You're managing eight clients. Each has three to five social channels. You post three times a week per channel. That's between 72 and 120 pieces of content per month, just for one person to track, write, review, approve, and schedule. Now add a second client. And a...
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“The team loved it from the start. Planable helps us overview the entire marketing efforts.“
Social listening tools track conversations across social media and other online channels to show what people are saying about your brand, competitors, or any other industry-related topic.
But not every platform covers the same use cases. Some focus mainly on branded mentions and customer feedback, while others support broader competitor analysis, trend monitoring, and market research.
To compare the social listening tools from this list, I tested each one against the same criteria: can it surface a conversation from someone who never tagged you, on a platform where you hold no account? What about the use cases it fulfills, and how well it does it?
This guide presents the tools by coverage, use case, and overall fit so you can choose the right option for your current needs.
Social media listening tools at a glance
The tools showcased throughout this article are a mix of small business, agency, and enterprise-oriented solutions.
They also fulfill various use cases: some handle social listening for content ideation and publishing; others for market research; and a few unify listening with engagement workflows.
To make the comparison easier, the table below summarizes the key details you need to know about each platform before I explore them in more depth.
Tool
Best for
Starting price
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Alerts
Planable
Teams that want to track untagged brand mentions and turn them into scheduled posts
Full. 8 sources: X, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, plus the wider web (blogs, news sites, forums, newsletters)
Alerts
Yes. Threshold alerts on mention volume or sentiment, filterable by platform
Sprinklr
Best for
Global brands listening across broadcast and print media
Starting price
Quote-based pricing
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. 30+ social and digital channels plus broadcast and print, with firehose access to 10+ channels
Alerts
Yes. Alerts with workflow routing
Meltwater
Best for
PR teams tracking earned media next to social
Starting price
Quote-based pricing
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. News, broadcast, social and podcasts.
Alerts
Yes. Alerts and reporting listed from the Starter tier
Sprout Social
Best for
Enterprise teams that want listening and customer care in one platform
Starting price
From $199/seat/mo (core product) + listening add-on (quote-based pricing)
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. All major social networks and review sites
Alerts
Yes. Custom Spike Alerts on sudden volume or sentiment changes
Hootsuite
Best for
Data coverage and depth
Starting price
From $99/user/mo
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. 30+ social channels and 300 review and feedback sources
Alerts
Yes. Trend and sentiment-based notifications
Agorapulse
Best for
Teams that want to unify social listening and inbox management
Starting price
From $79/user/mo (core product) + Advanced Listening module (quote-based pricing)
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. Social networks, blogs, news, and forums
Alerts
Yes. Volume-spike and sentiment-shift alerts, plus custom alerts
Statusbrew
Best for
Built-in listening, engagement, and moderation
Starting price
Listening starts on Premium plan: $229/mo
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. Social networks, plus blogs and news
Alerts
Yes. Rule-based alerts
Mention
Best for
Teams that want a social listening-centric tool
Starting price
Quote-based pricing
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. Major social networks plus news, blogs, forums and 75+ review sites. Boolean queries up to 2,000 characters.
Alerts
Yes. Email and desktop push notifications, plus Slack and Zapier automation
Brandwatch
Best for
Multi-platform social listening and competitive analysis
Starting price
Quote-based pricing
Keyword listening (sources covered)
Full. Major social networks (APAC included), blogs, news, forums, review sites.
Alerts
Yes. Custom alerts with email notifications
How I evaluated and tested these social listening tools
Having worked in social media and marketing for years, I had the chance to work with loads of social media tools with listening capabilities, and the ones you just read about were some of the best I personally used throughout my career.
That said, here are the evaluation criteria I used when deciding which platforms made it on the list:
Keyword-based monitoring. This is a big one: I prioritized platforms that monitor particular topics – not only branded queries. Keyword-based monitoring listens in on conversations from users completely unrelated to your brand, which I believe is super important for proper market research and more objective sentiment analysis.
Source coverage. Platforms that track socials, plus web resources (news, reviews, blogs, etc.) had an advantage here.
