{"id":6353,"date":"2026-11-04T13:56:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T13:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/?p=6353&#038;preview=true&#038;preview_id=6353"},"modified":"2026-11-04T14:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T14:32:07","slug":"social-media-competitor-analysis-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/social-media-competitor-analysis-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools: 12 Compared on Networks, Caps and Price"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Short answer: Social media competitor analysis tools do two different jobs. Profile benchmarking tools such as Rival IQ, Socialinsider, Hootsuite and Sprout Social read what a competitor publishes on accounts you name, from $20 per month (Semrush Social Toolkit). Listening tools such as BrandMentions, Brand24, Awario, Mention and Talkwalker collect what everyone else says about that competitor across social, news, forums, reviews and video, from $29 per month (Awario). This audit's picks are Rival IQ or Socialinsider for benchmarking and BrandMentions for listening (Pro at $299 per month), on the six-criterion checklist published below.<\/em><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Key takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A supported network is not a supported research task.<\/strong> Owned-account analytics, named-competitor tracking, industry averages and keyword listening are four levels of access printed as the same platform icon, and the vendors are not two clean camps: Hootsuite ships baseline listening, Sprout Social sells it as an add-on, Sprinklr runs both as separate modules.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Caps are measured in different units.<\/strong> Tracked companies, shared profiles, keywords, topics and monthly mentions are not interchangeable; \"20 competitors\" and \"20 keywords\" describe different research capacity.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Compare the usable plan, not the cheapest subscription.<\/strong> Hootsuite covers three networks for competitor reports, Socialinsider six, Sprout Social's competitor reports start at $299 per seat on Professional, and a three-person team changes the ranking before any feature does.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Most of the conversation is not on the profile networks.<\/strong> Across 30 brands and 617,183 written mentions in the BrandMentions index, a median 87% of a brand's mentions sat outside the Social category, and video transcripts added 98 spoken mentions per 100 written. Per-brand counts are in the CSV below.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"which-are-the-best-social-media-competitor-analysis-tools-for-each-job\">Which are the best social media competitor analysis tools for each job?<\/h2>\n<p>Rival IQ and Socialinsider are the strongest for benchmarking competitors' published content; BrandMentions, Awario and Brand24 are the strongest for listening to what people say about them. Entry prices for the competitor feature run from $20 per month (Semrush Social Toolkit) to $599 (Mention), with Sprinklr and Talkwalker on quote. Match the purchase to the deliverable you owe someone, then filter by network and budget.<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Tool<\/th>\n<th>Best for<\/th>\n<th>Entry price for the competitor feature<\/th>\n<th>Pricing unit<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Rival IQ<\/td>\n<td>Dedicated competitive content analysis<\/td>\n<td>$239\/month (Drive)<\/td>\n<td>Per tracked company<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Socialinsider<\/td>\n<td>TikTok and LinkedIn company-page benchmarking<\/td>\n<td>$83\/month, annual billing (Adapt)<\/td>\n<td>Per shared social account<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Semrush Social Toolkit<\/td>\n<td>Low-cost competitor profile tracking<\/td>\n<td>$20\/month (Base)<\/td>\n<td>Per competitor profile allocation<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Metricool<\/td>\n<td>Free starting point<\/td>\n<td>Free; Starter $25\/month<\/td>\n<td>Per plan and network<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Hootsuite<\/td>\n<td>Teams already publishing in Hootsuite<\/td>\n<td>$99\/user\/month, annual billing (Standard)<\/td>\n<td>Per user<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Sprout Social<\/td>\n<td>Stakeholder-ready reporting in an existing suite<\/td>\n<td>$299\/seat\/month, annual billing (Professional)<\/td>\n<td>Per seat<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Sprinklr<\/td>\n<td>Enterprise research across specialist sources<\/td>\n<td>Pricing on request<\/td>\n<td>Per contract<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>BrandMentions<\/td>\n<td>Competitor conversation analysis, written and spoken<\/td>\n<td>$299\/month (Pro); Starter $99\/month billed quarterly<\/td>\n<td>Per plan: projects, keywords, mentions<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Awario<\/td>\n<td>Budget keyword monitoring<\/td>\n<td>$29\/month, annual billing (Starter)<\/td>\n<td>Per topic and mention volume<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Brand24<\/td>\n<td>Keyword-led monitoring with source-level analysis<\/td>\n<td>$199\/month, annual billing (Individual)<\/td>\n<td>Per keyword and mention volume<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Mention<\/td>\n<td>Structured news and community queries<\/td>\n<td>$599\/month, annual billing only (Company)<\/td>\n<td>Per alert and mention quota<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Talkwalker<\/td>\n<td>Broadcast, podcast and image-level coverage<\/td>\n<td>Pricing on request<\/td>\n<td>Per contract<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The quick table above names the pick per job; the sections below give the caps, the documented limits and the price arithmetic behind each one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In this guide<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#which-are-the-best-social-media-competitor-analysis-tools-for-each-job\">Which are the best social media competitor analysis tools for each job?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#what-is-a-social-media-competitor-analysis-tool-and-what-does-it-track\">What is a social media competitor analysis tool and what does it track?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#how-does-profile-benchmarking-differ-from-conversation-listening-and-can-one-tool-do-both\">How does profile benchmarking differ from conversation listening, and can one tool do both?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#which-networks-does-each-tool-cover-for-competitor-reports\">Which networks does each tool cover for competitor reports?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#which-tools-show-what-people-say-about-my-competitors-not-only-their-posts\">Which tools show what people say about my competitors, not only their posts?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#where-do-competitor-mentions-actually-live\">Where do competitor mentions actually live?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#how-much-do-they-cost-per-month\">How much do they cost per month?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#can-i-get-agency-or-white-label-reports\">Can I get agency or white-label reports?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#which-tools-are-strongest-for-comparing-competitors-published-content\">Which tools are strongest for comparing competitors' published content?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#which-listening-first-tools-belong-on-the-shortlist\">Which listening-first tools belong on the shortlist?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#how-do-the-listening-tools-compare-on-published-facts\">How do the listening tools compare on published facts?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#how-do-you-test-a-tools-coverage-yourself-before-buying\">How do you test a tool's coverage yourself before buying?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#rival-iq-vs-hootsuite-sprout-social-vs-brandmentions-brand24-vs-awario-vs-brandmentions-which-wins\">Rival IQ vs Hootsuite, Sprout Social vs BrandMentions, Brand24 vs Awario vs BrandMentions: which wins?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#frequently-asked-questions\">Frequently Asked Questions<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#conclusion-buy-the-report-not-the-category\">Conclusion: buy the report, not the category<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"what-is-a-social-media-competitor-analysis-tool-and-what-does-it-track\">What is a social media competitor analysis tool and what does it track?<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/e6a902ad-9517-426b-a296-277573a919c9_090793f5.webp\" alt=\"Two-job framework for social media competitor analysis tools: profiles versus conversations\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is a social media competitor analysis tool?