Social monitoring tools track where your brand, your competitors or a topic come up online, and each tool watches a different set of places. Some social monitoring tools watch Instagram Reels, some look for your logo in images, and others cover news sites, posts from years ago, keywords across the web, your own accounts or your competitors' accounts. The right tool depends on which of those you need to see.
So we reviewed the 24 tools that the top-ranking articles recommend most often and picked the best one for each thing you might need to monitor. Here are the eight social media monitoring tools we found:
- Sociable AI is the best for monitoring your brand on Instagram, with social listening from $1,740/mo.
- Talkwalker is the best for monitoring logos and objects in images and video, priced by quote.
- Meltwater is the best for monitoring news coverage and social together, priced by quote.
- Brandwatch is the best for monitoring past conversations, priced by quote.
- Mentionlytics is the best for monitoring brand and keyword mentions across the web and social, from $49/mo billed annually.
- Google Alerts is the best for monitoring new web pages, and it's free.
- Vista Social is the best for monitoring comments and mentions on your own accounts, from $79/mo billed annually.
- Social Status is the best for monitoring your competitors' accounts, free for one profile.
Our picks
Sociable AI is the best for monitoring your brand on Instagram
Sociable AI lets you search your brand and see the Instagram Reels it shows up in. For teams that want the data in their own tools, the Search API goes through each Reel frame by frame and returns the brands in it.
The other tools in this article that cover Instagram collect Instagram posts in a few set ways:
- Posts under hashtags you track, where Meta allows 30 hashtags a week and only returns posts from the last 24 hours.
- Posts from Business and Creator accounts you name.
- For Talkwalker, a fixed catalog of accounts on top of that.
Sociable AI is the only tool here whose search isn't limited to posts with a hashtag you track or from an account you named. In Sociable AI's data on social listening for Instagram, around 9 in 10 Reels in which a brand is referenced never name it in the caption.
Sociable AI is also the only tool here that finds Reels likely to go viral in their first hours and lets you comment on them early. We draft the comment, and you approve each one before it posts.
Every Sociable AI plan is billed monthly:
- Social listening is on the Scale plan at $1,740/mo.
- Viral commenting is on every plan, starting with Growth at $95/mo.
- The Search API is priced by quote.
Each self-serve plan has a free trial.
Talkwalker is the best for monitoring logos and objects in images and video
Talkwalker searches social, news and the web for your brand, and it finds "30,000+ brand logos" plus scenes and objects in the images and video it collects. A photo of your product with no brand name anywhere in the text can still show up in your results. TV, radio, print and newswires come through LexisNexis. Hootsuite has owned Talkwalker since 2024, and the product is now sold as Lumen by Talkwalker. Every plan comes with unlimited users, so the cost doesn't climb with each person you add.
Talkwalker doesn't publish prices, so you'll book a demo and get a quote before you see a number.
Keep in mind that on Instagram, Talkwalker's logo search only runs on the posts it has already collected by hashtag, from accounts you add, or from its catalog of 150,000 Business and Creator accounts.
If you want the same kind of image search at a published price, YouScan is the runner-up. YouScan starts at $499/mo, billed annually only, for 3 topics and 15,000 mentions a month, and you'll need one of its Unlimited plans, priced by quote, to collect posts by what's in the image.
Meltwater is the best for monitoring news coverage and social together
Meltwater gives you one search across news, broadcast, podcasts and social, so a PR or comms team can report on press coverage and social mentions from the same place. Meltwater also turns the speech in the videos it collects into searchable text, Instagram Reels included. A creator who says your brand name out loud can show up in your search.
Meltwater doesn't publish prices, and the minimum contract is 12 months.
On Instagram, posts come into Meltwater by hashtag and from the profiles you set up, so the spoken-word search only covers the Reels collected that way. When you add a hashtag, Meltwater collects the previous 24 hours of posts and then collects forward from that point, and you can add Business and Creator profiles you don't own to monitor alongside them.