Keyword and topic limits. How many brand and topic keywords one workspace gets before you have to decide what to stop tracking.
Sentiment scoring. Whether every mention gets a sentiment label, and if teams can handle feedback directly.
Refresh cadence and date-range depth. How often mention data refreshes, and how far back the history reaches.
Alerts and notifications. The type of alerts each platform sends (e.g., sentiment or volume shifts) and if it notifies team members across channels outside the software itself – absolutely critical for any potential PR crises.
Who it fits. The team size and ideal use-cases each platform fulfills.
The 9 best social listening tools I tested
Each tool I tested and included in this list fulfills one key criterion: it handles keyword-based monitoring. Unlike branded queries, keyword monitoring helps track conversation around your entire industry.
This is useful because you’ll spot insights from users who may not follow or engage with your brand whatsoever, which is perfect for particular tasks, like market audience research or topic ideation, for example.
1. Planable: best for unified social listening, engagement, and publishing workflows
Best for: agencies and teams that want to turn conversations into approved, scheduled posts.
Why I picked it
Planable is a social media management tool that lets users unify end-to-end social media workflows. It gives you easy access to its content planning, collaboration, and approval features directly from the dashboard. That means you can collaborate on a new piece with team members one second, schedule a batch of posts the next, and maybe approve some content while you’re at it as well.
Add Planable’s social listening add-on into the mix, and you’ll also be able to monitor brand mentions, spot post-worthy topic ideas, and jump straight into content creation. It pulls mentions and keywords from most major social networks (Reddit included), plus blog posts, news sites, newsletters, and forums.
Planable’s Social Listening add-on, tracking brand and topic mentions across social and the wider web
Plus, the social listening tool is keyword-based. That means it can surface mentions from accounts that don’t tag or relate to your brand. For example, I personally tracked broader keywords that are still rather closely related to the Planable platform, like “marketing agency” and “social media marketing.”
Standout features
Eight sources: X, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the wider web of blogs, news, forums, and newsletters.
Alerts on mention activity with Slack and email notifications.
Brand keyword re-syncs every 24 hours, topic keywords every 7 days.
Displays AI sentiment for each individual mention.
CSV export, aggregated or the full mention list.
Integrations:Zapier, Canva, Slack, and MCP on all plans; API on Pro, SSO on Enterprise.
Pricing: Core product starts at $33 per workspace per month with unlimited users. Social listening add-on costs $99 per workspace per month. You can try the listening tool completely for free for up to 30 days.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Per-workspace pricing model allows for unlimited users on all subscription plans.
A 30-day history ceiling with no backfill: anything from before you switched it on is not there to find.
Competitor brand mention tracking included.
One brand keyword and three topic keywords per workspace, so tracking several competitors means choosing what to leave out.
Pros
Per-workspace pricing model allows for unlimited users on all subscription plans.
Competitor brand mention tracking included.
Cons
A 30-day history ceiling with no backfill: anything from before you switched it on is not there to find.
One brand keyword and three topic keywords per workspace, so tracking several competitors means choosing what to leave out.
2. Sprinklr: best for global brands listening across broadcast and print media
Best for: enterprise teams whose coverage requirement runs past social into traditional media.
Why I picked it
Sprinklr’s social listening capabilities are part of Sprinklr Insights, the platform’s consumer intelligence solution.
It offers broad data coverage, with listening across 30+ social and digital channels, 900+ review sites, and more than one billion websites.
Social listening in Sprinklr Insights, covering 30+ social and digital channels
Plus, Sprinklr’s partnership with LexisNexis extends the platform’s reach to TV and radio broadcasts, and even print media. The platform’s data coverage makes it a solid choice for global, enterprise-level companies looking to pull consumer insights from across all possible channels, offline media included.
Standout features
30+ social and digital channels, plus broadcast and print, with firehose access to 10 or more.
Visual brand mention detection across images, GIFs and video.
Sentiment, emotion and entity classification across specialist and generative AI models.
Automatic alerts on spikes in conversation volumes with quick insights on audience sentiment and mentioned products or topics.
