The best social listening tools in 2026
“Social listening” covers two genuinely different jobs, brand monitoring and buying-intent listening, and buying the wrong one is easy. This list splits them cleanly, verifies pricing against each vendor’s own site, and says plainly where each tool fits, including where ours does and does not belong.
Social listening tools split into two segments that answer different questions. Brand monitoring asks who is talking about YOU: your brand, your product, your competitors. Brand24, Mention, Brandwatch, and Sprout Social (Hootsuite runs a similar model) live here, ranging from affordable self-serve to quote-only enterprise. Buying-intent listening asks a different question entirely: who is publicly asking for what I sell, right now, regardless of whether they have ever mentioned my brand. Buska, Syften, Octolens, and EaseClaw (our product) live here.
So the numbers below are list positions within each segment, not a power ranking across the whole page. Brand monitoring tools are grouped first, self-serve toward enterprise. Buying-intent tools are grouped second, with EaseClaw leading that group. Read the segment tag and the price first, then decide.
Full disclosure: I am Pritesh, the founder of EaseClaw, and EaseClaw is our product, one of the tools on this list. It leads the buying-intent group because that is genuinely its category, not because I ranked it first overall; the brand-monitoring group above it exists for a different job and I have not called EaseClaw the best tool there, because it is not. If your real goal is finding buyers rather than tracking reputation, our companion best AI lead generation tools guide goes deeper, and the wider guides hub has more.
Compare at a glance
Brand monitoring first, buying-intent listening second, EaseClaw leading its own group. Prices are the vendor’s own published number where one exists; where a vendor keeps pricing private, that is stated plainly rather than guessed at.
| Tool | Best for | Key capability | Price | Free tier / trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | SMBs and agencies wanting affordable, broad self-serve brand monitoring. | Sentiment and reach analytics across 16 self-serve source types. | Individual $199/mo · Team $299/mo · Pro $399/mo · Business $599/mo (annual billing) · Enterprise from about $1,499/mo. | 14-day free trial, no card required. |
| Mention | Teams needing reputation and review-site tracking who are fine with an annual enterprise deal. | Sentiment and competitor benchmarking across 75+ review sites. | Company plan from $599/mo, annual contract. Mention's own help center confirms its legacy self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus plans stopped taking new signups in mid-2025, leaving only the enterprise Company plan. | Free trial available on the Company plan; no self-serve free tier for new signups. |
| Brandwatch | Large enterprises needing deep consumer-intelligence analytics at scale. | Historical consumer-opinion archive plus a 30M+ influencer database. | Custom pricing (contact sales). No public self-serve tier. | None disclosed; demo request only. |
| Sprout Social | Teams wanting a full publish, engage, and analytics suite with listening added. | Listening layered onto a full publish, engage, and reporting suite. | Essentials $79/seat/mo · Standard $199 · Professional $299 · Advanced $399 per seat per month (annual); Enterprise custom. Listening is a separate paid add-on on Standard and up, price undisclosed on the public site. | None; every tier is paid. |
| EaseClawour product | Founders who want social and community buying-intent posts scored, plus a drafted reply, not brand dashboards. | Scores each post 0 to 100 for buying intent across 12 platforms and drafts the reply. | Free plan (no card) · Pro $99/mo · Business $199/mo, each paid plan carries its own 7-day free trial (card on file). | Free plan, no card, plus a 7-day free trial on every paid plan. |
| Buska | Founders and small B2B teams wanting buying-intent leads, not brand dashboards. | AI buying-intent and ICP scoring across 16 to 33 sources. | Starter $49/mo · Growth $99/mo · Scale $249/mo · Agency custom. | 7-day free trial, no card required. |
| Syften | Developers and founders wanting the cheapest published buying-intent alerts here, with AI filtering. | AI-filtered keyword alerts with Slack, webhook, and MCP delivery. | Entry $29.95/mo · Standard $49.95/mo · Syften PRO $119.95/mo. Custom solutions available on request. | 14-day free trial, no card required, with immediate access to the prior 60 days of mentions. |
| Octolens | B2B and dev-tool teams wanting brand and competitor mention monitoring, with unlimited seats. | Hourly-to-real-time mention scanning across 13 dev and social sources, unlimited seats. | Pro $159/mo (annual) · Scale $499/mo (annual) · Enterprise custom. | 7-day free trial of the Pro plan, up to 5,000 mentions. |
What social listening actually covers
Before any tool, it helps to know what the category actually does. Most brand-monitoring platforms combine these six jobs to some degree. The enterprise suites do all of them deeply; the cheaper self-serve tools cover the core and thin out toward the edges.
Buying-intent listening sits underneath all of this, using the same raw signal (public posts) but scoring each one for purchase intent instead of tracking sentiment, so the output is warm prospects rather than reputation reports. It is worth reading the trade-offs against a classic monitor like Mention or Brand24 before you commit to one shape.
The tools, by segment
Eight tools that earn their place, grouped into the two segments above. Each is tagged with its price, verified against the vendor’s own site (or marked quote-only where the vendor does not publish one), its sources, best-fit buyer, and one honest note.
Brand monitoring (self-serve)
Monitors a wide spread of social and web sources for mentions of your brand or keywords, with sentiment and reach analytics on top.
16 source types, including Facebook, Instagram, X, news, blogs, Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YouTube, TikTok, reviews, Twitch, newsletters, and podcasts.
Individual $199/mo · Team $299/mo · Pro $399/mo · Business $599/mo (annual billing) · Enterprise from about $1,499/mo.
SMBs and agencies wanting affordable, broad self-serve brand monitoring.
