Blog / Digital Marketing

Top 5 Mention Alternatives: A Detailed Comparison for 2026

Updated: January 23, 2026

12 min read

Mention is one of the best – but not the only – media monitoring software. In this article, we’re discussing and comparing the 5 best alternatives to this tool in detail.

Quick summary of Mention alternatives

Below, you can see a quick, straight-to-the point table summarizing the top 5 Mention alternatives.

Tool	Best for	Top strengths	What could be better
Brand24	Medium and large brands and enterprises	• AI-driven insights • Accurate sentiment • LLM visibility tracking	• Advanced features on higher plans
Meltwater	Global enterprises	• Massive media coverage • PR & influencer suite • Advanced analytics	• Very high cost • Steep learning curve
Sprout Social	Social-oriented medium and large businesses	• Strong social analytics • All-in-one workflow • Collaboration features	• Expensive listening add-on • Overwhelming for basics
Hootsuite	Enterprises	• Broad source coverage • Unified social platform • Powerful analytics	• Listening costs extra • Limited historical data
Awario	Small-to-medium brands	• Affordable monitoring • Real-time alerts • Lead discovery	• Lower sentiment accuracy • Less intuitive UI

Top 5 Mention alternatives:

01 Brand24

Brand24 is a media monitoring and social listening tool that lets you track and analyze online conversations in real time. It is known for its strong sentiment analysis, broad coverage, and powerful AI features. 

Besides, Brand24 enables you to monitor LLMs and measure your AI brand visibility in AI-generated responses across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

🔑 Key features:

• AI Brand Assistant – a ChatGPT-style interface that allows you to ask and receive details about your brand performance
• Presence Score – a snapshot metric presenting your current brand popularity on a scale of 0 to 100
• AI Events Detector – automatically flags unusual spikes in brand mentions volume and/or sentiment, and identifies the root cause
• Smart Context Search – AI filter that helps you analyze all brand mentions based on their meaning and intent
• AI Visibility – tracks and analyzes your performance across the most popular AI models and presents key AI visibility metrics, such as brand score, median position, or key sources for your brand prompts

🔎 Monitored sources:

• Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Telegram, Twitch, and Bluesky
• News sites, blogs, podcasts, video platforms, forums, newsletters, review sites

⭐ Best for:

• Medium to large businesses looking for comprehensive media monitoring and social listening capabilities

💪 Strengths:

• Multiple well-designed and helpful AI features that streamline getting meaningful media monitoring and sentiment analysis insights
• Friendly UX and easy learning curve
• LLM monitoring that helps you to understand your brand presence in AI chatbot responses

👎 What could be better:

• Lack of historical data
• Some more advanced features are reserved for higher-tier plans

Comparison: Mention vs. Brand24

Category	Brand24	Mention
Best for	Medium to large businesses	Enterprises and large teams
Key strengths	AI-driven insights with accurate sentiment & emotion analysis. AI Brand Assistant and Presence Score turn large data sets into actionable insights.	Real-time alerts and extensive monitoring. Strong collaboration and benchmarking tools support enterprise needs.

02 Meltwater

Meltwater is a comprehensive media intelligence platform that offers powerful media monitoring, along with a suite of PR, social media, and analytics tools. 

It stands out for its global coverage across traditional and digital media, powered by advanced AI-driven insights and analytics capabilities. 

In addition to tracking online mentions, Meltwater lets you manage your social media presence, send press releases, and engage in influencer marketing.

🔑 Key features:

• Multi-channel monitoring & alerts – tracks brand mentions in real time across online news, social networks, print, broadcast (TV/radio), and podcasts, with customizable instant alerts for spikes or crises.
• Media relations (PR suite) – built-in media database for journalist contacts and outlets, plus press release distribution to manage PR outreach and media lists.
• Mira AI assistant – a generative AI feature that analyzes coverage to explain what’s driving conversations and summarize trends.
• Influencer discovery & management – to identify relevant influencers and creators, manage influencer campaigns, and track their performance & ROI.

🔎 Monitored sources:

• Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, and even region-specific channels like KakaoTalk and LINE
• News sites, blogs, podcasts, video platforms, forums, review sites, traditional media (TV and radio)

⭐ Best for:

• Large enterprises, global brands, and PR teams that need an all-in-one media intelligence solution with broad coverage and in-depth analytics.

💪 Strengths:

• Extremely broad media coverage – global coverage across news, social media, broadcast, and other channels, providing a 360° view of brand mentions.
• All-in-one platform – a combination of media monitoring with PR outreach, influencer marketing, social publishing, and more in one interface. This integrated toolkit supports enterprise workflows without needing separate tools.
• Advanced analytics & AI – dashboards with custom reports, sentiment analysis, and AI-generated insights. 

