Best Social Listening Tools: An Honest Comparison

The best social listening tools for most businesses fall into three groups: enterprise research platforms (Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Meltwater, YouScan), social media suites with listening built in or sold as an add-on (Sprout Social, Hootsuite), and self-serve monitoring tools (Brand24, which publishes its prices, and Mention). Most enterprise tools are quote-based. If you only need to catch mentions and reviews, free options can go a long way, but deep listening across millions of posts needs a dedicated tool.

This guide compares eight tools using only what each company publishes on its own website, as of September 2026. It doesn’t repeat the basics of what social listening is and how to set it up; it helps you pick software.

How we compared these tools

This comparison is research-based. We read each company’s own pricing and product pages in September 2026 and recorded only what they state. We did not run trial accounts, and we don’t give star ratings or scores, because a score would suggest testing we haven’t done.

For each tool we looked at:

• Pricing: whether prices are published or quote-based, and what the entry plan includes.
• Trial: whether you can try it yourself or need to book a demo first.
• Coverage: which sources the company says it monitors.
• Analysis: sentiment, AI summaries, image analysis and alerts, where the company describes them.
• Who it’s built for: a solo marketer, a small team or a global brand.

Pricing and features change often. Check each vendor’s current pricing page before you buy.

Summary table: social listening tools at a glance

All details below are as of September 2026, taken from each company’s own website.

Tool	Pricing as published	Trial	Best suited to
Brandwatch	Not published; demo required	Not stated; free demo offered	Large brands and research teams
Sprout Social	Plans from $79 per seat/month (Essentials, annual); Listening is a quoted add-on to Standard and up	30 days, no credit card	Teams that want publishing, inbox and listening in one place
Talkwalker	Not published; custom quote for Core, Analyze and Business plans	Not stated; custom demo offered	Global brands needing wide source and language coverage
Meltwater	Not published; tailored quote for Starter, Pro, Enterprise and Agency	No self-serve trial; guided demo	PR and comms teams wanting news and social together
Hootsuite	Standard from $99, Professional $199, Advanced $399 per user/month; Enterprise custom	14 days, no credit card	Social teams that mainly publish and engage, with some monitoring
Mention	Company plan; price not confirmed from the page	Free trial offered	Small and mid-sized teams tracking web, social and reviews
Brand24	$249 to $699/month (or $199 to $599 billed annually); Enterprise from $1,499/month	14 days free	Small businesses and agencies wanting self-serve monitoring
YouScan	Starter 3 at $499/month billed annually; Unlimited plans quote-based	Trial account set up after a demo request	Brands that care about images and visual mentions

The tools, one by one

Each entry covers what the company says the tool does, how it’s priced, and where it fits, based on published information rather than hands-on testing.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch sells a suite that includes Consumer Intelligence, Social Media Management, Influencer Marketing and Search Intelligence. Its listening product, Consumer Research, is described as drawing on “over 100 million online sources”, with posts going back to 2008. The product page also describes Iris, a generative AI assistant, image analysis, and custom classifiers you can train to sort data your own way.

Pricing: not published. The pricing page says “standard to enterprise plans available” and asks you to schedule a free demo. Our guide to Brandwatch’s quote process covers what shapes the price and the contract terms to check.

Where it fits: research-heavy teams that want long historical data for benchmarking and the ability to build custom categories. The trade-off: no pricing or trial without a sales conversation, and more depth than most small businesses need. If that rules it out, see our shortlist of Brandwatch alternatives.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform first: publishing, a shared inbox, analytics and review management. Its Standard plan includes “keyword and location monitoring”. Full Listening, which Sprout describes as using AI to surface insights from conversations, with Smart Categories, sentiment tracking and spike alerts, is sold separately.

Pricing: Essentials is $79 per seat/month on annual billing ($99 billed monthly). Standard is $199, Professional $299 and Advanced $399 per seat/month, on annual billing ($249, $399 and $499 billed monthly). Enterprise is custom. Sprout states that “Premium Analytics and Listening are each available as individual add-ons to the Standard plan and up”, and the add-on price isn’t published; you schedule a demo. There’s a 30-day free trial with no credit card required.