Integrations: 38 integrations covering Adobe Analytics, Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, Tableau, Power BI, and more.
Pricing: You’ll have to contact the sales team to get a custom quote.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Broadcast and print coverage, which no other tool on this list offers.
Sprinklr is oriented towards enterprise-level companies, which may not make it a viable option for small teams.
Turns negative mentions into customer support cases with automated routing capabilities.
Social media management features are available under a separate module, which may bump up the final price tag.
Pros
Broadcast and print coverage, which no other tool on this list offers.
Turns negative mentions into customer support cases with automated routing capabilities.
Cons
Sprinklr is oriented towards enterprise-level companies, which may not make it a viable option for small teams.
Social media management features are available under a separate module, which may bump up the final price tag.
3. Meltwater: best for PR teams tracking earned media next to social
Best for: comms teams reporting on press coverage and social conversation in the same review.
Why I picked it
Meltwater brings social listening tools with media intelligence and relations, AI brand visibility tracking, and influencer marketing features under a unified platform.
Meltwater’s unified view of social listening, media intelligence and AI visibility tracking
I find this combo particularly useful for PR teams because it allows them to gauge audience sentiment across social and news outlets, track brand mentions in AI search results, and build partnerships with relevant influencers or journalists, all within the same ecosystem.
Standout features
Media Intelligence, Social Listening, AI Visibility Tracking, Media Relations and Influencer Marketing, sold together.
Mira AI that summarizes, filters, and analyzes all collected data
Keyword and topic monitoring included in the Starter plan.
Alerts and reports available in the Starter plan.
Integrations: Power BI, Google Data Studio, Salesforce (CRM), plus MCPs.
Pricing: Pricing is upon request for all available plans.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Ample AI search engine support for brand visibility tracking (Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok).
Prone to occasional performance issues, like lagging or crashes.
Native influencer and journalist databases with outreach capabilities.
Influencer Marketing only available in Enterprise and Agency plans.
Pros
Ample AI search engine support for brand visibility tracking (Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok).
Native influencer and journalist databases with outreach capabilities.
Cons
Prone to occasional performance issues, like lagging or crashes.
Influencer Marketing only available in Enterprise and Agency plans.
4. Sprout Social: best for enterprise teams pairing listening with customer care
Best for: in-house teams that want unified listening, publishing, and social customer care tools.
Why I picked it
Sprout Social‘s listening features are an add-on to the platform’s core social media management and customer care tool. But the platform also includes review management and brand keyword monitoring by default across Standard, Professional, and Advanced plans: 10 keywords per group on Standard and Professional, 20 on Advanced.
Sprout Social’s Listening add-on, with sentiment tracking and share of voice benchmarks
I find this feature worth trying out to see whether Sprout Social is a good fit before you commit to the Listening add-on, an option most other software vendors don’t include.
The Listening add-on is available starting from the Standard plan (pricing is upon request) and adds extra features like sentiment tracking and competitor Share of Voice benchmarks.
Standout features
Custom Spike Alerts on the Listening add-on for sudden volume or sentiment changes.
Shareable links, so clients can easily view reports without having to set up accounts.
Smart Categories for topic identification, plus machine-learning relevance filters.
A sentiment tracking and scoring model inside the add-on.
Integrations: All major social networks (Snapchat and Reddit included), review sites (Trustpilot, TripAdvisor, Yelp), plus Google Analytics, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Zendesk.
Pricing: Starts at $79/seat/month with the Essentials plan, billed annually. The Listening add-on is available from the Standard plan ($199/user/month). Add-on pricing is not published. 30-day free trial available.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Message Spike Alerts are included by default in the Advanced plan; no add-on needed.
Listening add-on is unavailable on Essentials, which also doesn’t include keyword tracking, so the entry plan is not a viable option for those specifically seeking social listening features.
Unlimited social profiles from Professional up, compared to 5 on Standard.
Default sentiment analysis features are only available starting from the Advanced plan, so the Listening add-on is mandatory across cheaper tiers.
Pros
Message Spike Alerts are included by default in the Advanced plan; no add-on needed.
