Social listening tools are software platforms that track and analyze online conversations about brands, industries, and competitors, helping teams turn audience insights into strategy. In other words, they’re tools that help you hear what people are saying about you online so you can respond, improve, and plan smarter.
Why Onclusive Social Leads Social Listening in 2025
Onclusive Social processes over 850 million sources daily. It has the widest coverage in the industry, including hard-to-track platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. With advanced AI Sense technology for accurate sentiment analysis, 2 years of historical search data, and seamless integration with comprehensive media intelligence, Onclusive Social delivers the enterprise-grade insights that PR, communications, and marketing teams need.
Best for: Global enterprise teams requiring comprehensive coverage, advanced AI-driven insights, and sophisticated benchmarking capabilities.
See how Onclusive Social compares to other platforms in this article.
Key Takeaways – Best Social Listening Tools in 2025
- Social listening tools help brands track conversations, spot emerging trends, and understand audience sentiment across millions of online sources.
- What’s more, they’re essential for PR, communications, and marketing teams that want to turn real audience insights into strategy.
- That said, platforms differ in coverage, accuracy, integrations, and ease of use, so choosing the right tool depends on your goals, industry, and team size.
- Notably, enterprise-ready platforms like Onclusive Social lead the way in coverage and AI-driven insights, while some other options serve more niche or regional needs.
- In the end, the right social listening tool isn’t just about monitoring mentions. It’s about unlocking intelligence that drives brand reputation, customer experience, and business growth.
Table of Contents
- Why Social Listening Tools Are Critical for Your Brand
- Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring
- How to Choose the Right Social Listening Tools
- Top 10 Social Listening Tools in 2025
- Top 10 Social Listening Platforms Comparison Table
- Platform-Specific Social Listening
- Free Social Listening Tools
- Use Cases by Business Type
- Final Thoughts: Start Listening Strategically
- Frequently Asked Questions About Social Listening Tools
Why Social Listening Tools Are Critical for Your Brand
Social listening tools help you find meaningful insights in millions of online conversations. Beyond that, they cut out hours of manual research, letting you focus on what matters – turning real audience opinions into strategy.
In fact, research from eMarketer (2025) shows that social listening has become a top strategic priority for marketers this year — ranking alongside AI-driven personalization and creator partnerships. Rather than chasing virality, brands are focusing on meaningful engagement and data-driven insight to understand their audiences more deeply.
Stay Ahead of Cultural Movements
Social listening platforms detect patterns in conversations around specific keywords and hashtags. As a result, this helps you see when certain topics are starting to gain traction. Indeed, being early to a trend helps your brand stay relevant and memorable.
According to Hootsuite’s 2025 report, social listening has evolved from passive tracking to a proactive discipline — helping brands “react early to trending topics or negative sentiment” and adapt messaging in real time to maintain relevance.
In practice, social listening helps you do this by surfacing real-time shifts in conversations. This means as new discussions emerge and trends evolve, you can respond quickly and craft your messaging to match the moment.
Decode Customer Behavior and Preferences
Social listening tools let you tap into authentic audience signals. In particular, listening in on social media conversations helps you understand what topics people like to engage with and what inspires or frustrates them. In turn, these insights fuel more relevant content, smarter product ideas, and more empathetic customer care. At its core, understanding customers’ values and pain points makes it easier to speak directly to what matters most.
Protect and Enhance Your Brand Image
Social listening tools keep track of every relevant brand mention, even if you’re not tagged. This means you can identify and address conversations that could harm your brand reputation and amplify conversations that cast you in a positive light. What’s more, quick, thoughtful responses deliver the standout experience customers are looking for. Essentially, it shows you’re paying attention and that their opinions matter.
Discover Revenue-Generating Opportunities
Social listening platforms help you spot revenue opportunities. In particular, they highlight relevant conversations from users that seek a solution you can provide. Consequently, identifying high-intent conversations early allows you to engage at the right moment, offer useful solutions, and optimize conversion tactics.
Gain Competitive Market Intelligence
Social listening is also a powerful tool for competitive analysis. Consider this: when you track what audiences say about similar brands, you can see what’s hitting the mark and what’s missing it. In practice, these insights help you benchmark your brand performance and identify gaps in the market.
Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring
Social listening and social monitoring serve different purposes. In particular, social monitoring tracks brand mentions and helps you to respond to customer inquiries. It’s reactive and handles immediate needs.
By contrast, social listening takes a broader approach. It analyzes conversation patterns and identifies emerging trends. On top of that, it tracks sentiment changes over time and uncovers insights for long-term strategy. In essence, instead of just counting mentions, social listening helps you understand the ‘why’ behind conversations.
How to Choose the Right Social Listening Tools
Industry-Specific Needs
Different industries need different listening capabilities. Consider: healthcare organizations need compliance-aware platforms. Similarly, retail brands require real-time monitoring for customer service. At the same time, financial services companies need robust filtering for regulatory requirements.
Coverage and Integration
Platform coverage varies widely across tools. Most cover major English-language platforms well. That said, international coverage and non-English language analysis differ significantly. For this reason, consider your geographic markets and language needs when evaluating options.
In addition, look for seamless integration with your existing systems. The best platforms offer robust API access and pre-built integrations with popular marketing tools. Beyond that, they also provide flexible data export capabilities.
Sentiment Analysis and Reporting
Sentiment analysis ranges from basic positive/negative classifications to advanced emotion detection. Notably, more sophisticated platforms can identify sarcasm and detect nuanced emotions. On top of that, they also provide sentiment analysis across multiple languages with higher accuracy.
Equally important, strong reporting capabilities help you extract actionable insights. Look for customizable dashboards and automated reporting features. At their best, the best platforms present complex data in clear, visual formats that stakeholders can easily understand.
Top 10 Social Listening Tools in 2025
1. Onclusive Social
Strengths:
- Industry-leading social listening platform with the widest data coverage on the market.
- Monitors hard-to-track sources like TikTok, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.
- Processes over 850 million sources daily worldwide.
- Advanced AI Sense technology filters data accurately and applies sentiment analysis.
- Historical Search gives access to up to 2 years of past mentions with unlimited searches.
- Sophisticated benchmarking capabilities for detailed data analysis.
- Bespoke AI Sense tools designed for faster set up, alerting, analysis, and decision-making.
- Seamless integration with Onclusive’s broader media intelligence suite.
Ideal User or Team: Enterprise PR teams, corporate communications, and marketing professionals who need comprehensive global coverage with advanced AI intelligence.
Price Range: Custom enterprise pricing based on requirements.
Limitations: Extensive features that may exceed the requirements of smaller organizations.
See How Onclusive Social compares to other market leaders
2. Brandwatch
Strengths:
- Possible integration with Cision’s traditional media monitoring suite.
- Real-time alerts and AI-powered sentiment analysis, with additional Iris AI features.
- Includes a social media management and influencer marketing tool.
- Strong consumer research use cases.
Ideal User or Team: PR teams who need an integrated media monitoring solution or social media marketing teams
Price Range: Custom enterprise pricing.
Limitations: Depends heavily on data sampling, TikTok monitoring is limited to brand handles, and Facebook/Instagram coverage is limited to pages added by clients.
3. Vuelio
Strengths:
- Strong UK and European focus with comprehensive media coverage.
- Media database of over 1 million journalists and influencers.
- Integrated social media monitoring and traditional media tracking.
- Political monitoring capabilities for government relations.
- Customizable dashboards and automated reporting.
- Excellent audience intelligence and stakeholder management tools.
- Strong customer support and training resources.
Ideal User or Team: UK-based organizations and PR agencies needing strong European media coverage and political monitoring.
Price Range: Annual pricing starting around £3,000-5,000, with additional costs for specialized features.
Limitations: Primarily focused on UK and European markets. Limited global coverage compared to other enterprise platforms.
4. Talkwalker
Strengths:
- Social coverage includes 150+ million sources.
- Visual listening with image and video recognition technology.
- Blue Silk AI provides insights and trend identification.
- Volume predictions to anticipate viral content.
- Historical data analysis for trend research.
- Owned by social media management company, Hootsuite.
Ideal User or Team: Marketing teams focused on content and trend identification.
Price Range: Enterprise pricing starting around $9,600+ annually.