Where it fits: a team that already needs a publishing and engagement tool and wants listening in the same place. Per-seat pricing plus a separate listening add-on means the total grows with team size, so ask for a full quote. Our Sprout Social per-seat cost breakdown shows how the total adds up, and we compare Sprout Social competitors separately.

Talkwalker

Talkwalker, which Hootsuite acquired in 2024, presents three plans on its pricing page, Core, Analyze and Business, under the name “Lumen by Talkwalker”. It says the platform covers “30+ social platforms”, “187 languages” and “150 million data sources”, and that every plan includes unlimited users and professional onboarding. Higher plans add more non-sampled results volume, more topics and filters, and additional historical data. Talkwalker also lists monitoring of how AI assistants talk about your brand.

Pricing: not published. The page says “Pick your plan to get a custom quote” and offers a custom demo.

Where it fits: multinational brands and agencies that need broad language and country coverage. Unlimited users is helpful if many departments will use it. As with other enterprise tools, expect a sales process before you see numbers. Our guide to Talkwalker’s Core, Analyze and Business plans explains what changes between them. If it’s more than you need, see our list of Talkwalker alternatives.

Meltwater

Meltwater combines media intelligence (news, press and PR reporting) with social listening, which it says is also known as Explore. Its product page lists real-time alerts for volume spikes and sentiment shifts delivered via Slack or Teams, share-of-voice and competitor benchmarking, and an AI assistant called Mira. On sources, Meltwater says coverage “can include sources like X (Twitter), TikTok brand mentions, Reddit, online news, and more, depending on your package and region”.

Pricing: quote-based across Starter, Pro, Enterprise and Agency plans. In Meltwater’s words, “Your quote is customized to your goals, the modules you choose, and the scale of your program.” It states that it “does not offer a self-serve free trial”, but offers a guided demo.

Where it fits: communications and PR teams that want earned media and social conversation in one workflow. Meltwater itself notes that sentiment accuracy depends on source, language and context, which is a fair warning for any tool on this list. Our research-based look at Meltwater and explainer on Meltwater’s plans and contracts go further, and for news, broadcast and podcast coverage specifically, see our media monitoring software comparison.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is best known for scheduling and managing social accounts. Its plans page lists “Monitor your brand and competitors” in the Standard plan, and its Enterprise plan adds “advanced listening” to uncover trends “across social, digital, and AI”. Hootsuite acquired Talkwalker in 2024: its insights and listening product is called Lumen, Talkwalker now brands its platform Lumen by Talkwalker, and Hootsuite lists Lumen by Talkwalker as an Enterprise-plan feature.

Pricing: Hootsuite’s pricing FAQ says paid plans start at $99 for Standard and $199 for Professional, and range up to $399 for Advanced, per user per month (plan cards show annual billing). Enterprise is custom. There’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Where it fits: teams whose main job is publishing and replying, who want basic brand and competitor monitoring alongside. If deep listening is the priority, confirm which listening features your plan actually includes, because the advanced tier sits at Enterprise. For a head-to-head on price and features, see our Hootsuite and Sprout Social comparison.

Mention

Mention focuses on monitoring and analysis. Its pricing page lists a single Company plan covering real-time mention tracking across Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube “and more”, web monitoring of news, blogs and forums, and “75+ review sites including Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, Amazon, and Glassdoor”. It includes Boolean search, sentiment analysis, share of voice and competitor benchmarking. Historical data access and API access are listed as paid add-ons.

Pricing: the page offers a free trial and a demo, and says paying yearly gets you two months free. We couldn’t confirm the plan’s price from the page itself, so check it directly.

Where it fits: teams that want social, web and review mentions in one feed without an enterprise contract. Mention’s site says it now recommends Agorapulse for publishing and responding, so treat Mention as a monitoring tool rather than a full social suite. See our breakdown of Mention’s pricing and terms before you book a demo. If Mention isn’t the right fit, our Mention alternatives roundup compares other monitoring tools.

