The best social listening tools for 2026

What should you look for in a social listening or monitoring tool?

I'd ask five things before paying for any of them.

1. 01

   Does it read the apps your customers use? Look hard at TikTok. Many tools only see TikTok videos that tag your brand, not the ones that just say your name.

2. 02

   Can you read posts in other languages, or does the tool only count them?

3. 03

   What are the limits? Most tools cap both keywords and mentions each month, so ask what happens when you hit the cap.

4. 04

   Will an urgent post reach you the same day, or in next week's summary?

5. 05

   Is the price on the website, and does it go up with every person you add?

1. Brand24

Best for

Small teams that want to start a trial today

Price

From $249 a month, or $199 a month billed yearly, for 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions.

You can sign up for Brand24 on your own, without talking to sales. The trial lasts 14 days and doesn't ask for a card. It also pulls in mentions from the past 30 days, so you don't start with an empty screen. Every plan includes sentiment.

The catch is the entry plan. It has one user and checks for new mentions every 12 hours, so a complaint posted at breakfast might not show up until dinner. Hourly checks start on the Team plan at $349 a month. I couldn't find translation on any plan.

2. Awario

Best for

Tight budgets that need a lot of mentions

Price

From $49 a month, or $29 a month billed yearly, for 3 topics and 30,000 mentions.

Awario is the cheapest tool here, and at that price it gives you far more mentions than anything else on this list. Each topic can hold as many keywords as you like, so three topics stretch further than they sound. It has sentiment too.

There's a storage limit, though. On Starter, each topic keeps up to 5,000 mentions. When one fills up, Awario stops collecting for 24 hours, then starts replacing the oldest mentions with new ones. Starter is also one user only, and I didn't see TikTok anywhere in its list of sources.

3. Sprout Social

Best for

Teams that want publishing and listening in one app

Price

From $199 a seat a month, billed yearly. Listening costs extra. Ask sales for the price.

Sprout Social is really a tool for running your own accounts. You schedule posts and answer messages from one place. Listening is an extra you add to the Standard plan or higher, and you have to book a demo to find out what it costs.

You pay per person, so the bill grows every time someone joins. On TikTok it sees comments on your profile, your @mentions and your brand hashtags, but not every video that mentions you. There's a 30-day free trial.

4. Brandwatch

Best for

Large brands and agencies with a research team

Price

No public price. Ask sales for a quote.

Brandwatch Consumer Research is built for big brands and agencies. You can write detailed searches across a year or more of history. It's also an official TikTok partner, so it gets the top TikTok posts that tag your brand.

There's no public price. You book a demo and they quote you. Vendr, which tracks what companies pay for software, puts a typical contract in the tens of thousands of dollars a year. If you run a café or a small online shop, that's a lot of tool.

5. Herd

Best for

Small businesses whose customers post in more than one language

Price

From $29 a month, or $23.20 a month billed yearly, for 3 keywords and 3,000 mentions.

This is the one I make. I built it for small businesses whose customers don't all post in the same language. It reads Threads (comments included) and Reddit today, and translates every post into your language. X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, RedNote and podcasts are coming soon. Slang gets translated too, and the original is one tap away.

Herd marks every post positive, neutral or negative, and you can show only one label at a time. When something is urgent, it sends the post to you by email with a reply already drafted in your tone. You edit the reply before you post it. Once a week you get a one-page report with the sentiment trend and the topics people talked about most.

It only listens, though. It won't schedule posts or run your accounts.

Which tool should you pick?

Take the five questions above and hold each tool up against them. Where your customers post, and in which language, will settle most of it.

If they post in more than one language, try Herd. Every plan reads every source and translates each post into your language.

Whichever tool you use, start with three keywords: your brand, your main product and one competitor. Read everything that comes in for two weeks before you add more.