Limitations: TikTok monitoring was discontinued in September 2024, LinkedIn Monitoring is based on a sampled beta program. Complex setup requiring Boolean search expertise. Higher price point may be prohibitive for smaller organizations.
5. Sprinklr
Strengths:
- Covers 30+ social channels and millions of online sources with real-time monitoring.
- AI-powered sentiment analysis and conversation clustering for deep audience insights.
- Unified Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform integrates social listening with publishing, engagement, and customer service.
- Strong compliance and governance features for regulated industries.
- Customizable dashboards, reporting, and workflow automation.
Ideal User or Team: Enterprise PR, marketing, and customer experience teams needing advanced listening combined with engagement and publishing in one platform.
Price Range: Enterprise-level pricing, typically custom contracts starting in the tens of thousands annually.
Limitations: Complexity of setup may require dedicated training and onboarding. High price point makes it less suitable for small or mid-sized organizations. Some features may overlap or feel redundant if a company already uses standalone publishing/engagement tools
6. Sprout Social
Strengths:
- Integration of social listening with social media management.
- Includes AI Assist summarization feature. Strong customer service focus with unified inbox capabilities.
- Custom alerts setup.
- Good team collaboration tools and user-friendly interface.
- Cross-platform social media monitoring capabilities.
Ideal User or Team: Marketing teams managing both social media publishing and monitoring. Customer service teams handling social inquiries.
Price Range: Subscription plans with listening features on higher tiers.
Limitations: Listening capabilities less sophisticated than dedicated monitoring platforms. Limited historical data access on lower plans.
7. Meltwater
Strengths:
- Media monitoring available beyond social listening.
- Strong coverage in Chinese social media.
- Available historical data.
- Audience sentiment analysis and behavioral insights.
Ideal User or Team: PR teams and communications professionals needing integrated earned media monitoring across all channels.
Price Range: Custom enterprise pricing, typically thousands annually.
Limitations: Facebook/Instagram account monitoring that relies on limited API, LinkedIn Monitoring relies on sampled beta program, and TikTok monitoring is limited to brand handles
8. Mention
Strengths:
- User-friendly interface with straightforward setup.
- Good balance of features and affordability for mid-market organizations.
- Basic sentiment analysis and competitive tracking.
- Email alerts and notification system.
- Multi-language monitoring capabilities.
- Simple reporting and analytics dashboards.
- API access for custom integrations.
Ideal User or Team: Small to medium marketing teams and agencies serving multiple clients.
Price Range: Affordable pricing starting from basic monitoring tiers.
Limitations: Limited advanced analytics capabilities. Smaller data coverage compared to enterprise platforms.
9. Brand24
Strengths:
- Good value for money with comprehensive monitoring features.
- Tracks conversations from 25 million online sources.
- User-friendly dashboard design.
- Automated reporting and alert systems.
- Social media reach and engagement analytics.
Ideal User or Team: Small to medium businesses and marketing consultants.
Price Range: Affordable pricing with multiple tiers available.
Limitations: Limited advanced analytics capabilities. May struggle with high-volume monitoring requirements.
10. YouScan
Strengths:
- ChatGpt integration: Visual content analysis identifies brand mentions in images and videos.
- Available TikTok Monitoring.
- Unlimited queries.
- Automated buyer persona insights.
Ideal User or Team: Brands with strong visual components, organizations operating in emerging markets, companies requiring advanced image analysis capabilities.
Limitations: Smaller overall data coverage compared to enterprise platforms. Less established in Western markets. Less available historical data.
Top 10 Social Listening Platforms 2025
The insights in this guide are based on Onclusive’s first-party data and market research, combined with our experience working with global PR, communications and marketing teams.