Unlimited social profiles from Professional up, compared to 5 on Standard.
Cons
Listening add-on is unavailable on Essentials, which also doesn’t include keyword tracking, so the entry plan is not a viable option for those specifically seeking social listening features.
Default sentiment analysis features are only available starting from the Advanced plan, so the Listening add-on is mandatory across cheaper tiers.
5. Hootsuite: best for data coverage and depth
Best for: teams whose brand shows up on review sites and niche forums as much as on social.
Why I picked it
Hootsuite’s social listening features are available under Lumen, a proprietary AI toolset that focuses on social media listening and sentiment analysis.
The platform stands out through its depth: you get full breakdowns covering each tracked keyword’s engagement metrics, overall sentiment, closely-related sub-topics, influencers, demographics, and more.
Hootsuite Lumen, the AI toolset behind Hootsuite’s social listening and sentiment analysis
However, with a starting price tag of $99 per user per month, Hootsuite is quite pricey for smaller businesses. If you’re on a tighter budget, I actually put together a list of Hootsuite alternatives you should consider.
Standout features
150 million websites and 30+ social channels across 239 countries, plus 300 review sources.
24+ months of historical data on full Lumen, the deepest published window here.
Instant notifications when sentiment shifts or trends take off.
Full social media management suite included.
Integrations: A Lumen MCP connector for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini sits alongside the publishing and inbox modules.
Pricing: From $99/user/month on Standard, billed annually, up to $399 on Advanced. Lumen Lite is included in every plan; full Lumen is priced by quote. A 14-day free trial is also available.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Sources listening data from most major social networks (YouTube and Bluesky included), plus podcasts, community forums, and blogs by default.
Scheduled listening reports, competitive benchmarking, and extra listening data sources (e.g., Vimeo and Dailymotion) are locked behind the enterprise plan.
Also tracks branded visual assets across images and videos.
I found occasional bugs and glitches, like random social account disconnects, for example.
Pros
Sources listening data from most major social networks (YouTube and Bluesky included), plus podcasts, community forums, and blogs by default.
Also tracks branded visual assets across images and videos.
Cons
Scheduled listening reports, competitive benchmarking, and extra listening data sources (e.g., Vimeo and Dailymotion) are locked behind the enterprise plan.
I found occasional bugs and glitches, like random social account disconnects, for example.
6. Agorapulse: best for teams that want to unify social listening and inbox management
Best for: teams that want to track and address social mentions within the same workflow.
Why I picked it
Agorapulse’s social listening features are available in the Advanced Listening add-on. What I liked about it is that you can easily filter through positive or negative mentions and address feedback directly whenever needed: all it takes is just a few clicks.
Brand monitoring on Reddit and blogs with Agorapulse’s Advanced Listening add-on
As for network support, Agorapulse pulls listening data from across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, news sites, blogs, and forums.
Standout features
Up to 24 months of historical data.
Listening Screening, which separates genuine brand mentions from coincidental keyword matches in one click.
Sentiment your team can reclassify, with a score out of 100 and period-over-period comparison.
Native share of voice, feeding the same reports as publishing and inbox activity.
Integrations: MCPs for ChatGPT and Claude, plus native GA 4 integration (available for starter plan); HubSpot, Salesforce, and Google Data Studio available in Enterprise plan.
Pricing: From $79/user/month billed annually, or $99 billed monthly. Advanced Listening is quote-only based on conversation volume and history depth. 30-day free trial available.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Volume-spike and sentiment-shift alerts, plus saved keyword alerts that notify particular team members.
Limited to 10 social profiles on every price tier (except for Enterprise), with extras billed separately.
Keyword searches take under a minute to set up, with no Boolean syntax to learn.
Listening is an add-on, so you pay for the publishing platform first.
Pros
Volume-spike and sentiment-shift alerts, plus saved keyword alerts that notify particular team members.
Keyword searches take under a minute to set up, with no Boolean syntax to learn.
Cons
Limited to 10 social profiles on every price tier (except for Enterprise), with extras billed separately.
