The 11 Best AI Social Media Monitoring Tools to Try in 2025

About 5.5 BILLION people worldwide use social media, and more than 2 BILLION posts are published daily. How can you handle such a large amount of information? The answer is: use social media monitoring tools.

Social media monitoring tools track, gather, and analyze mentions and conversations across social media platforms. They assist in keeping track of what people say about a brand, product, service, person, or any particular subject of interest in real-time.

These tools present the key social media metrics, such as reach, sentiment score, volume of mentions, likes, shares, and AVE.

There are many tools available on the market. Even though they look similar, they vary greatly.

To make your choice easier, I’ve picked the 11 best social media tracking tools!

Table of contents:

• What is a social media monitoring tool?
• Best AI social media monitoring tools
• Free social media monitoring tools
• Key features of a social monitoring tool
• Can you monitor social media mentions manually without using dedicated tools?
• Why do brands use social monitoring tools?
• Conclusion

What is a social media monitoring tool?

A social media monitoring tool is software that tracks, collects, and analyzes mentions of your brand, products, hashtags, marketing campaigns, competitors, or anything related to your business across social media platforms.

But that’s not everything!

Some tools also monitor other sources, such as news sites, blogs, forums, podcasts, newsletters, and other various websites.

Many social monitoring tools have advanced analytical features that provide valuable insights about the keywords you are tracking.

How can you use social media monitoring tools?

There are various applications of social media monitoring tools in business, such as:

• Social media analysis: Collect the most valuable social data and get actionable AI insights to improve your social media strategy.
• Competitor analysis: Keep an eye on your competitors’ activities and compare their performance with yours.
• Measure campaign effectiveness: Analyze the success of your marketing campaigns by monitoring their reach, sentiment, and advertising value equivalency (AVE).
• Social media trends identification: Discover emerging industry trends and popular topics across different platforms.
• PR crisis management: Quickly identify and address potential PR issues before they escalate.
• Brand reputation management: Monitor the sentiment of mentions and respond to both positive and negative ones quickly.

Best AI social media monitoring tools

I curated this list based on my own experience and reviews from platforms like G2, Capterra, and Reddit:

01 Brand24

Free 14-day trial.

Brand24 is one of the most advanced social listening and media monitoring tools.

This AI tool collects social mentions in real-time across the most important social media (Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and more) and other sources, including:

• News sites
• Blogs and forums
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• and much more!

No matter what your priority is – monitoring social media conversations, tracking hashtags, analyzing your competitors, or evaluating the results of your marketing campaign?

Brand24’s user-friendly dashboard has it all!

You get access to:

• Mentions tab with advanced filters – you can easily track mentions across social media, which enables you to focus on what matters the most
• Sentiment analysis – automatically assigns sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) to every detected mention
• Social media reach – see how many people have seen posts with your brand on social media
• Advanced AI features such as:
  • Anomaly Detector – quickly detects sudden spikes in mentions & reach and provides explanations for why these changes occurred
  • Brand Assistant – works like ChatGPT but tailored to your project
  • Topic Analysis – uncovers the key topics related to your brand
  • Metrics Analysis – offers detailed insights into your social media performance
  • Emotion Analysis – analyzes the emotional tone of mentions to give you a deeper understanding of public sentiment
• AI insights and recommendations – you get automated insights and actionable recommendations based on your brand’s performance
• Top public profiles – you can discover key influencers who are talking about your brand and find potential collaboration opportunities
• Reputation and presence score – assess your brand’s reputation and visibility across different platforms
• Custom reports – generate tailored reports whenever you need to share insights with supervisors or clients

Let me show you my favorite Brand24’s feature – AI Brand Assistant 🤖

You can ask “him” literally anything!

It’s like having your own personal assistant, but even smarter… and unlike a real assistant, “he” won’t take coffee breaks or ask for a raise!

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Instagram
• X (Twitter)
• Facebook
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• Quora
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Telegram
• Twitch
• Pinterest

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Brand24 is perfect for medium and large companies that are looking for the highest-quality social media monitoring tool at a competitive price.

💪 Strengths:

1. It has many powerful AI features, thanks to which you get in-depth analysis and valuable insights with just a few clicks.
2. The notification system is very advanced. You receive alerts in the dashboard, app, via email, or even through a dedicated Slack channel.

👎 What could be better:

Historical data is quite limited; data collection begins once you set up your project.

Here’s what people say about Brand24 on G2:

“Brand24 allows me to track mentions of my brand, products, or services across social media, blogs, forums, and other online sources in real-time. This helps me stay informed about conversations and respond promptly to customers or potential customers.

