Comparison · Social Listening
Best social listening tools
Six tools, honest pricing, and how much signal you actually get versus noise.
- 6 tools compared
- Real prices
- Setup notes
Best social listening tools: which one should you pick?
Brandwatch and Sprout Social suit teams needing deep sentiment analysis and reporting, Mention and Awario are solid budget picks for smaller brands, and Google Alerts plus a free Reddit/X search covers very early-stage founders who just need to know when they're mentioned.
Last updated 3 August 2026
| Tool | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Brandwatch | Larger brands needing deep analytics and historical data | Custom pricing, typically several hundred dollars a month and up |
| Sprout Social | Teams that want listening bundled with publishing and reporting | From about $199 a month per seat |
| Mention | Small businesses wanting straightforward brand and competitor tracking | From about $41 a month |
| Awario | Budget-conscious founders tracking a handful of keywords | From about $29 a month |
| Hootsuite Insights | Teams already on Hootsuite for scheduling | Add-on pricing, typically from about $99 a month |
| Google Alerts + manual platform search | Very early-stage founders with no budget for a tool | Free |
Social listening tools track mentions of your brand, competitors, or a topic across social platforms, forums and news. The value isn't the alert volume — it's whether the tool surfaces the handful of mentions that actually matter, like a viral complaint or a competitor's product launch, without burying you in noise.
Price scales with mention volume and how many keywords you track, so a small brand can get a lot of value from a cheap tool while an established one needs the volume handling and sentiment analysis of an enterprise platform.
How we judged them
What matters when you're small.
Coverage across platforms
Check whether the tool covers the platforms your audience actually uses — Reddit and TikTok coverage varies a lot between tools and matters more for consumer brands than B2B ones.
Sentiment analysis accuracy
Automated sentiment tagging is often wrong on sarcasm and industry jargon. Look for tools that let you correct tags easily rather than trusting the score blindly.
Alerting and noise control
A tool that emails you fifty low-relevance mentions a day trains you to ignore it. Good filtering and a way to flag a spike as urgent is worth more than raw mention count.
Pricing by mention volume vs seats
Some tools price by keyword count, others by mention volume or seats. Estimate your actual mention volume during a busy week, not an average one, before comparing plans.
The picks
What each one is actually good at.
Brandwatch
Custom pricing, typically several hundred dollars a month and upBest for: Larger brands needing deep analytics and historical data
The most powerful analytics and historical trend data on this list, with strong visualisation. Priced and built for enterprise marketing teams — a small business will use a fraction of what it offers.
Sprout Social
From about $199 a month per seatBest for: Teams that want listening bundled with publishing and reporting
Solid listening features bundled into a broader social management platform, which is convenient if you're already using it to schedule posts. Listening alone is expensive if that's your only use case.
Mention
From about $41 a monthBest for: Small businesses wanting straightforward brand and competitor tracking
Clean interface and good coverage for the price, with reasonable filtering. Sentiment analysis is more basic than Brandwatch's and historical data is limited on lower tiers.
Awario
From about $29 a monthBest for: Budget-conscious founders tracking a handful of keywords
The cheapest genuinely useful option, with decent Reddit and forum coverage that some competitors lack. Reporting is basic and better suited to a solo marketer than a team.
Hootsuite Insights
Add-on pricing, typically from about $99 a monthBest for: Teams already on Hootsuite for scheduling
Convenient if you're already paying for Hootsuite, but the listening features are thinner than dedicated tools. Not worth adding just for listening alone.
Google Alerts + manual platform search
FreeBest for: Very early-stage founders with no budget for a tool
Covers news and indexed web mentions well but misses most real-time social conversation. Fine as a stopgap until mention volume justifies a paid tool.
Skip
What we'd leave alone.
- Any tool that only offers keyword tracking with no sentiment or filtering — you'll spend more time reading noise than insight.
- Enterprise listening platforms if your brand gets under a hundred mentions a month — the analytics depth is wasted at that volume.
- Tools without Reddit or forum coverage if your audience is active in niche communities rather than mainstream social platforms.
Questions
Common questions.
How many mentions a month justify paying for a tool?
Once you're getting more than a handful of mentions a week across platforms, manual searching starts missing things and a paid tool starts paying for itself in time saved.
Is sentiment analysis reliable?
It's a useful directional signal but frequently misreads sarcasm, industry-specific phrasing, and mixed sentiment in one post. Spot-check the automated tags rather than trusting the aggregate score.
Can social listening replace customer support monitoring?
No — it can flag public complaints, but you still need a proper support channel for actual resolution. Use listening to catch what customers don't bother emailing you about.
Do I need to track competitors as well as my own brand?
It's worth it if competitor mentions inform your positioning or product decisions, but it adds to your keyword count and cost — start with your own brand and add competitors later.
Which tool has the best free option?
None of the paid tools here have a fully free tier; Google Alerts combined with manual searches on X and Reddit is the closest free equivalent, though coverage is limited.
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