<\/strong> It is software that collects public information about rival brands, either from accounts you nominate (posts, cadence, followers, visible interactions) or from keyword-matched content that mentions those brands anywhere public, and presents it against your own numbers.<\/p>\n<p>The first job is profile benchmarking: the tool authenticates against platform APIs, reads the competitor's public account and returns posting frequency, engagement, format mix, top posts and follower movement. The second job is conversation analysis: the tool queries the open web and social platforms for the competitor's name, regardless of who wrote it, and returns mentions, sources, sentiment and share of voice. Sprinklr's own benchmarking documentation separates the two explicitly, benchmarking counts social actions on tracked handles and listening counts mentions, and almost no vendor homepage states it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Network-Mode Test: a supported network is not a supported research task.<\/strong> Rival IQ supports LinkedIn analytics for your own authenticated company, not LinkedIn competitor comparisons. Sprinklr's TikTok benchmarking accepts only Creator Marketplace-registered creator accounts, not arbitrary competitor URLs. Both legitimately \"support\" those networks; neither produces the competitor report a buyer assumes. It is also why one vendor in this audit, BrandMentions, documents coverage by category (Social, Discussions, Video, News, Blogs, Web) instead of by logo: the category tells you what kind of conversation you will get, which is the question the logo does not answer.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ask every shortlisted vendor to export one report containing your actual competitor names before you sign. A network logo on a pricing page is not evidence that the vendor can collect what you need.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"how-does-profile-benchmarking-differ-from-conversation-listening-and-can-one-tool-do-both\">How does profile benchmarking differ from conversation listening, and can one tool do both?<\/h2>\n<p>They differ in data source, in what \"a competitor\" means and in how the cap is counted.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Benchmarking: a competitor is a handle or company you add.<\/strong> Hootsuite allows five competitor accounts per network on Standard and 20 on Advanced and Enterprise; Rival IQ counts companies, one handle per network each.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Listening: a competitor is a keyword or topic bounded by mention volume.<\/strong> Brand24 Individual allows three keywords and 2,000 mentions a month; Awario Starter allows three topics, 30,000 new mentions a month and 5,000 stored per topic.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ingestion and retention are different limits.<\/strong> Only retention decides how much evidence is still in the dashboard in month three. A loud competitor consumes an allowance built for your own brand, so teams adding three large rivals usually need the tier above the one they sized for themselves, and twenty keywords track fewer brands than it sounds once product names, executive names and misspellings are added.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Can one tool do both? Not at a self-serve price. A benchmarking tool never queries third-party conversation; its pipeline starts from an account identifier. A listening tool measures how much of the market conversation a competitor owns but does not return post-level engagement through authenticated APIs the way Rival IQ or Socialinsider do. The hybrids are gated: Hootsuite includes basic listening with seven days of history on Standard and 30 on Advanced and Enterprise (plans page, October 30, 2026); Sprout Social sells Listening as a separate add-on on a seat-priced plan; Sprinklr runs both with different source lists. The decision rule: if your KPI is engagement, reach or content performance, buy benchmarking first; if you own positioning, PR, product marketing or reputation, buy listening first; if you are an agency serving both, buy one of each and check the per-client allocation before the feature list.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Benchmark the profiles to learn what a competitor is doing. Listen to the conversation to learn whether it is working. One purchase tells you their plan and hides their results.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"which-networks-does-each-tool-cover-for-competitor-reports\">Which networks does each tool cover for competitor reports?<\/h2>\n<p>Competitor coverage is consistently narrower than general platform support, so this matrix lists the competitor reporting mode only, not every integration the vendor sells. Every record was fetched or re-checked October 30, 2026; each vendor source is linked under that tool's verdict line.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key:<\/strong> FB = Facebook, IG = Instagram, YT = YouTube. \"Shared\" allocations also absorb owned accounts, influencers or ad accounts. BrandMentions documents coverage at category level rather than per network and is printed here as it documents it.<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Tool<\/th>\n<th>Job<\/th>\n<th>Competitor-report coverage<\/th>\n<th>Competitor cap or allocation<\/th>\n<th>Entry price for the competitor feature<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Semrush Social Toolkit<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking<\/td>\n<td>FB business pages, IG business accounts, X, YT channels, Pinterest; LinkedIn not documented<\/td>\n<td>10 competitor profiles (Base), 20 (Pro, Business); hard cap of 20 competitors per project<\/td>\n<td>$20\/month (Base)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Metricool<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking<\/td>\n<td>Free and paid: FB, IG, Threads, Bluesky, Twitch. Paid only: YT and X (X via add-on)<\/td>\n<td>Free: 5 per network, cannot be removed. Paid: 100 per network<\/td>\n<td>Free; Starter $25\/month ($20\/month annually); X requires paid plan plus add-on<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Hootsuite<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking plus baseline listening<\/td>\n<td>FB Pages, IG Business, X<\/td>\n<td>5 per network (Standard), 20 (Advanced, Enterprise)<\/td>\n<td>From $99\/user\/month (Standard, annual billing); Advanced $249\/user\/month<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Socialinsider<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking<\/td>\n<td>FB, IG, X, TikTok, YT, LinkedIn company pages<\/td>\n<td>20 shared social accounts (Adapt), 30 (Optimize), 40 (Predict); 10 \/ 15 \/ 20 profile replacements per month<\/td>\n<td>$990\/year, equivalent to $82.50\/month.\u00a0 Monthly billing is also available.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Rival IQ<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking plus saved searches<\/td>\n<td>FB, IG, X, TikTok, YT. LinkedIn competitors excluded<\/td>\n<td>10 companies (Drive), 20 (Engage), 40 (Engage Pro), plus 5 for $50\/month; extra users $10\/month<\/td>\n<td>$239\/month (Drive), 15% off annually<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Sprout Social<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking, listening as add-on<\/td>\n<td>FB, IG, X<\/td>\n<td>Report-specific. X report: 20 competitors per group<\/td>\n<td>$299\/seat\/month annual billing (Professional); competitor reports on Professional and Advanced<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Sprinklr<\/td>\n<td>Benchmarking and listening as separate modules<\/td>\n<td>8 sources: FB public pages, X public accounts, IG business accounts, YT, VK, Twitch, Quora, TikTok. YT standard dashboard only; TikTok Creator Marketplace accounts only; dark posts excluded<\/td>\n<td>Contract-defined; 2 years auto-backfill, 3 on request<\/td>\n<td>Pricing on request<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>BrandMentions<\/td>\n<td>Listening<\/td>\n<td>Documented by category, not by network: Social, Discussions, Video (spoken mentions, from Pro), News, Blogs, Web; 125M+ sources, 100+ languages<\/td>\n<td>Pro: 10 projects, 20 keywords, 30,000 mentions\/month; Expert: 50 projects, 50 keywords, 75,000; Starter: 3 projects, 5 keywords, 5,000<\/td>\n<td>$299\/month (Pro); Starter $99\/month billed quarterly<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Awario<\/td>\n<td>Listening<\/td>\n<td>Keyword mentions across X, FB, YT, Reddit, news, blogs, forums, review sites<\/td>\n<td>3 topics, unlimited keywords per topic, 30,000 new mentions\/month, 5,000 stored per topic<\/td>\n<td>$29\/month annual billing, $49 monthly (Starter)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Brand24<\/td>\n<td>Listening<\/td>\n<td>Individual: FB, IG, X, news, blogs, other