Best Social Listening Tools in 2026 (25 Compared)

Social listening tools, sometimes called social media monitoring tools, scan Reddit, X, LinkedIn, news, forums, and other public sources for your keywords, brand name, or competitor mentions. The best ones don't stop at "here's a mention": they classify what kind of conversation it is, buying intent, someone seeking an alternative to a competitor, a pain point, a competitor complaint, praise, so a GTM or brand team can act on the right ones first instead of reading everything. The category splits into roughly five tiers: enterprise consumer-intelligence platforms (Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprinklr, Cision) built for large research and comms teams; all-in-one management suites (Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Agorapulse) that bundle listening with publishing; mid-market and analytics-focused tools (Mention, Brand24, YouScan, Keyhole, Buzzsumo, Determ); a cluster of Reddit-only lead-gen tools (RedReach, Alertly, RedditQuest, ReplyGuy); and lightweight, real-time tools (SnitchFeed, Awario, Octolens, Syften) built for startups and small teams.

This guide covers 25 tools across all five tiers, sorted by who each one actually fits: startups and B2B teams that need self-serve setup and real-time alerts on Reddit, X, and LinkedIn; Reddit-specific lead-gen tools; free and low-cost tools if budget is the main constraint; mid-market and agency tools built for broader coverage and client workflows; and enterprise platforms for teams that need broadcast, print, or deep consumer research alongside social. Every entry also covers whether the tool has a public API and whether it ships AI-agent access (MCP), since both have become common decision factors in 2026. If you're tracking brand reputation and sentiment trends over time rather than catching every individual mention, see Best Brand Monitoring Tools in 2026 instead.

Quick comparison: 25 social listening tools

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the standard that lets AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT connect to a tool's data directly through natural conversation instead of a coded API integration. "Official" means the vendor ships and documents the MCP server themselves; "third-party" means the only MCP access is through an independent connector (Zapier, StackOne, community projects) rather than the vendor. Note: Determ uses "MCP" as an internal product name (Media Coverage Platform) unrelated to the AI-agent protocol; it has no Model Context Protocol server as of this writing.

Best for startups and B2B teams (self-serve, real-time)

1. SnitchFeed

SnitchFeed isn't just keyword matching. It monitors Reddit, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Bluesky for your keywords, then an AI layer classifies each mention by intent, buying intent, recommendation requests, seeking-alternative/switching signals, competitor mentions and complaints, pain points, feature requests, and praise, and scores sentiment on a continuous scale, not just positive/negative. That combination is what makes it useful for GTM (surface buyers before they ask for a demo), brand monitoring (see praise, pain points, and sentiment shifts together), and competitor monitoring (catch competitor complaints and switching intent in the same feed) rather than just a mention firehose.

What it does well:

• Real-time Reddit and Bluesky monitoring, hourly-to-real-time X and LinkedIn depending on plan
• Intent tagging beyond keyword matching: buying intent, seeking-alternative/switching signals, competitor mentions and complaints, pain points, feature requests, recommendation requests, and praise, plus continuous sentiment scoring
• Slack, Discord, email, and webhook delivery out of the box
• Self-serve signup, transparent pricing, no demo required

API / AI agents: REST API plus an official MCP server (24 tools) included on every plan, so Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and Windsurf can pull mentions, run analytics, and manage listeners directly. OAuth login, no API keys to manage.

Pricing: Starter $59/mo (or $47/mo billed annually). Pro $119/mo (or $95/mo billed annually). 7-day free trial, no credit card required.

Honest limitations: No Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, broadcast, or print coverage. Not a consumer-research platform: no image analysis, no market-level trend forecasting.

Best for: GTM, brand, and competitor monitoring for B2B teams that want intent-tagged, sentiment-scored mentions across Reddit, X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky, not just a raw keyword feed.

2. Awario

Awario is a straightforward, budget-priced monitoring tool built for small teams that want Boolean search and broad web coverage without enterprise pricing.