| Tool | Best For | Coverage | Price Range | Limitations |
| Onclusive Social | Enterprise PR & communications teams needing advanced AI insights | 850M+ global sources, TikTok, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn | Custom enterprise pricing | Features may exceed smaller org needs |
| Brandwatch | PR & social media teams needing integrated monitoring + influencer marketing | Strong global coverage, sampling-based, limited TikTok/Facebook/Instagram | Custom enterprise pricing | Data sampling, platform API limitations |
| Vuelio | UK & European organizations, PR agencies, government relations | Strong UK/EU coverage, media & political monitoring | £3k–5k+ annually | Limited global coverage |
| Talkwalker | Marketing teams focused on trend identification | 150M+ sources, image/video recognition, historical data | From ~$9,600 annually | No TikTok, limited LinkedIn, complex Boolean setup |
| Sprinklr | Large enterprises needing unified customer experience management | 30+ social channels, millions of sources, AI clustering | Tens of thousands annually (custom) | Complex setup, high cost, feature overlap |
| Sprout Social | Marketing & customer service teams combining publishing + listening | Multi-platform monitoring, AI summarization, unified inbox | Tiered subscriptions (listening on higher plans) | Limited historical data, less advanced analytics |
| Meltwater | PR & comms pros needing integrated earned + social media monitoring | Strong in Chinese social media, audience insights, historical data | Custom enterprise pricing | Limited API access for Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn |
| Mention | SMEs and agencies managing multiple clients affordably | Multi-language monitoring, email alerts, API integrations | Affordable, tiered pricing | Smaller data coverage, limited advanced analytics |
| Brand24 | SMEs & consultants needing budget-friendly coverage | 25M+ sources, automated reporting, reach/engagement metrics | Affordable, multiple tiers | Struggles with high-volume monitoring |
| YouScan | Brands with strong visual content or emerging market focus | Visual/image recognition, TikTok, unlimited queries | Custom pricing (mid-market to enterprise) | Smaller coverage, less historical data, weaker Western presence |
Platform-Specific Social Listening
While comprehensive tools cover multiple platforms, some brands benefit from specialized monitoring for specific social networks where their audiences are most active.
TikTok-Specific Listening
TikTok has become essential for trend identification and cultural relevance. Significantly, Onclusive Social was the first social listening player to include TikTok monitoring as part of their wider coverage.
Exolyt provides comprehensive TikTok analytics and listening capabilities. In particular, it tracks specific accounts, hashtags, and videos while identifying trending sounds and effects that inform content strategy.
All Ears uses AI-powered analysis to monitor millions of TikTok videos for brand mentions. It automatically transcribes spoken content and provides metrics like reach and sentiment analysis specifically for video conversations.
X-Specific Tracking
X (formerly Twitter) remains crucial for real-time conversations, news discussions, and customer service interactions. The platform’s fast-moving nature requires tools that can process high-volume conversations and identify trending topics as they emerge.
X Advanced Search offers robust built-in capabilities for tracking conversations with specific words, phrases, and hashtags. It includes filters for engagement levels, date ranges, and account-specific searches.
X Pro (formerly TweetDeck) provides multi-column displays for monitoring hundreds of conversations simultaneously. It’s particularly useful for tracking multiple topics and lists in real-time during breaking news or events.
Free Social Listening Tools
Several free options provide basic monitoring for organizations with limited budgets or simple requirements.
Google Alerts
Strengths: Simple, reliable mention tracking delivered via email. Free service from Google with easy setup. Consistent delivery of alerts for specified keywords.
Ideal User or Team: Small businesses with basic monitoring needs. Individuals tracking personal brand mentions.
Price Range: Free
Limitations: No sentiment analysis. Limited filtering capabilities. Poor social media coverage. No analytical features beyond basic mention tracking.
Answer the Public
Strengths: Excellent for understanding what questions people ask about topics, brands, or industries. Visualizes search data from Google, Bing, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Provides content ideas based on real search queries.
Ideal User or Team: Content creators, SEO professionals, and marketers seeking topic ideas and understanding search behavior patterns.
Price Range: Free version with 3 searches per day. Paid plans available for unlimited access.
Limitations: Focuses on search queries rather than social conversations. Limited social listening capabilities compared to dedicated monitoring platforms.
Use Cases by Business Type
Enterprise Teams
Enterprise teams need social listening tools that can handle massive data volumes and provide global coverage. In particular, they benefit from platforms with advanced segmentation and custom reporting. Critically, integration with existing business intelligence systems is crucial. For multinational brands, global coverage is essential. This means these companies need platforms with strong international data sources and multi-language processing.
