Best Meltwater Alternatives to Try & Test in 2026

Meltwater is one of the most established media intelligence platforms. But it’s not the only one! Below, you’ll see the curated list of the top Meltwater alternatives in terms of social listening and social media monitoring.

• The best Meltwater alternatives depends on your specific needs (more social media management vs. more social listening), your company size, and a budget.
• Top Meltwater alternatives for social listening include Brand24, Brandwatch, Mentionlytics, and Keyhole.
• The best Meltwater alternatives for social media management are Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Sprinklr.

Top 7 Meltwater alternatives:

01 Brand24

Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that tracks and analyzes brand mentions across social and non-social sources.

The tool offers a wide suite of helpful AI-powered features that allow medium-to-large businesses take care of their brand reputation, analyze sentiment, monitor competitors, and find top brand influencers.

🔑 Key features:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis that allow to uncover real emotions behind each brand mention. In addition to detecting positive, negative, or neutral sentiment, the tool identifies more sophisticated feelings (like admiration, joy, sadness, etc.)
• AI Insights, so the automated report presenting the most crucial observations, conclusions, trends, and personalized recommendations
• Storm Alerts, which act like early crisis warnings that notify users about sudden increase in mentions volume or reach
• AI Events Detector that discovers unusual spikes in your brand mentions volume or sentiment and automatically interprets them
• AI Brand Assistant, so a chatbot that is equipped with internal knowledge and that can respond to any brand-related query

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Telegram, Twitch, etc.
• News sites, blogs, podcasts, video platforms, forums, newsletters
• Over 50 review sites, including AppStore, Google Play, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Booking.com, and Capterra

🥇 Best for:

Medium-to-large sized businesses that are seeking for a comprehensive media monitoring tool.

💪 Strengths:

• AI powered features that really work and can distinctly help in getting more accurate insights fast
• Real-time monitoring that captures and analyzes mentions almost instantly
• Friendly UX, making learning the tool and its everyday use pleasant and intuitive
• Advanced filtering, allowing uses adjust dashboards and reports exactly to their needs
• Competitor analysis that allow brands to track their market rivals and benchmark their market positions.

🔻 What could be better:

• Limited access to historical data

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Brand24

	Meltwater	Brand24
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	AI-powered social listening and media monitoring across social, web, reviews, newsletters
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Best for agencies, mid-sized businesses, enterprises
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Real-time mentions tracking, AI analytics features, friendly UX, good value for money

In the last 30 days, Meltwater received about 40% more online mentions than Brand24. However, when it comes to the quality of those mentions, Brand24 enjoys a more favorable customer sentiment.

02 Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management (CXM) platform that combines social media marketing, advertising, content management, customer care, and social media monitoring.

It provides advanced tools to monitor brand mentions, analyze sentiment, and receive real-time alerts about potential crises – all of them necessary to protect brand reputation.

🔑 Key features:

• Unified and comprehensive CXM capabilities
• AI-powered social listening
• Comprehensive media monitoring (with over 400K news outlets tracked)
• Sprinklr AI Insights
• Campaign management and automations
• Multiple integrations (CRMs, BI tools, DAM, ad platforms, etc)

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, VKontakte, LinkedIn, etc.
• News sites, blogs, podcasts, video sites, forums, and review platforms
• Print publications, TV news channels, and radio broadcasts

🥇 Best for:

Sprinklr is primarily for large enterprises with complex and multi-channel media monitoring needs. It’s definitely not for freelancers and SMBs, for whom the platform’s complexity and pricing are too much.

💪 Strengths:

• Huge channel coverage – Sprinklr monitors a vast amount of social & non-social sources, providing comprehensive coverage of brand mentions
• Powerful AI and analytics – real-time data, AI-powered features, and a highly accurate sentiment analysis
• Unified and scalable workflows – a single interface with customizable dashboards

🔻 What could be better:

• Steep learning curve – you require a lot of time to learn Sprinklr and find the ideal way it can help your organization
• Occasional data gaps – users occasionally report missing data and analytics flaws

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Sprinklr

	Meltwater	Sprinklr
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Enterprise customer experience & social listening
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Enterprises and global brands scaling CXM and media monitoring
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Enterprise-level social media management, customer experience and customer care

According to the Brand24 comparison feature, Sprinklr is a slightly more recognizable tool than Meltwater (42 vs. 39 Presence Score).

Moreover, Sprinklr drives more intense emotions. I would not say “you love it or hate it”, but – compared to Meltwater – it generates stronger opinions, both positive and negative.