socials, Reddit. Team adds LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YT, TikTok. Pro adds reviews, Twitch, newsletters. Business adds podcasts<\/td>\n<td>3 keywords, 2,000 mentions\/month (Individual)<\/td>\n<td>$249\/month, $199\/month annually (Individual)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Mention<\/td>\n<td>Listening<\/td>\n<td>FB, IG, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, YT, news, blogs, forums, reviews across 75+ sites. IG comments excluded<\/td>\n<td>Subscription-defined alert and mention quotas<\/td>\n<td>From $599\/month, annual billing only (Company)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Talkwalker<\/td>\n<td>Listening<\/td>\n<td>Social, news, blogs, Reddit, podcasts (speech-to-text catalogue), broadcast TV and radio<\/td>\n<td>Contract-defined<\/td>\n<td>Pricing on request<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Three readings matter more than any row. Facebook, Instagram and X are table stakes; TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube competitor access is where vendors diverge, so it is the first filter if your rivals win there. \"Pricing on request\" is not a neutral cell: Sprinklr and Talkwalker need a sales conversation before you see a number, and Mention's one published figure is annual-only. And documentation contradicts itself: Metricool's plans article lists four free-plan competitor networks while its competitor-analysis article lists five (adding Threads); Sprinklr's 20.7 release notes describe TikTok benchmarking as owned-accounts-only while its newer source article admits Creator Marketplace accounts. Where sources conflicted, this matrix follows the dedicated feature documentation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Brandwatch, Buffer and Keyhole are not in the matrix.<\/strong> The inclusion rule was a published price or a published competitor cap and network list checkable against vendor documentation on the audit date. Brandwatch (Cision) is enterprise listening on quote only with no public caps, so it would add a second \"pricing on request\" cell and no verifiable number. Buffer's analytics documentation covers the accounts you connect, not named competitors. Keyhole's competitor features were not fetched for this audit, so no claim is made about them. All three are legitimate shortlist candidates for other jobs.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"which-tools-show-what-people-say-about-my-competitors-not-only-their-posts\">Which tools show what people say about my competitors, not only their posts?<\/h2>\n<p>Awario, Brand24, Mention, Talkwalker and BrandMentions collect conversation about competitors from outside their accounts; Hootsuite, Sprinklr and Sprout Social reach some of it through included or add-on listening modules. The material that structurally cannot reach a profile report is the point: a Reddit thread comparing two vendors, a Trustpilot review naming a weak point, a forum post about a recall, a podcast host saying the brand name out loud. None of it touches the competitor's Instagram account, so none of it enters a report built from that account. The next section measures how much that is.<\/p>\n<p>A listening label is not a promise of everything public. Mention excludes Instagram comments. Brand24's entry plan covers seven source categories and adds YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn only from Team, reviews from Pro and podcasts from Business. Talkwalker's developer documentation states that Facebook and Instagram content is not exportable through its API, that raw Reddit and TikTok data leave only as aggregated metrics and that news content is truncated for copyright reasons: the data can appear in a dashboard and still not be deliverable as raw export. Before you commit, when you <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/how-to-do-a-competitive-analysis\/\">run a competitive analysis<\/a> that has to be handed to a client, confirm raw-data delivery rights per source, not just whether a chart renders.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"where-do-competitor-mentions-actually-live\">Where do competitor mentions actually live?<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/3c08424d-7b41-4ab1-b427-58e48a6100e0_d4f3c7cd.webp\" alt=\"BrandMentions index metric showing most competitor mentions live outside Social\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mostly outside the Social category. Across 30 brands in 10 industries, over the 90 days from August 4 to November 1, 2026, the BrandMentions index held 617,183 written mentions of those brand names. Social accounted for 22.0% of them by volume and a median of 12.8% per brand. News held 32.7%, Discussions 29.7%, Web 13.5% and Blogs 2.1%. Put the other way round: the median brand had 87% of its written mentions on sources that a profile-benchmarking tool never queries, and no brand in the sample had less than a quarter. On top of the written mentions, the same brands were spoken 602,912 times in video transcripts, almost one spoken mention for every written one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Categories, as the index reports them.<\/strong> Social: posts on social networks. Discussions: forum, community and microblog threads and comments. News: news publishers. Blogs. Web: every other public page, including review sites, directories and comparison pages. Spoken Mentions: each time the brand name is said in a video, found in the transcript and linked to the second it is spoken.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How the pull was run.<\/strong> One exact-phrase query per brand name, no other keywords, counts by the index's own categories, mention count rather than reach, UTC days; brands chosen for unambiguous names, three per industry across consumer, B2B, hardware and travel. The brand list and every count are in the CSV: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/resources\/BrandMentions_sources_mix_for_30_brands_dataset_for_aug_nov_2026.csv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Download the full research dataset: mention sources for 30 brands (CSV).<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Industry (3 brands each)<\/th>\n<th>Written mentions<\/th>\n<th>Social<\/th>\n<th>Discussions<\/th>\n<th>News<\/th>\n<th>Blogs<\/th>\n<th>Web<\/th>\n<th>Spoken mentions per 100 written<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Language learning \/ EdTech<\/td>\n<td>39,996<\/td>\n<td>34.9%<\/td>\n<td>30.7%<\/td>\n<td>19.7%<\/td>\n<td>2.8%<\/td>\n<td>11.9%<\/td>\n<td>38<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fintech \/ neobanks<\/td>\n<td>33,636<\/td>\n<td>8.7%<\/td>\n<td>33.4%<\/td>\n<td>37.9%<\/td>\n<td>2.0%<\/td>\n<td>18.0%<\/td>\n<td>35<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fitness tech<\/td>\n<td>31,210<\/td>\n<td>12.8%<\/td>\n<td>37.8%<\/td>\n<td>36.8%<\/td>\n<td>1.4%<\/td>\n<td>11.1%<\/td>\n<td>84<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Athleisure &amp; apparel<\/td>\n<td>41,822<\/td>\n<td>31.2%<\/td>\n<td>13.6%<\/td>\n<td>39.0%<\/td>\n<td>2.1%<\/td>\n<td>14.0%<\/td>\n<td>53<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>B2B SaaS (CRM &amp; support)<\/td>\n<td>39,612<\/td>\n<td>12.0%<\/td>\n<td>12.2%<\/td>\n<td>41.3%<\/td>\n<td>8.1%<\/td>\n<td>26.4%<\/td>\n<td>85<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Design &amp; collaboration SaaS<\/td>\n<td>42,128<\/td>\n<td>32.3%<\/td>\n<td>29.0%<\/td>\n<td>20.8%<\/td>\n<td>3.0%<\/td>\n<td>15.0%<\/td>\n<td>96<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Audio hardware<\/td>\n<td>28,298<\/td>\n<td>19.4%<\/td>\n<td>28.3%<\/td>\n<td>38.3%<\/td>\n<td>2.1%<\/td>\n<td>11.9%<\/td>\n<td>156<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Beverages<\/td>\n<td>48,846<\/td>\n<td>16.0%<\/td>\n<td>16.8%<\/td>\n<td>58.3%<\/td>\n<td>1.1%<\/td>\n<td>7.7%<\/td>\n<td>87<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Electric vehicles<\/td>\n<td>262,841<\/td>\n<td>24.6%<\/td>\n<td>35.5%<\/td>\n<td>26.0%<\/td>\n<td>1.3%<\/td>\n<td>12.6%<\/td>\n<td>122<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Travel<\/td>\n<td>48,794<\/td>\n<td>11.0%<\/td>\n<td>32.5%<\/td>\n<td>42.4%<\/td>\n<td>1.8%<\/td>\n<td>12.4%<\/td>\n<td>97<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>All 30 brands, by volume<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>617,183<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>22.0%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>29.7%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>32.7%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>2.1%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>13.5%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>98<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Median brand<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><strong>12.8%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>20.6%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>33.8%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>2.0%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>14.6%<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>71<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The five written-source percentages total approximately 100% in each industry row and the overall row, allowing for rounding. The median row reports each category\u2019s median separately, so its percentages do not need to total 100%.