What it does well:

• Boolean search across web, news, and major social platforms
• Unlimited keywords on every plan, with a mention-volume cap per tier
• Data export and PDF reports on every tier

API / AI agents: REST API, but gated to the Enterprise plan ($249/mo annual) and custom packages above it, not the Starter or Pro tiers. No MCP server.

Pricing: Starter $29/mo billed annually ($49/mo month-to-month). Pro $89/mo annually ($149/mo month-to-month). Enterprise $249/mo annually ($399/mo month-to-month).

Honest limitations: Relevance filtering is more basic than AI-scored tools, and mention-volume caps on lower tiers can bite on high-volume keywords. No dedicated buying-intent or switching-intent classification, Boolean matches only.

Best for: Small marketing teams and solo founders who want Boolean search and broad coverage on a fixed, published budget.

3. Octolens

Octolens is a developer-friendly monitoring tool built for the indie-hacker and small B2B team segment, with a mention-volume pricing model similar to Brand24's.

What it does well:

• 15,000 mentions and 10 keywords on the entry Pro tier, hourly refresh
• AI filtering with Slack and email alerts
• Scale tier adds real-time refresh plus podcasts, newsletters, and news coverage

API / AI agents: API, webhooks, and an official MCP server are included on every plan, including the $159/mo Pro tier, so Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients can query mentions without a separate agent add-on.

Pricing: Pro $159/mo. Scale $499/mo. Additional mentions from $0.01 each, additional keywords from $5/mo. Enterprise is custom.

Honest limitations: Real-time refresh requires the $499/mo Scale tier; the entry Pro tier is hourly only.

Best for: Small teams that want pay-as-you-grow mention pricing and don't mind hourly refresh at the entry tier.

4. Syften

Syften is one of the cheapest paid options on this list, covering Reddit, X, Hacker News, and Lobsters with keyword-triggered Slack or email alerts.

What it does well:

• Broad forum coverage including Hacker News and Lobsters, which most competitors skip
• Simple, published entry-level pricing
• Straightforward Slack/email alert setup

API / AI agents: Documented REST API for pulling mentions into your own tools or scripts. No MCP server as of this writing.

Pricing: Entry $19.95/mo. Standard $39.95/mo (adds AI filtering, Slack integration, optional X/YouTube add-ons). Pro $99.95/mo (more matches, unlimited keywords on higher tiers).

Honest limitations: No LinkedIn or Bluesky coverage, and AI-based relevance scoring is limited to the Standard tier and above.

Best for: Solo founders and small teams that want Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters coverage at the lowest paid price point.

Reddit-focused lead-gen tools

A distinct cluster has grown up around Reddit specifically: instead of general mention monitoring, these tools are built to find sales leads in Reddit threads and, in some cases, draft or post replies for you.

5. RedReach

RedReach is a Reddit-only "Marketing OS": it finds Reddit posts already ranking in Google for your keywords, scores them for relevance, drafts replies in your voice, and includes a Chrome-extension DM tool for 1:1 outreach.

What it does well:

• SEO-opportunity finder that surfaces Reddit threads already ranking on Google
• AI-drafted reply suggestions and unlimited competitor tracking
• Chrome-extension DM outreach for personalized 1:1 messages

API / AI agents: HMAC-signed webhooks (paste any HTTP endpoint, including Zapier catch hooks) with delivery logs and retry-with-backoff. No documented REST API beyond webhooks, and no MCP server.

Pricing: Starter $19/mo. A $12 one-time 3-day pass is also available for a short test.

Honest limitations: Reddit only, no X, LinkedIn, or Bluesky coverage. Best suited to founders comfortable doing manual outreach rather than a full alerting/GTM stack.

Best for: Solo founders and small teams doing Reddit-only lead generation and manual outreach.

6. Alertly

Alertly focuses on AI noise reduction for Reddit specifically, aiming for a "set it and forget it" daily-digest workflow for busy founders, with brand and competitor tracking on X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky as secondary coverage.

