Improve your retentionGet more views
The Retention Lab is a place where YouTube creators grow their understanding of audience retention. Connect your channel(s) to explore your own retention charts, watch course material to learn more about what makes viewers watch longer, and share insights with a community of people who take retention as seriously as you do.
Create an account and you're straight in. Free to start, with Apprentice memberships open now and Scientist coming soon.
Built from retention work across 1B+ monthly views
Built by Mario Joos
Retention Director
Courses · Short lessons on what the retention chart is really measuring.
Questions, answered
What is The Retention Lab?
The Retention Lab is a place for YouTube creators to deeply understand audience retention. It combines learning, your own channel data, practical tools, live sessions, and a community of people who take retention seriously.
Is The Retention Lab just a course?
No. The course is only one part of it. The Retention Lab is something you can keep coming back to as you create, analyze videos, learn new concepts, review your retention, and improve over time.
Can I connect my own YouTube channel?
Yes. You can connect your channel and explore the retention of your own videos, making it easier to apply what you learn directly to the content you’re creating. We request read-only access, never modify your channel, and never sell your data. Your analysis is private to you. The full detail is in our Privacy Policy at /privacy.
When can I get in?
Now. The lab is in beta: create an account and you're straight in. It's free to start, Apprentice memberships are open, and Scientist is coming soon.
Is this only for large creators?
No. The Retention Lab is built around understanding viewers, not channel size. Whether you’re still growing or already getting millions of views, the same underlying principles of retention still count.
Why do you ask to connect my YouTube account?
Connecting is optional, and the lab only works with data you already own: your own YouTube analytics.
- Read-only access: the youtube.readonly and yt-analytics.readonly permissions, so we can read your channel, your videos, and their retention and watch-time statistics.
- It's used for one thing: showing you the analysis of your own channel inside the lab.
- We never change your channel, post or act as you, sell your data, or use it for advertising.
- It stays private to you, unless you deliberately submit one of your videos for community feedback.
- You can disconnect at any time, from the lab or from your Google account, and the channel data we hold is deleted.
Every field we store and how long we keep it is in our Privacy Policy. Connected YouTube data is also subject to the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy.