18 best social listening tools in 2025 (free & paid)

Brands and influencers want to gain more and more attention across all social media platforms. However, a huge challenge is to find out what and where people are talking about them. This is where social media listening tools come in.

The popularity of social listening tools is due to their ability to track brand discussions, mentions, and hashtags across all major social media platforms.

Businesses, organizations, and influencers can’t keep up with every conversation about them across every social media platform. So, social listening tools can assist them with tracking discussions and mentions.

What is social listening?

Social listening is a process of keeping a tab on the conversations among audiences and finding out what people think of your brand through social media monitoring.

Businesses and individuals are keen to find out about the performance of their products, so social listening assists them in understanding what people think of their products.

The key purposes of utilizing social listening are:

• To learn about the effectiveness of the product
• To understand how the product is making a difference in people’s lives
• To find out what people are struggling with
• To identify where the target audience exists

What are social listening tools?

Social listening tools are the advanced dashboards used for tracking public conversations on social media and understanding the consumer sentiments about a specific product or brand.

These tools are fully equipped to find, track, monitor, and analyze discussions about specific products or brands. Brands are curious to know about the opinions, emotions, and reactions of users across different platforms. This is where these social listening tools come in handy.

Top social listening tools for 2025 (paid)

There are several social media listening tools available on the market that help brands, organizations, and influencers monitor discussions about their brands. Here are the ones that are paid social listening tools:

1. ContentStudio

ContentStudio is an all-in-one social media management tool that assists brands, agencies, and influencers in streamlining social media content publishing. It makes content planning, scheduling, and analyzing easier than ever. The platform allows users to publish and schedule content across different publishing platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Medium, Tumblr, and others.

Features

• Social media publishing/scheduling
• Content planner
• Influencer discovery
• Competitor analysis
• AI writing assistant
• Social inbox
• Approval workflow
• Social media analytics
• Third-party tools integration

Pros and cons

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of ContentStudio:

Pros	Cons
ContentStudio has a user-friendly interface for post scheduling and analysis	The dashboard can be a little overwhelming for first-timers
Loads of features make it an all-in-one social dashboard	Some tools may not be used every single day
It allows users to post or schedule blog content across several blogging platforms	Bloggers might not need a third-party blog post scheduler, as most platforms have in-app scheduling features
ContentStudio offers multiple pricing plans to cater to all types of users	It should offer a beginner plan under $9 per month for starters

Pricing plans

• Starter: $19 per month
• Pro: $49 per month
• Agency: $99 per month

2. Brand24

Brand24 is an advanced tool designed for social media analytics, offering thorough brand insight exploration to support strategic competitor analysis and real-time social media listening. It collects and delivers key data from rival brands, enabling users to conduct comprehensive evaluations. It is recognized for its exceptional online and social monitoring capabilities, as it helps businesses craft smarter and more competitive digital marketing strategies.

Features

• Brand monitoring
• Social listening
• Business intelligence
• Competitor analysis
• Reputation management

Pros and cons

Here are the pros and cons of Brand24:

Pros	Cons
Real-time monitoring across millions of sources, including social media, blogs, forums, and news sites	Lacks social media publishing and scheduling features, requiring integration with other tools for a complete solution.
It offers advanced AI-based features like media monitoring, data visualization, competitor analysis, and influencer marketing	Some of the advanced features aren’t available for low-tier/beginner plans
It provides Influencer identification and engagement tools to amplify brand messaging.	API access is available only as a paid add-on.
It has several comprehensive reporting tools with export options in PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.	One of the cons is limited historical data access on lower-tier plans, which might be a strategic sales move.

Pricing plans

• Individual: $199 per month
• Team: $299 per month
• Pro: $399 per month
• Business: $599 per month
• Custom: Contact the team

3. BrandMention

BrandMentions is a robust social media analytics platform designed to deliver detailed, essential brand insights through advanced competitor analysis and social listening capabilities. It collects important analytics data from competitors and presents it to users for comprehensive evaluation. Moreover, it enables brands to craft highly effective digital marketing strategies and provides several social media competitor analysis tools to sharpen the competitor analysis efforts.

Features

• Branding monitoring
• Social media listening
• Competitor spying
• Business intelligence
• Reputation management

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It offers comprehensive monitoring across social media, blogs, forums, and news sites.	Some advanced features are only available on higher-tier plans.
It has a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation and setup.	Provides limited native integrations; relies on third-party tools like Zapier.
Detailed sentiment analysis and competitor benchmarking tools.	Historical data access is restricted on lower-tier plans.

Pricing plans

• Starter: $149 per month
• Pro: $499 per month
• Expert: $799 per month
• Enterprise: Contact the sales team

4. Keyhole

Keyhole is an effective social media analysis tool designed to help brands, agencies, and organizations efficiently monitor their social media presence. Its social listening capability ensures that brands or influencers to keep a tab on public discussions surrounding their brand, stay updated on industry trends, and observe competitor activities across leading platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube.

Features

• Social listening
• Social media monitoring
• Historical insights
• Campaign monitoring
• Hashtags analytics
• Influencer marketing
• Keywords tracking
• Competitor analysis

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Robust hashtag tracking and campaign performance analytics.	Limited to social media platforms; lacks coverage of blogs and news sites.
It has comprehensive, easy-to-understand reporting features.	The interface may have a steeper learning curve for new users.
It offers real-time monitoring of brand mentions across major social platforms.	It comes with limited platform diversity compared to some competitors.
It provides influencer analytics to identify and assess key influencers.	The majority of advanced features are only available on higher-tier plans.

Pricing plans:

Request a demo to get the pricing details.

5. Meltwater

Meltwater is a powerful competitor analysis and influence tracking platform that assists brands, agencies, and organizations in analyzing social metrics to make data-informed decisions. This platform stands out with its comprehensive social listening, media intelligence, and consumer research features that eliminate uncertainty from strategic content planning and publishing. Moreover, it’s equipped with AI-powered technology that examines key data and market trends to support users in making precise and efficient choices.

Features

• Social listening
• Brand management
• Consumer intelligence
• Influencer tracking
• Sales intelligence

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It offers comprehensive media monitoring across online news, social media, print, broadcast, and podcasts.	It lacks transparency in the pricing as prices aren’t mentioned.
It comes with a robust analytics tool for tracking brand visibility and mentions.	Undoubtedly, it has a steep learning curve due to its complex user interface.
The tool offers effective influencer marketing features with tagging and ROI tracking.	It can’t be blindly trusted, as there is a chance of irrelevant or inaccurate social listening data in some cases.

Pricing plans

Request a demo for pricing and sales inquiries

6. Mention

Mention is yet another social media monitoring tool that collects insightful data through its competitor insights capabilities. It assists brands, marketers, and influencers in understanding their brand position across different platforms. It capitalizes on social listening, market research, and competitor analysis to extract useful information for the campaign, which contributes to building the overall social media marketing strategy.

Features

• Socia listening
• Social media management
• Competitor analysis
• Brand management
• Market research
• Web monitoring

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
This tool offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation and setup.	Some users may find occasional missed mentions if searches aren’t set up properly.
It allows tracking of brand mentions and evaluation of marketing and PR initiatives with ease.	The search feature could overlook important mentions depending on the problems.
It provides informative industry reports and analytics.	There might be limited third-party integrations compared to competitors.

Pricing plans

• Solo plan: $49 per month
• Pro plan: $99 per month
• Pro Plus plan: $179 per month
• Company plan: Contact the sales team

7. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence tool that offers several social and marketing intelligence services to assist brands, influencers, and organizations in understanding the behavior of the target audience across multiple social media platforms. This tool is equipped with AI-powered technology and caters to diverse industries.

Features

• Social media listening
• Media monitoring
• Social benchmarking
• Audience insights
• Customer feedback analysis
• Social content ratings

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It offers media monitoring across online news, social media, print, broadcast, and podcasts.	The prices aren’t mentioned on their website, so it lacks pricing clarity.
It provides 24/7 multilingual customer support with dedicated account managers.	Brands have noticed limited coverage of non-traditional media sources like bloggers and influencers.
It comes with a Global reach with support for multiple languages and regions.	Occasional delays in data processing and reporting can be frustrating.

Pricing plans

Book your free demo to get proper quotes.

8. Awario

Awario is a powerful social media monitoring platform that tracks social conversations across different platforms. It helps brands and individuals monitor discussions across social media, news, blogs, videos, and forums. Unlike other social management platforms that offer a plethora of tools, Awario solely focuses on social listening to help users track brand mentions.