Brandwatch is the best for monitoring past conversations
Brandwatch Consumer Research searches "1.4+ trillion posts" going back to 2008, so you can see how people talked about your brand or a topic years before you started tracking it. The archive covers news, blogs, forums, reviews and the major social networks, including TikTok, YouTube and X. On Instagram, the history runs up to 400 days for public Business accounts.
Brandwatch doesn't publish prices. The rate card it filed for UK government buyers starts Consumer Research at £10,800 a year, and Vendr's data from 40 purchases puts the median contract at about $50,000 a year.
If you want Brandwatch's kind of listening with a published price, we compared seven Brandwatch alternatives by cost.
Mentionlytics is the best for monitoring brand and keyword mentions across the web and social
Mentionlytics monitors your keywords across social, including TikTok and Reddit, as well as news, blogs, forums and review sites, and it marks the sentiment of every mention. You can set it up yourself without a sales call. On its entry plan, Mentionlytics gives you more than Brand24, its runner-up here, for less:
- Mentionlytics Basic is $49/mo billed annually, or $59/mo billed monthly, on a limited-time offer. The list price is $58 and $69. That covers 3 keyword rules, 5,000 mentions a month and 2 users.
- Brand24 Individual is $199/mo billed annually, or $249/mo billed monthly, for 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions a month and 1 user.
Mentionlytics has a 14-day trial. Basic refreshes your mentions every 12 hours. If you need continuous updates, LinkedIn or unlimited users, the Advanced plan is $249/mo billed annually for 15 keyword rules and 50,000 mentions a month.
On the other hand, Mentionlytics only collects Instagram posts by hashtag, not by the words in the caption.
Two runners-up sit near Mentionlytics on price:
- Brand24 has a 14-day trial. Hourly updates start on the Team plan at $299/mo billed annually, and so do TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn, none of which are on the Individual plan.
- Awario is the cheapest keyword monitoring tool in this article at $29/mo billed annually, or $49/mo billed monthly, for 30,000 mentions a month and 1 user. The Starter plan has no exports or PDF reports, so you'll need the Pro plan at $89/mo billed annually for those, and the trial runs 7 days. Awario also doesn't list TikTok or LinkedIn among its sources.
Google Alerts is the best for monitoring new web pages
Google Alerts is free, and it emails you when Google finds a new page that mentions your search term, whether that's a news article, a blog post, a video or a discussion thread. You can get the emails as they happen, once a day or once a week, and you can choose between "Only the best results" and "All results" for each alert. You set the language and region per alert, and all you need is a Google account.
Google Alerts only sees pages that Google indexes, so it doesn't watch Instagram, TikTok or other social posts. There's no history either, so you'll only hear about pages Google finds after you set the alert up.
Vista Social is the best for monitoring comments and mentions on your own accounts
Vista Social gives you a unified inbox with "every comment, DM, share, mention, and review from every network, in one place", and the inbox is on every plan. You can assign a message to a teammate, tag it and leave internal notes on it before anyone replies. Plans start at $79/mo billed annually, or $99/mo billed monthly, for 2 users and 15 profiles.
Listening is an add-on that costs nothing for your own profiles. Listening beyond them, across social, the web and news, runs $75 to $250/mo, and you can add it yourself without a sales call. Results refresh every 4 to 6 hours. There's no free plan, and the trial runs 14 days. Keep in mind that on Instagram, the listening add-on covers hashtags in captions, not comments, and it doesn't cover TikTok.
Two other management suites pair an inbox with a listening add-on:
- Agorapulse has an inbox on every plan, starting at $79 per user/mo billed annually, with listening as a quote-only add-on and a 30-day trial. Agorapulse bought Mention, which hasn't been sold on its own since July 1, 2026.
- Sprout Social sells its listening add-on by quote on top of plans from $199 per seat/mo billed annually, with a 30-day trial.
Social Status is the best for monitoring your competitors' accounts
Social Status reports on any public competitor profile on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube, so you can compare their posting and engagement with yours. You can sort their posts by engagement rate, likes, comments or shares to see what's working for them.