PR and Communications Teams
PR and communications teams need social listening tools optimized for reputation management and crisis monitoring. They benefit from platforms that cover traditional news sources, blogs, and industry publications beyond social media. Real-time alerting is essential for crisis response. Over time, sentiment tracking helps measure the effectiveness of communications efforts.
Marketing Teams
Marketing teams use social listening tools to measure campaign performance and understand audience response. In practice, they need platforms that can track campaign-specific keywords, hashtags, and mentions. Here, detailed engagement and sentiment analysis are important. Furthermore, competitive benchmarking features help teams understand how their campaigns perform compared to competitors.
Final Thoughts: Start Listening Strategically
Social listening tools have become essential business intelligence platforms. In fact, they provide competitive advantages through deep audience understanding, trend identification, and strategic market insights. Significantly, the most successful organizations approach social listening as a strategic capability rather than just tactical monitoring.
When evaluating social listening tools, prioritize platforms that match your team’s capabilities. In addition, look for effective integration with existing technology systems. Beyond that, choose platforms that provide room for growth as your needs evolve. And, consider the total cost of ownership including training, implementation, and ongoing management.
Start your social listening journey by defining clear objectives. From there, understand your team’s capabilities and select platforms that provide immediate value. At the same time, the right platform should also support long-term strategic intelligence requirements. In the end, the insights waiting in your industry’s digital conversations can transform how you approach marketing, customer service, product development, and competitive strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions About Social Listening Tools
Q1. What are social listening tools?
Social listening tools are software platforms that track and analyze online conversations about brands, industries, and competitors. They monitor millions of sources including social media, news sites, blogs, and forums. These tools help organizations understand customer sentiment and identify emerging trends. Beyond that, they protect brand reputation and uncover business opportunities. In essence, they turn raw social data into actionable insights for PR, marketing, and customer service teams.
Q2. What is the difference between social listening and social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring is reactive—tracking mentions for real-time customer responses. In contrast, social listening is strategic. It analyzes conversation patterns, identifies trends, and tracks sentiment over time. While monitoring handles immediate needs, listening informs long-term strategy. Specifically, it guides product development and competitive positioning through deeper audience insights.
Q3. What are the best free social listening tools?
The best free tools include Google Alerts for brand tracking and AnswerThePublic for search insights. That said, free options lack advanced sentiment analysis, multi-platform coverage, and historical data. For comprehensive listening, paid platforms like Onclusive Social provide significantly more value.
Q4. How do social listening tools help with PR and communications?
Social listening tools protect brand reputation by monitoring all mentions across millions of sources, even when untagged. They track emerging issues in real time, enabling rapid crisis response. Additionally, they measure campaign effectiveness, identify media opportunities, and monitor competitors. In essence, they give communications teams the intelligence to act proactively rather than reactively.
Q5. Who should use social listening tools?
Any team needing audience insights benefits from social listening. This includes PR teams tracking reputation, marketing teams measuring campaigns, and customer service teams identifying pain points. Additionally, product teams discover feature requests, while executives gain competitive intelligence. In practice, social listening provides value across the entire organization.
Q6. Which social listening software has the best sentiment analysis in 2025?
Advanced platforms like Onclusive Social offer the best sentiment analysis in 2025. They use AI to detect nuance, sarcasm, and emotions across multiple languages. In contrast, basic tools only classify mentions as positive, negative, or neutral. This deeper analysis helps teams understand true audience feelings and respond appropriately to maintain brand reputation.
Q7. How do social listening tools work?
Social listening tools scan millions of sources—social media, news sites, blogs, and forums—collecting brand and keyword mentions. Then, AI algorithms analyze the data to identify sentiment, detect trends, and measure engagement. The platforms organize findings into dashboards with real-time alerts and automated reports. This helps teams understand conversations and make data-driven decisions quickly.
Q8. Do I need social listening if I’m a small business?
Small businesses benefit from social listening if managing reputation, tracking competitors, or seeking customer insights. Free tools like Google Alerts work for start-ups with limited budgets.
Q9. What can you do with social listening data?
Social listening data protects brand reputation by catching negative sentiment early. It discovers customer pain points and product opportunities. Additionally, it tracks competitors, identifies influencers, and measures campaign performance. Social listening tools also spot emerging trends and transform raw data into actionable business intelligence across PR, marketing, and customer service teams.