Features

• Social monitoring
• Sentiment analysis
• Social media management
• Social listening reports
• Keywords tracking

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It offers fast and efficient monitoring across different platforms, such as social media, news, blogs, videos, forums, and reviews.	This tool has slightly limited third-party integrations compared to competitors.
It crawls over 13 billion pages daily to provide high-quality results	API accessibility and usage might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
This tool is fully committed to social listening and tracking as compared to many other tools on the market.	The dashboard interface is rather simple and clean, which makes this platform look less efficient.

Pricing plans

• Starter plan: $49 per month
• Pro plan: $149 per month
• Enterprise plan: $399 per month

9. Digimind

Digimind (now Onclusive Social) is a social media listening and competitor intelligence platform for tracking social behaviors, market trends, and consumer insights. This marketing suite assists brands in driving competitive intelligence and influencer identification campaigns through a data-driven approach.

Features

• Brand reputation
• Social listening
• Competitive intelligence
• Consumer insights
• Influencer management
• Social campaign analysis
• Market intelligence

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It focuses on social listening and competitive intelligence gathering	The website layout and design are not the best, which might hurt the conversion rate
The platform operates as a marketing intelligence dashboard for companies	The solutions being offered can send a vague message to an average user
It seamlessly integrates with several tools, making it easier for brands and marketers to implement social listening	The prices aren’t mentioned on the website

Pricing plans

Request a demo

Top social listening tools for 2025 (free)

10. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a comprehensive social media analysis platform that leverages advanced AI technology to monitor online conversations related to your brand, products, or competitors across both social media and the web. With strong social listening capabilities, Mentionlytics enables brands, agencies, and influencers to uncover valuable audience insights and track brand mentions in real-time.

Features

• Social listening
• Social publishing
• Media monitoring
• Socia intelligence
• Reviews analysis

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Mentionlytics seems more dedicated to social listening and mentions tracking.	The dashboard interface is a little bit old-fashioned and can be improved.
It’s an AI-powered social analytics platform with multiple solutions.	Some additional features are limited to high-tier pricing plans.
It offers multiple pricing plans, which makes it convenient for all types of users	There is no free plan, which means some of the prospects would immediately move on.

Pricing plans

• Basic: $49 per month
• Essential: $139 per month
• Advanced: $249 per month
• Pro: $399 per month
• Agency: $599 per month
• Enterprise: $950 per month

Free trial/plan

Free trial available

11. YouScan

YouScan is a social media listening and competitor analysis platform that focuses on visual insights. It uses AI to analyze all forms of data on all social media platforms. It empowers brands to analyze consumer sentiments, extract actionable insights, and safeguard their brand reputation. YouScan does a pretty decent job at brand visibility when comparing your data to competitors and providing essential insights to drive social media marketing strategy more convincingly.

Features:

• Social media listening
• AI-powered data analysis
• Visual audience insights
• Competitor analysis
• Brand health tracking
• Influencer discovery

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
YouScan revolves around social listening and marketing insights	Some of the features might be confusing for newbies
There are two pricing plans to choose from	It’s a pricey tool that beginners might not be able to afford.
Anyone can request a demo of the tool to try it out.	The free plan is missing from the package.

Pricing plans:

Pricing starts at $299 per month (billed annually)

Free plan/trial

Free trial available

12. Cyfe

Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard to monitor and visualize content performance and engagement across different marketing platforms. It offers a cohesive environment to report analytics, social media, sales, and support elements all in one place.

Features

• Social media dashboards
• Custom widgets
• Embedded analytics
• Multiple integrations

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It’s an all-in-one social tracking dashboard that monitors all major social profiles under one umbrella.	Its website doesn’t clearly tell about the services or solutions it provides.
It integrates with dozens of third-party marketing tools to make the process more efficient	The website design isn’t convincing enough for new users to hop on and sign up for the account.
It offers multiple pricing plans, which makes onboarding easier.	It only offers a 14-day free trial, but it doesn’t have a free plan.

Pricing plans

Starter: $29 per month

Standard: $39 per month

Pro: $65 per month

Premier: $119 per month

Free plan/trial

Cyfe has a free plan (with limited features)

It also offers a 14-day free trial on paid plans

13. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a powerful social media management dashboard that offers social listening, scheduling, collaboration, and analytics. It’s an easy-to-use, AI-powered social media management tool for brands, influencers, and small businesses. It has a robust, clean, and user-friendly interface, ensuring a silky-smooth user experience across the board.