<\/p>\n<p>Four things in the table change how you buy.<\/p>\n<p>The spread between brands is wider than between industries. Liquid Death had 72% of its written mentions in Social, Lululemon 46%, Duolingo 38%; Sennheiser 4%, Booking.com 6%, Monzo 6%. The source mix can help identify where listening coverage matters. Benchmarking remains useful for comparing competitors\u2019 publishing activity, regardless of where most mentions occur. Follower count does not tell you which group a competitor is in. Run the split before you choose the tool.<\/p>\n<p>News is the largest single category for six of the ten industries, and it is the one no benchmarking tool touches at all. For B2B software the Web category (review sites, directories, documentation, comparison pages) adds another quarter. Social accounted for 12% of written mentions in the B2B software sample. This does not establish how much a competitor-profile report captures, because the dataset does not distinguish brand-owned posts from third-party mentions.<\/p>\n<p>Spoken mentions are a second conversation that neither profile tools nor most listening tools see. For every written mention, audio hardware brands were spoken 1.6 times in video and electric-vehicle brands 1.2 times; travel, design software, beverages, B2B software and fitness brands landed between 0.8 and 1.0; fintech and language apps around 0.35. Product reviews, teardowns and podcast segments are where a hardware or EV competitor is actually judged.\u00a0 A text-only tool may miss substantial discussion in video transcripts. However, spoken occurrences and written mentions use different counting units, so their totals do not establish which medium contains more distinct discussions. BrandMentions surfaces these as Spoken Mentions linked to the exact second; of the other eleven tools here only Talkwalker documents speech-to-text, for podcasts and broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>Electric vehicles are 43% of the written sample because Tesla alone produced 246,399 written mentions, which is why the table also reports the median brand. Size a plan on the median unless your rival is a Tesla.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What this pull does not show.<\/strong> It does not label ownership: a mention in Social may be the brand's own post or someone else's, so 22% is the ceiling of what a profile tool could see, not what it does see. Spoken mentions are counted per occurrence, so one long video naming the brand several times contributes several, which is why they sit in their own column and are never added to the written total. Counts are mentions, not reach. None of that changes the direction of the finding, only how precisely you should quote it.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"how-much-do-they-cost-per-month\">How much do they cost per month?<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/21ec06e0-d748-48f2-aca3-2de21379a304_c32cca63.webp\" alt=\"Pricing-unit bar chart comparing per-seat and per-plan competitor analysis costs\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Verified entry prices run from free (Metricool and Fanpage Karma, both limited; Social Status from $9) to $599 per month (Mention Company, annual only), with two products quoting on request.<\/p>\n<p>Entry prices and billing units for all twelve are in the quick table at the top; a tracked company, a shared social profile, a keyword and a seat are not comparable units, so normalise before you compare.<\/p>\n<p>Price one brief across vendors: five named competitors, three networks, three people needing access, one branded monthly report.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Semrush Social Toolkit: $20; Metricool Starter: $25 (both shallow)<\/li>\n<li>Socialinsider Adapt: $83, but one seat, and competitors and owned accounts share the same 20 slots<\/li>\n<li>Rival IQ Drive: $259 ($239 plus two extra users at $10)<\/li>\n<li>Hootsuite Standard: $297 (three users at $99), three networks<\/li>\n<li>Sprout Social Professional: $897 (three seats at $299), because every person who opens the report is a seat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Two conclusions survive: per seat versus per plan is the biggest hidden multiplier in the category, and plan gating is the second, since Sprout Social places its full competitor insights in Professional, not in the $199 Standard tier many buyers quote.<\/p>\n<p>Enterprise contract values are left out on purpose: no published figures exist for Sprinklr, Talkwalker or Sprout's Listening add-on, and quoting a number you cannot source is how a buying guide loses its credibility.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"can-i-get-agency-or-white-label-reports\">Can I get agency or white-label reports?<\/h2>\n<p>Yes, once you separate a branded report file from a branded client-facing application. For branded files, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.socialstatus.io\/plans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Social Status<\/a> lists white-label reports from Essential at $49 per month (Basic at $29 keeps its branding; Bronze at $99 adds 100 shared profiles), Awario from Pro at $89 per month annually, Brand24 from Pro at $399 per month annually (PDF, Excel, PowerPoint), Mention inside its Company plan, and BrandMentions from Expert at $499 per month. For a branded application the answer is almost always an enterprise contract, and the published tiers will not tell you the price. What narrows an agency shortlist is not the white-label checkbox but how many distinct client brands one plan covers, how many users come with it and whether each client needs its own paid allocation; answer those three, then audit the result against the <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/social-media-audit-tools\/\">social media audit tools<\/a> you already report from.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"which-tools-are-strongest-for-comparing-competitors-published-content\">Which tools are strongest for comparing competitors' published content?<\/h2>\n<p>Seven products here produce structured reports on what competitors publish; they differ in network reach, cap unit and whether you pay per user. Each review follows the same five lines, and plan prices are in the quick table at the top.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"rival-iq-https-www-rivaliq-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Rival IQ<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/8c5201be-b431-40cf-9e60-40e44a4700a2_f73ab63e.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Rival IQ website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for company-centred benchmarking \u00b7 10 tracked companies across 5 networks \u00b7 from $239\/mo \u00b7 Limitation: no LinkedIn competitor comparisons.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/pricing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube, one handle per network per tracked company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Engagement rate against category benchmarks, with topic, hashtag and timing analysis attached to each company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Drive includes scheduled reports and email alerts, including alerts on competitor bio and profile changes. Custom-branded exports are not on Drive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> LinkedIn data covers your own authenticated company only; boosted-post detection is a prediction, not confirmed ad spend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Drive allows swapping 100% of tracked companies each month, which turns 10 slots into sequential category research, but rotation gives no continuous history on companies you cycle out: rotate for discovery, keep your real rivals fixed.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"socialinsider-https-www-socialinsider-io\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.socialinsider.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Socialinsider<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/fd461147-c368-475c-a587-63894e706681_e7cce870.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Socialinsider website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for cross-network content research \u00b7 6 benchmarking networks \u00b7 from $83\/mo billed annually \u00b7 Limitation: no conversation data outside profiles.