Every profile you track counts toward the plan, competitors included, so three profiles could be your own account plus two competitors. Here's what each plan costs:
- Free for one profile.
- Micro is $9/mo for three profiles.
- Basic is $29/mo for 10 profiles.
- Essential is $49/mo for 40 profiles.
Micro, Basic and Essential come with a 14-day trial. The lower plans cover Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Essential is the only small business plan that adds TikTok, LinkedIn and X, so if your competitors post mostly on TikTok, that's the plan to start from. Each plan also sets how far back you can fetch posts, from two months of history on Micro to six months on Essential.
Though, Social Status reports on profiles, not keywords, so it won't find mentions of your brand. Instagram competitors also have to be Business or Creator accounts.
If you'd rather track competitors inside a tool that also schedules your posts, Iconosquare is the runner-up. Its Scale plan starts at $79/mo billed annually, or $95/mo billed monthly, with 5 competitors per profile and hashtag tracking. Competitor data goes back 90 days, and the trial runs 14 days.
The eight tools compared
Here's how the eight picks compare on price, trial and what each one finds on Instagram:
| Tool | Best for monitoring | Starting price | Free plan or trial | What it finds on Instagram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sociable AI | Your brand on Instagram | $1,740/mo (social listening) | Free trial | Reels that show or say your brand |
| Talkwalker | Logos and objects in images and video | Not published | No | Hashtags, accounts you add and a 150,000-account catalog |
| Meltwater | News coverage and social together | Not published | No | Hashtags and accounts you add, plus speech in those Reels |
| Brandwatch | Past conversations | Not published | No | Hashtags and accounts you add |
| Mentionlytics | Brand and keyword mentions across the web and social | $49/mo annual | 14-day trial | Hashtags only |
| Google Alerts | New web pages | Free | Free | Not covered |
| Vista Social | Comments and mentions on your own accounts | $79/mo annual | 14-day trial | Hashtags only |
| Social Status | Your competitors' accounts | Free for one profile | Free plan | Competitor Business profiles |
Find the Reels your brand is in, then get your comment in early
Sociable AI shows you the Reels your brand shows up in. Once you can see those Reels, the next step is being part of them while they're still climbing. In our data, comments left in a Reel's first hour earned about three times the likes of comments left a few hours later, and Sociable AI users have earned nearly 1.4 million likes this way.
Sociable AI monitors Reels across your niche in their first hours and flags the ones likely to go viral. We draft a comment that fits the post, you approve it, and the comment goes up while the Reel is still climbing.
Try Sociable AI and see which Reels your brand is in today.
FAQ
What is a social media monitoring tool?
A social media monitoring tool is software that tracks where a brand, a competitor or a topic comes up on social media and the web, then alerts you or reports on what it found. Different tools watch different places, so the one you pick depends on whether you need Instagram Reels, images, news, past posts, keywords or specific accounts.
What's the difference between social monitoring and social listening?
Social monitoring tracks individual mentions so you can respond to them. Social listening looks across those mentions for patterns such as sentiment and trends. Every pick in this article except Google Alerts and Social Status does both.
Is there a free social media monitoring tool?
Yes. Google Alerts is free and covers new web pages that Google indexes. Social Status has a free plan that covers one profile, and Iconosquare's free plan covers 2 profiles with analytics only. If you want to monitor keywords across social and the web, there's no free plan among these tools, though Mentionlytics, Brand24, Awario and Vista Social each offer a trial.
Which social monitoring tools can find logos in images?
Talkwalker, YouScan, Meltwater and Brandwatch find logos in images they've already collected. Mentionlytics does the same on its Business plan and up. Sociable AI finds your brand in Instagram Reels by watching the video itself.
Is Mention still available?
Not as a standalone product. Mention stopped selling to new customers on July 1, 2026 after Agorapulse bought it, and new buyers are moved to Agorapulse.
