Top 10 Social Media Monitoring Tools in 2026

Social media monitoring tools are a must-have for brands that want to be efficient with social listening. Real-time tracking of mentions, keywords, and conversations is crucial to understanding what people are saying about a brand, product, industry, or specific topic. 

The article unpacks features, pricing, and my review of the top 10 tools for monitoring and listening.

Some of these tools are sought after due to their added offering of a social media management suite, which complements monitoring efforts. 

Before that, I've spotlighted 4 tools that are emerging solutions for companies looking to streamline their social media monitoring:

Top 10 Social Media Monitoring/ Social Listening Tools

I’m listing the top free and paid social media monitoring tools for businesses. These listening tools help track brand mentions, monitor trends, and analyze audience sentiment effectively.

1. Google Alerts

2. Statusbrew

3. Hootsuite

4. Meltwater

5. Mentionlytics

6. Sprout Social

7. BuzzSumo

8. Brandwatch

9. Mention

10. Answer the Public

You’ll find social media management tools that have social listening integrated as a feature.

The list also has standalone social media monitoring tools. We will discuss the tool's capabilities, interface, pricing, and trial options. 

Google Alerts 

Google Alerts is a free tool from Google that emails you notifications whenever it indexes new web content (like news articles, blog posts, forums, or videos) matching your chosen keywords, brand names, competitors, or topics. It's simple to set up and great for basic web monitoring.

Alerts can also be prioritized by criteria such as frequency, source, and region, so you don’t miss critical information.

Users can receive real-time alerts directly in their inbox, helping them stay on top of new updates and media mentions. 

Price:

Free

My take:

Google Alerts is excellent for free, low-effort web/news monitoring. It's largely ineffective for social media monitoring in 2026, because a lot of posts are not crawled by Google in real-time.

Social media conversations move extremely fast.  A crisis or viral mention can explode in minutes. Google Alerts won't catch it in time for a quick response.

Statusbrew

Statusbrew’s Listen feature enables real-time social listening across Instagram, X, YouTube, Reddit, Threads, and web sources (including blogs and news). It centralizes all conversations around brand mentions, keywords, and industry trends into a single inbox.

Statusbrew is a comprehensive social media management platform that includes strong tools for publishing, engagement, analytics, and social media monitoring.

The platform features a real-time, unified Engage Inbox with push notifications, smart filters, auto-moderation (which automatically hides or deletes spam or troll comments), bulk actions, and AI-assisted replies.

The ‘Listen’ feature allows you to track brand keywords or hashtags rather than just explicit ‘@brandname’ tags (meaning you can catch mentions without direct tags) in real time.

You can customize notifications for specific phrases, high-engagement posts, or sentiments. Conversations are automatically routed to your team with tags and assignments, enabling effective reputation management and swift crisis response.

Statusbrew's AI-powered sentiment analysis automatically tags every mention as Positive, Negative, Neutral, or Mixed and shows sentiment trends over time. 

Teams can monitor user-generated content (UGC) tied to branded hashtags or keywords. This enables campaign tracking and stakeholder reporting.

Platforms supported:

Instagram, X, YouTube, Reddit, Threads, and Web mentions (Blogs & News). 

Price:

Here are the Statusbrew plans and their prices. The platform also offers a monthly billing option and custom pricing for enterprises. 

• Premium $229/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise Custom pricing (contact for quote)

• Trial: 14-day free trial, in addition to a customized demo to experience the platform’s features.  

My take:

Statusbrew is highly useful for teams whoes priority is social media management & decent good to have listening & monitoring features. Its live query preview is especially useful in letting you fine-tune topics before launching them. 

Statusbrew’s detailed listening reports, presenting trends in volume, sentiment, and recurring themes, enable better decision-making. It's one of the most balanced options for most businesses and agencies, in terms of offering and price.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that has native monitoring features and an add-on option for in-depth listening tools.

