Top 8 Brand Monitoring Tools: Features, Security and Pricing (2025)

Brand monitoring in the age of AI-first businesses means you’re no longer waiting to catch wind of customer sentiment — you’re in tune with it, minute by minute. Now, every tweet, review, and mention that’s remotely about your brand is tracked and decoded into insights you can use to safeguard your brand health. 

And here’s the best part: robust brand monitoring tools can do much more than basic sentiment tracking. They can spot trends, raise alerts, and pull insights from every corner of the web - social media, blogs, forums, product reviews, YouTube videos, and surveys, to name a few. 

So, let’s dive into the world of brand monitoring software and explore a few tools that are shaping the market with disruptive features, competitive pricing, and glowing customer reviews. Bookmark this guide; you’ll want it handy when it’s time to choose a tool that will keep your brand ahead of the curve. 

What are brand monitoring tools?

Brand monitoring tools are software solutions that collect and analyze mentions of your brand across digital touchpoints, turning them into actionable insights to manage your online reputation.  

They gather and dissect customer feedback and brand mentions from sources such as social media, blogs, forums, product reviews, YouTube videos, and surveys. 

Let’s understand what brand monitoring tools can accomplish with an illustration. 

Imagine you’re part of a popular smartphone company and you’ve been actively tracking brand mentions online. After analyzing the data, you notice a trend: customers consistently praise your camera quality and user-friendly interface. This feedback or product insight could be the starting point for a social media campaign, where you’d highlight these key features to attract followers and drive engagement. Sharing glowing user-generated reviews will build credibility and drive social media conversions. That’s the value a reliable brand monitoring tool brings. 

Interesting Read: A-Z Guide on Brand Monitoring in 2025 & Beyond   

What to monitor for your brand (and why) 

Today, brand building goes beyond just offering a great product or service and hoping it garners customer trust and revenue. It also encompasses brand reputation management and shaping brand perception. 

As a brand owner, manager, or marketer, you have an active role to play in shaping the way people see and talk about you online. Brand monitoring tools enable you to take charge of your brand’s image by yielding a 360° view of your brand’s digital footprint.  

So, where do you start? Let’s break down the essential areas you should monitor to build a positive brand image in a crowded marketplace. 

1. Sentiment analysis 
   Sentiment analysis helps you understand how customers feel about your brand. Are they happy, upset, or indifferent? By analyzing the tone in customer comments and reviews, you can see if the general sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral. This insight can guide you in refining your product design, customer service, marketing, and sales strategies to meet customer expectations better. 
2. Brand mentions 
   Every mention of your brand is a chance to build connections and learn more about your audience. Brand mentions appear everywhere — from blog posts to tweets to review platforms. By keeping track of these, you gain insight into where your brand name is being discussed, who’s talking about it, and in what context. Positive mentions can be celebrated and amplified, while constructive criticism can become opportunities to improve. Social mentions can even help identify potential influencers or brand advocates. 
3. Customer reviews 
   Monitoring reviews across Google, Yelp, Amazon and industry-specific forums allows you to track customer satisfaction. Positive reviews indicate what’s working, while negative ones offer a chance to address issues early. When you respond proactively, it shows potential customers that you value feedback, turning even dissatisfied customers into potential loyalists. Rigorous review management helps you maintain high ratings and attract new customers. 
4. Industry news and competitor updates 
   Real-time and accurate competitor and market insights help you stay relevant and competitive. For example, tracking industry news pinpoints emerging trends and regulatory changes in your domain. Likewise, tracking competitor mentions on social media gives insights into their weaknesses and strengths for you to leverage.  
5. Influencer mentions
   Influencers are the new brand builders. One positive mention from a trusted voice can elevate your brand's visibility higher than any self-serving ad. Tracking influencer mentions allows you to step in and lead meaningful social media interactions. Additionally, it helps you understand how effectively your influencers are representing you. It also surfaces potential social media collaboration opportunities if you see an organic buzz from influential voices.  