Features

• Social listening
• Social sharing
• Insights monitoring
• Conversations tracking
• AI-content content
• Team collaboration

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Iconosquare has the best dashboard layout design without a doubt.	The text in their website copy could be a little bit bigger.
The services are clearly stated in the features section, which makes a huge difference.	The color scheme looks similar to other SAAS tools on the market.
They offer multiple pricing plans, which helps the buying decision.	There is no free plan for starters who don’t want to pay in the beginning. However, it does have a free trial.

Pricing plans

• Launch: $39 per month
• Scale: $83 per month
• Excel: $139 per month
• Custom: Contact sales

Free plan/trial

2-week free trial available

14. Reputation

Reputation is a multi-tool dashboard with several marketing and engagement segments. One of the sections is the social suite that offers social media management services. The social suite features include social publishing/scheduling, social listening, responding, and insights.

Features

• Social publishing
• Social listening
• Social responding
• Social insights

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It offers all the key features of social listening.	The website layout is old-fashioned and confusing.
It’s a multi-service platform, which might not work for beginners.	A lot of users might not be able to locate the “Social Suite” for social listening.
Users can apply for a demo to try it out	There are no pricing plans written on the website.

Pricing plans

Get a demo for pricing plans

Free trial/plan

A free demo is available

15. Oktopost

Oktopost is a complete social media management toolkit for B2B companies. It offers various social management, advocacy, and analytics tools to enable brands to manage their social media campaigns effectively. It lets users publish, measure, listen to, and analyze social media content across different platforms.

Features

• Social management
• Employee advocacy
• Social listening
• Marketing intelligence
• Social analytics
• Customer engagement

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Oktopost has a decent dashboard layout and website design.	It’s built for B2B businesses, and they have stated on the homepage.
It offers every essential social listening and market insights feature.	Some users might get confused with marketing intelligence and employee advocacy
Anyone can fill out the form to get a free demo.	No pricing plans are highlighted on the website.

Pricing plans

Request a quote for pricing

Free plan/trial

A free trial is available

16. Synthesio

Synthesio is an intelligent social media analysis tool that has an AI-powered trends detection capability to identify, analyze, and report social data points. It offers various social listening, business intelligence, and trend analysis tools for large-scale organizations and businesses.

Features

• Social media listening
• Business intelligence reporting
• Trends detection module
• AI-powered trends analysis

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It’s an AI-powered social listening tool.	The features aren’t clearly mentioned on the website.
It has highlighted different industries and use cases on the website.	The website layout and design are not very welcoming.
Users can apply for a demo via the request form.	Prices are not mentioned on the website.

Pricing plans

Get a demo

Free trial/plan

Request a free demo

17. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a unified customer experience platform that prioritizes social listening, competitive insights, consumer benchmarking, media monitoring, and analytical data. It’s a complete customer engagement and management platform for businesses to track, manage, and analyze customer relationships across different avenues.

Features

• Social media listening
• Competitive insights
• Product insights
• Media monitoring
• Social analytics

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It’s an all-in-one marketing suite with different sub-sections.	Sometimes, multi-layered tools can be confusing for beginners.
Sprinklr is an AI-powered customer engagement dashboard that competes with several marketing intelligence platforms.	It might not be helpful for users who just need social listening.
It has custom pricing, so the prices may vary for different users.	No pricing plans are mentioned on the website, which can be frustrating for some people.

Pricing plans

Request a demo for pricing details

Free trial/plan

A free demo is available

18. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a social media analysis tool that offers social listening, social analytics, competitor insights, and social media audits. It provides a comprehensive competitor analysis on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It also analyzes the latest social media trends, generates social audit reports, and performs social listening for users.

Features

• Social listening
• Social media audits
• Competitive insights
• Social analytics
• Hashtag tracking
• Influencer marketing

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
It’s a simple, straightforward social listening tool for marketers and brands.	It doesn’t have the most attractive website on the internet, but it works out for them.
It shares free industry reports and surveys for marketers and brands.	Some of the features might not be relevant for average users.
There are multiple pricing plans available for users.	The prices are quite high, making this tool unaffordable for most users.

Pricing plans

• Drive: $239 per month
• Engage: $349 per month
• Engage Pro: $559 per month

Free trial/plan

A 14-day free trial is available

How to choose the right social listening tool

Here are the steps involved in choosing the right social listening tool:

1. Define your goal

Start by defining your goal. Figure out what you want to achieve with social listening. Different brands choose social listening for different purposes, such as trend spotting, competitor analysis, brand positioning, or campaign tracking. So, choose a specific goal for your social listening campaign.