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.socialinsider.io\/pricing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn company pages, the widest documented competitor set under $100 here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Format-level content performance, so you compare like with like instead of averaging Reels against carousels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Automated reports and unlimited exports on paid plans.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Follower history from before a profile was added can be AI-estimated, so a growth curve may mix modelled and collected points; swaps are capped at 10 per month on Adapt.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Separate reconstructed from collected history before you present a trend; an inflection point inside the estimated range is a modelling artefact until a second source confirms it.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"semrush-social-toolkit-https-www-semrush-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Semrush Social Toolkit<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for existing Semrush subscribers \u00b7 10 competitor profiles on Base \u00b7 from $20\/mo \u00b7 Limitation: depth below dedicated benchmarking tools.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semrush.com\/kb\/619-configuring-social-tracker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Social Tracker setup<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Facebook business pages, Instagram business accounts, X, YouTube channels and Pinterest, per the Social Tracker setup article and Semrush's own competitor-tool listing, including the only Pinterest competitor tracking in this audit. Personal Facebook profiles, groups and access-restricted pages are not tracked. LinkedIn competitor tracking is not documented.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Audience growth and posting activity next to your search and paid data in the same account.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Standard toolkit exports, with report depth below Rival IQ or Socialinsider.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Social Toolkit is priced and capped separately from the core Semrush subscription; the competitor allowance does not inherit your SEO plan's limits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> At $20 per month with 10 profiles this is the cheapest verified paid competitor tracking here: right when benchmarking is a secondary need, wrong when the report itself is the deliverable.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"metricool-https-metricool-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/metricool.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Metricool<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/b8c4d632-f405-4173-b76f-031ed0f04d46_4ef6e113.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Metricool website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for a free starting point \u00b7 5 competitors \u00d7 5 networks on the free plan \u00b7 $0\/mo, Starter $25\/mo \u00b7 Limitation: free watchlists cannot be edited or deleted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/help.metricool.com\/en\/article\/competitor-analysis-1vs9jxy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">competitor analysis help article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Metricool\u2019s listed competitor networks include Threads, Bluesky and Twitch, paid adds YouTube and X. Metricool's plans article lists four free networks, its competitor-analysis article (updated October 2026) lists five, and this review follows the latter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Public interactions per post, calculated the same way for every account you add.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Downloadable PDF and PowerPoint reports begin on Starter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Competitor engagement is calculated on followers because competitor reach is unavailable; free-plan competitors cannot be removed or changed; X needs a paid plan plus add-on; YouTube competitors are paid-only.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Add your own profile to the competitor list so your rate is computed on followers too; otherwise your account wins the chart purely because the tool has privileged reach data for it. <strong>Compare public metrics with public metrics.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3 id=\"hootsuite-https-www-hootsuite-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hootsuite.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hootsuite<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/38cb72a5-ac52-4c2d-9ee7-3cbf1df514a5_501005a5.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Hootsuite website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for teams already publishing in Hootsuite \u00b7 5 competitors per network on Standard \u00b7 from $99\/user\/mo \u00b7 Limitation: competitor reports on three networks only.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hootsuite.com\/platform\/competitive-analysis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">competitive analysis page<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hootsuite.com\/plans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> X, Facebook Pages and Instagram Business accounts only, compared against one of your own accounts on the same network.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Posting frequency and post performance inside the reporting workflow the team already uses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Competitive analysis sits inside Analytics: posts, posting frequency, average engagement, audience growth, follower count and estimated engagement per competitor. The current plans page lists Standard, Advanced and Enterprise; Professional and Team no longer appear. Listening (Lumen) extends into forums and podcasts, with real-time alerts on Enterprise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Competitor reports cover Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and X only; LinkedIn and TikTok appear as industry averages, not named competitors. Listening history is 7 days on Standard and 30 on Advanced, so a Standard seat cannot reconstruct last quarter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Add your full roster on day one; five slots per network fill fast once sub-brands count, and before rotating a competitor out, ask Hootsuite support whether its history survives removal.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"sprout-social-https-sproutsocial-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sproutsocial.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sprout Social<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for stakeholder-ready competitor reporting \u00b7 20 X competitors per group \u00b7 from $299\/seat\/mo \u00b7 Limitation: competitor reports start on Professional, not Standard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/sproutsocial.com\/pricing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Facebook, Instagram and X. TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn competitor reports are not part of this set.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Audience growth and publishing behaviour side by side, the easiest output here to put in front of an executive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> The X Competitors Report supports CSV, PDF and scheduled PDF delivery.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Unlimited connected profiles is not an unlimited competitor allowance; limits are report-specific, 20 per group on the X report.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Stronger than any listening product when you need publishing approval workflows and competitor reporting in one place; an expensive way to buy benchmarking alone, because every person who opens the report is a seat.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"sprinklr-https-www-sprinklr-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sprinklr.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sprinklr<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/c6f6ee4f-fd33-4789-a0fa-cffcf531df65_85e22ea0.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Sprinklr website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for enterprise competitive research \u00b7 8 benchmarking sources \u00b7 pricing on request \u00b7 Limitation: TikTok benchmarking is limited to Creator Marketplace accounts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sprinklr.com\/help\/articles\/benchmarking-faqs\/benchmarking-and-sources-faqs\/63e3a53fa9d51179030167ba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">benchmarking and sources FAQ<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Eight benchmarking sources per Sprinklr's own FAQ: Facebook public pages, X public accounts, Instagram business accounts, YouTube, VK, Twitch, Quora and TikTok. VK, Twitch and Quora are specialist platforms no other product in this audit benchmarks. Instagram Reels have been included since July 2022; Instagram Stories are not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Competitive content and engagement beside care, advertising and campaign data in one data model.