03 Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics tool that aims to monitor online presence and gain customer insights from online conversations.

It offers AI-powered tools to track brand mentions, analyze sentiment shifts & trends, and manage social media in real time. 

Overall, Brandwatch combines customer intelligence, social media management, and media monitoring in one suite.

🔑 Key features:

• Social listening across over 100 million online sources
• Unified content calendar to schedule and manage all organic and paid posts in one place
• Social inbox that consolidates messages from all networks into a single inbox for a better customer service and engagement
• Competitive analytics to benchmark your brand’s social performance against competitors to discover share of voice and industry trends
• Influencer identification to discover relevant voices for brand collaborations and campaign partnerships 

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, etc.
• Blogs, forums, news sites, TV, radio, review platforms, other websites

🥇 Best for:

Mid-to-large enterprises and agencies that need advanced social intelligence, rather than small businesses or individual users.

💪 Strengths:

• Excessive data coverage, including about 1.6 trillion historical conversations (dating back to 2010)
• Great analytics and visuals that present key metrics in a friendly and clear way
• All-in-one solution, combining listening, publishing, engagement, and influencer mangagement from one platform

🔻 What could be better:

• High cost, making it available only to organizations with significant budgets
• Feature limitations, such as low customization of dashboards and real-time data updates lags

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Brandwatch

	Meltwater	Brandwatch
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Consumer intelligence platform, social listening, analytics
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Mid and large companies, enterprises, research and insight teams
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Consumer intelligence and trend spotting beyond mentions

Meltwater and Brandwatch go head to head. While Brandwatch enjoys a slightly higher volume of mentions, it’s Meltwater that reaches more customers.

Further read: Brandwatch alternatives

04 Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management tool that helps manage all your social accounts from one place.

It includes a suite of tools and features for scheduling and publishing content, messaging, analyzing social media performance, and social listening capabilities.

🔑 Key features:

• Unified inbox to see and respond to messages, comments, and mentions from multiple social networks
• Content calendar and scheduling posts to plan and automate content publishing
• Social listening to monitor brand mentions
• Analytics and reporting dashboards to track engagement metrics, audience growth, and content performance
• Team collaboration to improve the workflow

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and more
• News sites, blogs, forums, and review platforms

🥇 Best for:

Mid- to large-sized businesses and enterprises, as well as marketing agencies that require powerful social media management. A bit too complex and expensive for individual creators, freelancers, and small businesses.

💪 Strengths:

• User-friendly interface with its clean and well-organized dashboards
• Comprehensiveness when it comes to social media management 
• Great social media analytics

🔻 What could be better:

• High pricing – especially for smaller organizations
• Limited features on lower plans – more advanced analytics, social listening, and some automation tools are available only on higher-tier plans

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Sprout Social

	Meltwater	Sprout Social
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Comprehensive social media management, post scheduling, analytics
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Mid-sized teams and brands and marketing agencies
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Clean UX, combines publishing, analytics, and social listening capabilities

The comparison of Meltwater’s and Sprout Social’s brand visibility shows that Sprout Social enjoys a much higher online exposure.

However, it’s worth to note that Meltwater has a higher share of positive mentions than its market rival.

Further read: Sprout Social alternatives

05 Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps manage multiple social media accounts from a single tool.

In practice, it enables scheduling social media posts, real-time monitoring, analyzing social media performance, and so on.

🔑 Key features:

• Scheduling and automations to plan social media posts ahead and automate publishing across multiple platforms
• Customizable reports to track engagement, reach, and audience growth
• Team collaboration via shared dashboards, role-based permissions, and content approvals
• Social listening by monitoring social and non-social media sources
• Various integrations, including Canva, Google Drive, Slack, and much more

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Bluesky
• Websites, blogs, forums, video sites, podcasts, images, etc.

🥇 Best for:

Due to Hootsuite’s scalability and flexibility in terms of plan offers, it is suitable for solo entrepreneurs, small businesses, medium organizations, and even large companies.

💪 Strengths:

• Social media all-in-one platform to manage social accounts, schedule content, measure engagement, and analyze performance
• Bulk scheduling that significantly reduces time spent on manual posting
• Advanced analytics and automated reports, including dozens of metrics and insights

🔻 What could be better:

• Complex interface, making navigation and learning pretty difficult
• Add-on costs, as most advanced features are available at an extra money

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Hootsuite

	Meltwater	Hootsuite
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Social media management and monitoring across social and non-social sources
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Medium-to-large businesses focused on managing their social presence
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Good for broad social management, strong for scheduling and publishing

Hootsuite is definitely one of the most recognizable social media tools. Therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised that it overcomes Meltwater in terms of online visibility.

