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Steam analytics tools compared: SteamDB, Gamalytic and alternatives
DreamEp, founder of NextWishlist · Updated · 3 min read
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Short answerSteamDB is a free reference for player counts, prices and update history; Gamalytic estimates sales, revenue and wishlists for 100,000+ games from $25 a month; Video Game Insights now redirects to Sensor Tower. For your own upcoming game, a Steam marketing tool such as NextWishlist tracks your wishlists and compares them with similar games.
Steam data tools answer different questions. Some describe the whole market, mostly released games; others follow your own game. Here is what the main ones do, in their own words, and which question each one answers.
01Which question are you asking?
- "How did games like mine sell?" → a sales estimate site.
- "What's happening on Steam right now?" → SteamDB.
- "How are my wishlists doing, and what moved them?" → Steamworks, and a wishlist tracker.
- "Am I ahead or behind games like mine before launch?" → a tool that follows upcoming games.
02SteamDB
SteamDB describes itself as a purely informational site, created "to give more insight into the Steam database". It's free, with donations.
- Price history and player counts, updated every few minutes for top games, straight from Steam's API.
- Update and change history for every app.
- Lists such as most followed and most wishlisted games, and upcoming releases.
- For owner estimates, it credits third parties: SteamSpy, PlayTracker, Video Game Insights and Gamalytic.
03Gamalytic
Gamalytic presents itself as a database of 100,000+ Steam games with estimated revenue, sales and player data.
- Starter, $25 a month: analytics filters, one year of history, wishlist estimates, player overlaps, API access with a daily limit.
- Professional, $75 a month ($810 a year): history back to 2015, country splits, review sentiment, full API.
- A free tier exists below Starter; sales estimates for pre-order games are included from Starter.
Best for sizing a genre and pitching a publisher with comparable games. How these estimates work: how to estimate a Steam game's sales.
04Video Game Insights
Video Game Insights was a popular source of Steam market data and sales estimates. As of October 28, 2026, vginsights.com redirects to Sensor Tower's app, which now hosts it.
05Your own game: Steamworks and NextWishlist
- Steamworks (free): your wishlists by day and country, and UTM analytics for each link (how to track your wishlists).
- NextWishlist (private beta): a Steam marketing tool and wishlist tracker for indie developers. It reads your wishlists every night with a read-only Steamworks key, ties them to your posts and tracking links, compares your game with the upcoming games that share its tags, and turns it into a daily plan.
The difference with market databases: they describe released games well; NextWishlist is built for the months before launch, when the question is what to do next for your game.
06How to choose
Start with the free ones (Steamworks and SteamDB). Add a sales estimate site when you need to size a genre or a deal, and a tool that follows your own game when you want the daily work done for you. The wider list, with page reviews, press kits and creator platforms: Steam marketing tools.
Steam analytics tools compared: quick answers
What is the difference between SteamDB and Gamalytic?
SteamDB is a free reference for player counts, prices and update history. Gamalytic is a paid database of sales, revenue and wishlist estimates, from $25 a month.
Is there a free alternative to Gamalytic?
SteamDB is free and shows player counts, followers and lists like most wishlisted games; for sales, you can estimate them yourself from review counts.
What happened to VG Insights?
As of October 28, 2026, vginsights.com redirects to Sensor Tower's app, which now hosts Video Game Insights.
Which tool tracks my own Steam wishlists?
Steamworks shows them for free. NextWishlist, a Steam marketing tool in private beta, tracks them every night, ties them to your posts and compares your pace with similar upcoming games.
Sources
Valve's rules can change: the official Steamworks page always wins. Practitioner benchmarks are surveys of developers, given as ranges.
- SteamDB, FAQ (read Oct 28, 2026)
- Gamalytic (read Oct 28, 2026)
- Gamalytic, pricing (read Oct 28, 2026)
- Video Game Insights (vginsights.com, now redirecting to Sensor Tower) (read Oct 28, 2026)
- Valve, Wishlists (Steamworks) (read Oct 28, 2026)
- Valve, UTM analytics (Steamworks) (read Oct 28, 2026)
- GameDiscoverCo, “How that game sold on Steam, using the ‘NB number’” (237 games) (August 3, 2020)
The Steam marketing tool for indie developers.
Wishlist tracking, comparison with similar upcoming games, your page and demo checked against Valve's rules, and a daily plan that ties it together. In private beta.