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Dashboard exports and reporting integrations built for enterprise distribution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> YouTube data is confined to its standard dashboard and cannot be used in custom widgets. TikTok benchmarking accepts only public creator accounts registered with the Creator Marketplace, refreshed daily; competitor business accounts cannot be added by URL. Dark posts are excluded on every source.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> The channel count describes the management suite, not the benchmarking module; price the module and inspect each network's mode before accepting a coverage claim.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"which-listening-first-tools-belong-on-the-shortlist\">Which listening-first tools belong on the shortlist?<\/h2>\n<p>BrandMentions, Awario, Brand24, Mention and Talkwalker centre on mentions, sources and sentiment rather than competitor-owned accounts; the wider field is covered in the guide to <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/best-social-listening-tools\/\">social listening tools<\/a>. Same five lines; the five are checked on the six-criterion list below.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"brandmentions-https-brandmentions-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BrandMentions<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/850fe2a0-c090-4613-9e98-b3981eff8f6a_4ff8b465.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the BrandMentions website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for competitor conversation analysis across written and spoken sources \u00b7 20 keywords and 30,000 mentions\/month on Pro \u00b7 from $299\/mo (Pro); Starter $99\/mo billed quarterly \u00b7 Limitation: Starter refreshes daily and excludes video sources.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/facts\/\">facts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/pricing.php\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Public social and web conversation including news, blogs, forums and review platforms, across 125M+ sources and 100+ languages per its facts record. Video from Pro as Spoken Mentions, each time a competitor's name is said in a video, from the transcript, linked to the second; the category where hardware and EV brands were discussed most in the pull above. Starter covers social and discussion sources.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Mention share and sentiment compared project by project, two competitors side by side on the same source taxonomy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Pro ($299, $249 annually) carries 10 projects, 20 keywords, 30,000 mentions, 2 users, hourly updates and 6 months of history. Expert ($499, $399 annually) adds white-label reports, Boolean search, real-time updates, 50 keywords, 75,000 mentions and 10 users. Starter ($99 billed quarterly, $79 annually) is the single-brand entry with 3 projects, 5 keywords, 5,000 mentions and daily updates. 7-day trial on every plan, no card, no free plan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Refresh is plan-gated (Starter daily, Pro hourly, Expert and Enterprise real time); multilingual AI sentiment begins on Pro and Boolean search on Expert, so an operator-built query needs the higher tier. Private content stays outside collection.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> If the decision is alerting speed or operator-level query precision, the plan tier matters more than the keyword count. Where the deliverable is a structured comparison of competitors' published content, Rival IQ and Socialinsider remain the stronger fit: this product does not pull post-level engagement through authenticated APIs, schedule posts or reply to messages.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"awario\"><a href=\"https:\/\/awario.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Awario<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ad54edce-4ea3-47af-ac95-2dad02fa21e1_eb843500.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Awario website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for small teams on a strict budget \u00b7 30,000 new mentions per month \u00b7 from $29\/mo annual billing \u00b7 Limitation: 5,000 stored mentions per topic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/awario.com\/pricing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> X, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, news, blogs, forums and review sites.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Mention volume and alerting on competitor keywords at the lowest verified price in this group.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Awario\u2019s help documentation places PDF reports and CSV exports on Pro and above. White-label reports and API access require Enterprise or an applicable custom plan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Starter stores 5,000 mentions per topic even though it ingests 30,000 new mentions a month, so a busy rival fills the retained window fast.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Read ingestion and storage as a pair: only the second one shows up in your report at the end of the quarter.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"brand24-https-brand24-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brand24.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Brand24<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/b1404b39-0461-4a44-aeaf-2e20fdabbe38_db319f23.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Brand24 website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for keyword-led competitor monitoring with source-level analysis \u00b7 3 keywords on Individual \u00b7 from $199\/mo annual billing \u00b7 Limitation: entry plan covers 7 source categories and refreshes every 12 hours.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/brand24.com\/prices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">pricing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Tiered by plan per Brand24's pricing file: Individual covers Facebook, Instagram, X, news, blogs, other socials and Reddit; Team ($299 annually) adds LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YouTube and TikTok; Pro ($399) adds reviews, Twitch and newsletters; Business ($599) adds podcasts. A competitor whose audience lives on TikTok or YouTube is invisible on Individual.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Mention volume segmented by source and sentiment, with published sentiment performance of 95% macro-F1 on a 50,000-mention test in its own documentation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Source filtering beyond a single headline total; white-labelled PDF, Excel and PowerPoint reports from Pro; API a $99 add-on on Business; AI Visibility add-on priced on request.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Instagram collection requires authorization and follows hashtag and account rules; a monitored hashtag inside a comment can collect the parent post rather than the comment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Check that the captured text contains the opinion that triggered the match; a result that arrived through a comment but stored the post skews any sentiment read built on it.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"mention-https-mention-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mention.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mention<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/097df3c4-a049-4d7b-bc35-ac5ee37b2f97_c280baa0.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Mention website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for structured news and community queries \u00b7 20+ advanced query operators \u00b7 from $599\/mo annual only \u00b7 Limitation: Instagram comments excluded.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.support.mention.com\/en\/articles\/1851655-mention-sources-explained\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">sources explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube, plus news, blogs, forums and review monitoring across 75+ review sites. Instagram comments are excluded.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Conversation volume and source distribution under precise query control.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Company includes customizable and white-label reporting options.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Historical data is an add-on and does not cover every source; a country filter can exclude posts with unknown location, quietly shrinking a geographic comparison.