Learn More: How to Drive Organic Growth on Social Media: 8 Tips  

Best brand monitoring tools 

Choosing the right brand monitoring platform isn’t a straightforward task. But finding your best-fit tool can be transformative for your brand health, empowering you to make informed decisions.  

In this listicle, we have covered eight leading brand monitoring tools, discussing their key features, pricing, and user reviews so you can compare them objectively and find your best fit.  

8 Best brand monitoring tools for 2025 

Sprinklr

Sprinklr’s brand monitoring enables you to track your online reputation across various social media platforms, providing insights into customer sentiment and engagement. Paired with social listening and sentiment analysis, the trio helps you decode customer opinions intelligently, enabling you to take proactive measures to protect your reputation. 

Powered by advanced AI, Sprinklr analyzes data across 30+ digital channels, delivering cross-channel insights that sharpen your competitive edge and ensure you’re always in the know. 

🚀 Prominent features  

• Real-time social listening: Tracks brand mentions and engagement across 30+ digital channels, including social media, news sites, blogs, and forums. This allows you to monitor conversations about your brand as they happen, enabling quick responses to emerging trends or issues. 
  
• Sentiment analysis: The monitoring platform uses AI to analyze and categorize audience sentiment in real time, helping you understand how customers feel about your brand, products, or services. This feature enables you to measure shifts in public perception and address any negative sentiment promptly. 
• Crisis detection and alerts: Detects unusual activity or spikes in negative mentions, sending immediate alerts so your team can address potential crises before they escalate.  
• Competitive benchmarking: Provides insights into competitor performance by tracking their mentions and sentiment. This allows you to compare your brand’s performance to industry peers and gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. 
• Trend analysis: Identifies and tracks emerging trends by analyzing conversations and patterns over time. This helps your brand stay relevant by allowing you to join conversations that matter most to your audience. 
• Visual listening: Recognizes logos and brand imagery in social media content, even when your brand isn’t mentioned by name. This ensures that you don’t miss brand-related content and can monitor visual brand presence across platforms. 

🔓Security Measures for Data Protection 

Data encryption: Encrypts data at rest and in transit to protect it from unauthorized access. 

Access controls: Implements role-based access controls (RBAC) to limit data access to authorized users. 

Compliance: Adheres to GDPR and CCPA, ensuring data privacy and regulatory alignment. 

Continuous monitoring: Engages in regular audits and real-time monitoring to identify and mitigate security threats. 

In addition, Sprinklr offers a top-notch Trust Center, ensuring that your competitive analysis data remains safe. Take a look at its comprehensive compliance badges: 

 

 Customer testimonial  

💪 Strengths  
“Sprinklr has empowered our organization to make strategic decisions based on a wide array of data. From competitor benchmarking and crisis monitoring to deep dives into internal data, we have utilized Sprinklr daily for the past two years to increase engagement, improve brand health, and gain an edge over our competitors. Sprinklr helps us determine which strategies are effective for us and which are not. This allows us in real-time to refine our approach to social. It also allows us to monitor what works and what doesn't for our competitors, gleaning critical insights into areas we could leverage for our success.”  Source

💡 What could be better  
“Sprinklr is extremely customizable to your needs. This does entail a learning curve, which can be steep for novices, but once mastered, it's a powerful tool, and the team is super helpful at onboarding new users and solving problems in real-time.” Source    

Overall verdict  Sprinklr’s platform stands out in brand monitoring with a powerful suite of advanced tools designed to elevate brand management. From real-time insights and broad channel coverage to in-depth reporting and trend tracking, Sprinklr equips you with the tools and resources to stay on top of your game. While its advanced features come with a learning curve, the robust capabilities make it a worthwhile investment for teams ready to harness powerful, data-driven insights to stay ahead in the market.  