Published pricing and one of the widest self-serve source lists here, with a genuine no-card trial, though the entry plan still starts at $199/mo.
Brand monitoring (enterprise-only)
Monitors social networks, news, blogs, and 75+ review sites for your brand and competitors, with sentiment and benchmarking.
Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, news, blogs, and 75+ review sites (Google, Trustpilot, Amazon).
Company plan from $599/mo, annual contract. Mention's own help center confirms its legacy self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus plans stopped taking new signups in mid-2025, leaving only the enterprise Company plan.
Teams needing reputation and review-site tracking who are fine with an annual enterprise deal.
Used to be a budget-friendly self-serve tool. As of this writing new customers start at $599/mo, so it is no longer the accessible option it once was, worth knowing before you request a demo.
Brand monitoring (enterprise, quote-only)
Deep social intelligence built for large teams, pairing live monitoring with a historical consumer-opinion archive.
Deep social coverage plus a consumer-opinion archive and a 30M+ influencer database.
Custom pricing (contact sales). No public self-serve tier.
Large enterprises needing deep consumer-intelligence analytics at scale.
Quote-only and aimed at enterprise budgets. Powerful, but overkill for a founder or a small team.
Brand monitoring (suite add-on)
A full social management suite for publishing, engaging, and reporting, where listening is a paid add-on layered on top. Hootsuite runs a similar model: monitoring shows up from its Professional tier ($199/user/mo annual) upward, with deeper listening reserved for Enterprise.
Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more.
Essentials $79/seat/mo · Standard $199 · Professional $299 · Advanced $399 per seat per month (annual); Enterprise custom. Listening is a separate paid add-on on Standard and up, price undisclosed on the public site.
Teams wanting a full publish, engage, and analytics suite with listening added.
Listening is an add-on, not the core product, so the per-seat sticker price understates the true listening cost. Same story at Hootsuite.
Buying-intent listening (our product)
Monitors 12 platforms (Reddit, Hacker News, LinkedIn, X, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Quora, Product Hunt, and more) for people describing the problem you solve, scores each post 0 to 100 by buying intent, and drafts a reply you review and send yourself. It never auto-posts.
12 platforms, each post scored 0 to 100 by buying intent.
Free plan (no card) · Pro $99/mo · Business $199/mo, each paid plan carries its own 7-day free trial (card on file).
Founders who want social and community buying-intent posts scored, plus a drafted reply, not brand dashboards.
Narrow by design: buying-intent lead-gen, not brand reputation, sentiment dashboards, or share-of-voice reporting.
Buying-intent listening
Watches many sources for mentions, then layers AI buying-intent and ICP scoring on top so the output leans toward leads, not reputation dashboards.
16 to 33 sources with AI buying-intent and ICP scoring.
Starter $49/mo · Growth $99/mo · Scale $249/mo · Agency custom.
Founders and small B2B teams wanting buying-intent leads, not brand dashboards.
The closest tool here in spirit to EaseClaw: intent scoring for lead-gen rather than PR and sentiment reporting.
Buying-intent listening
Monitors developer and community platforms plus the open web for keyword and buying-intent conversations, with AI filtering and Slack, RSS, API, or webhook delivery.
Reddit, X, Hacker News, GitHub, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, Stack Exchange, Dev.to, podcasts, Slack communities, and general web content.
Entry $29.95/mo · Standard $49.95/mo · Syften PRO $119.95/mo. Custom solutions available on request.
Developers and founders wanting the cheapest published buying-intent alerts here, with AI filtering.
The cheapest published entry point in this whole list, and MCP and webhook support even below the top tier, though it delivers filtered alerts rather than a scored, ranked lead list.
Buying-intent listening
Monitors social and developer communities for brand and competitor mentions, with unlimited seats on every plan.
Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Hacker News, GitHub, YouTube, Bluesky, TikTok, Dev.to, Stack Overflow, podcasts, newsletters, and news.
Pro $159/mo (annual) · Scale $499/mo (annual) · Enterprise custom.
B2B and dev-tool teams wanting brand and competitor mention monitoring, with unlimited seats.
Strong developer-community coverage and unlimited seats, though the entry plan starts at $159/mo.
Where EaseClaw fits, and where it does not
EaseClaw genuinely belongs in this category: it monitors 12 platforms for public mentions, which is social listening by any fair definition. But its lens is different. It looks for buying intent for lead generation, not brand reputation. It scores each post 0 to 100 by how ready the person is to buy, then drafts a reply in your voice that you review and send yourself. It never auto-posts.
So here is the honest boundary. EaseClaw is not a brand-reputation or PR suite. It does not do sentiment dashboards, share-of-voice reporting, crisis alerts, influencer databases, or the 75+ review-site coverage that Brand24, Brandwatch, and Mention do. If you need PR crisis monitoring or a share-of-voice report for a board deck, EaseClaw is the wrong tool, and one of those is the right one.
Where it does fit is right next to Buska and Octolens in the buying-intent lane, not the brand-monitoring suites. Its edge is that each post arrives already scored by intent and with a drafted reply attached, so a founder doing sales personally can act in minutes. If that is the lane you want, the full comparisons hub lays out where each rival is the better fit than we are.
Questions
What is social listening?
What is the difference between brand monitoring and buying-intent listening?
What is the cheapest social listening tool here?
Does EaseClaw do brand monitoring?
Which social listening tool is best for founders and small teams?
Listening for buyers, not just mentions?
A brand monitor tells you who is talking. EaseClaw finds the people asking for what you sell across 12 platforms, scores the intent 0 to 100, and drafts the reply. You always press send.
Free plan available · 7-day trial on paid plans · never auto-posts