How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Rankite is independent; if a vendor ever pays for a featured spot, that listing is clearly labeled Partner.
Key takeaways
- A restaurant owner found out about a viral complaint three days late because nobody was monitoring mentions. That is the entire business case for this category: Brand24 Individual ($199/month) or Awario will catch it in minutes.
- Published pricing exists at Brand24 (from $199/month) and Hootsuite (Standard $99/user/month). Brandwatch, Meltwater, Talkwalker, Mention and Keyhole all price by custom quote, so budget a sales cycle.
- Listening is now an add-on, not a product, at the social suites: Sprout Social sells Listening as a paid add-on to Standard and up, and Hootsuite gates advanced listening to Enterprise.
- Talkwalker rebranded to Lumen by Talkwalker and Keyhole's listening now lives on Muck Rack: if you demo either, confirm which product name is on the contract.
- Mention killed its self-serve plans in 2026 and now sells a single custom Company plan, so small teams should shortlist Brand24, Awario or Hootsuite instead.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Brand24 | SMBs that want serious listening with honest published pricing | $199/month (Individual, billed annually) | Free trial (14 days, no credit card) |
 Mention | Mid-market teams that want media monitoring plus social listening | See website (Company plan, custom priced) | See website |
 Sprout Social | Social teams that want listening inside their management suite | See website (Listening sold as an add-on) | Free trial (no credit card required) |
 Hootsuite | Teams that want listening bundled with social management | $99/user/month (Standard) | Free trial (14 days, no credit card) |
 Awario | Budget buyers who want affordable mention tracking | See website | Free trial (no credit card required) |
 Brandwatch | Enterprises that need the deepest consumer intelligence | See website (custom quote) | No |
 Meltwater | PR and communications teams that need media plus social intelligence | See website (custom quote) | No |
 Talkwalker | Enterprises wanting AI-powered listening and trend prediction | See website (custom quote) | No |
 Keyhole | Agencies tracking hashtags, campaigns and influencers | See website | No |
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Picture the scenario. A customer posts a video about your product on TikTok on Friday night. It gets 400,000 views by Sunday. Your team finds out on Tuesday, from a journalist asking for comment. Social listening platforms exist to collapse that gap: they monitor millions of sources across social networks, news, blogs, forums and review sites, flag spikes in volume or negative sentiment, and alert you while there is still time to respond. These nine cover the real market, from $199-a-month self-serve tools to enterprise platforms that price by quote.
#1
Brand24
Best for: SMBs that want serious listening with honest published pricing
Visit brand24.com
Starting price$199/month (Individual, billed annually)
Free planFree trial (14 days, no credit card)
Brand24 is the rare listening vendor that publishes its prices and lets unlimited users log in. Individual at $199 per month annually ($249 monthly) is the entry point, scaling through Team ($299), Pro ($399) and Business ($599) to Enterprise from $1,499. Every plan includes realtime updates, AI sentiment analysis, event detection that explains sudden spikes, and storm alerts pushed to Slack or Teams. Source coverage is genuinely wide: Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, podcasts, newsletters and review sites.
The honest catch is the mention meter. Individual's 40K mentions a month sounds like a lot until a campaign goes viral, and the keyword counts are tight at the low end. For an SMB or agency tracking one brand and a few competitors, Individual or Team is the sweet spot. The 14-day trial needs no credit card, so run your actual brand keywords through it and check the mention quality before paying.
What we like- Published prices from $199/month with unlimited users on every plan
- AI sentiment analysis, event detection and brand assistant included
- Monitors TikTok, Reddit, podcasts and newsletters, not just the big networks
Watch out for- Individual covers only a small keyword set and 40K mentions a month
- API access costs $149 extra
- AI Visibility tracking is a paid add-on
#2
Mention
Best for: Mid-market teams that want media monitoring plus social listening
Visit mention.com
Starting priceSee website (Company plan, custom priced)
Free planSee website
Mention spent years as the affordable listening tool and then changed strategy: the 2026 pricing page shows a single Company plan with custom pricing and no public numbers. What you get is an enterprise-grade monitoring stack: real-time mention tracking across Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube, news and blog monitoring, 75-plus review sites including Google, Trustpilot and Amazon, advanced Boolean search, sentiment analysis and competitor benchmarking.
Two changes matter for buyers. First, the Publish and Respond features were progressively deprecated, with Agorapulse named as the official replacement, so Mention is now listening-only. Second, with no self-serve tier and no trial terms published, small teams face a sales process for a product that used to cost $49 a month. If you are mid-market or larger and want media plus social in one contract, it is worth the call. If you are small, Brand24 or Awario gets you listening this week.