What it does well:

• AI-powered filtering built to surface high-intent Reddit conversations while minimizing spam
• Daily digest workflow designed for founders who don't want to babysit a dashboard
• Fetches alerts via a simple GET /alert API endpoint, plus Slack delivery

API / AI agents: REST API for pulling alerts into your own tools. No MCP server.

Pricing: Starter $29/mo (10 keywords, 15,000 alerts). Higher tiers around $49/mo and $99/mo add more alerts and AI features.

Honest limitations: Single-platform dependency on Reddit for its core strength; other platform coverage is thinner than multi-platform tools.

Best for: Founders who want a low-maintenance, high-signal Reddit lead feed without configuring a dashboard.

7. RedditQuest

RedditQuest runs a CRM-style pipeline specifically for Reddit lead generation: it scores leads, tracks them through a pipeline, and can generate AI pitches for outreach.

What it does well:

• Lead scoring and pipeline management built specifically for converting Reddit conversations into sales leads
• Built-in AI pitch generator for drafting outreach
• Very low entry price for testing the category

API / AI agents: No public API or MCP server found as of this writing.

Pricing: $15/mo (10 keywords, up to 1,500 leads/mo). $45/mo (20 keywords, up to 10,000-20,000 leads/mo depending on plan details). 5-day free trial.

Honest limitations: Exclusively Reddit; no multi-platform coverage. No confirmed API for teams that want to pipe leads into their own CRM.

Best for: Indie hackers and bootstrapped startups running Reddit-only outreach on a tight budget.

8. ReplyGuy

ReplyGuy automates finding relevant Reddit and X threads and posting AI-generated replies that mention your product, aiming for a fully hands-off "set and forget" workflow.

Important caution: journalists investigating ReplyGuy found that most of the Reddit accounts featured on the company's own site had been banned, and a Reddit spokesperson said they would treat this kind of automated posting activity as spam. Automated replies posted through your own account carry real shadowban and ban risk on both Reddit and X, and you're billed monthly whether a reply lands or gets removed. Treat this as a distinct risk profile from every other tool on this list, which alert a human rather than post on your behalf.

What it does well:

• Fully automated: a campaign can be running within minutes
• Scales to high volumes of product mentions across Reddit and X for agencies managing several projects

API / AI agents: No public API or MCP server found as of this writing.

Pricing: Small $10/mo (5 keywords, 20 replies). Pro $49/mo (100 replies). Business $99/mo (300 replies, 5 projects). Enterprise $199/mo (1,000 replies, unlimited projects). Yearly billing available at roughly half the effective monthly cost.

Honest limitations: Real reputational and account-ban risk documented by third-party reporting. Every other tool in this guide surfaces mentions for a human to act on; ReplyGuy posts on your behalf, which is a materially different (and riskier) approach.

Best for: Teams that have weighed the ban/reputation risk and specifically want automated volume over human-reviewed alerts. Most B2B teams are better served by an alerting tool (SnitchFeed, Alertly, RedReach) and a human writing the reply.

Free and low-cost tools

9. F5Bot

F5Bot is completely free and monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters for your keywords, sending an email alert within minutes of a match.

What it does well:

• No cost, no credit card, no paid tier at all
• Fast alerts on Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters specifically

API / AI agents: Free API with alert-management endpoints (create, update, delete, list alerts) and webhook delivery with a request history dashboard. No MCP server.

Pricing: Free.

Honest limitations: No X, LinkedIn, or Bluesky coverage. No AI relevance scoring, intent classification, or noise filtering: every keyword match generates an alert, so broad keywords get noisy fast. No dashboard beyond email, though the API covers alert management.

Best for: Developers and indie hackers who want free, no-frills alerts on Reddit and Hacker News specifically.

10. KWatch.io

KWatch.io offers a genuine free tier alongside affordable paid plans, covering Reddit, Hacker News, X, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What it does well:

• A real free plan, not just a trial
• Broad platform list even at low price points
• AI sentiment analysis and Slack/API access at higher tiers

API / AI agents: API webhooks push new mentions to your own systems (also wired into Zapier and n8n for no-code automation). No MCP server as of this writing.