Users get results pulled from news sites, newsletters, blogs, forums, Reddit, X, and Quora.

To use monitoring in Hootsuite, you create Streams for @mentions, keywords, hashtags, locations, or competitor handles. 

The Standard plan ($99/month, billed annually) searches the last 7 days, and the Advanced ($249/month, billed annually) searches the last 30 days with Boolean support.

With the Sentiment Analysis tool, you can compare topics side by side, in the context of a specific brand keyword.

Hootsuite also has a Talkwalker integration for listening.

Its full-scale social listening solution is available to Enterprise users. You receive 13 months of historical data access, compared to the platform’s 30 days. 

Users can set up alerts for volume spikes, negative sentiment, or specific phrases (enhanced in Enterprise).

Conversations automatically flow into the shared Inbox with tagging and assignments, helping teams protect their reputation and respond in seconds.

Platforms supported:

Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Mixcloud, Ekşi Sözlük, Disqus, Vimeo, Dailymotion, LINE, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Podcasts and web.

In Custom Pricing plans: Extensive web, news, blogs, forums, and review sites.

Price:

• Standard $99/month (billed annually)

• Advanced $249/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise Custom pricing (contact for quote)

• Trial: 30-day free trial, in addition to a customized demo to experience the platform’s features.

My take

Hootsuite’s listening tool delivers clear, actionable data by pulling relevant conversations into one place. The streams-based interface, while powerful, still feels dated and cluttered compared to newer competitors. 

Core monitoring is pretty good on connected social networks. However, deeper listening (full-web coverage, historical data, crisis alerts, competitor benchmarking across the web) requires the custom Enterprise plan or paid add-ons.

This can push the real cost well into 4-figures per month for teams.

Hootsuite in 2026 is best suited for enterprises in regulated industries and brands needing deep third-party integrations in one dashboard.

It's less ideal for growing/ mid-size teams who want comprehensive listening at an affordable cost.

Note: In case you have already tried Hootsuite in the past, you can learn more about better Hootsuite alternatives here.

Meltwater

Meltwater is a platform that provides solutions for tracking online mentions, analyzing sentiment, identifying trends, and providing insights into customer behavior, industry news, and social media conversations.

The tool is known for its unified media and social dashboards. It also offers reporting and cross-channel analytics.

The Essentials plan, the basic tier, is designed for smaller teams. It provides core media monitoring tools for tracking brand mentions and industry trends across news and social sources.

This plan includes basic mention detection and trend identification.

The Suite plan offers real-time tracking of social mentions, audience engagement tools, performance analysis across platforms, and reporting on sentiment and trends.

The Enterprise plan provides real-time alerts, access to historical data, crisis detection, and AI-driven insights. The interface supports enterprise needs with API integrations and role-based access controls. 

Platforms supported:

Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, blogs, forums, podcasts, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines.

Pricing:

Meltwater's pricing for social monitoring is not publicly listed.

Quotes are customized based on factors like data volume, user count, regions monitored, and integrations.

Contracts are typically annual; monthly options are unavailable.

Based on user data, this is the ballpark figure of the plans.

• Essentials plan/ single user starts at $7,000/year.

• Suite plans range from $15,000–$20,000/year.

• Enterprise-level solutions can exceed $40,000/year.

• Trial: No self-serve free trial exists. Free guided demos and interactive product tours are available.

My take:

Meltwater is useful for tracking media mentions that don’t always surface through standard search engines. It is good at pulling data from across the web, including social platforms.

The platform does have a steep learning curve. Getting the most out of it requires consistent, hands-on training rather than generic demos that the platform offers. 

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is an AI-powered social media monitoring and intelligence platform that tracks brand mentions, analyzes sentiment, identifies influencers, and provides insights into trends, competitors, and customer conversations across social networks, news, blogs, and forums.

Social Intelligence Advisor (SIA) AI provides automated recommendations, emotion analysis, and share-of-voice metrics, along with a Boolean search function for precise queries.