Listening is an add-on, so you pay for the publishing platform first.
7. Statusbrew: best for built-in engagement and moderation
Best for: multi-brand teams that want to unify listening, engagement, and moderation workflows.
Why I picked it
Statusbrew’s Premium plan includes full access to the platform’s social listening and engagement tools. That means you can monitor brand mentions across all major social networks (plus blogs, review platforms, and news sites), engage with your audience to address feedback, and keep everything in check through moderation workflows.
Statusbrew’s report builder with AI sentiment analysis for listening insights
Since the Premium package costs $229 per month for up to six users, I would say you’re getting decent value. I also found the platform’s report builder quite solid. You get access to ample sets of fully customizable templates covering inbox performance, social listening insights, and competitor benchmarks.
Standout features
Routes private messages, brand mentions, and comments to particular team members.
Social & Web Listening and AI sentiment analysis, both from the Premium tier.
Free migration and onboarding included with a paid plan.
Workflow builder for rule-based comment moderation.
Integrations: HubSpot and Salesforce on Enterprise, plus MCP support on Enterprise.
Pricing: Listening features available from the Premium plan at $229/month billed annually, with six users included. The entry-level pricing plan costs $69/month billed annually, for one user. A 14-day free trial is also available.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Social CRM included, plus report templates that cover competitor reputation analysis.
Social listening and full access to engagement tools are only available from the Premium plan.
Full social media management suite with native content publishing tools.
I found the platform’s UI quite busy due to its large feature set.
Pros
Social CRM included, plus report templates that cover competitor reputation analysis.
Full social media management suite with native content publishing tools.
Cons
Social listening and full access to engagement tools are only available from the Premium plan.
I found the platform’s UI quite busy due to its large feature set.
8. Mention: best for teams that want a social listening-centric tool
Best for: teams that want a listening-first tool for PR and crisis management.
Why I picked it
Acquired by Agorapulse in 2025, Mention is a specialized social listening tool that stands out through its custom alerts. You’ve got three alert types to choose from: Basic, Standard, and Advanced.
Setting up keyword alerts in Mention, from AI-assisted Basic alerts to Boolean Advanced alerts
Basic alerts let you quickly monitor keywords through an AI assistant, while standard alerts provide a query builder for more precise searches.
Advanced Alerts, however, build custom Boolean queries up to 2,000 characters, which allows for probably the most advanced monitoring workflows out of all the tools mentioned in this list.
Standout features
75+ review sites monitored alongside social platforms, news, blogs, and forums.
Dedicated influencer reports that track engagement for posts where your brand is mentioned.
Email and desktop push notifications, adjustable per account, with shared alert access for teams.
Sentiment analysis with share of voice, influencer scoring, and competitor benchmarking.
Integrations: Slack and Zapier. API access is a paid add-on.
Pricing: Quote-based pricing only.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Review-site coverage sits inside the same alert as social and news, rather than in a separate product.
Historical data is not included in the plan and costs extra, with no depth published.
Daily AI-generated brand mention summaries.
Publish and reply features are deprecated, with users pointed to Agorapulse instead.
Pros
Review-site coverage sits inside the same alert as social and news, rather than in a separate product.
Daily AI-generated brand mention summaries.
Cons
Historical data is not included in the plan and costs extra, with no depth published.
Publish and reply features are deprecated, with users pointed to Agorapulse instead.
9. Brandwatch: best for multi-platform social listening and competitive analysis
Best for: research teams who want data depth and coverage for market research and competitive analysis.
Why I picked it
Brandwatch includes social listening under its Consumer Intelligence tool suite, a specialized research platform that tracks online conversations related to proprietary brands and competitors across socials, news outlets, review platforms, and community forums.
Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence, compiling listening data into sentiment and competitor reports
It then uses AI to compile collected data into actionable reports covering sentiment breakdowns, competitive benchmarks, and key sub-topics.
The platform’s network coverage is a big plus. Besides major social networks and review sites, Brandwatch sources listening data from APAC-native platforms: WeChat, Weibo, and Rednote — super useful for product teams looking to break into Asian markets.