Pricing: Free plan available. Essential $19/mo. Business $79/mo. Enterprise $199/mo. Agency (multi-client) is custom.

Honest limitations: Keyword-alert volume is limited on the free and Essential tiers; teams tracking competitive keywords will likely need to upgrade quickly.

Best for: Teams that want to test social listening at zero cost before committing to a paid tool.

11. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is Google's free, built-in tool for tracking keyword mentions across news and indexed web pages.

What it does well:

• Completely free, no signup beyond a Google account
• Covers a broad swath of indexed news and blog content

API / AI agents: No public API, no webhooks, no MCP server. Delivery is email or RSS only.

Pricing: Free.

Honest limitations: No real social platform coverage at all, Google Alerts only indexes what Google crawls, which excludes most Reddit threads, X posts, and LinkedIn content in practice. No AI filtering, no intent classification, no Slack/Discord delivery, frequent delay or missed mentions.

Best for: A zero-cost starting point for web and news mentions, not a substitute for real social monitoring.

Best for mid-market teams and agencies

12. Mention

Mention covers over a billion sources across social, news, blogs, and forums, with strong historical data and team workflows built for agencies managing multiple client brands.

What it does well:

• Broad source coverage: web, news, X, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit
• Up to two years of historical mention data on paid plans
• Team collaboration: assign mentions, add notes, track response status

API / AI agents: REST API with a real-time streaming endpoint for mentions, plus bearer-token app authentication. No MCP server found as of this writing.

Pricing: Not published on Mention's site as of this writing; their pricing page requires a quote request. Confirm current pricing directly with their sales team before budgeting.

Honest limitations: Setup and dashboard configuration take longer than a self-serve tool. Lower tiers cap mention volume.

Best for: Agencies and mid-market marketing teams that need broad source coverage and structured collaboration workflows.

13. Brand24

Brand24 is one of the most widely used listening tools among PR teams and growing brands, with sentiment scoring, influencer identification, and a benchmark "presence score" against competitors.

What it does well:

• Broad coverage including TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, and review sites
• Influencer and reach scoring
• Automated PDF reports for stakeholders and clients

API / AI agents: REST API plus an official, OAuth-based MCP server that connects your Brand24 project data to Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients (Brand24 is also listed in the ChatGPT App Store). Requires an active paid subscription.

Pricing: Individual $199/mo, Team $299/mo, Pro $399/mo, Business $599/mo (all billed annually; month-to-month runs about 20% higher). Enterprise starts around $1,499/mo.

Honest limitations: Mention volume caps on lower tiers. The interface is feature-dense and takes time to learn well.

Best for: PR teams and growing brands that want broad platform coverage with self-serve pricing and client-ready reports.

14. YouScan

YouScan focuses on visual social listening: image and logo recognition across social platforms, useful for consumer brands that get mentioned in photos without being tagged in text.

What it does well:

• Image recognition for logos and visual mentions
• Sentiment analysis with a visual-first dashboard

API / AI agents: REST API and webhook integration for pulling mention, sentiment, and topic data into your own tools or spreadsheets. No MCP server found as of this writing.

Pricing: Starter plan $499/mo billed annually. Higher "Unlimited" tiers require a demo for pricing.

Honest limitations: A meaningful spend for a small team, and full pricing transparency stops after the entry tier.

Best for: Consumer and CPG brands that specifically need image/logo recognition alongside text monitoring.

15. Keyhole

Keyhole is a real-time hashtag tracker for X, Instagram, and Facebook, better known for campaign analytics, influencer identification, and client-ready reporting than for keyword alerting.

What it does well:

• Best-in-class hashtag tracking for event marketing and brand campaigns
• Strong influencer analytics and ROI measurement
• Visually polished reports built for sharing with clients or stakeholders

API / AI agents: JSON API with webhooks, OAuth, and OpenAPI/Postman collections, but access is gated to customers on supported plans (contact Keyhole to confirm eligibility). No MCP server found.

