Best social media monitoring tools in 2026: eleven compared

Dedicated monitoring tools priced for small and mid-size teams come first, then social management suites that include monitoring, then free and platform-specific options, then an enterprise suite. HearBuyers is on the list and labelled as ours, since it monitors X and Reddit for a narrower purpose. For the analysis side, see our list of social listening tools.

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

Brand24 pulls mentions from social media, news, blogs, videos, forums and reviews into a dashboard with sentiment, reach and topic analysis. It supports Boolean search and filters for sentiment, reach, language and source. Alerts arrive as daily and weekly reports, storm alerts, mobile push and email, and it connects to Slack and Microsoft Teams.

It's built for marketing and PR teams that want one place to watch a brand and report on it.

Its home page lists these sources: X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, news, LinkedIn, blogs, forums, reviews, Reddit, Telegram, TripAdvisor, app stores and TikTok.

Reports export as PDF, Excel and PowerPoint, and white-label reports are available.

Pricing as checked on 17 October 2026: Individual is $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 from $1,499 a month billed annually. There's a 14-day free trial.

Awario tracks conversations across social media, news, blogs, videos, forums and reviews, plus a crawl of the web. A topic is one keyword or a group of them, in any language, and can include handles, hashtags and URLs. You also get Boolean search, sentiment analysis, location-based monitoring and Slack integration.

Small teams and agencies that want broad coverage at a modest price are the fit. Social selling is among the vendor's listed use cases, though no buying-intent score is listed.

It covers X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Vimeo, blogs, forums, news and the wider web.

There's no cap on keywords per topic. You pay by the number of topics and mentions.

As of 17 October 2026, Starter costs $49 a month ($29 a month billed annually) for 3 topics and 30,000 new mentions a month. Pro is $149 ($89 annually) for 15 topics, and Enterprise is $399 ($249 annually) for 100 topics. The free trial needs no card.

Mentionlytics monitors brand mentions and layers on AI sentiment and emotion analysis, share of voice, dashboards and tagging. It also lets you draft, schedule and publish posts, and sends alerts by email, push and desktop notification. Integrations include Slack, Hootsuite, Looker Studio and Power BI.

It fits teams that want mentions and publishing in one tool, and agencies that need client accounts on the higher plans.

Sources: web (news, blogs, forums), X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Bluesky and Threads, with reviews as an add-on.

Standout: AI mention clustering and anomaly detection, with an optional managed service.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): billed yearly, Basic is $49 a month (3 keyword rules, 5,000 mentions), Essential $141, Advanced $249, Pro $416, Business $624, and Enterprise starts at $1,083. The 14-day free trial allows up to 3 keywords.

BrandMentions describes itself as a social listening and brand monitoring tool with deep web and social monitoring. It handles brand monitoring, reputation management, competitor tracking and media monitoring, and emails you when new mentions or links appear.

It suits small businesses and agencies that want mentions and links tracked in one place.

Sources include social networks, short-form and discussion sites, video platforms, communities, blogs, news and forums. The pricing page doesn't name individual networks.

Higher tiers get hourly or real-time updates. Expert adds white-label reports, and Boolean search starts at Expert.

As of 17 October 2026, Starter is $99 a month billed quarterly (5 keywords, 5,000 mentions), Pro $299 a month, Expert $499 a month, and Enterprise from $1,299 a month. There's a 7-day free trial.

Mention is a social listening and media monitoring tool with keyword and page-based alerts, influence and sentiment indicators, share of voice and dashboards. Its Advanced Alert accepts custom Boolean queries up to 2,000 characters. According to its FAQ, the Publish and Respond features are being deprecated, with Agorapulse recommended in their place.

It's for organisations that want a tailored monitoring contract with an account manager.

Status: the home page says Agorapulse has acquired Mention.

Sources: Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, news, blogs, forums and 75+ review sites.

Standout: advanced Boolean alerts, and review monitoring across 75+ sites.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): not listed. The pricing page has a single "Company" plan with a "Get a demo" button, and its price field was empty when we looked.

Hootsuite is a social media management platform. Brand and competitor monitoring is included from the Standard plan, and advanced listening comes with Enterprise. Standard covers up to 10 social accounts, one inbox and unlimited scheduling. Professional adds inbox automation and trend forecasting, and Advanced adds approvals and message routing. The listening product is now called Lumen by Talkwalker.

It suits teams that publish and reply across many accounts and want monitoring in the same dashboard.

Sources: the social accounts you connect, with brand and competitor monitoring from Standard and advanced listening on Enterprise.

