Know what is holding your audience’s attention while you are still live

Live shows force decisions before the data arrives. Twenty minutes into a segment, you have to choose whether to stay with it or move on without seeing the audience. Downloads later show how many people started. Comments capture what a few vocal listeners thought. Neither tells you what you need to know in the moment: is this landing right now?Without a live signal, that call still comes down to instinct.

HeatCheck gives you that signal. Your audience opens a permanent page such as heatcheck.io/your-handle and keeps it open while they listen. Share it in a channel description, place it in a lower third, or show it as an on-screen QR code. Listeners move a slider from 1 to 10 whenever their interest changes, and you watch the room average update.

What the number means

The gauge reports the average interest of everyone currently in the room, rounded to one decimal place. Two rules keep that number useful.

• Silence counts as 5. A person who is present but has not moved the slider contributes a neutral 5 instead of disappearing from the calculation. Otherwise, three enthusiastic voters in a room of four hundred could produce a 9.7 that says very little about the room. A busy room therefore starts near 5 and moves as people vote. Treat the opening minutes as a baseline, not a verdict.
• Only current listeners count. A listener remains in the room while their page has checked in within the last 30 seconds. Close the tab and they leave the average within about half a minute. A tab moved to the background, whether from a locked phone or an app switch, is held for up to an hour because that person may still be listening.

Open to every listener

Voting requires no account. Asking someone to register before reacting adds friction in the middle of the show, so the slider is available to anyone with the link. HeatCheck stores an anonymous token in the browser to stop one person with the page open on a laptop and a phone from counting as two votes. That token is never connected to a name or email address.

Accounts are reserved for features that carry a listener’s identity between shows: checking in to roll call and sharing ideas on the suggestions board. Interest votes and poll answers remain anonymous either way.

Give every score context

A score becomes more useful when it has context. Before or during a segment, give it a name such as “listener questions,” “the interview,” or “sponsor read.” The score then belongs to that part of the show instead of the night as a whole. Switching segments resets the votes, so each new reading starts with the next topic rather than carrying the previous one forward.

This is what makes the analytics useful after the show. Instead of one average for two hours, you get a score for each segment and can see the pattern across weeks. Free keeps seven days of history; every paid plan keeps all of it.

Start on Free

The free plan supports up to 200 listeners in the room at once. It is a permanent tier, not a time-limited trial, and it requires no card. The meter remains available on Free. Paid plans add the features around it: roll call, the suggestions board, custom branding, stream overlays, sponsor placements, and a larger room.