What each one costs, read from the vendor
Every figure below came from the vendor’s own pricing page on 16 September 2026, not from another comparison. Where a price is only offered on an annual plan, that is said rather than converted. Pricing here changes without notice, so check the date on any comparison you read, including this one.
| Tool | Plan priced here | Per month | Keywords | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F5Bot | Goldmonthly | $49.99 | 200 | Yes, $0 forever |
| KWatch.io | Businessmonthly | $79.00 | 100 | Yes, $0 tier |
| RedShip | Starterbilled yearly | $29.00 | 10 | No, $12 seven-day pass |
| Syften | Standardmonthly | $49.95 | 20 | No, 14-day trial without a card |
| Awario | Starterbilled annually, $49 monthly | $29.00 | not sold that way | No |
| OctoLens | Probilled annually | $159 | 10 | No, free trial |
| Brand24 | Individualbilled annually, $249 monthly | $199 | 3 | No |
| Hootsuite | Standardbilled annually, per user | $99.00 | not sold that way | No, 14-day trial |
| Sprout Social | Standardper seat, monthly | $199 | not sold that way | No, free trial |
IdeaFast is not in this table. It is Reddit research with no alerting and no listening dashboard, so it does not belong in a listening comparison. More on that at the end.
Cost per keyword, which nobody publishes
Every roundup compares features. None of them normalise the price against what you are allowed to watch, which is the number that decides your bill. Divide each published plan by the keywords it permits and the category stops looking like one market.
| Plan | Per month | Keywords | Per keyword |
|---|---|---|---|
| F5Bot Gold | $49.99 | 200 | $0.25 |
| KWatch.io Business | $79.00 | 100 | $0.79 |
| Syften Standard | $49.95 | 20 | $2.50 |
| RedShip Starter | $29.00 | 10 | $2.90 |
| OctoLens Pro | $159 | 10 | $15.90 |
| Brand24 Individual | $199 | 3 | $66.33 |
F5Bot Gold at $0.25 a keyword against Brand24 Individual at $66.33 is a gap of about 265 times for something that reads the same public posts.
That is not proof the expensive end is a rip-off. The money at the top buys sentiment scoring, share of voice, reporting, seats, compliance and coverage far beyond Reddit and Hacker News, and if you need those, the cheap rows genuinely cannot do the job. What it does show is that if all you want is to know when a handful of phrases appear, you are choosing between a few dollars a month and a few hundred, and the feature lists will not tell you that.
Awario, Hootsuite and Sprout Social are absent from this second table on purpose. Awario sells topics with unlimited keywords inside each, and the other two do not put listening inside a published plan at all, so a per-keyword figure for any of the three would be invented rather than computed.
Three big names publish no price at all
This is the reason the cost question goes unanswered. Checked in a browser on 16 September 2026, because naming a company as hiding its pricing ought to be right:
Brandwatch
Page titled "Pricing & Plans for Every Team". No dollar figure anywhere on it. The heading is "Choose the solution that is right for you" and the action is "Request your Brandwatch demo".
Talkwalker
Three named tiers, Core, Analyze and Business, under the heading "Pick your plan to get a custom quote". No dollar figure on the page.
Mention
No dollar figure. The page reads "Enterprise-Grade Social Intelligence for Your Business" and offers "Get a demo". Mention used to be one of the cheaper published options in this category.
Two more belong in this section for a subtler reason. Hootsuite publishes Standard at $99, Professional at $199 and Advanced at $399 per user, but its own plan page puts advanced listening in Enterprise, which is custom priced. Sprout Social publishes $199, $299 and $399 per seat, and then says Listening is an add-on to Standard and up, with a demo request instead of a number.
So both appear on this search with published pricing, and neither price includes the thing being searched for. That is worth knowing before you sit through a demo.
Which “free” is actually free
“Free social listening tools” is one of the most searched phrases in this category and the roundups answering it mix three different things together. Separating them, as of 16 September 2026:
- Free and open. F5Bot’s $0 tier and KWatch.io’s $0 tier. An email address, no card, and they keep working.
- Free but gated. Talkwalker’s Free Social Search exists and is genuinely free to use, but the page asks for your first name, last name and contact details before you get to it.
- Not free, a trial. Syften, Hootsuite, Sprout Social and OctoLens offer trials, typically 14 days. Several roundups list these under “free” without saying so. A trial expires; a free tier is still running next year when you have forgotten about it.
If what you want is one keyword watched indefinitely without a card on file, the honest list is short and it does not include most of the brands on this page.
How much conversation are you actually buying coverage of?
Nearly every tool here lists Reddit as a source, and how well each one covers it is not something you can check from a pricing page. What you can check is how much is being written there, which is what the mention caps have to absorb.