Standout: publishing, inbox and monitoring in one place.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): per user per month, billed annually, Standard is $99, Professional $199 and Advanced $399, with Enterprise on request. The 14-day free trial needs no card.

Sprout Social combines publishing, a shared inbox and reporting. Keyword and location monitoring is included on Standard and up. Advanced adds AI reply assist, sentiment in the inbox and spike alerts. Listening is a separate add-on for Standard and up.

It fits social media teams that want monitoring inside the tool they publish from and don't mind paying per seat.

Sources. The social profiles you connect, plus keyword and location monitoring on Standard and up.

Standout. Message tagging and approvals, with an AI agent credit allowance on every plan.

Price (checked 17 October 2026). Per seat per month, billed annually: Essentials $79, Standard $199, Professional $299 and Advanced $399, with Enterprise on request. Listening is a paid add-on to Standard and up. There's a 30-day free trial.

Social Searcher is a free social media search engine. Type a keyword and you get public posts and mentions sorted by relevance or date, each with a preview, author and link. It handles exact phrases in quotes, a minus sign to exclude words, and OR. There are also user search and trending hashtag tools.

It's good for a one-off check or a tight budget. 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 its About page says it collects no data about you.

Price (checked 17 October 2026). Free. No paid plan appears on its pages, and the old pricing URL returns "page not found".

X Pro, formerly TweetDeck, is X's own multi-column workspace. According to X, the new version has a full post composer, advanced search features, new column types and Decks (groups of columns saved as workspaces). Search, list and profile columns can be copied across once.

It's for anyone who watches X all day and wants searches, lists and profiles visible side by side. It only covers X, and it only monitors while it's open.

Sources: X only.

Standout: advanced search and refreshing timelines in a multi-column view.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): X Pro sits under Premium+, which X prices at US$40 a month or US$395 a year on the web. Local prices vary.

Talkwalker is now Lumen by Talkwalker, as Hootsuite and Talkwalker are brought closer together. It offers social listening, media monitoring, social benchmarking, audience insights and customer feedback analytics. The plans are Core, Analyze and Business, and each includes unlimited users, onboarding and training.

It's aimed at large organisations that need volume, history and governance and buy through a sales team.

Sources: its page claims 150 million data sources and 30+ social platforms.

Standout: non-sampled results and an AI agent that answers questions about your data.

Price (checked 17 October 2026): not listed. The pricing page offers Core, Analyze and Business plans, with a custom quote after a demo.

HearBuyers is ours. It isn't a brand monitor: it watches X and Reddit for people asking for what you sell. You paste your company website and it infers your buyers, the problems they describe and your search phrases. Every post gets a buying-intent score from 0 to 100, along with the sentence that shows the need.

Matches above your threshold (70 by default) get a drafted public reply, and on X a DM draft too. A person edits, approves and posts it. It doesn't track sentiment or share of voice, and it reads nothing beyond X and Reddit.

On X it reads posts and replies. On Reddit it reads posts and comments in the subreddits you choose, plus Reddit search. Hacker News is next.

Alerts go to Slack, a daily email digest and a team inbox with stages from new to won.

HearBuyers is free for 14 days with no card, then from $19 a month.

1. Name the job first. Volume and reporting, publishing plus monitoring, and buyer discovery each point to a different group in this list.
2. Check the networks. Make sure the tool reads the platforms you care about, and find out whether it covers comments or only posts.
3. Count your keywords. Plans cap keywords, topics or mentions, so write a realistic list before comparing prices.
4. Look at update speed. Some plans refresh every 12 hours, others hourly. Match it to how fast you need to respond.
5. Decide who sees the alerts. Slack, email and a shared inbox suit different teams.
6. Trial two tools side by side. Give both the same keywords for a week and compare what each one missed.

Reddit's public data access changes between 31 October 2026 and March 2027, so any tool reading Reddit from outside may cover less in that window. Later for Reddit, for example, announced on 3 October 2026 that its posting stops on 1 January 2027. Ask each vendor what it will be able to read on Reddit after the change.

Monitoring tracks mentions and alerts you. Listening analyses what the conversations mean, such as sentiment and themes. Plenty of tools do both. See our social listening tools list.

Yes. Social Searcher is free, and our list of free social listening tools has more.

Several. X Pro is X's own, and our guide to the best Twitter monitoring tools compares the others.

Some can, if they score or filter posts for buying intent. Most brand monitors report mentions without judging whether the author wants to buy.

Write down your ten most important keywords, then trial two tools from this list on them for a week. Our Mention alternatives page and Brand24 alternatives page explain how to compare.

*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.*