A price per check makes these tools look comparable, and they are not. One bills once a year, one bills every month, most sell a single report, one charges nothing, and one has shut down. The number a buyer actually hands over is the smallest cheque the vendor will take — and across the 9 tools below, read from their own pages on 2026-09-19, that runs from nothing at all to 55 times the cheapest dollar-priced entry, for the same question.
What the category charges to get started
| Tool | Billing | Smallest cheque | What it sells |
|---|---|---|---|
| DimeADozen | One-time | $9 | A long one-off research report on an idea you bring |
| PainOnSocial | Subscription | $19/month | Pain points mined from Reddit, scored and ranked |
| WhittleOS (us) | Credits, one-time | $19 for 2 credits | A kept decision on an idea, or a market searched for candidates |
| IdeaProof | Credits, one-time | €19.99 | Validation plus business-plan, brand and ad-creative generation |
| Preuve AI | One-time | $29 | A long evidence-linked report on an idea you bring |
| FounderPal | One-time | $99, shown at $49.50 with a code | An AI marketing assistant, not an idea validator |
| IdeaBrowser | Annual only | $499/year | A browsable database of researched ideas, plus agents and coaching |
| ValidatorAI | Free | Free | A fast score on an idea, plus trend and newsletter content |
| GummySearch | Closed | Closed | Reddit audience research, until it shut down |
Every row read from that vendor's own public page on 2026-09-19, ordered by each vendor's own published entry figure in the currency it publishes. Nothing is converted, which is why one row is in euros and sits in the order by its own number rather than a translated one: a converted figure is a number we invented at a rate we did not publish. Our own row is computed from the code that charges, not typed alongside theirs.
Three things in that table are worth more than the numbers.
- 5 different billing models for one job. A monthly subscription and a one-off report are not the same purchase, and neither is an annual plan you cannot buy for a month. Per unit they can be made to look alike; in your bank account they are nothing alike.
- The dearest entry is 55 times the cheapest. That is the division across the 6 rows priced in dollars; IdeaProof publishes in euros and is left out of it rather than converted at a rate we would have had to invent. It is not a quality gradient either way — it is different products sold to different buyers under one search term, and the gap widens further on the upper plans, which this column does not carry.
- GummySearch is in the table and it is closed. Its pricing page still lists tiers and states the shutdown date. A category page that drops a tool the moment it dies cannot be checked against the market it claims to describe.
What that cheque actually buys
A smallest cheque with no limits attached is the same trick as a price per check. These are the limits each vendor publishes for the plan its entry price buys, in their own words, condensed:
| Tool | Cheque | Plan | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| DimeADozen | $9 | Starter | Credits, which the site says do not expire |
| PainOnSocial | $19/month | Starter | 20 scans a month, up to 2 subreddits per scan, 7-day free trial |
| IdeaProof | €19.99 | Starter | 150 credits, which the site puts at about three validations |
| Preuve AI | $29 | Founder Report | One 18-section report; packs of 5 for $95 and 10 for $159 |
| FounderPal | $99, shown at $49.50 with a code | Founder | Lifetime access; 20 deep researches and 10 SEO articles a month |
| IdeaBrowser | $499/year | Starter | Idea and trend databases; 20 generated ideas a month; no research agent |
| ValidatorAI | Free | Idea validation | No pricing page and no price anywhere on the home page on the date below |
| GummySearch | Closed | Closed | The pricing page states the product closed on 30 November 2025 |
| WhittleOS (us) | $19 for 2 credits | 2 credits | 1 credit to check an idea, 1 to rank three against each other, 2 to search a market — and the market search never comes out of the signup grant |
The limits are each vendor's own, for the plan their entry price buys, read on 2026-09-19. Read the rows against each other rather than down the cheque column: an annual database seat, twenty monthly scans and a single report are three different purchases, and only one of them ends with a decision on the idea you brought.
The same three jobs, across all of them
An entry price answers "what does it cost to start here". It does not answer "what does THIS cost here", and the second question is the one a buyer has. So: three jobs, every tool, with the mapping from job to mode stated per cell rather than assumed. Where a vendor's pages publish no mode for a job, the cell says that and nothing more — it is a statement about what we read on 2026-09-19, not a claim about what their product can do.
The shape of the answer is the finding. Of the 8 other tools, the ones publishing a mode for each job run 5 for checking one idea, 4 for weighing three against each other and 4 for searching a market. One search term, three different products underneath it.