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> A single Company plan from $599 per month billed yearly only, Historical Data and API as paid upgrades, Solo and Pro gone from the public page, publishing and responding retired in favour of Agorapulse, which owns Mention. Treat it as a mid-market research purchase and plan engagement elsewhere.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"talkwalker-https-www-talkwalker-com\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.talkwalker.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Talkwalker<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/274c4633-f822-465f-83f4-9b9978d25c4e_bf9dbef0.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Talkwalker website page\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> Best for broadcast and podcast coverage \u00b7 35,000-show podcast catalogue plus TV and radio \u00b7 pricing on request \u00b7 Limitation: Facebook and Instagram content cannot be exported through its API.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vendor record (checked Oct 30, 2026):<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.talkwalker.com\/docs\/getting-started\/api-restrictions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">API restrictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coverage for competitor reports:<\/strong> Social, news, blogs, Reddit, podcasts (a speech-to-text catalogue launched in 2021 with 35,000 shows) and broadcast TV and radio via TV Eyes documents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric that justifies the spend:<\/strong> Share of voice across media types that web-only tools cannot reach, including image and video recognition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporting and exports:<\/strong> Enterprise reporting and API access, subject to source-level restrictions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limit from the documentation:<\/strong> Its API restrictions page: Facebook and Instagram content not exportable, X exports limited to IDs and sentiment without a paid data add-on, raw Reddit and TikTok data only as aggregated metrics, news and TV content truncated for copyright. Dashboard visibility and data delivery are not the same entitlement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Buying implication:<\/strong> Hootsuite acquired Talkwalker in April 2024 and sells its listening as Lumen inside Hootsuite Social OS; ask which product a quote covers and which entity owns the contract.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Buy listening for the question \"why is this happening\", and benchmarking for the question \"what are they doing\". Vendors sell both as competitor analysis, and only one of them will answer the question on your desk this quarter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"how-do-the-listening-tools-compare-on-published-facts\">How do the listening tools compare on published facts?<\/h2>\n<p>Six criteria, each a fact already printed in this audit, checked identically for all five listening-first tools.<\/p>\n<p><em>Disclosure: BrandMentions publishes this page, so the checklist is printed in full and uses only vendor-documented facts. The seven benchmarking tools are not on it because they do not attempt this job.<\/em><\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Criterion<\/th>\n<th>BrandMentions (Pro)<\/th>\n<th>Awario (Starter)<\/th>\n<th>Brand24 (Individual)<\/th>\n<th>Mention (Company)<\/th>\n<th>Talkwalker<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Price published on the website<\/td>\n<td>Yes, $299 ($249 annually)<\/td>\n<td>Yes, $29 annually ($49 monthly)<\/td>\n<td>Yes, $199 annually ($249 monthly)<\/td>\n<td>Yes, $599, annual only<\/td>\n<td>No, quote<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Monthly billing available<\/td>\n<td>Yes<\/td>\n<td>Yes<\/td>\n<td>Yes<\/td>\n<td>No<\/td>\n<td>No<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Keywords published for the plan<\/td>\n<td>20<\/td>\n<td>3 topics (unlimited keywords inside each)<\/td>\n<td>3<\/td>\n<td>Subscription-defined<\/td>\n<td>Contract<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Monthly mention quota published<\/td>\n<td>30,000<\/td>\n<td>30,000 new, 5,000 stored per topic<\/td>\n<td>2,000<\/td>\n<td>Subscription-defined<\/td>\n<td>Contract<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Transcript mentions (video or audio) documented<\/td>\n<td>Yes, video, linked to the second<\/td>\n<td>No<\/td>\n<td>No<\/td>\n<td>No<\/td>\n<td>Yes, podcasts and broadcast<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>White-label reports on a published plan<\/td>\n<td>Yes, Expert $499<\/td>\n<td>Enterprise or an applicable custom plan.<\/td>\n<td>Yes, Pro $399 annually<\/td>\n<td>Yes, Company<\/td>\n<td>Contract<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Read the checklist for what it says. Awario misses only transcript coverage and is the price pick by a distance: a Starter seat costs a tenth of BrandMentions Pro, and if 5,000 stored mentions per topic is enough evidence, buy it. Brand24 misses the same criterion and has the better documented sentiment model. Mention and Talkwalker have gaps for what they do not publish, not for what they do, and Talkwalker wins when broadcast and podcasts are the sources that matter. BrandMentions is the only one of the five that publishes every number a buyer needs and adds spoken mentions to the written categories: per keyword, Pro works out at about $12 a month against Brand24 Individual's $66; per 1,000 mentions, about $8 against $100.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"how-do-you-test-a-tools-coverage-yourself-before-buying\">How do you test a tool's coverage yourself before buying?<\/h2>\n<p>Documentation proves scope, not recall. The pull above shows where the conversation sits; it does not show how much of it a given product retrieves, and that question is answerable in a trial week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Ownership Split: source type is not source ownership.<\/strong> An Instagram mention can live on the competitor's account or on an unrelated creator's; a news item can be the competitor's press release or a journalist's critical feature. A chart by source type, including the one above, cannot tell you how much of the conversation the competitor controls. Ask any listening vendor to label the same mention set twice, once for source type and once for ownership, on mention count rather than reach, and to say how it handles ambiguous brand names, multilingual aliases, co-mentions and syndicated copies, each of which moves the off-profile share.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The 50-item recall test.<\/strong> Assemble 50 items you can see with your own eyes: competitor posts, comments, articles, reviews, two languages, one fixed fortnight. Run the same competitor query in each trial and record misses and false positives per source type. Then export the matched items as raw rows, because dashboard visibility and data delivery are not the same entitlement (see Talkwalker's API restrictions). That test separates a listening shortlist in days. One limit on the business conclusion: an off-profile majority does not prove that listening should be bought before benchmarking, that every public complaint signals switching intent or that conversation volume predicts revenue; validate those on your own category during the trial, on three competitor keywords, before building a reporting pipeline on them.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"rival-iq-vs-hootsuite-sprout-social-vs-brandmentions-brand24-vs-awario-vs-brandmentions-which-wins\">Rival IQ vs Hootsuite, Sprout Social vs BrandMentions, Brand24 vs Awario vs BrandMentions: which wins?<\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"rival-iq-vs-hootsuite\">Rival IQ vs Hootsuite<\/h3>\n<p>A unit-of-measurement decision: 10 tracked companies across five networks for $239 with one user, against five competitors per network across three networks from $99 per user. Rival IQ wins on coverage per dollar for a single analyst; Hootsuite wins when the team already pays for publishing.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"sprout-social-vs-brandmentions\">Sprout Social vs BrandMentions<\/h3>\n<p>A job decision first. Sprout Social Professional at $299 per seat delivers Facebook, Instagram and X competitor reports inside the tool your team already works in; BrandMentions Pro, $299 per plan, delivers what the market says about that competitor across news, discussions, reviews and video transcripts, with no post-level engagement data. If the budget stretches to one, buy the listening tool: the median brand had 87% of its mentions where Sprout's competitor report does not look, and three Sprout seats cost $897 against $299 for a plan with two users.