The pink pill everyone's googling 🦐

Trend of the Week

🦐 The pink pill everyone's googling

Astaxanthin went from a fish-farm ingredient to a supplement-cabinet staple.

Our algorithm picked this one up recently, and it's not a small niche anymore.

The scoreboard: searches for "astaxanthin" went from 74,000 a month a year ago to 301,000 now. Two years ago it was 60,500, so this isn't a slow climb. It's a breakout.

Wait, what's astaxanthin?

It's a red-orange pigment made by microalgae. Shrimp eat the algae, salmon eat the shrimp, and that's why salmon is pink. It's a strong antioxidant, and for years its biggest buyer was fish farms, which feed it to salmon for the color.

Now it's sold as a softgel, usually 12 mg, and pitched for skin, recovery and healthy aging.

Why now?

1. The longevity crowd found it. In 2024, the US government-funded Interventions Testing Program found astaxanthin extended lifespan in male mice. That result got widely shared. The plot twist: a 2026 follow-up did not repeat that result, according to Dr. Brad Stanfield's review (updated October 27). The hype traveled faster than the correction. It usually does.

2. The gym crowd found it too. A 2026 meta-analysis of 24 trials found astaxanthin lowered markers of muscle damage after exercise, but didn't make anyone faster or stronger. Stanfield's summary: it may help markers of recovery, but no gain in performance. "Helps you recover" is still a very sellable label.

Who's making money

• Amazon sellers: the top 20 astaxanthin listings average about 6,650 sales a month at about $27, according to sales estimates. That's up from about 4,700 a month back in April. The #1 listing, Micro Ingredients' 12 mg softgels, shows 20,000+ bought in the past month.

• The established brands: Sports Research's Icelandic Astaxanthin sits in the top 5 with 12,600 reviews. These listings aren't new. The shoppers are.

• The cheap end: a 180-softgel "6 month supply" sells 10,000+ a month at $8.48. When the race to the bottom starts, the category is mainstream.

So what happens next?

• It shows up in stacks. Expect astaxanthin inside "skin from within" gummies, recovery blends and longevity stacks, next to collagen and creatine.

• The evidence fight gets louder. Supplements that boom on one mouse study tend to get a reality check. Brands that make honest claims (recovery markers, not "6,000x stronger than vitamin C") will outlast the hype.

• Sourcing becomes the label. "Natural, from algae" vs synthetic is already on every listing. That's where brands will compete.

The Pro Move

⚡ Catch the next breakout

Astaxanthin was one trend. There are 50,000 more.

Pro has every one of them, each with its search history, plus 20,000+ websites and apps on the rise and the Amazon categories people are actually buying from.

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Trending in the Group Chat

👀 Your agent finally has thumbs

What the internet argued about, starred and installed this week

🐦 The tweet: "Is Opus 5.5 nerfed?" asked @shanemelaugh, who had Gemini analyse 1,400 of his Claude Code sessions and says the reasoning changed sharply on November 3, with no change in the model's name. 578K views and 770 points on Hacker News. Same name, different vibes. We've all dated that person.

🛠 The repo: Spotifast is a native Spotify app written in Rust, no browser engine inside, for Linux, macOS and Windows. 10K stars since it went up on August 27. It's an unofficial client built on librespot, so Spotify hasn't blessed it, and playback needs Premium. Your RAM called. It says thanks.

🎓 The tutorial: Tristen O'Brien's Build Your FIRST AI Agent in Claude Code (11 Minutes), posted November 5. No code, no terminal: you hand it your whole to-do list, press one button, and subagents work through your tasks at the same time, asking before they send anything. 249K views in five days. Your to-do list finally has someone else to procrastinate on it.

🎬 The tool: Glasshand rents real iPhones and Macs in a data center to your AI agents. Claude Code, Codex or Cursor grab one through an API to post on socials, test apps in Xcode or run errands, and every device gets wiped after each rental. #1 on Product Hunt with 398 upvotes. Their pitch: "We bring the device and the fingers."

Site on the Rise

🌐 exporttok.com

A comment exporter that ranks for "anonymous TikTok viewer"

• What it is: a web tool that pulls the comments and replies from any TikTok video into a CSV or Excel file. Built for marketers and researchers who want to read 5,000 comments without scrolling.

• Traffic: about 63,000 visits a month according to traffic estimates, up from around 170 in March. It took off in April and has grown every month since, roughly 370x in seven months.

• Top keywords bringing the traffic:

  • "tiktok repost viewer" (33,100 searches a month), ranking #1

  • "anonymous tiktok viewer" (33,100), ranking #2

  • "tiktok viewer" (246,000), ranking #4

  • "tiktok anonymous viewer" (27,100), ranking #2

  • "tiktok comment viewer" (5,400), ranking #1

• Insight: look at the keywords. The product exports comments, but the traffic comes from people who want to look at someone's TikTok without being seen. ExportTok built small "use" pages for each job (repost viewer, account viewer, comment viewer) and they rank. Your product doesn't have to match the biggest search. One feature page per job people search for can do the work.

• Link: exporttok.com

Breakout App

Rips by Triumph

Buy a pack of trading cards without leaving the couch

• What it is: you buy a digital pack (Pokémon, sports cards and more), "rip" it on your phone, and pull a real card. Then you keep it and have it shipped, or sell it back to the app. It's a mystery box with a real card inside, so it sits close to gambling. The App Store rates it 17+.

• Launched: on iOS in October 2025, on Android in May 2026.

• Traction: 1.9 million installs on Google Play, with 4.6 stars from 74,000 ratings. On the App Store, 4.7 stars from 261,000 ratings.

• Search interest: "Rips by Triumph" gets 49,500 searches a month, from zero a year ago.

• Insight: opening the pack was always the product. Card breakers built whole businesses on livestreaming it, and this app turned the moment into a button. Copycats are already here: Rip Rush launched on iOS in June and has 15,000 ratings. If you sell collectibles, the thrill of the reveal is worth more than the card.

• Get it: App Store · Google Play

Down Bad

📉 Mushroom coffee

The fungus is among us. Less of us, anyway.

• What it is: coffee blended with mushroom extracts like lion's mane, chaga or reishi, sold as calmer energy and better focus. It was the wellness drink of 2024.

• The fall: searches for "mushroom coffee" topped out at 301,000 a month (in April 2024, and again in early 2025), were at 201,000 a year ago and sit at 135,000 now. "Mushroom coffee benefits" went from 33,100 a year ago to 22,200.

• The twist: the shopping searches fell harder. "Mushroom coffee blend" went from 1,600 a month a year ago to 320. People still know the name. Fewer are looking for a new one to buy.

• Insight: 135,000 searches a month is still a big market, just not a growing one. Wellness buyers rotate: last year's mushroom is this year's algae. If you sell in this space, build the brand around the customer, not the ingredient, so you can follow them to the next one.

That's a Wrap

👋 Same time next Tuesday?

You made it to the end. Respect.

Hope you walked away with at least one idea worth stealing. Hit reply and tell me what you're building, what you loved, or what you'd cut. I read every reply, usually with too much coffee.

Catch you next week,

Rachid · Founder, Rising Trends · @rachidseo