The platform provides sentiment analysis, which helps me understand the overall tone of the discussions surrounding my brand. This information is valuable for refining my marketing strategy and addressing any negative sentiment that may arise.”

Lukasz Z., SEO Expert and Consultant

02 Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media monitoring tool that is also a social media management platform.

It will help you in many areas, from brand monitoring, through hashtag tracking to influencer marketing.

The tool offers sentiment analysis and other valuable features, such as:

• Tracking audience engagement
• Measuring the reach of your posts
• Highlighting influential accounts

Unfortunately, you need to buy the most expensive plan to fully benefit from Keyhole social listening features and access all monitored sources – and honestly, there aren’t many sources anyway 😢

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• TikTok

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Keyhole is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses that care the most about tracking hashtags and campaigns.

💪 Strengths:

1. It provides a very easy-to-use hashtag tracker that works exceptionally well.

👎 What could be better:

This tool monitors only six major social media channels, skipping one of the most important: Reddit and Pinterest.

Check: Keyhole Competitors

03 Hootsuite

Hootsuite is mainly a social media management platform. It offers robust social media analytics and a scheduling section.

The advanced social listening features are add-ons available only in the enterprise plan.

With this tool, you can:

• Receive sentiment analysis of your brand mentions
• Track your social media presence and performance
• Create and manage different campaigns, including ads campaigns
• Schedule posts and publish content

What’s great about Hootsuite is that you can engage with social media posts, mentions, or incoming messages directly within this tool.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• TikTok

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Hootsuite is a great choice for those who mainly need a social media management platform and treat the mentions tracking as an additional feature.

💪 Strengths:

1. It’s a comprehensive platform that allows you to effectively manage your social media channels while also monitoring social platforms.
2. It provides historical data from the past 13 months.

👎 What could be better:

Most social listening features are only included in the enterprise plan, the most expensive plan.

04 Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another social media management tool that offers social media monitoring.

It will let you uncover audience insights from online conversations and improve your social media strategy.

With this tool, you can:

• Monitor different keywords and hashtags
• Discover audience sentiment toward them
• Identify content that sparks people’s interest
• Manage your social media accounts

Remember that Sprout Social’s monitoring features are only available as individual add-ons in any plan.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• X (Twitter)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Reddit

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Sprout Social is designed for medium and big companies that are able to pay extra for monitoring capabilities.

💪 Strengths:

1. It has many management and publishing features. All of them are advanced but, at the same time, easy to use.

👎 What could be better:

As Sprout Social excels in social media management, its monitoring features are less developed, yet you still have to pay extra for them.

Want to find something cheaper than Sprout Social? Check the alternatives!

05 Mention

Mention is one of the most popular social media monitoring software. It also provides publishing features.

Like most social media monitoring tools, it gauges the sentiment behind tracked mentions, categorizing them as positive, negative, or neutral.

This tool also allows you to:

• Precisely track the impact of your social media work
• Benchmark your social media performance and gather market insights
• Compare trends by filtering critical online conversations
• Social media planning

Disappointing info: To get access to all the social media listed below, you must choose the company plan that is the most expensive.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Pinterest

⭐️ Overall verdict:

It’s best suited for businesses with a larger budget and no need for LinkedIn monitoring – unless they’re willing to pay extra for it.

💪 Strengths:

1. Customizing the dashboard to fit your business’s strategy on social media is possible.

👎 What could be better:

Access to historical data and keyword monitoring on LinkedIn requires an additional fee.

Check: Mention Competitors

06 X Pro (Tweetdeck)

Tweetdeck was one of the free monitoring tools developed by Twitter. Right now, it’s called X Pro and requires a premium subscription.

It’s a very simple tool for tracking and responding to only X (Twitter) mentions and conversations. Excellent for examining your presence on X (Twitter)!

X Pro allows you to spot trending topics and emerging trends so you can prepare content that will boost your brand awareness.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• X (Twitter)

⭐️ Overall verdict:

I would recommend this tool only for a social media manager handling the account of a public figure or a verified startup on X or any other organization.

💪 Strengths:

1. X Pro is fully customizable, so you can set up a column to help you track the X (Twitter) performance, manage messages, or see all the conversations about you.

👎 What could be better:

X Pro is not available on mobile.

07 Awario

Awario is a media monitoring tool that tracks mentions across Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, and Reddit.

Beyond social media, it also monitors news sites, forums, blogs, and review platforms.

However, it lacks support for two key platforms: TikTok and LinkedIn, which may be a drawback for some users.

But at the same time, it is one of the cheapest tools on this list.

Two of its most important features:

• Social media sentiment analysis
• Mention alerts

Awario is particularly useful for identifying influencers and brand advocates for cooperation.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube
• Reddit

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Awario is quite a basic solution, but it is also budget-friendly, making it a good choice for small businesses and agencies.