However, social media management features are sold separately, while Brandwatch’s quote-based pricing makes the total cost hard to predict.
Standout features
Native Zendesk and Service Cloud integrations to turn negative feedback into customer support cases.
Named coverage across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, Twitter, Bluesky, TikTok, Reddit, and LinkedIn.
Unlimited channels for suite customers.
Flexible reporting and alerts across the business.
Integrations: 17 partner tools, including Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, HubSpot, Shopify, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Bynder, Bitly, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox.
Pricing: Upon request.
Pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Tracks online conversation across APAC networks.
Prone to occasional performance issues and inconsistencies in sentiment data analysis.
Historical data from 2010 onward.
The platform has a bit of a learning curve.
Pros
Tracks online conversation across APAC networks.
Historical data from 2010 onward.
Cons
Prone to occasional performance issues and inconsistencies in sentiment data analysis.
The platform has a bit of a learning curve.
What is social listening software?
Social listening tools track brand and product mentions, and any keywords across social platforms and the wider web, including conversations from people who never tagged your account. Mentions often come with sentiment scores attached, so you can gauge opinions and feedback more effectively and decide what mentions you need to address.
What can you actually do with social listening?
Social listening shows you conversations you were never tagged in, on platforms where you may not hold an account. For an agency running 10 client workspaces, that is the gap between reporting on your own posts and reporting on what the market actually said about your client last month.
Five outcomes hold up across client work:
Catch a product complaint before it reaches your inbox. Someone vents about your client’s checkout on X without ever tagging the brand handle, and it still lands in the mention feed.
Find the thread your client’s category argues in. A subreddit comparing invoicing tools is where a fintech client’s next comparison post gets written, in the words buyers actually used.
See which competitor gets named in conversations you are absent from. A YouTube review runs through four tools and your client is not one of them, which is a positioning gap for the next strategy call.
Pull quotes that become next week’s posts. A customer’s forum phrasing usually lands better than a line written from scratch, and you can carry it into a draft with attribution.
Get notified without opening the feed. Alerts keep the mention feed working on the client accounts you check least often.
“You need a deep understanding of not just the platforms, but the individual sources (people on LinkedIn, creators on IG/TikTok, subReddits, YouTube channels, podcasts, email newsletters, et al.) that reach your ICP.”
The practical value is not simply collecting more mentions. Social listening shows agencies where customers, prospects, and competitors are already having conversations about a client’s market, giving teams better material for content, positioning, community engagement, and client reporting.
Why social listening also matters for AI search visibility
Social listening can also show you where a brand is present, or absent, in the third-party conversations that may influence AI-generated answers.
A SE Ranking study of 129,000 domains found domains with millions of brand mentions on Quora and Reddit have roughly 4x higher chances of being cited by ChatGPT than domains with minimal activity.
That does not mean social listening directly improves AI visibility. It does mean that monitoring forums, communities, reviews, and other third-party sources can help teams understand where their brand is being discussed and where important conversations are happening without them.
How do you choose a social listening tool?
The answer mostly depends on your particular workflow, team size, and budget. To help with decision-making, the table below summarizes which platforms best fit particular use cases.