| Tool | Their mode | Cheque | Why that mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| DimeADozen | Free idea score, or the Entrepreneur report | Free, or $129 | A two-minute score at no cost; the full report is a separate one-off. Their Starter credits begin at $9 and their page does not state how many credits one report costs, so $9 is an entry price rather than a price for this job |
| PainOnSocial | Nothing published for this job | — | Their pricing page publishes no verdict on an idea you bring; the product scans communities and ranks what it finds there |
| IdeaProof | Free, or Starter credits | Free, then €19.99 | 90 credits on signup with no card; their own page puts the €19.99 Starter's 150 credits at about three validations, so one validation is a third of that pack by their arithmetic, not ours |
| Preuve AI | Reality Check, or the Founder Report | Free, or $29 | A free score with a market overview and two competitor previews; $29 buys one 18-section report |
| FounderPal | Nothing published for this job | — | Sold in their own words as an AI marketing assistant rather than an idea validator, and their pricing page publishes no idea verdict |
| IdeaBrowser | Idea research agent, on Pro | $1,499/year | The agent is absent from the $499 Starter entirely. On Pro it is 20 runs a YEAR, so a single idea check is only buyable inside an annual plan several times the price of anybody else's one-off |
| ValidatorAI | Idea validation | Free | A fast score. There was no pricing page and no price anywhere on the home page on the date we read it, and no published limits to record |
| GummySearch | Nothing published for this job | Closed | The pricing page states the product closed on 30 November 2025 |
| WhittleOS (us) | Single Idea Check | $9.50 inside the smallest pack | 1 credit, and the 2 granted at signup cover it |
| Tool | Their mode | Cheque | Why that mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| DimeADozen | Nothing published for this job | — | Their pricing page describes no multi-idea or comparison mode; on their published prices three reports are three separate purchases at $129 each |
| PainOnSocial | Nothing published for this job | — | Same reading: nothing on their pages weighs ideas against each other |
| IdeaProof | Starter | €19.99 | The same about-three-validations figure, from their page. Three validations run separately — nothing there describes ranking them against each other |
| Preuve AI | Founder Report, 5-pack | $95 | Their own pack price, which works out under their single-report price per report. Three reports rather than a ranking — nothing on their page compares ideas to each other |
| FounderPal | Nothing published for this job | — | Same reading — nothing on their pages ranks ideas |
| IdeaBrowser | Idea research agent, on Pro | $1,499/year | Three of the same twenty annual runs. Nothing on their page ranks the results against each other or against a founder |
| ValidatorAI | Idea validation | Free | Three separate free scores; their pages describe no comparison |
| GummySearch | Nothing published for this job | Closed | Closed |
| WhittleOS (us) | Compare | $9.50 inside the smallest pack | 1 credits for the three together, ranked against one profile rather than scored separately |
| Tool | Their mode | Cheque | Why that mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| DimeADozen | Nothing published for this job | — | Nothing on their pricing page describes searching a market for candidates — the product takes an idea you already have |
| PainOnSocial | Starter | $19/month | 20 scans a month, up to 2 subreddits per scan, with a 7-day free trial — the closest thing in the table to a market search, and it is a subscription rather than a single answer |
| IdeaProof | Nothing published for this job | — | Their pages describe validation plus business-plan, brand and ad output, and no search for candidate ideas |
| Preuve AI | Radar Pro | $19/month | The one subscription on their page. It is monitoring rather than a search for candidates, so the mapping is the weakest in this column and is offered as the nearest thing, not the same thing |
| FounderPal | Founder | $99, shown at $49.50 with a code | 20 deep researches a month is the nearest published thing to researching a market, and it is a general research tool rather than a candidate search |
| IdeaBrowser | Starter | $499/year | The idea and trend databases plus 20 generated ideas a month. This is the job their product is actually built for, and the one cell in their row where the entry price is the right price to quote |
| ValidatorAI | Nothing published for this job | — | Trend and newsletter content is the nearest thing on their site, and it is reading rather than a search you run |
| GummySearch | Nothing published for this job | Closed | Closed — and this was the row it would have led, which is the reason a dead tool stays in the table |
| WhittleOS (us) | Discovery | $19 inside the smallest pack | 2 credits, and this one never comes out of the signup grant |
Ours in credits, since credits are what we charge
The money columns above are the same three jobs divided out of a pack. This is what the product actually bills, which is the honest unit for our own row:
| Job | Credits | In the smallest pack | In the largest pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Check one idea you bring | 1 | $9.50 | $4.97 |
| Rank three ideas against each other | 1 | $9.50 | $4.97 |
| Search one market for candidates | 2 | $19 | $9.93 |
Credit costs come from the pricing rules in code, and the two money columns divide the pack price by its credits. 2 of the three are covered outright by the credits a new account is granted; the third is not, and the next section says why rather than leaving it in a footnote.
The unit price is the wrong number, including ours
Divide any of our packs and a credit lands between $4.97 and $9.50. That is a real range and it is the number a comparison table wants, which is exactly why it misleads.
The smallest cheque is $19. Nobody buys one credit. The cheapest real transaction is $19 for 2 credits, and the per-credit figure only reaches $4.97 at the $149 end, where you are buying 30 of them. Quoting the low end next to somebody else's headline price is the move this page exists to avoid.
And the free credits do not cover everything. A new account is granted 2 credits, which pays for the first two jobs in the table above outright. They deliberately do not pay for the third: search one market for candidates costs 2 credits and always comes out of a purchased pack, because it is tens of minutes of live searching rather than one model call. Stating that here rather than at checkout is the difference between a price page and a trap.
What a price table cannot tell you
We have not run any of these tools. Every figure above is what a vendor publishes about itself, read on one date. Nothing here compares what comes out the other end, because we have no dated run of theirs to compare against, and inventing one would be the same fabrication this site exists to argue against.
A published claim is a claim, not a finding. Several of these tools advertise numbers about themselves:
Taken from each vendor's own page on 2026-09-19 and recorded as something they advertise, which is checkable, rather than as something we verified, which we did not. We publish no accuracy figure of our own — the reasoning is on our own benchmark write-up.
And cheapest is not the argument. If the decision came down to price, the honest recommendation on that table is one of the free rows, or the one-off report at the bottom of the paid range. What you are choosing between is not cost per document — it is whether the thing will tell you no, show you where the claim came from, and answer for your constraints rather than in general. Those are comparisons of behaviour, and the only one we can make with evidence is about our own.
The short version
- The comparable number is the smallest cheque, not the price per check. Across 9 tools it runs from nothing to 55 times the cheapest dollar entry, with the euro row left out of that division rather than converted.
- 5 billing models are in play — annual, monthly, one-off, credits, free. Per-unit maths flattens a difference that is real in your bank account.
- Ours: $19 is the smallest real payment, a credit works out between $4.97 and $9.50 depending on the pack, and the free credits cover checking and comparing ideas but never a market search.
- Nobody on this page has run anybody else's tool, including us. Price is the one dimension that can be compared from the outside, and it is not the one that should decide it.