Best free social listening tools in 2026, and what they miss

Tools with a free plan come first, ordered by how many sources they cover. Free trials come after them, because trials end. HearBuyers is listed last and labelled as ours. It isn't a free product. You get 14 days free with no card, then it costs from $19 a month. We include it so you can see what changes once you outgrow the free tools. The full paid field is in the best social listening tools.

Prices are the plan names and figures shown on each vendor's own pricing page, checked on 17 and 18 October 2026. Plans change, so check the vendor's page before you buy.

Google Alerts sends you an email when Google Search finds new results for a topic. You choose the frequency (as it happens, daily or weekly), the sources (news, blogs, web, video, books, discussions, finance), the language, the region and how many results you get. Setup takes about a minute, as our Google Alerts guide shows.

It's useful for watching your brand and competitors on the open web. It only sees what Google Search surfaces, so social posts and new comments on old threads can slip past it. It has no scoring, no reply drafting and no team inbox.

Sources: Google Search results, with a source setting for news, blogs, web, video, books, discussions and finance.

Standout: it's free forever, the interface is plain, and it covers several source types.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): free. You need a Google account to receive the emails.

F5Bot watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters for your keywords and emails you when they show up, in posts or comments. It says it checks every few minutes. Setup takes an email address and a list of keywords. Paid plans add advanced filters, more keywords, feeds, AI filtering, and delivery to Slack and Discord.

Founders and marketers who want a simple, free keyword alert on those three communities will get what they need from it. It doesn't score intent or draft replies.

Its home page highlights free keyword alerts for posts and comments in every subreddit.

As of 17 October 2026, keyword alerts by email are free. Silver costs $9.99 a month for 20 keywords. Gold costs $49.99 a month for 200 keywords and adds RSS and JSON feeds, AI filtering, and Slack and Discord. For Enterprise, you contact them.

KWatch.io sends keyword alerts from LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Hacker News by email, Slack or webhook. The free plan covers 2 Reddit and 2 Hacker News keywords and has no AI features or integrations. Paid plans add more keywords per platform and AI analysis of the context around each keyword.

It suits people who want to start free on Reddit and Hacker News and might add other platforms later.

Sources: LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Hacker News. Coverage depends on the plan: LinkedIn posts but not comments, and YouTube titles and descriptions only.

Standout: the free tier includes Reddit and Hacker News, and paid conversation tracking alerts you when someone comments in a thread.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): Free is $0 (2 Reddit and 2 Hacker News keywords), Essential $19 a month, Business $79, Enterprise $199, and Agency on request.

Social Searcher is a free social media search engine. You type a keyword and get public posts and mentions, sorted by relevance or date. It supports exact phrases in quotes, minus to exclude, and OR, and it has tools for user search and trending hashtags. Its About page says it finds public results with embedded Google search technology.

It works well for a quick check. Its pages don't mention saved alerts, email notifications, a team inbox, scoring or reply drafting.

Sources: public posts it finds through an embedded Google search.

Standout: you don't need to register, and it describes itself as completely free.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): Free. Its pages list no paid plan, and the old pricing URL returns "page not found".

X's advanced search filters posts by words, exact phrases, any of several words, excluded words, hashtags, language, accounts, replies, mentions, places and date ranges. On the web, run a search and open Advanced search from the filters. Our X search operators cheat sheet lists the operators we could confirm, and the free X advanced search builder writes queries for you.

It suits anyone who wants to look through X themselves. It only runs when you run it, and it sends no alerts.

It covers public posts on X. What stands out is the date range, which per X's help page goes back to the first public post.

As of 18 October 2026, it's free to use with an X account. X's help page says advanced search is available when you're logged in.

Reddit's own search takes filter words such as author:, subreddit:, title:, selftext: and site:, plus the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT in capitals. You can search inside a community or a post's comments, and there's an AI-powered Ask feature that writes an answer from posts and comments. Our Reddit search guide shows the syntax.

It's built for research by hand. It runs only when you run it, and Reddit's help page notes that comment searches currently require all of your words to match.

Sources: posts and comments on Reddit, with filters for community, author, flair and more.

Standout: filter words that narrow a search to a community, author or title.

Price (checked 18 October 2026): free in the Reddit website and apps.

Reddinbox is a research agent that searches Reddit, X, Bluesky, Hacker News and Facebook and groups the results by theme. Its free tools include a thread downloader, subreddit stats, a shadowban checker, a thread summarizer, a subreddit finder and a pain point tool. The agent has a free trial with no card, but no permanent free plan.

It suits researchers who want the free utilities now and might pay for the agent later.

Sources: Reddit, X, Bluesky, Hacker News and Facebook.