If this is you
Prioritize
Start with
Agency running 5-10+ clients
Billing that follows client count, and a route from mention to scheduled post
Planable (listening add-on at $99 per workspace per month)
In-house team at a single brand
One keyword set covering social and the open web, on a plan that includes some listening without a separate quote
Hootsuite (from $99 per user per month, with Lumen Lite included in every plan)
PR or comms team
Earned media sitting next to social: news, broadcast, podcasts
Meltwater (quote only, with unified listening, PR, and AI visibility tracking tools)
Enterprise with global or multi-language coverage
Channel breadth past social, plus a long history window
Sprinklr (30+ social and digital channels, and traditional media) or Hootsuite’s Lumen (150 million websites, 24+ months of history)
Small team on a fixed budget
A published price and a trial you can run before committing
Planable’s $99 add-on on a $39 workspace base, or Statusbrew’s $229 Premium billed annually
Agency running 5-10+ clients
Prioritize
Billing that follows client count, and a route from mention to scheduled post
Start with
Planable (listening add-on at $99 per workspace per month)
In-house team at a single brand
Prioritize
One keyword set covering social and the open web, on a plan that includes some listening without a separate quote
Start with
Hootsuite (from $99 per user per month, with Lumen Lite included in every plan)
PR or comms team
Prioritize
Earned media sitting next to social: news, broadcast, podcasts
Start with
Meltwater (quote only, with unified listening, PR, and AI visibility tracking tools)
Enterprise with global or multi-language coverage
Prioritize
Channel breadth past social, plus a long history window
Start with
Sprinklr (30+ social and digital channels, and traditional media) or Hootsuite’s Lumen (150 million websites, 24+ months of history)
Small team on a fixed budget
Prioritize
A published price and a trial you can run before committing
Start with
Planable’s $99 add-on on a $39 workspace base, or Statusbrew’s $229 Premium billed annually
If you’re still on the fence, here’s a list of extra criteria to further narrow down your search:
How many keywords do you actually need? Companies usually need a branded keyword, plus a few competitor-specific terms. That totals around four or five keywords. Agencies would need to scale that up, since they handle multiple clients.
What’s the pricing model like? Workspace-based pricing models like Planable’s are ideal for agencies because they don’t limit the number of users you can add. A per-user structure can work for individual companies that have a few people in charge of social listening.
What happens to the mention once you have found it? If you mainly want to use social listening for topic ideation, consider a platform that lets you seamlessly switch between listening and content creation workflows. Planable is a solid option here. If you plan to perform market research, consider analytics-oriented tools like Brandwatch, Meltwater, or Sprinklr.
Who has to read the output? If the output goes to a client in a monthly report, focus on CSV exports and sentiment charts. If it goes to whoever answers, prioritize routing workflows.
Social listening tools FAQs
Are there free social listening tools?
The social listening tools on this list are primarily paid products, but several offer free trials. Planable and Sprout Social offer 30-day trials, while Hootsuite and Statusbrew offer 14-day trials.
What’s the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Social monitoring tracks direct interactions with your brand, such as tags, replies, comments, and mentions on your own social profiles.
Social listening goes broader. It tracks conversations about your brand, competitors, products, or industry, including posts where you are not tagged.
In short, monitoring helps you respond to conversations already reaching you. Listening helps you discover conversations happening around you.
Can ChatGPT do social listening?
No. ChatGPT can summarize and sort the mention data you paste into it, but it can’t source social listening data on its own. Proper social listening requires specialized tools, like Planable. Such tools have the tech needed to pull brand mentions across actual conversations from across the web.
Is Planable a replacement for Brandwatch?
No. Planable’s Social Listening is built for agencies and multi-brand teams who want listening next to the content they already plan and publish. Teams that need deep historical analysis or enterprise-scale query volume are better served by a dedicated listening specialist.
Final verdict
The right social listening tool depends on what you need to monitor and what you want to do with the data afterward.
Brandwatch and Sprinklr are better suited to teams that need broad data coverage and in-depth market research. Meltwater is a strong fit for PR and communications teams, while Agorapulse and Statusbrew combine listening with engagement and inbox workflows.
Planable is best suited to agencies and social media teams that want listening to sit directly alongside content planning, approvals, and publishing. Its social listening add-on lets teams monitor relevant conversations, identify content ideas, track competitor mentions, and move those insights into their existing content workflow.
Plus, its workspace-based pricing model ensures you’ll get a good deal, especially if you run a larger team. You don’t even have to pay in the first place: try it out for free here!
Horea is a B2B SaaS content writer and MarTech researcher. He has written for Planable since 2023, covering social media management, scheduling, listening and collaboration software. He's spent 7+ years writing about marketing technology, with work for HubSpot, Surfer and UX Pilot AI on topics from SEO and answer engine optimization to UX and web design tools. His roundups are research-first: he tests the tools and workflows himself, then writes the comparisons that help marketers choose with confidence.
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