Best Social Listening Tools in 2026: 6 Compared and Ranked
Summary
Brand24 is our pick among the best social listening tools for most marketing teams: it publishes pricing from $199 a month, covers Reddit, TikTok and podcasts, and includes AI sentiment. Awario is the budget option from $29 a month, Sprout Social suits teams that also publish, Brandwatch and Talkwalker serve enterprises, and Mention now sells by demo only.
Six social listening tools compared on price, source coverage, AI features and usage limits, with a clear pick for most marketing teams and for enterprise buyers.
At-a-glance
| Brand24 | Awario | Sprout Social | Brandwatch | Talkwalker | Mention | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $199/month billed annually ($249 monthly), Individual plan | $29/month billed annually ($49 monthly), Starter plan | $79 per seat/month Essentials has no listening; Standard is $199 per seat | Custom quote only; a UK government rate card lists Consumer Intelligence from £10,800 a year | Custom quote only, three tiers: Core, Analyze, Business | Demo only; one Company plan, reported at $599/month billed annually |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card | Free trial on the Starter plan, no credit card | 30 days, no credit card | No self-serve trial, demo through sales | No self-serve trial, custom demo | Free trial offered on the homepage; plan pricing sits behind a demo |
| Sources covered | Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, news, blogs, podcasts, reviews | Social networks, news, blogs, videos, forums and review sites | Keyword and location monitoring on Standard; full Listening is a separate add-on | Full social, news, forum and review data across Consumer Intelligence | 30+ social platforms, 150 million data sources, 187 languages | Social, news, blogs, forums and 75+ review sites |
| AI and analysis | AI sentiment on all plans; AI Insights, Topics and Brand Assistant from Pro ($399 annual) | Boolean search, sentiment, influencer discovery and lead finding; lighter on AI | Trellis AI agent with 100 free credits per seat; Trellis Plus costs $28 per seat | Research-grade analytics, pioneering AI claims, image analysis and deep history | AI agent, peak detection, forecasting, AI summaries and LLM Insights | AI assistant for building alerts, sentiment and share of voice |
| What caps your plan | Keywords and monthly mentions: 3 keywords and 2K mentions on Individual, 12 and 40K on Pro | Topics and mentions: 3 topics and 30,000 mentions on Starter, 15 and 300,000 on Pro | Seats, plus 10 brand keywords per group on Standard and Professional | Queries, users and data volume, set in the contract | Non-sampled results volume, topics and history; users are unlimited | Reported 50,000 mentions a month; API and historical data cost extra |
| Price transparency | Full price list published, with overage fees past the mention limit | Full price list published for all three tiers | Seat prices published; Listening add-on needs a demo | Quote only, with multi-week procurement for most buyers | Quote only | Quote only since the Agorapulse acquisition |
Brand24
- Public pricing from $199 a month billed annually, with a 14-day trial and no card
- Covers Reddit, TikTok, podcasts, newsletters and review sites, not just the big social networks
- AI sentiment on every plan, and AI Insights plus Topics from the Pro tier
- Strong review scores: 4.6 on G2 and 4.7 on Capterra as listed in Brand24's own roundup
- The entry plan allows only 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions a month
- Going over the mention limit triggers overage fees, so busy brands need to watch usage
- The API costs an extra $149 and is missing from the cheaper plans
The safest default for most marketing teams: clear price, broad sources, usable AI.
Awario
- Starts at $29 a month billed annually, the cheapest paid plan in this list
- Quotas are generous: 30,000 mentions a month on Starter and 300,000 on Pro
- Unlimited keywords per topic, with Boolean search on every plan
- Lead finding and influencer discovery come built in
- Review scores are the lowest here: 3.9 on G2 and 3.8 on Capterra, on small samples
- Data export and report sharing start only at the Pro plan
- Lighter AI analysis than Brand24, Talkwalker or Brandwatch
Excellent value if you can live with a plainer interface and less AI.
Sprout Social
- Publishing, inbox, reporting and listening live in one login
- Highest review volume in the list: 4.4 on G2 across about 7,000 reviews
- 30-day free trial with no card, and a Trellis AI agent included on every plan
- Seat prices are public: $199, $299 and $399 per seat a month
- Full social listening is a paid add-on sold through a demo, not part of the listed seat price
- Per-seat pricing gets costly fast for teams larger than two or three people
- Keyword monitoring in the base plans is shallower than dedicated listening tools
Right for social teams, poor value if listening is all you need.
Brandwatch
- Research-grade analytics and one of the deepest data archives in the category
- Part of a wider suite covering social management, influencer marketing and search intelligence
- Consumer Intelligence scores 4.4 on G2 across 730 reviews
- Built for multi-market, multi-team rollouts with governance
- No public pricing; third-party contract data points to five or six figures a year
- Procurement and onboarding take weeks, which rules it out for small teams
- Overkill if you only track brand mentions and a few competitors
The heavyweight for analysts with budget; skip it if you need to start this week.
Talkwalker
- Coverage of 30+ social platforms and 187 languages across 196 countries
- Unlimited users on every plan, which is unusual at this tier
- LLM Insights shows how AI assistants describe your brand
- Now owned by Hootsuite, with onboarding and strategy reviews included
- Quote-only pricing with no way to estimate cost before a sales call
- The product has been rebranded to Lumen by Talkwalker, so older tutorials no longer match
- Only 24 Capterra reviews, so the rating is a thin signal
Strong for international monitoring if you can accept sales-led buying.