Trusted by: IKEA, Shell, SAP, Acer, Sonos and Arnott’s Group  

Price: Check out pricing details 

Brandwatch

Brandwatch uses advanced image and text analysis to capture brand mentions in text and visual media, making it uniquely valuable for businesses where brand visuals play a key role. This brand monitoring tool has an expansive database and AI-enhanced sentiment insights that allow you to understand public perception at a granular level, providing crucial feedback on how well your brand resonates with various audiences. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Visual analysis of brand mentions: Brandwatch identifies your logos and branding in visual content, like images or videos, on platforms that don’t directly mention your brand name. This gives a holistic picture of your brand awareness and visibility, even where text-based tools fall short. 
• Trend detection across channels: Brandwatch’s AI continuously scans and detects emerging trends, allowing you to respond to new topics or changes in brand perception as they surface. 
• Demographic and sentiment analysis: The platform breaks down consumer opinions by demographics and sentiment, offering deeper insights into specific audience segments and their sentiment about your brand. 
• Customizable dashboards for real-time monitoring: These dashboards let you tailor your view to prioritize certain channels or audience segments, yielding crystal-clear insights into brand mentions. 

 Customer testimonial  

💪 Strengths 
“Brandwatch is my favorite tool for social listening. For social media monitoring specifically, it is the best, but traditional media monitoring is not the best.” Source  

💡 What Could Be Better 
“Setting up customized dashboards can be time-intensive, but they become invaluable once fine-tuned to fit specific brand needs.” Source  

Overall verdict 
As mentioned earlier, Brandwatch’s visual and trend analysis capabilities make it a winner for brands with a strong visual identity. By monitoring mentions across text and image, Brandwatch provides a comprehensive view of brand presence and consumer sentiment across the digital landscape. 

Price: Brandwatch offers customized pricing tailored to specific use cases and business needs. While exact figures aren't publicly disclosed, industry sources suggest that its plans start at approximately £500/month. For a more accurate quote, contact Brandwatch directly through their official website.  

Meltwater

Meltwater offers unparalleled global media coverage, continuously tracking mentions on news sites, blogs, and social media. By filtering data through advanced AI, Meltwater allows you to cut through the noise, focusing only on relevant mentions. Additionally, Meltwater’s sentiment analysis and alert system simplify trend analysis and crisis management, giving you a firm hold over your brand reputation. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Global media tracking across 120+ countries: Meltwater scans millions of sources across social and traditional media, allowing you to monitor brand presence in real time across international markets. 
• AI-powered sentiment analysis: This feature enables you to see how audiences feel about your brand. Like Sprinklr, Meltwater’s AI sorts through mentions to assess public sentiment, helping you prioritize issues or positive feedback. 
• Customizable alerts for crisis management: Meltwater’s real-time alerts notify you of significant changes in mention volume or sentiment, allowing for swift crisis management if negative trends emerge. 
• Competitor comparison: Similar to Sprinklr’s competitive benchmarking tool, Meltwater’s benchmarking tool compares your brand with industry competitors, providing insights into brand perception, messaging impact, and areas for strategic improvement. 

Customer testimonial  

💪 Strengths 
“I find Meltwater a great tool for media monitoring and analytics. Its comprehensive coverage and detailed insights help us stay informed about industry trends and track our brand's presence across various media channels.” Source 

💡 What Could Be Better 
“We don't love having to pay separately for an API integration that allows our data and analytics team to connect directly to the platform. The database of reporters could be a little bit more robust, but it is sufficient for our needs.” Source 

Overall verdict 
Meltwater’s extensive global coverage makes it a smart choice for brands with international reach. Its AI filtering, sentiment analysis, and crisis alert system provide comprehensive and actionable insights into brand perception, perfect for staying ahead of reputation-related challenges. 

Cision

Cision is another well-known social media and brand monitoring platform that focuses on providing brands with clear visibility into both traditional and social channels. With powerful PR-specific features, Cision lets you monitor brand mentions, connect with influencers, and engage directly with journalists to build a strong, proactive brand presence.  