What we like- One platform for social, web, news and 75-plus review sites
- Advanced Boolean search with 2,000-character queries
- Sentiment analysis, share of voice and competitor benchmarking built in
Watch out for- Self-serve plans are gone in 2026, everything is a custom Company quote
- Publish and respond features were deprecated in favor of Agorapulse
- No trial terms stated on the pricing page
#3
Sprout Social
Best for: Social teams that want listening inside their management suite
Visit sproutsocial.com
Starting priceSee website (Listening sold as an add-on)
Free planFree trial (no credit card required)
Sprout Social is a social media management suite first, and its Listening product is an add-on to the Standard plan and above. That positioning is the whole pitch: the same team that publishes content and answers messages also watches the conversation, with AI-powered Smart Categories, sentiment tracking, spike alerts for sudden volume or sentiment changes, and machine-learning filters, all feeding the same reports as the publishing side.
The honest catch is the stack. You cannot buy Sprout listening alone, and the vendor's pricing page did not render plan prices in readable form during this review, so the total cost of plan plus Listening add-on needs a quote or a trial. The trial needs no credit card. For a marketing team already managing social in Sprout, adding Listening is the path of least resistance. For a PR team that only needs monitoring, a dedicated listening tool is cheaper and deeper.
What we like- Listening lives next to publishing, engagement and analytics in one login
- Smart Categories, sentiment scoring and spike alerts are genuinely strong
- 100 monthly AI agent credits per seat included in plans
Watch out for- Listening is a paid add-on to Standard and up, not a standalone product
- Plan prices were not readable on the vendor pricing page
- Overkill if you only need monitoring
#4
Hootsuite
Best for: Teams that want listening bundled with social management
Visit hootsuite.com
Starting price$99/user/month (Standard)
Free planFree trial (14 days, no credit card)
Hootsuite bundles basic listening into every paid plan, which makes it the cheapest way to get monitoring plus management in one bill. Standard at $99 per user per month includes brand and competitor monitoring, a unified inbox, scheduling and analytics for up to 10 social accounts. Professional at $199 adds unlimited accounts, 30-day Quick Search across conversations, AI-powered trend forecasting up to 90 days out, and benchmarking against up to 20 competitors. Advanced at $399 adds team workflows and approvals.
The line to know is between Professional and Enterprise. The deep listening features, 13 months of historical data, advanced data sources, scheduled listening reports and brand review monitoring, live on Enterprise with custom pricing, powered by the Talkwalker technology Hootsuite acquired. For an SMB that wants to watch its brand while managing its accounts, Standard or Professional is enough. For serious consumer intelligence, you are buying Enterprise or a dedicated platform.
What we like- Standard includes social listening, monitoring and competitive benchmarking at $99/user/month
- Professional ($199) adds 30-day conversation search and 90-day trend forecasting
- 14-day trial with no credit card and no auto-charge
Watch out for- Advanced listening (13 months of history, brand review monitoring) is Enterprise-only
- Per-user pricing adds up fast for larger teams
- Trial posting limits apply
#5
Awario
Best for: Budget buyers who want affordable mention tracking
Visit awario.com
Starting priceSee website
Free planFree trial (no credit card required)
Awario built its name as the budget alternative to Brandwatch, aimed at small businesses and freelancers who need mention tracking without enterprise pricing. The feature set punches above its historical price: Boolean alerts, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, share-of-voice reporting, and lead generation from social conversations. The trial grants Starter-level access with up to 3 alerts and 30,000 mentions, needs no credit card, and expired trials are never charged.
The caveat is verification: the vendor's pricing page did not render plan prices in readable form during this review, so confirm the current tiers on awario.com before budgeting. Also note the history caps, from 3,000 to 50,000 stored mentions per alert depending on plan, and that mention export to CSV requires Pro or Enterprise. For a solo marketer or tiny agency watching a handful of keywords, Awario remains the price leader to beat.
What we like- Historically the cheapest real listening tool in the category
- Boolean search, sentiment analysis and influencer identification included
- Trial needs no credit card and unused accounts are never charged
Watch out for- Plan prices were not readable on the vendor pricing page during this review
- Mention history caps range from 3,000 to 50,000 per alert
- CSV export needs Pro or Enterprise
Starting priceSee website (custom quote)
Free planNo
Brandwatch is the enterprise standard for consumer intelligence, and it prices like it. There are no public plans: everything is a custom quote after a demo and a scoping call. What the money buys is depth: the world's largest archive of consumer conversation, advanced AI for trend discovery, image and logo analysis, audience segmentation, and a full social suite covering publishing, engagement and care alongside listening.