Another feature is AI Mention Translate, which lets you translate any mention into English, Spanish, Portuguese, or Greek with a single click.

Mentionlytics offers tiered plans based on mention volume. The Essential plan costs $141/month for 15,000 mentions. For larger needs, the Business plan starts at $624/month for 200,000+ mentions, and the Enterprise plan begins at $833/month with unlimited mentions.

Platforms supported:

X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, blogs, news sites, and forums.

Price:

Mentionlytics offers tiered pricing, with both monthly and annual billing options.

• Basic $49/month

• Essential $141/month (15,000 mentions)

• Advanced $249/month

• Pro $416/month

• Business $624/month (200k+ mentions)

• Enterprise from $833/month (Unlimited Mentions)

• Trial: 14-day free trial with access to all features, limited to 3 keywords and 5,000 mentions.

My take:

Mentionlytics’ AI-enhanced social listening enables quick setup and user-friendly dashboards for filtering data, making it ideal for tracking trends without complexity.

However, users need to check for occasional data gaps in niche platforms. The pricing tiers make it scalable for both small and growing teams. 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform offering social monitoring, among other tools.

Sprout Social’s competitor analysis in listening provides benchmarks on share-of-voice, engagement, and trends via interactive charts.

Insights are available in the Smart Inbox so teams can act without switching tools. Users can create queries in the builder to track topics like brands, products, campaigns, or custom keywords across platforms

The Standard plan ($199/month, billed annually) provides basic keyword/location monitoring and review management for small teams. The Professional plan ($299/month, billed annually) adds competitor insights and tag reporting. The Advanced plan ($399/month, billed annually) includes sentiment analysis in Inbox and spike alerts 

The custom-priced Enterprise plan offers onboarding and a full listening suite. The listening tool is an add-on with AI for topics, sentiment, and alert features.

Trial: 30-day free trial covering base features. Demos are available to experience the add-on features. 

Platforms supported:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, and websites.

Pricing:

Pricing is a per-seat model, billed annually. There are monthly billing options as well. 

• Standard $199/seat/month

• Professional $299; Advanced $399

• Enterprise Contact for a quote

My take:

Sprout Social is good for integrated monitoring and clean dashboards for real-time insights. Keeping the occasional data lags aside, the per-seat pricing and add-on costs are bigger issues.

Teams also need to account for the training involved to help smooth the learning curve for social media workflows.

Note:

In case you loved Sprout Social but pricing is the issue, you can check Sprout Social alternatives list of affordable tools.

Or you can also read Hootsuite vs Sprout Social comparision in case you want to choose one of these leaders.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing platform that helps you discover high-performing content, monitor brand mentions, and identify influencers.

Its content analysis tools scan billions of articles and social posts across multiple networks, letting you uncover the most engaging headlines on any topic.

You can also use its journalist and influencer database (700K+ journalists) to find, pitch, and track the most relevant creators for your niche. 

The tool has a historical data backup of 5 years, which is helpful for long-term content strategy.

The Content Creation plan ($159/month, billed annually) is designed for small teams, providing basic content discovery, 2,000 article mentions/month for monitoring, and a limited influencer list (20 journalists). 

The PR & Comms plan ($239/month, billed annually) increases mentions to 10,000/month, 100 journalists per list, and adds media outreach tools. The Suite plan ($399/month, billed annually) provides unlimited mentions, 600 journalists per list, and full analytics integration. 

The Enterprise plan ($999/month, billed annually) includes granular location search, custom reporting, and 5 years of historical data.

Platforms supported:

Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, and various web sources, including blogs, news sites, forums, and websites.

Pricing:

BuzzSumo's tiered plans are billed annually (monthly options are also available).

• Content Creation $159/month (billed annually)

• PR & Comms $239/month (billed annually)

• Suite $399/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise $999/month (billed annually)

• Trial: 30-day free trial available.