Measured on 16 September 2026 with the code behind our subreddit stats tool, six startup and business communities produced 34,205 posts and comments in a single week: r/SaaS 12,109, r/smallbusiness 11,348, r/webdev 5,076, r/startups 2,476, r/Entrepreneur 2,335 and r/marketing 861.
Brand24’s cheapest published plan allows 2,000 matched mentions a month, roughly 460 a week. Those caps count matches, not raw volume, so they are not the same number. What the comparison tells you is how narrow a keyword each vendor is pricing for. A 2,000-a-month allowance assumes a rare brand name. Point a common phrase at communities producing 34,205 contributions a week and the cap, not the feature list, decides what you pay.
Pick the keywords first, check how busy the places are, then pick the plan.
Where IdeaFast sits, which is not on this list
IdeaFast is ours and it is not a social listening tool. It reads a Reddit community’s recent posts, groups the ones describing the same underlying problem, scores each group from 0 to 100 on how acute, frequent and recent it is, and links the original threads under every claim.
No alerts, no sentiment dashboard, no share of voice, no real time, and it never posts. If you need to know when your brand is mentioned, one of the tools above will serve you and nothing we sell will. We wrote this page because the price comparison did not exist in an honest form, not to insert ourselves into it.
We also have not used all 12 products here, and we are not pretending otherwise. Everything above is what each vendor publishes, read on one day and dated so you can check it yourself.
If the research half is what you actually wanted:
- Scored problems in r/SaaS: a finished result, free, no account
- Reddit monitoring tools compared: the Reddit-only alerting tools, prices checked the same day
- Reddit research tools compared: for working out what to build rather than what to reply to
- Subreddit stats: check the weekly volume of any community before you pick a plan
Frequently asked questions
How much do social listening tools cost?
From $0 to $499 a month among the tools that publish a price, read on 16 September 2026. F5Bot free to $49.99, KWatch.io free to $199, RedShip $29 to $49 billed yearly, Syften $29.95 to $119.95, Awario from $29 billed annually, OctoLens $159 to $499 billed annually, Brand24 from $199 billed annually, Hootsuite $99 to $399 per user, Sprout Social $199 to $399 per seat. Brandwatch, Talkwalker and Mention publish no price at all and ask you to book a demo.
What is the best free social listening tool?
F5Bot has a genuinely free tier at $0 with no card, covering Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters. KWatch.io also publishes a free tier. Talkwalker has a Free Social Search, but it sits behind a form asking for your name and contact details, so free is not the same as open. Most other "free" entries in this category are 14-day trials, not free tiers. Checked 16 September 2026.
Which social listening tools do not publish their pricing?
Brandwatch, Talkwalker and Mention, checked in a browser on 16 September 2026. Brandwatch's pricing page carries no dollar figure and offers a demo. Talkwalker names three tiers, Core, Analyze and Business, under "Pick your plan to get a custom quote". Mention's pricing page has no figure either. Hootsuite and Sprout Social publish plan prices but not listening: Hootsuite puts advanced listening in custom-priced Enterprise, and Sprout sells Listening as an add-on whose price is a demo request.
What is the cheapest way to monitor keywords?
Measured per keyword allowed, from published plans on 16 September 2026, the spread across this category is about 265 times. F5Bot Gold works out at $0.25 per keyword a month, Brand24 Individual at $66.33. The expensive end buys sentiment, reporting, seats and coverage beyond Reddit and Hacker News, so it is not simply worse value, but almost nobody publishes the comparison.
What is the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Vendors use them loosely and often interchangeably. In practice monitoring means alerting on a keyword, and listening means the wider analysis layer on top: sentiment, share of voice, trend and topic clustering. The distinction matters mainly because listening is what sits behind the expensive tiers, while alerting is available for a few dollars a month.
Do social listening tools cover Reddit?
Most list Reddit as a source, and coverage depth is the part you cannot check from a pricing page. What you can check is how much is being written. Six startup and business communities on Reddit produced 34,205 posts and comments in one week when we measured them on 16 September 2026. A plan capped at 2,000 matched mentions a month is built for a rare brand name, not a common phrase in busy communities.
Is a free trial the same as a free tier?
No, and this category blurs it constantly. A free tier keeps working after you stop paying attention to it. A trial expires, usually in 14 days, and several tools listed in free roundups only offer the latter. If you want something that keeps watching a keyword for years without a card on file, the list is short.
Does IdeaFast do social listening?
No, which is why it is not ranked among the tools here. IdeaFast reads a community's recent Reddit posts, groups the ones describing the same underlying problem, scores each group and links the original threads. There is no alerting, no sentiment dashboard, no share of voice and nothing real time. If you need to be told when your brand is mentioned, pick one of the tools above.