Pricing: Professional $179/mo (3 trackers). Corporate $539/mo (10 trackers). Enterprise $999/mo (unlimited trackers). No free plan; 14-day trial.

Honest limitations: Analytics-only, no publishing/scheduling. No dedicated buying-intent or GTM lead scoring, its strength is hashtag/campaign measurement, not sales signal detection.

Best for: Agencies and brand teams running hashtag-driven campaigns who need polished, client-ready analytics.

16. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is built for content marketers and PR teams: it analyzes what content performs best on a topic and includes a large searchable database of journalists and influencers.

What it does well:

• Best-in-class content performance analysis for content strategy and SEO
• Large influencer and journalist database for PR outreach
• Question Analyzer and Trending Feeds for content ideation

API / AI agents: Official REST API included for paid users, with separate subscriptions available for larger data streams. MCP access exists only through a third-party connector (viaSocket); no official BuzzSumo MCP server.

Pricing: Content Creation $199/mo. PR & Comms $299/mo. Suite $499/mo. Enterprise $999/mo. All billed annually with a 20% discount versus monthly where available.

Honest limitations: Built for content/PR discovery, not real-time keyword alerting or GTM lead scoring, it's a research tool more than a listening/alerting one.

Best for: Content marketers and PR teams researching what to write about and who to pitch, not teams that need real-time mention alerts.

17. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media management platform (scheduling, inbox, reporting) with social listening as a feature on its higher tiers.

What it does well:

• Tight integration between listening, publishing, and inbox management
• Team workflows, bulk scheduling, and Power Reports for agencies
• Competitor benchmarking on higher tiers

API / AI agents: Official MCP connector, available to all paid Agorapulse plans (excluding Legacy and Free plans), that lets Claude, ChatGPT, or Microsoft Copilot manage social media and pull analytics via natural language. The connector can draft posts but not auto-publish them; requires an active Claude Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise (or equivalent) subscription on the AI side too.

Pricing: Standard $79/user/mo (annual) / $99 month-to-month. Professional $119/user/mo (annual) / $149 month-to-month. Advanced $149/user/mo (annual) / $199 month-to-month. Competitor benchmarking requires Advanced or Custom.

Honest limitations: Listening is bundled with a full publishing suite, not sold standalone, so you're paying for scheduling and inbox tools even if listening is your primary need. No dedicated buying-intent/GTM lead classification.

Best for: Teams that want listening folded into a full social media management platform with mature MCP support.

18. Determ

Determ is a real-time media monitoring tool built for PR and comms teams, covering social, news, blogs, and forums with sentiment analysis and reporting.

What it does well:

• Real-time updates with unlimited keywords and unlimited users on every plan
• "All AI Features" included even on the entry tier, per Determ's own plan comparison
• Integrations with BigQuery, Power BI, Slack, Teams, and Zapier

API / AI agents: API listed as included on all paid plans per Determ's feature comparison table. No Model Context Protocol (AI-agent) server: Determ's own "MCP" branding refers to its internal Media Coverage Platform, not an AI-agent integration, so don't confuse the two if you're specifically shopping for Claude/ChatGPT connectivity.

Pricing: Focus €99/mo (1 topic, 1,000 mentions). Expand €299/mo (5 topics, 5,000 mentions). Command €499/mo (10 topics, 10,000 mentions). Custom tier available. Annual billing includes roughly 2 months free. 5-day free trial (14 days after a demo).

Honest limitations: Priced in euros and scoped around "topics" and mention caps rather than a flat per-seat or per-platform model, worth converting and comparing carefully against dollar-priced tools above.

Best for: PR and comms teams that want real-time media monitoring with unlimited keywords and users, and don't need AI-agent connectivity.

19. Sprout Social + Listening

Sprout Social is primarily a publishing and engagement platform. Listening is sold as an add-on for teams that want monitoring alongside their existing Sprout workflow.

