Pinclicks is the closest direct competitor to PinTool. Tony Hill built it, ~2,000 paying users last we checked, and the marketing pitch leans hard on a single defensive moat: “the only Pinterest keyword rank tracker on the web.” That stopped being true in 2026.
Below is the honest head-to-head — what each tool genuinely does well, where each falls short, and the decision tree we’d give a friend asking which one to buy.
What Pinclicks is good at
Pinclicks does one thing exceptionally well: it surfaces Pinterest keyword search volume buckets with a clean UI and a 5-day trial that converts well. If your only need is “give me a list of pinnable keywords with rough volume,” Pinclicks works on day one.
Their weekly SERP rank tracker is also competent. You add a tracked keyword, they scrape the top 50 pins for that query weekly, and report your position. For a long time, this was unique on the market.
Where Pinclicks falls short in 2026
No content brief generation
Pinclicks tells you which keywords matter. It does not tell you what to write. You still have to crack open ChatGPT and prompt your way to a brief — which means another tool in your stack and another monthly fee.
No blog integration
Pinclicks lives entirely on the Pinterest side of the loop. The connection between “pin → click → blog post → Google ranking” is invisible to it. You can’t answer the question “which of my posts are starved for Pinterest distribution?”
Light competitor analysis
Pinclicks lets you peek at one Pinterest profile at a time. It does not auto-discover your competitors based on SERP overlap with your boards. That’s a manual game of Pinterest stalking instead of a research workflow.
$29-$49 pricing with no free tier
The 5-day trial converts well precisely because there is no free path. Hard sell to first-time users who want to compare options or to bloggers who don’t yet pin daily.
Pinclicks vs PinTool — feature by feature
| Feature | Pinclicks | PinTool |
|---|---|---|
Free tier PinTool: 3 daily searches, no card. | ✗ | ✓ |
Volume buckets per keyword | ✓ | ✓ |
Long-tail + related keyword discovery | Partial | ✓ |
Weekly SERP rank tracker | ✓ | ✓ |
Content brief generator 5 titles, hook, 5–7 H2s, long-tails | ✗ | ✓ |
Auto-discovered competitors | ✗ | ✓ |
Topic gap analysis | ✗ | ✓ |
Best time to pin (per niche) | ✗ | ✓ |
Blog connector (WordPress today) | ✗ | ✓ |
Pin → blog post mapping | ✗ | ✓ |
Anomaly + rank-change notifications | ✗ | ✓ |
Weekly email digest | ✗ | ✓ |
Starting price | $29/mo | Free → $12 → $29 |
Where PinTool wins — in plain English
✅ Pros
- +Free tier — Eva can try it during a coffee break.
- +Brief tab generates 5 title templates, an opening hook, 5–7 question-form H2 candidates, long-tails to weave in.
- +Connect WordPress and PinTool joins your scraped pins with your post inventory (the Blog ROI loop).
- +Auto-discovered competitors based on real SERP overlap — no manual list curation.
- +Topic Gap Analysis: boards your competitors have that you do not, sorted by reach.
- +Best Time to Pin per niche, weighted by your real competitors.
- +Anomaly + rank-change notifications. Pinclicks emails you nothing.
⛔ Cons
- −Pin scheduling is not yet shipped (use Tailwind alongside).
- −Pin design templates not built-in (use Canva).
- −Younger product than Pinclicks — fewer years of edge cases hardened.
Where Pinclicks still wins (or ties)
Two areas where Pinclicks deserves credit:
- Brand recognition. If you Google “Pinterest keyword research tool,” Pinclicks ranks first. That is a real moat in itself.
- Maturity of the rank tracker. They have 2 years of data on what fails in production (Pinterest blocks, scraper retries, IP rotation). PinTool ships the same feature but is younger; a few transient errors per cron run still happen and are now retried automatically.
Pricing side-by-side
| Plan | Pinclicks | PinTool |
|---|---|---|
Free | ✗ | 3 daily searches, 1 tracked keyword |
Entry tier | Pin Pro · $29/mo · 50 tracked KW | Starter · $12/mo · 50 daily searches, 50 KW, briefs, blog connector |
Top tier | Pin Plus · $49/mo · 200 tracked KW | Pro · $29/mo · unlimited searches + tracking, profile analyzer, weekly digest |
Trial | 5 days, no free tier | Always-free tier, no card |
The honest decision tree
How to try PinTool in 2 minutes
- 1
Sign up for free
No credit card. /signup. - 2
Pick a niche, type your seed keyword, run the search
You get the same volume buckets as Pinclicks plus the InsightCard recommendation. - 3
Click any result row
The drawer opens with 8 tabs — Overview, Long-tail, Related, Pins, Categories, Boards, Pin Titles, and Brief. - 4
Hit the Brief tab
Click 📋 Copy full brief. Paste into Notion or your WordPress editor.
That last step is what Pinclicks does not have, and it is the single biggest reason the tool exists.