Mention
- Monitors 75+ review sites on top of social, news, blogs and forums
- Advanced Boolean alerts accept queries up to 2,000 characters
- 4.3 on G2 across 442 reviews
- Includes team roles, mention assignment, Slack and Zapier integrations
- Pricing moved from self-serve tiers to one demo-only Company plan after the Agorapulse acquisition
- Publish and Respond features are being retired, so it is now a pure listening tool
- Historical data and API access are paid add-ons
Capable, but the buying experience got worse and the price rose.
Verdict
Brand24 is the best social listening tool for most marketing teams: broad source coverage, AI sentiment on every plan and a published price list starting at $199 a month. Awario wins on budget, Sprout Social on all-in-one social management, Brandwatch on enterprise research, Talkwalker on multilingual reach. Mention is still capable but now sells through demos only.
How we tested
This ranking rests on desk research done on 30 October 2026, not on hands-on benchmarks of each tool. I read the live pricing and plan pages for Brand24, Awario, Sprout Social, Mention and Talkwalker, and the public rate cards and contract data reported for Brandwatch. Review scores come from G2 and Capterra figures as displayed on the vendors' pages and in roundup articles, so they are self-selected and uneven in sample size. Scores out of 5 are editorial and weigh value for a marketing team that needs to track a brand, competitors and campaigns, not raw feature count. None of the six companies pays us a commission at the time of writing. Prices change often, so check the vendor page before you buy.
Short answer. Among the best social listening tools compared here, Brand24 fits most marketing teams best. It publishes pricing from $199 a month billed annually, tracks Reddit, TikTok, podcasts and review sites, and includes AI sentiment on every plan. Awario is the cheaper option, Sprout Social suits teams that also publish, Brandwatch and Talkwalker target enterprises, and Mention now sells by demo.
Six tools, three very different buyers
Social listening tools track mentions of a brand, a competitor or a topic across social networks, news, blogs and forums, then score sentiment and surface spikes. The six tools below do that job, but they are sold to three different buyers. Small teams want a price they can read and a trial they can start today. Social managers want listening inside the platform where they already publish. Enterprise insights teams want research depth and are willing to sit through procurement.
Brand24 and Awario serve the first group. Sprout Social serves the second. Brandwatch, Talkwalker and Mention now sit in the third, because none of them publishes a self-serve price.
Brand24 earns the top spot on clarity and coverage
Brand24 is the only tool here that combines a full public price list, a 14-day trial without a card and coverage that reaches beyond the big social networks. Its plans run from $199 a month billed annually for 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions, up to $599 a month for 25 keywords and 100,000 mentions. The Pro plan at $399 annual is where the AI features start: Insights, Topics, Events Detection and a Brand Assistant.
The catch is volume. Every plan has a monthly mention limit, and Brand24 states that going over it triggers overage fees. A brand that gets spiky coverage can outgrow a plan mid-month, so check your typical mention count during the trial before you commit.
Awario gives you the most mentions per dollar
Awario's Starter plan costs $29 a month billed annually and allows 30,000 new mentions a month across 3 topics. Pro at $89 annual raises that to 300,000 mentions and 15 topics, and adds export. On paper that dwarfs Brand24's quotas, but mention counts depend on how each tool crawls and removes duplicates, so run both on the same keyword before you trust the numbers.
The trade-off shows in the reviews and the interface. Awario scores 3.9 on G2 and 3.8 on Capterra on small samples, and its AI analysis is lighter. For a freelancer or a small agency that mainly needs alerts and a lead feed, that is an acceptable bargain.
Sprout Social is a suite first and a listening tool second
Sprout Social lists seats at $199, $299 and $399 a month, with a 30-day trial. Those prices buy publishing, a shared inbox, reporting and keyword monitoring. The deeper Listening product is a separate add-on that Sprout sells through a demo, so the number on the pricing page is not what a listening-focused buyer pays.
That makes Sprout excellent value for a social team that already needs the rest, and poor value for anyone who only wants listening. With about 7,000 G2 reviews at 4.4, it also has the largest review base in this list.
Enterprise tools trade price clarity for depth
Brandwatch is the research heavyweight. Its Consumer Intelligence product is quote-only, a UK government rate card lists it from £10,800 a year, and third-party contract data reports first-year spend far higher once users and data volume are added. Talkwalker, now sold as Lumen by Talkwalker and owned by Hootsuite, covers 30+ platforms and 187 languages with unlimited users on every plan, again by quote.
Both fit a team that runs monitoring across several markets and needs analyst support. Neither fits a three-person team that wants to start tracking a brand by Friday.
If your real need is press and earned-media monitoring rather than social conversations, Meltwater sits in a neighbouring category and is worth a separate look.
Mention changed hands, and the buying experience changed with it
Agorapulse acquired Mention, and the pricing page now shows a single Company plan with no listed price. A third-party pricing guide reports $599 a month billed annually with a 50,000-mention cap, but Mention itself asks you to book a demo. Mention also says it is retiring its Publish and Respond features and pointing customers to Agorapulse for those jobs.
The monitoring itself is still solid, including 75+ review sites and long Boolean queries. The move from self-serve tiers to demo-only is the reason it ranks last here.
Pick by situation, not by feature count
Three contexts where the ranking holds, one where it flips. A marketing team with a few brands and a few thousand mentions a month should start with Brand24. A solo operator or agency with a very small budget should start with Awario. A social team that already lives in Sprout should price the Listening add-on before buying anything else. The one flip is the enterprise buyer with multiple markets, where Brandwatch or Talkwalker beat Brand24 on depth, and the sales process becomes part of the cost.
Whichever you choose, run a real keyword through the trial for a week. Tools disagree more on volume and sentiment than their marketing pages suggest.