Brand24

Brand24 is a self-serve monitoring tool with fully published pricing, which makes it one of the easiest to budget for. Its listed sources include Facebook, Instagram, X, news, blogs, Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YouTube, TikTok, reviews, Twitch, newsletters and podcasts. Plans include AI sentiment analysis, and higher tiers add AI insights and topics.

Plan	Monthly	Billed annually	Keywords	Mentions per month	Updates
Individual	$249	$199/month	3	2,000	Every 12 hours
Team	$349	$299/month	7	10,000	Every hour
Pro	$499	$399/month	12	40,000	Real time
Business	$699	$599/month	25	100,000	Real time
Enterprise	Not listed	From $1,499/month	Custom	Custom	Real time

All figures as of September 2026, from Brand24’s pricing page. There’s a 14-day free trial. Our guide to Brand24’s plans and add-ons covers which sources each plan includes and how cancellation works. Awario is another self-serve tool with published prices, from $29 a month billed yearly as of September 2026; our guide to Awario’s plans and mention limits has the details.

Where it fits: small businesses, consultants and agencies that want to start quickly and see costs up front. Watch the keyword and mention caps: a brand with a common name or a busy product category can reach them faster than expected.

YouScan

YouScan positions itself as AI-powered social listening with a strong focus on images. Its Visual Insights feature, according to the company, detects logos, objects, scenes and activities in images, which helps when people show your product without naming it. It also offers Insights Copilot, an AI assistant you can ask questions of your listening data, and Audience Insights.

Pricing: YouScan publishes one plan, Starter 3, at $499 a month billed annually, with 3 topics, up to 15,000 monthly mentions and 10 Insights Copilot questions a month. Its Unlimited plans, which include Visual Insights and Audience Insights, are quote-based. The homepage says it will set up a customized trial account after you request a demo.

Where it fits: consumer brands where photos and video carry much of the conversation, such as food, drink, fashion and beauty. Note that the visual features sit in the quote-based tier, not the entry plan.

Free social listening options

You don’t need a paid tool to start. Free options won’t give you trend analysis across millions of posts, but they catch a lot of what matters to a small or mid-sized business.

Our free platform: 123 Reputation Management

To be clear, this is ours. Our free platform does four things:

• It tags every page-one result for your name as positive, neutral or negative.
• It watches for new reviews and mentions, and alerts you when one needs a reply.
• It tracks every result as owned pages climb and old ones slip.
• It reports back every month in plain English.

It is not a full social listening suite. It doesn’t offer Boolean queries across social networks, historical archives, image recognition, share-of-voice dashboards or the other research features the paid tools above describe. It suits a business or individual who mainly cares about what shows up when someone searches their name and which new reviews and mentions need a reply. If you’re comparing broader software, our guides to online reputation management tools and reputation monitoring tools cover the wider field.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is free and emails you when new pages matching your search appear in Google’s results. It’s useful for news, blogs and websites. It is not a social listening tool: it doesn’t reliably catch posts on social networks, and alerts can arrive late or miss pages. Our guide to Google Alerts for business shows how to write useful queries. When alerts aren’t enough, our list of tools that catch more than Google Alerts covers free and paid upgrades.

Each platform’s native search and notifications

Every major network lets you search public posts and see mentions of your own account:

• X: search your brand name, handle and misspellings, and use advanced search to filter by phrase or date.
• Reddit: search your name across the site and in the specific communities where your customers talk.
• Facebook and Instagram: your notifications show tags and comments; hashtag and keyword searches catch some untagged posts.
• TikTok and YouTube: search your brand and product names; many reviews and complaints now arrive as videos.
• LinkedIn: search posts for your company name, especially for B2B and employer reputation.

Save these searches as bookmarks and run them on a schedule. Our guide on how to track brand mentions gives a weekly routine and a triage system for what you find.

What free options can’t do

Be realistic about the limits. Free methods are manual, patchy on untagged posts, and give you no history, no volume trends and no automated sentiment. If you need to know whether complaints about delivery have risen since last quarter, or how your share of conversation compares with three competitors, you need a dedicated listening tool.

How to choose a social listening tool

Start with the question you need answered, not the feature list. A shortlist usually falls out of five decisions.