👎 What could be better:

• High cost & no transparent pricing – Meltwater is a premium solution with expensive plans (often over $15,000 per year). Pricing isn’t disclosed publicly, and a sales demo is needed, which can be an obstacle for smaller budgets.
• Steep learning curve – new users report that the interface isn’t always intuitive and requires time to master all functionalities.
• Not ideal for small teams – many features may be overkill for small businesses or basic needs. Without a free trial it’s less accessible to SMBs looking for a simpler media monitoring tool.

Comparison: Meltwater vs. Mention

Category	Meltwater	Mention
Best for	Enterprises and global organizations with high PR, communications, and media monitoring needs.	Enterprises and large teams looking for real-time monitoring and collaboration.
Key strengths	Wide-ranging media intelligence coverage (news, social, broadcast) and deep analytics with AI insights. Integrated PR tools that work well with enterprise communications.	Real-time alerts and extensive monitoring across social and web. Strong collaboration and benchmarking features support enterprise needs.

📚 Further read: Meltwater alternatives

03 Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform that also offers powerful social listening and analytics features. 

It enables brands to monitor online conversations in real time and gain actionable insights, combining publishing, engagement, and listening tools into a single suite.

🔑 Key features:

• Social listening analytics – including sentiment analysis, emerging trends and keywords, competitor analysis through share of voice metrics, and campaign analysis.
• Sprout’s AI Assist – a feature that can summarize listening topics in simple language, suggest relevant keywords, and automatically identify sentiment. It also provides spike alerts for sudden changes in mention volume or sentiment.
• Integrated platform workflow – social listening is a part of Sprout Social’s broader toolkit. As so, it allows you to quickly switch between monitoring data and social media management (i.e., content scheduling)
• Flexible query builder – Sprout makes it easy to set up complex listening queries (Topics) with a no-code builder. Users can include keywords, hashtags, boolean logic, exclusions, and filters to adjust the results.

🔎 Monitored sources:

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

⭐ Best for:

• Mid to large organizations and agencies that need an all-in-one social media suite with advanced analytics.

💪 Strengths:

• Comprehensive analytics and insights – a rich analysis of social conversations, including automated sentiment tagging, trend detection, and competitor comparison
• All-in-one platform synergy – the integration of listening with Sprout’s broader social management features. In practice, it allows you to monitor, engage, and analyze from a single dashboard.
• Collaboration & scalability – you can assign tasks, share listening insights with other departments, and manage many social profiles at once. 

👎 What could be better:

• High cost of entry – Sprout Social’s listening is only available as a premium add-on (approximately $999+ per month on top of the regular plan). This pricing places it at the high end of the market. 
• Overkill for simple needs – as a comprehensive platform, Sprout Social can be overwhelming if you only need straightforward media monitoring.

Comparison: Mention vs. Sprout Social

	Mention	Sprout Social
Best for	Small to mid-sized teams that need quite simple and relatively cheap monitoring across web and social.	Medium to large organizations that want an all-in-one social media management suite with advanced listening analytics and multi-team collaboration.
Key strengths	Offers fast alerts and tracks multiple (social media, news, forums, reviews) in real time.	Comprehensive feature set that combines robust listening (sentiment, trend & competitor analysis) with publishing, CRM, and collaboration tools in one platform.

📚 Further read: Sprout Social alternatives

04 Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a popular all-in-one social media management tool that goes beyond scheduling and analytics by offering integrated social listening features.

You can say that Hootsuite serves as a “social media command central,” because it serves organizations to run their entire social media presence – including monitoring online conversations – from one dashboard.

🔑 Key features:

• Multi-channel monitoring – it allows you to create custom streams and alerts to track brand mentions across multiple social networks in real time.
• Advanced sentiment analysis – Hootsuite uses AI to analyze sentiment and spot trends at scale. In practice, it can analyze mentions across 150+ million sources in 180+ languages and even detect brand mentions in images, videos, and podcasts
• Competitive and trend insights – the listening module allows you to benchmark against competitors and identify industry trends. You can track competitors’ mentions & brand health, and visualize trending topics or hashtags in your space.

🔎 Monitored sources:

• Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, and region-specific channels (i.e., LINE)
• News sites, blogs, forums, review sites, video sites, podcasts, print (newspapers), and broadcast (TV, radio) media

⭐ Best for:

• Medium- to large-sized organizations – especially enterprise social media teams – that want comprehensive social media management with built-in listening.