What it does well:

• Tight integration with publishing and engagement if you're already on Sprout
• Cross-channel analytics alongside organic performance data
• Team assignment and response-time tracking

API / AI agents: Public API covering analytics, listening, publishing, and inbox data. Sprout's own AI agent, Trellis, deploys a remote MCP server for enterprise customers, and several third-party MCP servers also wrap the public API for Claude and other clients.

Pricing: Core plans start at $79/seat/mo (annual) or $99/mo month-to-month, rising to $399/seat/mo for Advanced. Listening is sold as a separate add-on, quote-based.

Honest limitations: Listening isn't available standalone, and the combined cost of Sprout + Listening can exceed dedicated monitoring tools.

Best for: Teams already using Sprout Social for publishing who want listening folded into the same platform.

Enterprise platforms

20. Hootsuite (Talkwalker)

Hootsuite bundles listening (powered by its Talkwalker acquisition) into its publishing and scheduling platform, with listening depth scaling by tier.

What it does well:

• Listening included on every paid tier, not sold as a separate add-on
• Scales from single-user scheduling up to enterprise team coordination
• Broad source coverage across 239 countries per Hootsuite's own claims

API / AI agents: Public API. Hootsuite has stated a roadmap to expose listening, publishing, and analytics natively through MCP, but as of this writing agent access runs through third-party MCP servers (Zapier, StackOne, open-source projects) rather than a first-party Hootsuite MCP server.

Pricing: Standard $99/user/mo (annual), manages up to 10 accounts. Professional $199/user/mo (annual), unlimited accounts. Advanced $399/user/mo (annual), adds deeper listening and approval workflows. Enterprise is custom.

Honest limitations: Meaningful per-seat cost if you only need listening, not the full publishing suite. Deeper listening capability is gated to the Advanced and Enterprise tiers.

Best for: Teams that want listening bundled with a full publishing and scheduling platform rather than a standalone tool.

21. Talkwalker

For teams that want Talkwalker's enterprise-grade visual listening as a standalone product rather than bundled with Hootsuite's scheduling tools, Talkwalker (marketed as "Lumen by Talkwalker") is available directly, with its "Blue Silk" AI engine for logo/scene detection and trend forecasting.

What it does well:

• Unmatched visual listening: detects logos and scenes in images/video without a text mention
• Massive multi-format coverage, over 150 million sources including offline media like print and TV
• Blue Silk AI for predictive trend forecasting and custom classification

API / AI agents: No public pricing or API documentation found; access details are only available after a sales conversation. Talkwalker's Blue Silk GPT and "Yeti" assistant are proprietary in-platform AI features, not a Model Context Protocol server, no MCP integration found.

Pricing: No published pricing. Third-party estimates suggest a base Core tier starting around $500/mo to $9,600/year for a single user, with mid-market (Analyze tier) deployments reportedly averaging around $27,000/year. Talkwalker does not confirm these figures; get a quote directly.

Best for: Global consumer brands that specifically need visual/logo detection and offline media (print, TV) coverage alongside social.

22. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a serious consumer intelligence platform built for large enterprises with a dedicated analytics team, offering advanced AI sentiment analysis and image/logo recognition at scale.

API / AI agents: Developer API with an llms.txt index built for AI-agent-readable documentation. Brandwatch doesn't publish a first-party MCP server directly, but third-party data platforms (e.g. Improvado) offer MCP-based access to Brandwatch data for Claude and other clients.

Pricing: No published pricing. Every quote requires a demo call.

Best for: Large enterprises that need deep, cross-market consumer research alongside social listening.

23. Meltwater

Meltwater is a media intelligence platform spanning news, social, and broadcast monitoring, commonly used by comms and PR teams at larger organizations.

API / AI agents: Developer portal API plus an official MCP server (part of Meltwater's Mira API) that gives Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients direct access to media and social data, natively supported since 2025.

