool above it. It had the most "best hook of the reel" picks, 8 of 15. For the sunscreen launch, the reviewers' favourite opener was Aubrium's: "Five shades on one cheek, watch which one disappears." Virlo scored higher for sticking to the facts and for being easy to film, and that's worth knowing.
Make my version writes your own script, hooks and a caption from any reel. My Rivals watches accounts like yours and flags the reel that's breaking out against that account's usual. And it all works inside ChatGPT and Claude.
What it doesn't do: it's Instagram only for now, it has no team seats, and there's no free plan or trial. Plans are $49, $99 or $249 a month, every plan has every tool,10 and a first plan is refunded in full within 15 days.11
Every one from an account with fewer than 10,000 followers. Views on the tile, followers underneath.
Which should you pick?
It comes down to where you post, and how you like to work.
| If you… | Pick |
|---|---|
| post on Instagramand want ideas from accounts your size | Aubrium |
| want a scriptbuilt from the reel itself, with hooks and a caption | Aubrium |
| want reels from your own country | Aubrium |
| want an assistantthat keeps researching, with alerts and team seats | Virlo |
| post the same videoto three platforms and want careful scripts | Virlo |
| already know the channelsyou want to follow, and want a write-up of one video | Sandcastles |
Questions people ask
Is Sandcastles or Virlo better?
For most creators, Virlo. Its scripts scored 29.3 out of 35 in our blind test to Sandcastles' 19.6, and its assistant can hold a search to accounts your size. Sandcastles suits you if you already know the channels you want to follow on three platforms.
Which is cheaper, Sandcastles or Virlo?
Both start at $49 a month. Sandcastles' next plan is $99 and Virlo's is $199. Sandcastles also lets new accounts start on a $5 Starter plan, offered once, without the global search.4
Do they have a free trial?
Which one shows reels from small accounts?
Virlo, if you ask its assistant for a follower range. Sandcastles has a size filter for finding channels, but none on videos, and in our searches 6% of its top results came from accounts under 10,000 followers. Every account in Aubrium has 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
Do their scripts make things up?
Sandcastles' did. In our test it added statistics that weren't in the reels, and it scored lowest of eight tools for sticking to the facts. Virlo was one of the most careful. Check any number before you say it on camera, whichever tool wrote it.
Read next in Tools & Comparisons
- The best tools to find viral reels: ten tools compared, with the full numbers.
- Aubrium vs Sandcastles: the same 147 searches, side by side.
- Aubrium vs Virlo: the two closest script writers in our test.
- The best Virlo alternatives: if Virlo's team tools are more than you need.
- The best Sandcastles alternatives: if you've decided to leave Sandcastles.
- Sandcastles vs ViralSpot: three platforms, or one plan with no credits.
How we did this
Our team studied both apps hands-on in October 2026, using each one the way a creator would. In Sandcastles we ran 147 keywords through its global search, most viral first, and saved the first 100 results of each. In Virlo, which searches only through its assistant, we ran 149 searches for Instagram reels from accounts with 1,000 to 100,000 followers and saved the top 20 of each, then ran its research agents on beauty and pilates. For every result we saved the account, its followers, the views, the tool's own score and the caption, and we ran the same keywords on Aubrium's library. Because the two tools search in different ways, we report each one's numbers on their own and never in one chart.
The five script reels were the same for every tool that writes. Most tools were also given a short description of the creator they were writing for; Aubrium wasn't. The scripts were scored blind by AI reviewers with one scorecard and no tool names, in two rounds of three. Prices and terms are from each tool's own site and Sandcastles' help centre, read on 22 October 2026. Aubrium's numbers come from its own database, read on 23 October 2026. Apps change. If something here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and move the date. And yes, Aubrium makes this page.
Sources
- Sandcastlessandcastles.ai · Plans, credits, refunds, the MCP connector. Read 22 October 2026.
- Global searchSandcastles help centre · Pro and up, captions and titles. Updated 2 October 2026. Read 22 October 2026.
- Finding channelsSandcastles help centre · The account-size filter when finding channels. Read 22 October 2026.
- PlansSandcastles help centre · The $5-a-month Starter plan, offered once, and what it leaves out. Read 22 October 2026.
- Can I get a refund?Sandcastles help centre · Refunds by plan. Read 22 October 2026.
- Virlo pricingvirlo.ai · Plans, credits, seats, the 7-day trial, platforms. Read 22 October 2026.
- Virlovirlo.ai · Research agents, tracking and alerts. Read 22 October 2026.
- Virlo research agentsvirlo.ai · What a run returns. Read 22 October 2026.
- Virlo refund policyvirlo.ai · No refunds after the trial, and the exceptions. Last updated October 2026. Read 22 October 2026.
- Aubrium pricingaubrium.com · Plans and Sparks. Read 22 October 2026.
- Aubrium refund policyaubrium.com · The 15-day refund on a first subscription. Read 22 October 2026.
- Virlo MCPvirlo.ai · The MCP server and its pay-as-you-go billing. Read 22 October 2026.
- About Virlovirlo.ai · Alerts to Slack, Discord, email and webhooks. Read 22 October 2026.
Changelog
- First version.
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