My take:

BuzzSumo is more content-focused than pure social listening, so it’s great at tracking content performance across platforms. You can’t use it to act on real-time DMs or comments.

Its monitoring/ listening features aren’t as tightly woven into a full social‑media management workflow like Sprout Social or Statusbrew. Entry-level plans can feel restrictive, pushing users to mid-tier plans.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a comprehensive social intelligence platform that uses AI-powered listening and analytics to track mentions, analyze sentiment, identify trends, benchmark competitors across social media, news, forums, blogs, and over 100 million online sources in real-time. 

Users can create custom queries for keywords, hashtags, or topics, along with customizable dashboards that provide deep dives into audience behavior and emerging opportunities.

You can also set up alerts for spikes in mentions or shifts in sentiment, enabling proactive responses to viral trends, crises, or campaign performance issues.

Platforms supported:

X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Tumblr, forums, YouTube, Reddit, news sites, blogs, review platforms, and QQ.

Pricing:

There is no pricing list on their site. The pricing given below is substantiated by user reviews.

• Custom pricing starts around $800/month for entry entry-level plan. (Scales to enterprise levels with add-ons for advanced AI features).

• Trial: There is no clear offering of a free trial. Demo is available.

My take:

The tool offers detailed AI-driven insights and vast data coverage that turns raw conversations into actionable strategies.

At its core, Brandwatch is primarily a consumer intelligence platform, more than a social media management tool. 

For teams that understand this, Brandwatch makes a good choice for businesses looking to turn audience insights into informed marketing decisions

Note: If social media management is your priority, you can check Brandwatch alternatives list of tools that care about social media.

Mention

Mention is a social listening and brand monitoring platform that tracks online mentions in real time across social media, web sources, and review sites.

The tool emphasizes AI-driven analysis for sentiment, trends, and audience insights, with access to historical data spanning up to 2 years.

The query builder uses Boolean operators, keywords, phrases, and filters (e.g., by sentiment, geography, or influence score) to create custom alerts for brands, products, campaigns, or themes. 

Mention's competitor analysis lets you track rivals' mentions, sentiment changes, share of voice metrics, and engagement rates to identify opportunities, such as engaging with dissatisfied customers of competitors.

The customizable Company plan (starts from $599/month, billed annually) provides multi-user access controls, team collaboration (e.g., mention assignment, shared alerts), real-time tracking across all sources, sentiment analysis, trend detection, competitor benchmarking, custom dashboards, API access, and integrations.

Platforms supported:

X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn; blogs, news websites, forums, and review sites.

Pricing:

• Customizable Company plan (starts from $599/month, billed annually).

• Trial: 30-day trial available. Feature-specific demos are offered.

My take:

Mention provides scalable monitoring, with strong real-time alerts and broad source coverage that benefits small to medium teams tracking brand health efficiently.

The biggest drawback is the higher costs for high-volume searches. It suits organizations prioritizing focused listening over full-suite social management.

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a search listening tool that analyzes auto-complete suggestions and search queries from engines like Google, as well as select social platforms, to uncover consumer questions, trends, and content ideas.

It offers limited social media insights focused on trending topics, hashtags, and popular searches on visual-heavy networks. 

The platform has selected free tools. Its features are designed to understand what people are searching for on social platforms. Users can create content (e.g., videos, posts, or Reels) based on audience curiosity. 

It's not a comprehensive social media monitoring platform (e.g., no real-time brand mention tracking, sentiment analysis, or crisis alerts.

The Free Plan offers 3 daily searches. The Pro Plan at $99/month (billed monthly) lets users have unlimited searches, alerts, and 5000 monthly prompt suggestions.

Platforms supported:

Google, Bing, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Amazon.

Pricing:

These are the pricing plans, billed monthly. Lifetime plans are also available.

• Free Plan: 3 basic searches

• Individual $20/ month, billed monthly

• Pro $99/month, billed monthly

• Expert $199/month, billed monthly

• Trial: Free plan is indefinite (no expiration); 7-day trial period. Demo available on-site.