Pricing: Meltwater states outright that it uses "tailored pricing rather than a one-size-fits-all list." No dollar figures are published; every plan requires a sales conversation.

Best for: Comms and PR teams at larger organizations that need broadcast and print coverage alongside social and news monitoring.

24. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a large customer-experience management suite with a listening module as one part of a much broader (and more expensive) platform spanning care, marketing, and social commerce.

API / AI agents: Open API plus an official Model Context Protocol tool documented in Sprinklr's own help center, alongside Sprinklr's separate proprietary AI Agent platform for building custom automations.

Pricing: Enterprise, quote-based only, no self-serve tier.

Best for: Large enterprises that want listening bundled into a broader customer-experience platform, not teams that only need monitoring.

25. Cision

Cision (CisionOne) combines journalist outreach, media monitoring, and social listening across Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Reddit, Bluesky, and millions of blogs and forums, built primarily for PR teams.

What it does well:

• Unified interface for journalist outreach, media monitoring, social listening, and reporting
• Social streams buildable in a few clicks across a wide source list
• Deep PR-industry relationships and media database, useful alongside monitoring

API / AI agents: Official REST API (documented at developers.cision.one) for pulling mention streams and analytics into your own tools, rate-limited to 10 requests/minute. No MCP server found as of this writing.

Pricing: No published pricing; opaque by design. Third-party procurement data (Vendr) puts the purchase median around $12,700/year, with a range from under $4,000 for stripped-down database access to $50,000-$150,000+/year for full enterprise configurations including PR Newswire distribution.

Honest limitations: No self-serve pricing or signup; every deal requires a sales conversation, and the opacity itself is a real cost in evaluation time.

Best for: PR-heavy enterprises that want journalist outreach and media monitoring in the same platform as social listening.

How to choose

Platforms you actually need. Most teams don't need all of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and print. Match the tool's coverage to where your buyers or audience actually talk, not the longest feature list.

Alert speed. Real-time delivery matters most for time-sensitive conversations like support requests or buying-intent questions. Batch/hourly refresh is fine for brand-health tracking where a few hours' delay doesn't cost you anything.

What kind of signal you actually want. Keyword-match tools (Awario, F5Bot, Google Alerts, Boolean-only setups) tell you a word appeared. Intent-tagged tools go further: SnitchFeed classifies mentions as buying intent, seeking-alternative/switching, competitor complaints, pain points, feature requests, or praise, and scores sentiment continuously, so a GTM or brand team can triage by what the conversation means, not just that it happened.

Reddit-only lead-gen tools carry different risk profiles. RedReach, Alertly, and RedditQuest surface leads for a human to review and reply to manually. ReplyGuy posts automated replies through your own account, which carries real ban and reputational risk per third-party reporting, a materially different tradeoff worth weighing carefully before choosing volume over safety.

Pricing model. Some tools charge per mention volume (Brand24, Octolens), some per seat (Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Agorapulse), some per topic (Determ), and some flat-tier (SnitchFeed, Awario, Syften). A flat-tier model is easier to budget if your mention volume is unpredictable.

API and AI agent access. Nearly every paid tool on this list has some form of API. MCP-based AI agent access (letting Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT query your mentions directly) is newer and unevenly available: SnitchFeed and Octolens ship it on every plan starting under $200/mo, Brand24, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social ship it on paid tiers, and Meltwater and Sprinklr ship it but gate it behind enterprise contracts. Hootsuite and Brandwatch currently rely on third-party connectors rather than a first-party MCP server.

FAQ

What's the best free social listening tool?

F5Bot is the most straightforward free option for Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters. KWatch.io's free tier adds X, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn coverage at a lower alert volume. Google Alerts is free but doesn't cover social platforms in practice, only indexed news and web content.

What's the difference between social listening and social monitoring?

The terms are often used interchangeably. Where a distinction is drawn, monitoring usually refers to tracking specific mentions and metrics (volume, sentiment, reach), while listening refers to using that data to spot broader trends, themes, or shifts in how people talk about a topic. In practice, most tools on this list do both.