06 Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a media monitoring tool that tracks and analyzes brand mentions across the internet. With its robust AI capabilities, Mentionlytics is an interesting alternative to Meltwater.

🔑 Key features:

• Comprehensive monitoring of social media platforms and websites
• AI-powered analytics that automatically tags mention sentiment (positive, neutral, negative), detect anomalies, and cluster related mentions by topics
• Customizable reports and dashboards with key metrics like share of voice, reach, and engagement
• Social Intelligence Advisor (SIA), which is a personal AI advisor that analyzes your mentions and provides actionable insights and recommendations to improve your online presence

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, and BlueSky
• News sites, blogs, forums, review platforms, and other websites

🥇 Best for:

Mentionlytics is a good choice for small and mid-sized businesses and marketing agencies looking to manage their online presence and reputation.

💪 Strengths:

• Wide coverage including popular social networks and emerging, niche platforms like Threads or Bluesky
• Advanced AI features, including AI-powered sentiment & emotion analysis, mention clustering, and anomaly detection, that simplify analysis and uncover insights
• User-friendly & insightful, by delivering highly accurate data and actionable insights without a complex interface

🔻 What could be better:

• Learning curve – Mentionlytics can have a steep learning curve for new users, requiring some time and guidance to master all features
• Keyword filtering limits – some users report limited control over filtering keywords, leading to occasional irrelevant or duplicate mentions that cannot be easily excluded

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Mentionlytics

	Meltwater	Mentionlytics
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Social and non-social media monitoring and sentiment analysis tool
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Small to mid-size businesses needing brand monitoring
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Broad web & social monitoring with good sentiment analysis and brand reputation focus

It’s obvious that Meltwater is a much more recognizable solution than Mentionlytics. However, it’s worth to note Mentionlytics’ positive reputation.

07 Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media analytics and monitoring tool that helps marketers track their impact and engagement on social media. 

Above all, it enables social listening, hashtag tracking, and influencer analytics across major social networks, allowing users to measure campaign performance and prove their social media ROI

🔑 Key features:

• Real-time social listening to monitor brand mentions, keywords, and hashtags across social media and beyond
• Hashtag analytics & tracking that allows discovering their volume trends and even predictive analytics to forecast campaign performance
• Influencer identification to find key brand advocates, filter them by location or keywords, and analyze their engagement impact
• Competitor benchmarking to compare your social performance against competitors with metrics like share of voice

🔍 Monitored sources:

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn
• News sites, blogs, and forums

🥇 Best for:

Keyhole is a good choice for small and medium businesses focused on tracking social media campaigns, events, and influencer partnerships.

💪 Strengths:

• Influencer tracking metrics, making Keyhole a good fit for brands engaging in multiple collaborations
• Strong hashtag analytics, including predictive analysis

🔻 What could be better:

• Data accuracy, as users and reviewers occasionally report data mistakes
• Limited historical data that covers only two weeks of past datax

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Keyhole

	Meltwater	Keyhole
Primary scope	Broad media intelligence: news, social media, print media, broadcasts, podcasts	Social media analytics and listening
Best for	Mid and large companies, enterprises, large PR and communications teams	Medium businesses and agencies looking for social media management, publishing, and listening solution
Strength highlights	Wide global coverage, deep media intelligence focus	Campaign-centric approach, detailed social metrics

Compared to Meltwater, Keyhole is a niche tool with a low-volume brand perception and recognizability.

Further read: Keyhole alternatives

FAQ

What is Meltwater?

Meltwater is a media intelligence tool that helps in managing multiple aspects of online presence, including media monitoring, social listening, public relations, social media management, influencer marketing, and analytics.

The platform aggregates data from social media, news outlets, blogs, and broadcast channels providing insights on brand performance and reputation.

What are the core features of Meltwater?

• Multi-channel media monitoring by tracking brand mentions across social and non-social sources, as well as traditional media (radio, TV)
• Social listening by providing real-time data & insights on brand conversations
• Media outreach due to a global media contacts database and press release distribution capabilities
• Social media management by scheduling and publishing posts across major social platforms from a single dashboard
• Influencer marketing through influencer discovery, running influencer campaign, real-time analytics and tracking ROI from partnerships

What sources does Meltwater monitor?

• Social media – Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitch, Pinterest, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.
• News outlets, blogs, forums, podcasts, video platforms
• TV, radio channels, newspapers, other print publications