🚀 Prominent features 

• Extensive media coverage, including influencer insights: Cision monitors brand mentions across traditional media, social platforms, and influencer content. This feature allows you to reach influential voices mentioning your brand, giving you the tools for maintaining a positive brand narrative. 
• Automated crisis alerts and sentiment analysis: The platform’s sentiment analysis gauges fluctuating brand perception and flags potential issues so you’re ready to take timely action. 
• Detailed analytics reports: Cision’s custom reports offer in-depth views into audience reach and brand sentiment, letting you track progress and demonstrate the value of your brand management efforts. 

 Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 
“Access to tens of thousands of journalists is useful as a PR practitioner. It also does a great job of tracking insights like tone and monitoring where your organization appears in the news.” Source 

💡What Could Be Better 
“It's not very intuitive. If you type in the name of an outlet, for example, all outlets having any part of the words used in the query will appear. Results require a lot of manual sorting to figure out what is relevant to your search and what isn't.” Source 

Overall verdict 
Cision’s focus on brand health, strong media, and influencer outreach tools make it an invaluable resource for brands that rely on positive PR and media relationships. Its analytics tools also make it easier to quantify the impact of brand management strategy.  

Talkwalker

Talkwalker is famed for its media and brand monitoring capabilities that go beyond text mentions. It detects your brand presence in images, videos, and audio clips. Additionally, its multilingual sentiment analysis and predictive trend analysis equip you to engage global audiences, respond to emerging trends, and track brand perception across different regions and languages. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Visual listening: Talkwalker’s AI-powered visual recognition technology captures brand logos in images and videos, ensuring no visual mention slips through, even when users don’t mention your brand in text. 
• Multilingual sentiment analysis: Covers sentiment insights in 29 languages, making it easy to understand how different regions and demographics view your brand. 
• AI-driven trend prediction: Analyzes historical and real-time data to forecast emerging topics, so you can proactively address conversations likely to impact your brand. 
• Event detection and alerts: Instantly notifies your team of brand-critical mentions, spikes, or events, helping you respond promptly to shifts in brand perception. 

 Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 
“Talkwalker has the ability to fully customize your search terms while looking at sentiment, geographic locations, and media types.” Source 

💡 What Could Be Better 
“One of the downsides of the version I use is that you can only search conversations from the last 30 days.” Source 

Overall verdict 
Talkwalker’s visual listening and trend analysis capabilities set it apart, making it ideal for brands with a global presence. The learning curve may be a consideration, but the deep insights gained through Talkwalker make the investment worthwhile. 

Price: Starts at approximately $9,600/year  

Quid

Quid combines social analytics with extensive consumer and market insights, making it a valuable tool for data-rich brand monitoring. Its AI-driven capabilities allow you to analyze sentiment, track competitive movements, and identify market shifts, arming you with the intel to drive effective brand strategies and competitive advantage. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Consumer and market insights: Just like Sprinklr, Quid’s AI analyzes consumer data to reveal hidden patterns and insights in public opinion and sentiment. 
• Trend and sentiment analysis: Tracks evolving trends and sentiments, giving you updates on how your brand is perceived by different audience groups. 
• Competitive analysis with benchmarking tools: The benchmarking capabilities of Quid allow you to compare your brand’s performance with competitors, helping you adjust your strategy based on competitor insights. 
• Crisis management alerts: Identifies negative spikes in sentiment or mentions, enabling your team to manage crises as they unfold. 

Customer testimonials 

💪 Strengths 
“We use NetBase primarily to monitor our brand health but over the course of the last 3+ years that we have been with NetBase, our account manager/reps have helped us discover several other ways that the platform can provide intelligence. We now use NetBase for competitive analysis, crisis management/monitoring, and campaign performance. These are all areas that our organization had never before had insights into. It has also helped us become better connected with our different business lines/industries.” 