Which social listening tool is cheapest for a B2B startup?

Of the tools built for real-time keyword alerts on Reddit, X, or LinkedIn, RedditQuest ($15/mo) and Syften ($19.95/mo) are cheapest, followed by SnitchFeed at $59/mo. The cheaper Reddit-only tools trade multi-platform coverage and intent classification for price; SnitchFeed adds buying-intent, switching-intent, and competitor-complaint tagging plus sentiment scoring across four platforms.

Do any of these tools cover Reddit specifically?

SnitchFeed, Syften, F5Bot, KWatch.io, Brand24, Mention, Octolens, RedReach, Alertly, RedditQuest, and ReplyGuy all cover Reddit. F5Bot and Syften are Reddit-forum-focused (also covering Hacker News); RedReach, Alertly, and RedditQuest are Reddit-only lead-gen tools; SnitchFeed adds real-time Reddit alongside X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky with intent tagging and sentiment scoring.

Which social listening tools have a public API?

Most paid tools on this list do: SnitchFeed, Awario (Enterprise plan only), Octolens, Syften, Alertly, F5Bot, KWatch.io, Mention, Brand24, YouScan, Keyhole (plan-gated), Buzzsumo, Agorapulse, Determ, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprinklr, and Cision. RedReach offers webhooks but not a documented REST API. Google Alerts, RedditQuest, ReplyGuy, and Talkwalker have no public API found.

Which social listening tools work with AI agents like Claude or Cursor?

MCP-based AI agent access has become common across the category in 2026. SnitchFeed, Octolens, Brand24, Agorapulse, Sprout Social, Meltwater, and Sprinklr all ship an official MCP server; Hootsuite, Brandwatch, and Buzzsumo currently offer agent access through third-party connectors rather than a first-party server. The real difference is price and access model: SnitchFeed (from $59/mo) and Octolens (from $159/mo) are the only tools here offering MCP access on self-serve plans with no demo call required. Brand24's MCP needs an active $199+/mo subscription, Agorapulse's connector requires a paid plan on both sides (Agorapulse and your Claude/ChatGPT subscription), and Meltwater, Sprinklr, and Brandwatch's agent access sits behind enterprise, quote-based contracts. SnitchFeed's MCP server has 24 tools and uses OAuth login, no API keys to manage. For a deeper breakdown of what each MCP server actually lets an agent do, see Social Listening APIs and MCP Servers in 2026.

Does any social listening tool classify mentions by buying intent, not just keywords?

SnitchFeed does. Instead of just flagging keyword matches, it tags each mention with an intent, buying intent, recommendation requests, comparisons, seeking-alternative/switching signals, competitor mentions and complaints, pain points, feature requests, hiring, or praise, and scores sentiment continuously rather than as a simple positive/negative label. That's built specifically for GTM and brand teams who want to triage a feed by what a conversation means (a prospect comparing vendors vs. a customer complaint) rather than reading every keyword match in order.

Is there a social listening tool with no contract?

Yes. SnitchFeed, Awario, Syften, Octolens, Brand24, KWatch.io, RedReach, Alertly, RedditQuest, ReplyGuy, Buzzsumo, Agorapulse, and Determ all offer month-to-month billing with no annual commitment required, though annual billing typically comes at a discount. Enterprise tools like Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprinklr, Talkwalker, and Cision generally require annual contracts negotiated during the sales process.

Is ReplyGuy safe to use?

Approach it carefully. Unlike every other tool in this guide, which surfaces mentions for a human to review and reply to, ReplyGuy posts AI-generated replies automatically through your own Reddit/X account. Third-party reporting found that most of the Reddit accounts shown on ReplyGuy's own marketing site had been banned, and a Reddit spokesperson said they treat this kind of automated activity as spam. If lead generation on Reddit or X is the goal, a tool that alerts you to relevant threads (SnitchFeed, Alertly, RedReach, RedditQuest) and lets you write the reply yourself carries substantially less platform risk.