💪 Strengths:

1. Awario offers white-label reports.
2. It is more affordable than other social media monitoring tools.

👎 What could be better:

The number of monitored sources could be more impressive.

Are you looking for a tracking tool that monitors all major social media platforms? Check: Awario Competitors!

08 Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a comprehensive social media management tool that offers Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube monitoring.

This tool will help you publish, engage, listen, report, and collaborate on digital marketing projects.

The feature I found the most useful is customer sentiment. It lets you identify your best content and quickly grow your social media presence.

You can also:

• Track brand mentions, social comments, and conversations from different channels and have them in one inbox – it makes it easy to engage with your target audience
• Monitor the results of your activities and report them to your colleagues and supervisors
• Do competitive analysis

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• Facebook

⭐️ Overall verdict:

This tool is ideal for businesses, agencies, or social media teams that don’t need to monitor multiple channels but want to focus on managing and tracking one specific platform, like Facebook.

💪 Strengths:

1. Agorapulse provides outstanding customer support – very fast and enjoyable to interact with.
2. It has a very clear and intuitive interface.

👎 What could be better:

Social listening capabilities are pretty limited – Agorapulse tracks only three platforms.

09 Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a bit of both worlds – you can go for its main paid version or settle for one of the free tools: Talkwalker Alerts or Talkwalker’s Free Social Search.

No matter what, Talkwalker is undoubtedly a powerful tool worth exploring!

In addition to real-time social monitoring, Talkwalker offers valuable audience insights and social content ratings.

With Talkwalker, you can:

• Track the performance of your digital marketing campaigns
• Find influencers, topics, and content ideas
• Get an instant answer to a quick question about your audience by asking Yeti, the AI assistant
• Protect and improve your reputation

Unfortunately, Talkwalker is a pricey tool!

🔎 Monitored social media:

30 social networks, including:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• Pinterest

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Talkwalker is a very advanced solution, ideal for larger businesses looking for powerful analytics, comprehensive data, and in-depth insights.

💪 Strengths:

1. Talkwalker offers up to 5 years of historical data.
2. It provides one of the broadest media monitoring coverages on the market, with 30 social media platforms and over 250 million websites.

👎 What could be better:

It’s a costly tool. Regarding the plans, the Basic one aimed at smaller brands or owned media-focused companies costs several thousand dollars yearly. The prices of the two remaining plans, Corporate and Enterprise, are discussed on request – thinking logically, they are even more expensive.

Are you looking for the best Talkwalker competitor? Check it out here!

10 BrandMentions

BrandMentions is a social media tracker – it will help you monitor conversations and mentions across the most important social media platforms and the whole web.

With BrandMentions, you can spy on competitors. You can get insights about any brand or topic from any market.

It also:

• Analyzes the sentiment of mentions and relevant conversations
• Provides real-time tracking – you get alerts whenever new mentions or links appear

The complete tool is subscription-based, but BrandMentions offers four trackers you can try for free!

🔎 Monitored social media:

• X (Twitter)
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• TikTok

⭐️ Overall verdict:

It is a solution suitable for small and large companies seeking to monitor all essential social platforms and the web.

💪 Strengths:

1. With BrandMentions, you can access the historical data no other tools provide – up to 10 years.
2. This tool provides essential KPIs, in-depth analytics, and filters on all available plans.

👎 What could be better:

Some users may initially find the interface slightly overwhelming, especially with so many available filters and options.

Check: BrandMentions Competitors

11 Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a social media management solution provided by Zoho One; this business system operates in several areas, including monitoring brand mentions.

You can also use this tool as a CRM! For example, the Facebook Lead Ads integration helps capture and monitor leads in real-time.

With Zoho Social, you can:

• Track brand reviews, mentions, and relevant keywords
• Discover trends and participate in industry conversations
• Convert social engagements into leads automatically
• Better understand your audience and create engaging content

A big plus of this tool is that it tracks Bluesky and has a mobile version.

🔎 Monitored social media:

• Facebook
• Threads
• Instagram
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Bluesky
• Telegram
• WhatsApp

⭐️ Overall verdict:

Zoho Social is suitable for social media managers who want to have a solid publishing & scheduling tool that provides monitoring features.

💪 Strengths:

• You can customize your social listening dashboard.
• It provides many team collaboration features; you can work with your colleagues on drafts via chat, audio, and video calls.

👎 What could be better:

The mobile app is much less intuitive than the desktop version. It can be particularly challenging when managing multiple social channels.

Free social media monitoring tools

Are there any free social media monitoring tools?

All of the tools in this list are free in some way – some offer free trials, and others have free plans.

