What Social Listening Tools Actually Cost

Three social listening vendors publish a full price list. Their plans look comparable until you line up what each one actually meters, and at that point the cheapest headline is rarely the cheapest tool.

This guide reads the published pricing pages of Brand24, Awario and Mentionlytics side by side. Every figure below was read in the page markup on October 31, 2026.

The pattern is consistent across all three. The headline price buys entry. The limits that decide whether the tool is usable sit two lines lower, in smaller type.

Three vendors, three different meters

Brand24 meters keywords. Its Individual plan is listed at $249 per month, or $199 per month billed annually, and includes 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions a month and 1 user.

Awario meters topics. Starter is listed at $49 per month, or $29 per month billed annually, with 3 topics to monitor and unlimited keywords inside each topic.

Mentionlytics meters keyword rules. Its Basic plan is listed at $49 a month billed yearly, beside a struck-through $58, with 3 keyword rules and 10 social profiles.

Those three units are not interchangeable. Awario's page states that "every topic can contain unlimited keywords", so three Awario topics can hold far more search strings than three Brand24 keywords.

The mention cap is the number that bites

All three tools stop collecting when the monthly mention cap is reached. Brand24 lists 2,000 mentions a month on Individual and 10,000 on Team, priced at $349 monthly or $299 billed annually.

Awario is far more generous at the entry point. Its Starter plan lists 30,000 new mentions a month, rising to 300,000 on Pro at $149 monthly or $89 billed annually.

Mentionlytics lists 5,000 monthly mentions on Basic and 15,000 on Essential at $141 a month billed yearly. Advanced at $249 lists 50,000, and Pro at $416 lists 100,000.

Awario also separates new mentions from stored ones. Stored mentions per topic are capped at 5,000 on Starter, 15,000 on Pro and 50,000 on Enterprise, listed at $399 monthly or $249 billed annually.

A cap on stored results is a cap on history. The same distinction decides the tier in scheduling tools, where the window of kept data is the real paywall, as in how far back social media analytics go.

Refresh speed is sold separately

The least obvious paywall is time. Brand24's Individual plan lists "Update every 12h". Team moves to "Update every hour", and Pro at $499 monthly or $399 annually moves to "Realtime updates".

Mentionlytics sells the same axis. Basic lists a "12 hours" update, Essential lists "6 hours", and Advanced and everything above it list "Continuous".

So a crisis-monitoring promise on an entry plan is a promise to tell you tomorrow. If the reason for buying is catching a complaint fast, the refresh row decides the plan, not the mention count.

Users, seats and who can log in

Brand24 lists 1 user on Individual and "Unlimited users" from Team upward. Awario lists 1 team member on Starter, 10 on Pro and unlimited on Enterprise.

Mentionlytics lists 2 users on Basic, 10 on Essential and "Unlimited users" from Advanced. Three vendors, three different points at which the second person becomes free.

Headcount pricing is a subject of its own, and the definitions move between vendors. The groundwork sits in what counts as a seat in social media tools.

What the annual discount is really worth

All three push annual billing. Brand24's page prints "Up to 3 months free" above the billing toggle, and that phrase is doing a lot of work.

Run the arithmetic. Individual at $249 monthly is $2,988 over twelve months by editorial calculation, against $2,388 at the annual rate. The saving is worth roughly 2.4 months.

Business is less generous. At $699 monthly against $599 billed annually, the saving is $1,200 a year by editorial calculation, or about 1.7 months of the monthly price.

Mentionlytics states the saving in dollars instead: "Save $338" on Essential, "Save $598" on Advanced and "Save $998" on Pro. Awario's toggle says "Save up to 40%".

Add-ons and the lines without numbers

Mentionlytics lists an "AI Visibility" add-on "from $49/mo" on every tier. It also lists a Managed Service that "can be added to Pro and higher plans", with no published price.

Brand24 marks "Smart Context Search" as an add-on on Pro and Business with no figure attached. It also gates AI Insights to 2 projects on Pro and 5 projects on Business.

Brand24's top tier is listed "from $1499 per month, billed annually". Mentionlytics lists Enterprise "from $1083" a month billed yearly. Awario simply sends you to a contact form.

Credit-shaped add-ons behave the same way right across the category, and they are easy to underestimate when budgeting. The mechanics are set out in what AI credits in social media tools actually buy.

How to shortlist without booking a demo

• Write down your real monthly mention volume first; it decides the tier more than the feature list does.
• Check the refresh interval on the plan you can afford, not on the plan in the screenshot.
• Count search strings the vendor's way: keywords, topics and keyword rules are three different units.
• Ask whether stored mentions are capped per topic, because that also caps how far back you can look.
• Add the seats you need at the published per-plan limits before comparing any headline prices.
• List every add-on that has no price beside it, then get those quoted in writing.

None of that requires a sales call. It requires the pricing page read line by line, which is a skill of its own, covered in how to read a social media tool pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest real social listening plan?

Of the three pages read here, Awario Starter at $29 a month billed annually, or $49 monthly, is the lowest entry price with a usable cap at 30,000 new mentions a month. Mentionlytics Basic is listed at $49 billed yearly but caps mentions at 5,000. Checked October 31, 2026.

Is a keyword the same thing as a topic?

No. Brand24 sells keywords and Awario sells topics, and Awario's page states each topic can hold unlimited keywords. Mentionlytics sells keyword rules. Comparing the raw counts across vendors will mislead you.

Why does my listening tool miss mentions?

Usually the monthly mention cap, or the refresh interval. Brand24 lists 2,000 mentions a month on Individual and an update every 12 hours. Mentionlytics lists 5,000 mentions and a 12 hour update on Basic.

Do these tools limit how much history I keep?

Awario does so explicitly, capping stored mentions per topic at 5,000 on Starter, 15,000 on Pro and 50,000 on Enterprise. Brand24 and Mentionlytics publish monthly mention volumes rather than a storage cap on the pages read here.

How much does annual billing actually save?

It varies by tier even inside one vendor. On Brand24, Individual drops from $249 to $199 a month, worth about 2.4 months a year by editorial calculation, while Business drops from $699 to $599, worth about 1.7 months.

Which plan do agencies need?

The pages tie agency work to white-label reports and client separation. Awario lists white-label reports and API access on its higher tiers, and Mentionlytics lists White Label Reports plus optional separate client accounts on Business at $624 a month billed yearly.

Bottom line

A complete listening quote names five numbers: search strings, monthly mentions, stored mentions, refresh interval and seats. All three vendors publish the first four, and all three leave at least one add-on without a figure.

Buy on the mention cap and the refresh row. The same discipline applies when counting what a vendor calls a connected account, which is unpacked in what counts as a channel in a social scheduler.

Listening also overlaps two things you may already pay for: an inbox, priced in what a unified social inbox actually costs, and client reporting, priced in what a white label client dashboard costs.

Before signing anything annual, check how the data leaves. That question is answered in what you can export from a social tool before you leave.