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"brand24-vs-awario-vs-brandmentions\">Brand24 vs Awario vs BrandMentions<\/h3>\n<p>A capacity decision, and the arithmetic is one-sided above the entry tier. Awario at $29 per month annually with 5,000 stored mentions per topic is the right buy for one brand and one reader. Brand24 Individual at $199 annually gives three keywords and 2,000 mentions, about $66 per keyword and $100 per 1,000 mentions. BrandMentions Pro at $249 annually gives 20 keywords and 30,000 mentions with hourly updates, about $12 per keyword and $8 per 1,000 mentions, plus spoken mentions and two users. For three or more competitors, BrandMentions is the capacity pick; decide on retained volume and refresh speed, not advertised source counts.<\/p>\n<p>Before any of that, choose which three rivals matter; the primer on <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/social-media-competitors\/\">analyzing social competitors<\/a> covers that step and saves more money than any plan comparison.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"frequently-asked-questions\">Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"what-are-the-best-social-media-competitor-analysis-tools\">What are the best social media competitor analysis tools?<\/h3>\n<p>For benchmarking what competitors publish, Rival IQ (10 tracked companies across five networks from $239 per month) and Socialinsider (six networks including TikTok and LinkedIn from $83 per month annually). For listening to what people say about them, BrandMentions (Pro at $299 per month, 20 keywords, 30,000 mentions, spoken mentions from video), with Awario as the budget pick from $29 per month annually and Brand24 for source-level filtering from $199.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"where-do-mentions-of-a-competitor-actually-come-from\">Where do mentions of a competitor actually come from?<\/h3>\n<p>Mostly from outside its social profiles. In a 30-brand, 90-day pull from the BrandMentions index (August 4 to November 1, 2026), Social held 22% of written mentions by volume and a median 13% per brand; News held 33%, Discussions 30%, Web 14% and Blogs 2%. Brands ranged from 4% to 72% in Social, so run the split on your competitor's name before choosing a tool; per-brand counts are in the CSV above.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"what-are-spoken-mentions\">What are spoken mentions?<\/h3>\n<p>A spoken mention is each time a brand name is said out loud in a video, found in the transcript and linked to the second it is spoken, as opposed to a written mention in a post, article or comment. In the same 30-brand pull, brands were spoken 602,912 times against 617,183 written mentions, 98 spoken per 100 written, and audio hardware and electric-vehicle brands were spoken more often than written about. Spoken mentions are counted per occurrence and reported as a separate unit.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"which-tool-is-best-for-seeing-what-people-say-about-competitors\">Which tool is best for seeing what people say about competitors?<\/h3>\n<p>BrandMentions: is one of the five audited that publishes price, monthly billing, keyword count and mention quota for the plan reviewed, and the only one that adds spoken mentions from video transcripts to the written categories. Pro costs $299 per month ($249 annually) for 20 keywords, 30,000 mentions and two users. Awario is the price pick at $29 per month annually; Talkwalker the pick when broadcast and podcasts matter.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"what-is-the-difference-between-social-media-benchmarking-and-social-listening\">What is the difference between social media benchmarking and social listening?<\/h3>\n<p>Benchmarking reads a competitor's own accounts through platform APIs and returns posting frequency, engagement, format mix and follower movement; the competitor is a handle, the cap is companies or profiles. Listening searches public social, news, discussion, blog, web and video sources for the competitor's name wherever anyone writes or says it; the competitor is a keyword, the cap is keywords and mentions. In the 30-brand pull above, a median 87% of written mentions sat outside Social, the part benchmarking never sees.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"how-much-does-a-social-media-competitor-analysis-tool-cost-per-month\">How much does a social media competitor analysis tool cost per month?<\/h3>\n<p>From free (Metricool, limited) and $20 per month (Semrush Social Toolkit Base) for benchmarking, from $29 per month annually (Awario Starter) for listening, up to $299 per seat (Sprout Social Professional), $299 per plan (BrandMentions Pro) and $599 annual-only (Mention Company); Sprinklr and Talkwalker quote on request. The billing unit matters more than the list price: a three-person team pays $897 on a per-seat plan and $299 on a per-plan one.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"is-there-a-free-social-media-competitor-analysis-tool\">Is there a free social media competitor analysis tool?<\/h3>\n<p>Yes, with limits. Metricool's free plan allows five competitors each on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Twitch but does not let you remove or change them, X needs a paid plan plus an add-on, and YouTube competitors are paid-only. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fanpagekarma.com\/plans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Fanpage Karma<\/a> documents five free competitor profiles. Social Status's free tier excludes competitor analytics; Micro at $9 per month is its cheapest plan with them. No listening tool here has a permanent free plan.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"do-any-track-tiktok-and-linkedin-competitors\">Do any track TikTok and LinkedIn competitors?<\/h3>\n<p>Socialinsider documents benchmarking for both TikTok and LinkedIn company pages, the clearest single answer here. Rival IQ covers TikTok competitors but restricts LinkedIn to your own company, Sprinklr's TikTok benchmarking is limited to Creator Marketplace accounts, and Hootsuite and Sprout Social competitor reports include neither. Listening tools treat both as public text rather than profile data, so evaluate <a href=\"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/best-tiktok-social-listening-tools\/\">TikTok listening tools<\/a> separately when conversation is the requirement.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"do-i-need-a-listening-tool-if-i-already-have-hootsuite-or-sprout\">Do I need a listening tool if I already have Hootsuite or Sprout?<\/h3>\n<p>Not automatically. Hootsuite includes baseline <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hootsuite.com\/plans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">listening searches<\/a> with seven days of history on Standard and 30 on Advanced and Enterprise, which may answer a short-window question. Buy a dedicated listening product when you need longer history, review and forum sources, transcript coverage or exportable raw data; Hootsuite's competitive analysis and Sprout Social's competitor reports read three networks of profile data and nothing beyond them.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"conclusion-buy-the-report-not-the-category\">Conclusion: buy the report, not the category<\/h2>\n<p>Competitor analysis is two products sharing a shelf label, and most buying mistakes happen before anyone opens a pricing page: a team asks for \"a competitor tool\", gets an accurate report about three networks of published content, and wonders why it never saw the Reddit thread or the podcast interview that moved the market. Write the deliverable down first, one sentence naming the competitors, the sources, the refresh speed and who receives the output, then ask every shortlisted vendor for the same export with your real competitor names in it. The shortlist usually collapses to two products: one that compares published content, one that reads the conversation around it. For the conversation half, BrandMentions runs a 7-day trial with no card on every plan: put your three real competitor names in it, run the source split from the section above, and you will know before the trial ends whether their conversation lives where your current tool looks. The decision is still yours, and it starts with the sentence, not the software.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A desk audit of 12 social media competitor analysis tools on competitor-report coverage, caps and verified entry prices, plus a 30-brand BrandMentions index pull showing where competitor mentions actually live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[133,369,170],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-listening","tag-competitor-analysis","tag-competitor-tools","tag-social-media-competitor-analysis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6367,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions\/6367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandmentions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}