Shield wound down. Here is what replaces it.

Shield was a LinkedIn analytics tool. It ran from 2018 and, in its own words, was used by "tens of thousands of creators, writers, founders, and operators". In May 2026 its co-founder Andreas Jonsson announced on LinkedIn that after seven years Shield was winding down, and the notice that replaced the product's home page said it in four sentences.

On 22 September 2026, shieldapp.ai itself answers with a paused-deployment page, and theshieldindex.com, the weekly LinkedIn benchmark Shield published alongside the product, answers the same way. The notice above is quoted from the Internet Archive's capture of shieldapp.ai/wind-down on 1 September 2026. That is the whole public record, and this page claims nothing beyond it.

Worth naming, because "a Shield alternative" means four different things depending on which part of it you used. From Shield's own last home page, archived on 6 March 2026: it "tracks your content performance, audience, and growth in one place, for one profile or your entire team" at $25 per profile per month with a 7-day trial and no card. Four jobs sat inside that.

• Your post history, measured. Every post you had ever published, sortable, filterable and searchable, with its impressions and engagement beside it, instead of one post at a time inside LinkedIn.
• Who was reading. Your audience broken down by job title, location and industry, so you could tell whether you were reaching decision makers or your own peers.
• A team in one view. Several profiles under one account, which is what made it the standard in employee advocacy and agency work.
• A benchmark. The Shield Index, a weekly read of organic reach across, by its own description, more than 50,000 fresh LinkedIn posts.

The first two have free or cheap replacements. The third has one credible paid option. The fourth, an independent weekly benchmark of the whole platform, currently has none, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest lie on this page.

Start here, before any subscription. LinkedIn gives every member more than most people who used a third-party tool ever looked at. Its help centre page "Analytics for LinkedIn members" names four surfaces: individual post analytics, which covers "short form posts, images, videos, events, polls, and articles"; creator analytics, which gives "aggregate analytics to show how your content portfolio performs over time" and audience analytics with "follower growth trends and follower demographics"; who viewed your profile, which shows more to Premium members; and your search appearances.

Between them, that is the impressions figure, members reached, engagement per post and your follower demographics, which is most of what Shield showed you about yourself. What LinkedIn does not do is keep it anywhere you can sort, export or compare: you read it a page at a time, inside LinkedIn, on whatever window LinkedIn chooses to show. That gap is what every tool below is selling into.

• Your impressions live only here and in your own browser. They are not in LinkedIn's public API, which is why no tool can show them to you without either your login or something reading the page you are on. The what LinkedIn impressions mean guide explains the numbers themselves in LinkedIn's own definitions.
• If you want one habit instead of one more tool: open your analytics on the same morning each week, write down four numbers, and read them next to what you posted. The best time to post on LinkedIn guide shows what that kind of record is worth against the published averages.

Sonar is a content platform, and the reason we built a Chrome extension is the paragraph above: LinkedIn's API does not return your impressions, so the only honest way to have them is to read the page you are already looking at. Sonar for LinkedIn runs on linkedin.com/dashboard and linkedin.com/analytics, in your own signed-in session, and sends one row a day to your own Sonar workspace.

What it reads

• The numbers LinkedIn has labelled on those pages: impressions, members reached, engagements, profile views, search appearances and total followers.
• The audience breakdowns on the audience page: job title, location, seniority, company, industry and company size.
• A number only when LinkedIn itself labelled it, the label names that metric exactly, and the period is known. A caption whose period cannot be read drops the metric rather than guessing at it, and the literal caption is stored beside every number so you can check what it was read under.

What it cannot do, and you should know before installing

• It starts from the day you pair it. It reads what is on the page while you are on it, so there is no backfill of the years Shield held, and if you exported a Shield CSV before the wind-down, keep it.
• It reads your own analytics only. Not a teammate's, not a competitor's, not a client's. There is no team view, because Sonar is one workspace for one founder.
• It is Chrome, and it needs a Sonar account: $99 a month after 7 free days. It is not a standalone analytics product and we do not sell it as one.
• It performs no action on your LinkedIn account and visits no page on your behalf. Its browser permissions are storage, for the pairing token, and permission to talk to Sonar; a switch in Sonar pauses it and uninstalling ends it.

What you get in exchange for that scope is the part Shield was loved for: your whole post history in one list, each post against your own average rather than somebody's benchmark, impressions where they exist, and a weekly read of what changed. The Sonar for LinkedIn extension page sets out exactly what it reads, and the extension itself is on the Chrome Web Store.

Three paid tools carry real LinkedIn analytics, with the prices as read on 22 September 2026. None of them is Shield, and each is honest about a different part of it.

Pick by the job you were actually doing with it.

• You checked your own numbers weekly. LinkedIn's own analytics, free, plus a note in a document. Add a tool only when the reading turns into writing.
• You wanted the history in one sortable place. Any of the paid tools above. If the posts also have to get written, Sonar does both; if they do not, AuthoredUp is the cheaper way to read your own.
• You ran several profiles, or a team. Scripe is the only option here that models it, with seats, roles and a team analytics dashboard. Sonar does not do this today.
• You read the Shield Index for the state of the platform. Nothing replaces it yet. Measure your own account and compare it against itself.

Whichever you pick, the lesson of the wind-down is worth keeping: a number that lives only inside somebody else's product can leave with it. Export what you can, and prefer a tool that shows you where each number came from. The LinkedIn tool reviews price each of the options above on its own page, and the personal branding tools guide puts eleven of them on one table.