2. Identify your target audience

Identifying your target audience helps you determine which tool is best for you. It’s crucial to understand where your audience spends time, for instance, X (Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, forums, blogs, etc. Just make sure the tool covers those platforms.

3. List essential features

Some must-have features are essential for the social listening process, for instance, real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, reporting, or integrations with your existing tools. Check with your favorite social listening tool before signing up that it offers those features.

4. Set your budget

Social media budget is an integral part of the tool selection. Decide how much you’re willing to spend on social listening. There might be some advanced social monitoring tools that offer high-end social listening services, but they might be a bit expensive. So, find the tool that matches your budget.

6. Test out the best tools

There would be a bunch of social listening tools available on the market. Handpick the ones that offer free trials. Most platforms offer a free trial for users to test out the product. So, test a few to see which interface is user-friendly, accurate, and meets your needs.

7. Evaluate reporting and analytics

Social listening won’t be effective if there isn’t any data analytics involved in the process. Check if the tool provides detailed insights, easy-to-read dashboards, and exportable reports to help you make data-driven decisions.

8. Opt for the best one

Choosing the right social listening tool means opting for the tool that offers every essential feature without breaking the bank. Make sure that the social listening tool has a vibrant customer care service, just in case. Opt for the one that checks the maximum boxes.

So, these are some essential steps to go through when choosing the right social listening tool.

How to implement social listening in your marketing strategy

Here’s the breakdown of the implementation process:

1. Set clear objectives to achieve

To implement social listening at its best, start with social media goals. You have to be crystal clear about what you want to accomplish with social listening. It can either improve customer service, identify brand advocates, monitor brand reputation, or spot market trends. Setting a clear goal will guide your strategy and help measure success effectively in the long run.

2. Choose the right social listening tool

Choosing a social listening tool is a must. Select a tool that fits your needs and budget. Look for some features, such as social monitoring, sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, and platform integration, to gather and analyze data efficiently across multiple social channels.

3. Track conversations related to your brand

One of the key purposes of social listening is to monitor social media mentions of your brand across all social media platforms. Mentions usually include brand name, products, hashtags, and relevant keywords to understand how people perceive and talk about your business. So, tracking conversations helps businesses identify the areas that can be improved going forward.

4. Pinpoint your competitors to analyze

One of the essential steps of social listening is to find out what people are saying about your social media competitor analysis. It’s vital to keep tabs on competitors’ perceptions among the audience. Analyzing competitor mentions, reviews, and customer feedback provides valuable insights for creating a value proposition in the future.

5. Gather feedback and sentiments

Implementing social listening won’t be complete without gathering audience feedback. Use social listening tools to collect direct and indirect feedback and sentiment about the brand. It encompasses how customers feel about your brand, uncovering both positive feedback and areas needing attention.

6. Implement changes for improvement

Once the sentiment analysis in terms of feedback and data analysis is received, the brand can act on the insights gathered by adjusting the marketing messages, improving products or services, and resolving customer pain points. It would eventually strengthen customers’ brand loyalty and trustworthiness toward a brand.

So, these are some of the key steps required when implementing social listening in your marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Social listening is an integral part of the social media marketing campaign as it allows brands and influencers to keep a tab on conversations about their brand, product quality, pricing, features, etc.

Thus, a social listening tool is a must-have software in the digital marketing arsenal. However, there are plenty of social listening tools available on the market. So, it can quickly become overwhelming for a new user to choose the social listening tool.

We compiled this list of excellent social media management tools that offer several social media marketing services, including social listening.

FAQs about social media listening

What are social listening tools?

Social listening tools are the softwares that help brands and experts keep a tab on the discussions of users on social media, forums, blogs, and websites.

What is the objective of social listening?

The main objective behind social listening is to understand theaudience’se pulse about a certain brand, topic, or event. Social listening tools can be an effective way to find out what people are thinking aboutae specific product or topic.  

How do you practice social listening?

You can practice social listening by choosing a reliable social listening tool and tracking your brand mentions across all social media channels.  

What is the goal of social listening?

The ultimate goal of social listening is to find out what customers and prospects are saying about a brand, product, event, or occasion.