What stands out is the set of free Reddit tools sitting next to a paid research agent.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): the research agent costs $39 a month on Starter and $99 a month on Pro, and yearly billing gets two months free. The agent has a free trial with no card, but no permanent free tier.

Syften watches communities and the web for your keywords and filters the results with rules you write in plain language. It covers Reddit, X, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt, forums and more. The 14-day PRO trial needs no card, and when you sign up it shows mentions from the previous 60 days.

That makes it a cheap way to see what a paid community monitor does before you commit.

It pulls from the public web, Reddit, X, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, GitHub, Product Hunt, Stack Exchange sites, forums, newsletters, YouTube, podcasts, Bluesky and Mastodon.

What sets it apart is the trial: you get the top plan and 60 days of past mentions.

Prices were checked on 17 October 2026. Entry is $29.95 a month for 3 community filters, Standard is $49.95 for 20 filters, Slack and AI filtering, and PRO is $119.95 for 100 filters and webhooks. X monitoring costs $40 a month extra, and YouTube costs $20. The 14-day PRO trial needs no card.

Octolens watches many platforms for your brand, your competitors and your keywords. Each mention gets a high, medium or low rating and a tag: buy intent, customer testimonial or promotional. The 7-day trial gives you Pro features for up to 5,000 mentions, with no card.

It fits teams that want to test AI-filtered mentions in Slack or email before they pay.

Sources: Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Bluesky, Hacker News, GitHub, DEV and Stack Overflow. Scale adds podcasts, newsletters, news, the web and reviews.

Standout: the trial includes Pro features.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): Pro costs $199 a month billed monthly or $159 a month billed yearly (15,000 mentions, 10 keywords). Scale costs $599 a month, or $499 a month billed yearly (50,000 mentions, 40 keywords). Enterprise pricing is custom. The 7-day trial needs no card.

Brand24 tracks mentions across social media, news, blogs, videos, forums and reviews, and adds sentiment and reach analysis plus reports. There's a 14-day free trial.

It suits teams that want to try a full-featured brand monitor before they pay.

The home page lists its sources as X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, news, LinkedIn, blogs, forums, reviews, Reddit, Telegram, TripAdvisor, app stores and TikTok.

That long source list is the main draw, and the 14-day trial lets you test all of it free.

As checked on 17 October 2026, Individual costs $249 a month ($199 a month billed annually; 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions a month), Team $349 ($299 annually), Pro $499 ($399), Business $699 ($599), and Enterprise starts at $1,499 a month billed annually. The 14-day free trial covers every plan.

HearBuyers is ours, and it isn't a free product. It reads public posts on X and Reddit, gives each one a buying-intent score from 0 to 100, and drafts a reply for matches above your threshold. A person approves the draft and posts it. You get 14 days free with no card, then it starts at $19 a month.

We list it because free tools can't tell you whether a post comes from a buyer, and none of them pairs X and Reddit coverage with a drafted reply. If all you need is alerts on a few keywords, F5Bot or Google Alerts may do the job.

Sources: X posts and replies, Reddit posts and comments in the subreddits you choose, and Reddit search. Hacker News is next.

What stands out: every score shows the sentence that triggered it, plus a one-line reason.

Price: free for 14 days with no card, then from $19 a month.

1. Start by listing where your buyers talk. For Reddit, use F5Bot or Reddit search. For X, use X search. For the open web, use Google Alerts.
2. Pair two free tools. A free alert plus a manual search twice a week covers a lot.
3. Know the limits of free tiers. They cap keywords, miss social platforms or only run when you do.
4. Run trials one after another. Try one paid tool at a time for a week and note what it caught that your free setup missed.
5. Move to a paid tool when reading the alerts still doesn't tell you which ones are buyers. Scoring is what you'd be paying for.

Between 31 October 2026 and March 2027, Reddit is changing how it gives out public data, so a tool that reads Reddit from outside may cover less during that window. Later for Reddit, for example, announced on 3 October 2026 that its posting will stop on 1 January 2027. Ask each vendor what it will still be able to read on Reddit after the change.

It depends on where your audience is. F5Bot covers Reddit and Hacker News, Google Alerts covers the open web, and the built-in search on X and Reddit works for research by hand.

X's advanced search is free, but it only runs when you run it. For alerts on X you generally need a paid tool.

Only for what Google Search surfaces. Our Google Alerts alternative page covers what it misses.

A week on the same keywords is usually enough to tell whether the results are relevant. It won't say much about long-term value.

Today, set up F5Bot or a Google Alert for your brand name and one buyer phrase, then run an X search by hand. After a week, count the results you'd have replied to. If the answer is "not enough", our F5Bot alternatives page explains what to look for.

*Product names belong to their owners, and HearBuyers isn't affiliated with any of them. Facts about other products come from their own pages on the dates shown.*