With a trial, you can explore all the features for a limited time, while free plans offer limited possibilities.

Check which tool offers what 👇

Brand24

✅Free trial: YES, available for 14 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Keyhole

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 14 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Hootsuite

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 30 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Sprout Social

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 30 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Mention

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 14 days

❌ Free plan: NO

X Pro (Tweetdeck)

❌ Free trial: NO

❌ Free plan: NO

Awario

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 7 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Agorapulse

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 30 days

✅ Free plan: YES

Talkwalker

❌ Free trial: NO

❌ Free plan: NO

BrandMentions

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 7 days

❌ Free plan: NO

Zoho Social

✅ Free trial: YES, available for 15 days

✅ Free plan: YES

I created a table for you – it shows all the info written above:

Key features of a social media monitoring tool

There are two main groups of features important in social monitoring tools:

1. Real-time monitoring & alerts
   
   The first group focuses on ensuring that your business runs smoothly, allowing you to stay informed and react quickly while also being able to sleep well.
   
   Real-time monitoring is essential, but the real value comes from automated alerts and reports:
   
   • Alerts notify you about significant spikes in mentions, potential crises, or unexpected engagement trends
   • Periodic reports provide a comprehensive overview of your brand’s online presence, allowing you to stay informed effortlessly
     
2. In-depth analysis & market insights
   
   The second group is more advanced and brings in-depth knowledge about your brand, competitors, or market trends that influence your organization.
   
   You can see how effective your marketing and PR-related activities are, how much value you created, and how many people you reached.
   
   You can also see how good you are compared to previous periods and your competitors, which is crucial for any business.

You know it, for sure, but let me remind you: the best social media monitoring platforms, like Brand24, are powered by AI.

For example, this allows conclusions and recommendations to generate themselves, so you can focus on planning how to react rather than finding out what is going on.

✅ This answer was written by Karol Kłaczyński, Head of Product at Brand24

Can you monitor social media mentions manually without using dedicated tools? 

Of course, you can, BUT manually monitoring is time-consuming and nearly impossible.

Why?

1. Firstly, you must put time aside to browse all social media and look for your brand mentions.
   
   I know that platforms notify you when your social media accounts are mentioned. But the more mentions you get, the harder it will be for you to keep up with them.
   
   Add to that the fact that you’re probably managing multiple social media accounts of your brand or multiple client accounts.
   
   You can easily track mentions when users tag you, but what if they don’t? Like in this case with the untagged Nike mention on TikTok:

Without a social media monitoring tool, Nike would NEVER have seen this mention.

2. Secondly, some key metrics, such as online presence score or share of voice, are not available in built-in social media analytics, and measuring them manually can be incredibly challenging.
3. Thirdly, the advantage of using tools lies in their effectiveness and the variety of analytical features they offer, such as sentiment analysis.

In a nutshell, using social media monitoring platforms makes social media marketers’ jobs much easier.

Why do brands use social media monitoring tools?

Social media tracking tools can be really powerful. They provide valuable insights that are normally very challenging, time-consuming, and costly to obtain on your own.

Acquiring data is just the beginning. The real value lies in processing, analyzing, identifying patterns, and extracting insights — and that’s where these social media tools shine. 

They provide fast and effective results with minimal user input.

The question shouldn’t be why use them, but rather why not! 

Their applications are diverse, for example:

• PR management for rapid response to negative brand sentiment
• Tracking marketing activities to assess brand presence
• Collecting customer feedback to make informed decisions

Moreover, their AI features give users a broader perspective and insights without the need for extensive data analysis experience.

Note that social listening is not limited to conventional areas. For example, one of Brand24’s clients uses it to track harmful bot makers.

With these tools, you can monitor anything that can be described in words!

The power of online monitoring goes beyond brands and industries, offering a tool that can be adapted to a wide range of scenarios.

✅ This answer was written by Adam Górnicz, Customer Success Manager at Brand24

Conclusion

As you can see, some social monitoring tools are all-in-one solutions that combine social listening with scheduling, publishing, content creation, and even more.

If you need the best possible social listening, choose a tool that treats it as its core feature, not an additional feature.

This ensures you’ll have access to the broadest range of mentioned sources and the most reliable social media data.

Key takeaways:

• With Brand24, you can monitor a large number of social media sources. The tool offers advanced analytics and AI reports.
• Sprout Social and Keyhole offer monitoring features only in the most expensive plans. 
• Social media monitoring is an add-on in Hootsuite.
• Awario and Mention are basic tools that are budget-friendly.
• Talkwalker is the most expensive tool dedicated to large companies.

Ready to set up your first social media monitoring project?

👉 Start a 14-day free trial! 👈