This is the right tool when the question is "what do 50 million consumers think about our category," asked by a team with analysts to work the data. It is the wrong tool for a 20-person company that wants to know when someone complains on X. There is no free plan and no self-serve trial, so evaluation means a guided demo. If your budget has five figures a year for listening and you have the headcount to use it, start here. Otherwise start with Brand24.
What we like- The largest archive of consumer opinion in the industry with advanced proprietary and generative AI
- Full social suite: listening, publishing, engagement and customer care in one platform
- Consistently rated a leader by industry analysts
Watch out for- Custom pricing only, expect an enterprise sales cycle and enterprise budget
- No free plan or self-serve trial
- More platform than most SMBs will ever use
#7
Meltwater
Best for: PR and communications teams that need media plus social intelligence
Visit meltwater.com
Starting priceSee website (custom quote)
Free planNo
Meltwater is built for PR, communications and marketing leaders rather than pure social teams. The platform combines media monitoring, social listening, media relations with journalist contact databases, and influencer marketing, ingesting over 1.3 billion documents a day. The 2026 positioning adds AI visibility tracking: understanding how AI platforms portray your organization, which is becoming a real line item in comms budgets.
For a comms team, the bundle logic works: one contract covers the morning news scan, the social conversation, the journalist outreach and the coverage reporting. For a team that only needs social listening, it is a lot of platform and a custom quote for a narrower job. There is no free plan; evaluation runs through demos and trials arranged with sales. If your listening buyer sits in PR rather than marketing, Meltwater usually beats the social-native tools on the media side.
What we like- One platform for media monitoring, social listening, journalist databases and influencer marketing
- 1.3 billion documents ingested daily across 240-plus languages
- AI visibility tracking shows how AI platforms portray your brand
Watch out for- Custom pricing only with an enterprise sales motion
- The breadth (PR, influencer, social) means listening depth varies by use case
- No free plan
#8
Talkwalker
Best for: Enterprises wanting AI-powered listening and trend prediction
Visit talkwalker.com
Starting priceSee website (custom quote)
Free planNo
Talkwalker is now Lumen by Talkwalker, reflecting the Hootsuite acquisition bringing the two closer together. The vendor is explicit that nothing else changed: same data, same reports, same workflows and integrations, new name. Underneath it remains one of the two enterprise listening leaders alongside Brandwatch, with particular strength in AI-powered trend detection, sentiment analysis across 187 languages historically, and image and video recognition.
The buying reality is enterprise: custom quotes, demos, and annual contracts. There is a useful synergy angle for Hootsuite customers, since Hootsuite's Enterprise advanced listening runs on this technology, so existing Hootsuite shops can sometimes add it without a second vendor relationship. For everyone else, evaluate it head-to-head with Brandwatch if the budget is there. Small teams should not start here.
What we like- Rebranded as Lumen by Talkwalker with the same industry-leading listening engine
- AI trend detection and image recognition are category standouts
- Trusted by 2,500-plus organizations including global brands
Watch out for- Custom pricing only
- The Hootsuite-era rebrand means confirming which product you are actually buying
- No self-serve option for small teams
#9
Keyhole
Best for: Agencies tracking hashtags, campaigns and influencers
Visit keyhole.co
Starting priceSee website
Free planNo
Keyhole made its name on hashtag tracking: campaigns, events and influencer activations measured in real time with shareable reports. The 2026 wrinkle is structural: Keyhole's social listening is now available on Muck Rack, combining social monitoring with Muck Rack's media intelligence for PR workflows. That makes it a natural fit for agencies and comms teams already in the Muck Rack world.
For always-on brand monitoring across the whole web, the dedicated listening platforms (Brand24, Brandwatch, Talkwalker) go deeper. For campaign bursts, hashtag battles and influencer reporting, Keyhole's analytics-first design still fits. There is no public pricing and no free plan, so talk to the vendor, and ask explicitly whether you are buying Keyhole standalone or the Muck Rack bundle. Get the product name on the contract.
What we like- The classic hashtag and campaign tracking tool, strong on influencer and campaign analytics
- Historical data and competitive benchmarking included
- Now paired with Muck Rack's PR intelligence
Watch out for- Keyhole's social listening now lives on Muck Rack, so confirm the product and pricing with the vendor
- No public pricing
- Narrower than full listening platforms for always-on brand monitoring
Match the tool to the job: monitoring, intelligence or campaigns
These nine split three ways. Always-on brand monitoring: Brand24, Mention, Awario and Hootsuite's bundled listening. Consumer intelligence and trend research: Brandwatch, Talkwalker and Meltwater, all enterprise-quoted. Campaign and hashtag analytics: Keyhole. Buying an intelligence platform for a monitoring job wastes five figures a year; buying a monitoring tool for an intelligence job leaves the insights team starved.