1. Decide between monitoring and research. If you mainly need to catch and reply to mentions, a monitoring tool such as Brand24 or Mention, or even free methods, may be enough. If you need market research, long history and custom classification, look at Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Meltwater or YouScan.
2. Check where your customers talk. A restaurant’s conversation lives on Instagram, TikTok and Google reviews; a software company’s may live on Reddit and LinkedIn. Make sure the tool covers those sources in your region.
3. Estimate your volume. Count mentions for a month using free methods. Tools that cap keywords or mentions can be cheap for a quiet brand and expensive for a noisy one.
4. Decide whether you need a social suite. If you also need publishing and a shared inbox, Sprout Social or Hootsuite may replace two tools. If you already have those, a standalone listening tool avoids paying for features you won’t use.
5. Test sentiment before trusting it. Automated sentiment misreads sarcasm and slang. Our guide to social media sentiment analysis explains how to spot-check labels.

Questions to ask on a demo

• Which platforms and sources are covered in my country and languages, and are any limited?
• Are results sampled or complete at my plan level?
• How far back does historical data go, and is it included or an add-on?
• How is pricing calculated: seats, keywords, mentions, topics or modules?
• What is the contract length, and what happens at renewal?
• Can I correct sentiment labels, and does the system learn from corrections?

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client. A regional chain of bike shops wants to know why its reviews have dipped. The owner first tracks mentions for a month using platform search and Google Alerts, logging about 150 mentions. Most complaints concern repair wait times, and they show up in Google reviews and local Facebook groups.

At that volume, an enterprise research platform would be more than the business needs. A self-serve tool with a few keywords and a few thousand mentions a month would cover it, and a free approach might too. The owner starts with free tracking, adds a monthly review of themes, and plans to trial a paid monitoring tool only if the volume grows or the team runs out of time.

A national brand with far higher volume and many product photos would reasonably shortlist an enterprise tool with image analysis instead.

Common mistakes when buying a listening tool

• Buying for features, not questions. A dashboard nobody reads is expensive noise.
• Ignoring caps. Keyword and mention limits decide your real price.
• Trusting old reviews of coverage. Platform access changes; check current coverage with the vendor.
• Skipping the trial. Run your own brand terms and compare results with mentions you already know about.
• Forgetting who will act. Listening only helps if findings reach the people who can fix the cause.

If you’d rather someone else watch and report on mentions for you, our brand monitoring service covers alerts, triage and monthly reporting.

Comparing review and reputation software too?

Social listening is one part of reputation software. If you’re also choosing a review platform, our other comparisons may help: Birdeye review, Podium review, Yext review, Birdeye pricing, Podium pricing, Birdeye vs Podium, Birdeye alternatives, Podium alternatives, Yext alternatives and Trustpilot alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best social listening tools?

For enterprise research, the main names are Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Meltwater and YouScan. For teams that want listening inside a social media suite, Sprout Social and Hootsuite. For self-serve monitoring, Brand24 (with published prices) and Mention. The best choice depends on your volume, the sources your customers use and whether you need research or just monitoring.

Are there free social listening tools?

There are free ways to monitor, such as Google Alerts, each platform’s own search and notifications, and our free platform, which tracks search results, reviews and mentions for your name. None of them is a full listening suite with trend analysis and history, so deeper listening needs a paid tool.

How much do social listening tools cost?

As of September 2026, Brand24 publishes plans from $249 a month ($199 billed annually), YouScan publishes an entry plan at $499 a month billed annually, and Sprout Social and Hootsuite publish per-seat plans with listening as an add-on or higher tier. Brandwatch, Talkwalker and Meltwater are quote-based. Check each vendor’s pricing page for current figures.

What's the difference between social listening and social monitoring?

Monitoring catches individual mentions so you can reply. Listening analyzes many mentions over time to find trends, themes and shifts in sentiment. Most paid tools do both; free methods mostly cover monitoring.

Do social listening tools see private groups and messages?

No. Listening tools work with public content and whatever each platform allows third-party tools to access. Private groups, direct messages and closed communities are generally out of reach, and you shouldn’t try to monitor them.