💪 Strengths:

• Broad coverage and language support – Hootsuite monitors over 150 million sources across 239 countries and 30+ social channels in over 180 languages. 
• Unified platform for management and listening – social listening is integrated into Hootsuite’s all-in-one platform. The same tool handles your post scheduling, ads, DMs, and analytics, as well as monitoring. 
• Strong analytics and insights – Hootsuite provides powerful analytics, from AI-driven sentiment analysis to trending topic identification. It works great for spotting spikes in mention volume or sentiment shifts and benchmarking them against competitors. 

👎 What could be better:

• Cost of advanced listening – listening features often require an Enterprise plan or add-on, which can make it more expensive than specialized tools.
• Historical data limitations: Compared to dedicated monitoring services, Hootsuite’s historical data retrieval is limited (ranging from 28 days up to 12 months of past data, depending on plan).

Comparison: Mention vs. Hootsuite

Aspect	Hootsuite	Mention
Best for	Enterprise social media teams that need an all-in-one management platform with integrated social listening	PR and marketing teams focused on brand monitoring and online reputation management across social and web channels.
Key strengths	Comprehensive social media suite that combines scheduling, engagement, and listening in one dashboard; extremely broad source coverage.	Specialized in listening and mention analytics with real-time alerts as a core feature; covers a vast number of sources (social media, news, blogs, forums) with powerful filtering options and sentiment analysis.

05 Awario

Awario is a social listening and media monitoring tool that helps you track how people discuss your brand, products, competitors, or industry across the internet in real time. 

It’s designed for reputation management, audience insights, and competitor monitoring, and is often considered a powerful but more affordable alternative to enterprise-focused tools.

🔑 Key features:

• Real-time mentions feed – continuously scans and updates with new mentions of your brand or keywords from across the web and social networks.
• Sentiment analysis & analytics – classifies mentions as positive, negative, or neutral and provides metrics on trends, reach & audience engagement signals.
• Influencer discovery & competitor tracking – identifies influencers & creators, and tracks competitors’ mentions.
• Lead generation – classifies potential customers based on monitored conversations.

🔎 Monitored sources:

• Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Reddit, YouTube, and Vimeo
• News sites, blogs, forums, review platforms, etc.

⭐ Best for:

• Small to mid-sized businesses, marketing teams, and agencies that need efficient brand monitoring and social listening without the complexity or price of large enterprise solutions.

💪 Strengths:

• Broad web and social coverage – Awario crawls millions of web pages and social sources so you can catch diverse mentions in one place.
• Actionable insights – real-time alerts, sentiment scoring, and filtering options help you understand brand perception and respond quickly.
• Value-oriented – offers accurate monitoring and analytics at a competitive entry level, making it accessible even for smaller teams.

👎 What could be better:

• Sentiment analysis accuracy varies – some users report sentiment classification that’s less accurate compared with higher-end tools.
• UI and reliability – Awario’s interface is sometimes seen as a bit messy, and mention filtering/organization can be less intuitive than in other platforms.

Comparison: Awario vs. Mention

Category	Awario	Mention
Best for	Small–mid-sized businesses and agencies needing broad social & web monitoring.	Marketing & PR teams focused on dedicated, real-time brand monitoring with strong sentiment and reporting tools.
Key strengths	Real-time web & social crawling plus sentiment analysis and lead discovery.	Comprehensive multi-source monitoring and deep filtering with strong reporting and alerting.

📚 Further read: Awario alternatives

FAQ

What is Mention?

Mention is a media monitoring and social listening tool that helps you track brand mentions, keywords, and competitor performance across online conversations in real-time.

What are the core features of Mention?

• Real-time monitoring and alerts – by setting up a keyword-based project, you receive instant notifications and insights whenever their brand, competitors, or other defined topics are mentioned online
• Social listening – Mention provides in-depth analysis of mentions’ volume, reach, sentiment, share of voice, and other metrics
• Social media management – you can manage multiple channels from a single tool, including content scheduling, analysis, and direct interactions
• Influencer analysis – Mention allows you to identify key brand voices speaking about you both in a positive and negative way
• Competitive analysis – you can track your competitors’ mentions and benchmark your performance with them

What sources does Mention monitor?

• Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok
• News sites, blogs, forums, video platforms, and review sites

Is Mention a cost-effective tool?

Mention is generally considered a quite cost-effective tool for medium-to-large brands seeking a balance between advanced social listening features and a pretty friendly price.

Nowadays, a complete monitoring solution with social listening starts at $599 a month.

Also, Mention is one of the few media monitoring tools that still offer a free trial (30 days).