The mention meter decides the real price
Every self-serve listening tool rations mentions, keywords or alerts. Brand24's Individual allows a small keyword set and 40K mentions a month. Awario caps stored history per alert. Hootsuite's deeper search windows sit on higher tiers. Before you buy, estimate your monthly mention volume: your brand name plus product names plus competitors, times the chatter of your industry. A B2B software company might generate 5,000 mentions a month; a consumer food brand can clear 200,000. Buy the tier that fits your volume with headroom for one viral week.
Free trials are the whole evaluation
Nobody should buy listening software without running their own keywords through it first. Brand24, Hootsuite and Awario all offer no-credit-card trials: set up your brand, your competitors and your industry terms, and check whether the mentions are relevant or noise. The enterprise tools (Brandwatch, Meltwater, Talkwalker, Keyhole, Mention's Company plan) evaluate through guided demos; insist the demo uses your keywords, not the vendor's polished sample data. If a vendor will not run your terms, walk away.
The 2026 consolidation wave, and what it means for buyers
Social listening is consolidating fast, and this list shows it. Hootsuite bought Talkwalker and rebranded it Lumen by Talkwalker. Keyhole's listening moved onto Muck Rack. Mention deprecated its publishing features and pointed users to Agorapulse, retreating to listening-only with custom pricing. Brand24 added an AI Visibility module as a paid add-on, tracking how AI platforms portray your brand.
For buyers, consolidation cuts two ways. Bundles get cheaper: Hootsuite Enterprise listening and the Muck Rack plus Keyhole combo give you more per contract. But choice shrinks at the low end: Mention's exit from self-serve leaves Brand24 and Awario as the only serious sub-$300 listening tools with published pricing. If you are signing a multi-year enterprise contract, get the product name, the data retention terms and the price-lock in writing; rebrands have a habit of arriving with new packaging and new prices.
How we chose
We started with the categories buyers search: social listening platforms, social listening tools, brand monitoring software and media monitoring tools. For each candidate we opened the vendor's own pricing page, checked plan details against public reviews on G2 and Capterra and practitioner discussion on Reddit, and compared source coverage, mention limits, sentiment analysis, alerting and team-size fit. Where a price could not be verified on the vendor's page we wrote "See website" rather than guessing. We never claim hands-on testing: this is document research, priced from vendor pages.
Frequently asked questions
What is social listening?
Social listening means monitoring what people say about your brand, competitors and industry across social networks, news sites, blogs, forums and review sites, then analyzing it for sentiment, trends and threats. It differs from social monitoring (just collecting mentions) by adding the analysis layer: why volume spiked, whether sentiment shifted, and what to do about it.
How much does social listening software cost?
Self-serve tools with published pricing run $99 to $599 a month: Hootsuite Standard at $99/user/month, Brand24 Individual at $199/month. Enterprise platforms (Brandwatch, Meltwater, Talkwalker) price by custom quote, typically five figures a year. Sprout Social sells listening as an add-on to its management plans.
Can small businesses afford social listening?
Yes. Brand24 Individual at $199/month and Awario's budget tiers put real listening within SMB reach, and Hootsuite Standard at $99/user/month bundles basic listening with social management. Both Brand24 and Awario offer no-credit-card trials. Skip the enterprise platforms until the mention volume justifies them.
What is the difference between social listening and media monitoring?
Social listening focuses on social networks and online conversation, with sentiment and trend analysis. Media monitoring covers news, broadcast and print coverage, traditionally for PR teams. Tools like Meltwater and Mention do both; pure listening tools like Brand24 lean social. Buy the coverage your team actually reads.
How do mention limits work?
Vendors ration how many results (mentions) your tracked keywords can generate per month. Exceed the limit and you either pay overages, upgrade, or stop collecting until the next cycle. Estimate your volume before buying: track your brand and competitor names for a month with a trial, then buy the tier with headroom for a viral spike.
Should I worry about vendor consolidation?
Mildly. Hootsuite owns Talkwalker (now Lumen), Keyhole sits on Muck Rack, and Mention exited self-serve in 2026. Consolidation usually means better bundles but less low-end choice. On enterprise contracts, get the product name, data retention and price-lock terms in writing before you sign.
Sources we checked (9)
- https://brand24.com/pricing/
- https://mention.com/en/pricing/
- https://sproutsocial.com/pricing/
- https://www.hootsuite.com/plans
- https://awario.com/pricing/
- https://www.brandwatch.com/
- https://meltwater.com/
- https://www.talkwalker.com/
- https://keyhole.co/
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has spent more than a decade helping SaaS and e-commerce brands grow through search. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.