My take:

Answer The Public is more of a content ideation and trend-spotting tool rather than a comprehensive monitoring for brand conversations.

It's best for early-stage research, like spotting viral queries before they explode, but it lacks depth in monitoring mentions or engagement metrics.

Summary

The right tool should align with team size, workflow needs, and budget while providing actionable insights and reporting capabilities. Here’s a practical breakdown of which social media monitoring tools are best suited for your business type:

Small Businesses & Solo Entrepreneurs:

Free or lightweight tools like Google Alerts and Answer the Public are ideal, offering basic keyword alerts, mention tracking, and content ideas without high costs.

Growing Teams & SMBs:

Mid-tier platforms such as Statusbrew, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, work well here. It combines monitoring with engagement management, reporting, and team collaboration across multiple social profiles.

Large Enterprises & Global Brands:

Enterprise-grade tools like Meltwater, Brandwatch, Sprout Social provide advanced analytics, historical data, sentiment tracking, and monitoring for complex, global strategies.

Social media monitoring is no longer a ‘nice to have’ tool. It's essential to stay afloat.

Whether you're tracking brand health, running campaigns, supporting customers, or driving product insights, the right listening tool can be transformative. 

FAQs

What is the difference between social media monitoring and social media listening? Monitoring tracks mentions where your brand is tagged (@) in real-time. Listening goes deeper, analyzing sentiment, trends, and unfiltered customer insights where your brand is mentioned but not tagged (@) to inform strategy.

How exactly does a monitoring tool work?

Monitoring systems work with a stream of social media posts and web content, match them to queries, and present results via mention streams, dashboards, alerts, and reports. 

BuzzSumo vs Mentionlytics: Which tool is best for content monitoring? BuzzSumo is best for content research and trend tracking, helping marketers discover top-performing content and influencers. Mentionlytics excels at broad social listening, sentiment analysis, and real-time brand monitoring. 

Which tools support multilingual social media monitoring?

Statusbrew supports multilingual social media monitoring on its Premium ($229/month, billed annually) and Enterprise plans, with sentiment analysis available in 12 languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese. 

Tools like Talkwalker, Brandwatch, and Mentionlytics support multilingual social media monitoring, enabling brands to track mentions, analyze sentiment, and detect trends across multiple regions and languages.

How do I know which tool is right for my business size? Consider your team size, number of social profiles, required integrations, and budget. Small businesses may prefer simpler, lower-cost tools. Bigger enterprises benefit from advanced analytics.

Statusbrew is the best choice for brands seeking reliable support for monitoring & listening, as well as social media management.

What platforms do social media monitoring tools support? Most cover X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, blogs, news sites, and forums. Some even include podcasts and broadcast media.

Can BuzzSumo track influencers and content performance?

Yes, it identifies top influencers, tracks content engagement, and provides historical content analytics.

Do social media listening tools analyze sentiment and emotions? Most platforms in 2026 offer AI-driven sentiment analysis to identify conversations that are positive, negative, or neutral.

Can I monitor competitor activity using social media monitoring tools? Yes, you can track competitor mentions, content engagement, and audience sentiment.

How accurate is AI-driven social listening? It’s generally reliable for sentiment and trend spotting, though sarcasm, irony, or cultural nuance can occasionally mislead AI.

Does Hootsuite include social listening in its plans?

Yes. All Hootsuite plans come with Listening Basics, which gives you a quick search of the past 7 days, sentiment analysis, trend tracking, and AI-powered summaries. 

For deeper listening, Hootsuite offers the Talkwalker add-on for the Enterprise plan, which gives you 30-day historical data, advanced filters, trend forecasting, mention tagging, and image recognition. 

Statusbrew is an alternative that offers built-in listening in its Premium plan, whereas Hootsuite typically has enterprise-level pricing.