💡 What Could Be Better 

“Since time is luxury these days for most of B2B businesses, This very platform has some room to pace up the proceedings little bit more & deliver the impact within expected time. Additionally, pricing of packages is something which is always on the cards whenever we talk about such things.” Source

Overall verdict 

Boasting powerful AI-driven insights, Quid is excellent for brands focused on thorough consumer understanding and competitive analysis. Although initial setup may require patience, this brand monitoring platform’s detailed insights justify the effort.   

Mention

Mention is designed for real-time monitoring, simplicity, and accessibility. It’s ideal for small to mid-sized teams looking to track brand mentions, competitor activity, and audience sentiment without extensive configuration. Mention’s alert system ensures you stay updated on key mentions, while hashtag and competitor tracking provide a streamlined view of relevant conversations. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Real-time alerts: Tracks mentions of your brand across social media and the web, sending instant alerts so you can engage promptly with your audience. 
• Competitor monitoring: Keeps tabs on competitors’ brand mentions, giving you context on how your brand stands in comparison. 
• Sentiment analysis: Basic sentiment scoring shows how mentions align with positive, neutral, or negative sentiment, helping you prioritize responses. 
• Influencer identification: Identifies influential users mentioning your brand so you can reach out to them for partnerships and brand advocacy. 

 💪 Strengths 
“Mention allows us to create alerts and perform searches with our filters. We can easily monitor the profiles of our brand. With the searched keywords we can easily review and digest the email list. Their dashboards is very simple to use and we do not have to learn many skills to use their dashboards. There are exceptional packages for the filters and Boolean search. It has a simple interface and is very easy to navigate.” Source

💡 What Could Be Better 
“It misses some places and does not cover all the areas where your business name was mentioned. I found that it did not capture abbreviations or mentions on websites that are not very famous. In one example, my previous company had been cited 160 times, but it did not even show half of them.” Source  

Overall verdict 
Mention is a strong choice for small to mid-sized teams that need a straightforward, real-time brand monitoring tool. It may lack the advanced analytics of more complex platforms, but it covers the essentials effectively and keeps brand monitoring manageable. 

Price: Starting at $49/month  

Critical Mention

Critical Mention’s specialty lies in broadcast monitoring, making it a powerful choice for brands with a presence on TV, radio, and online channels. By tracking brand mentions across these media types and providing keyword alerts, Critical Mention ensures you stay informed on how your brand appears in traditional media, complementing online brand monitoring. 

🚀 Prominent features 

• Custom keyword alerts: Allows you to set alerts for specific keywords related to your brand, instantly notifying you of relevant mentions. 
• Transcripts of broadcast mentions: Provides text transcriptions of audio or video mentions, which are useful for internal reporting or in-depth analysis. 
• Detailed Analytical Reports: Generates reports that show reach, sentiment, and geographic location, offering insights on how your messaging resonates with different markets. 

 💪 Strengths 
“The software they use allows me to target specific keywords, mentions, or topics, and customize feeds to my liking. The reports are easy to read, and I can send links of relevant updates and alerts to clients. I can store relevant mentions and/or posts for future reference and when necessary, analyze findings with reporting features such as number and frequency of specific posts, impact on a client, etc.” Source 

💡 What Could Be Better 
“Not much to complain about! Sometimes the site is a bit slow when pulling large reports, but that honestly is likely a network error and not the platform’s fault.” Source 

Overall verdict 
Critical Mention is ideal for brands focused on broadcast media coverage, giving visibility across traditional media channels. While report customization could be improved, its broadcast monitoring remains highly valuable for brands with a media-centric focus. 

How to choose the best brand monitoring software for your business 

Choosing the right brand monitoring tool or software takes careful research and planning. It’s about finding a tool that not only fits seamlessly into your workflow and tech stack but also scales as your needs grow. With so many options, each with its own strengths, tool selection can feel overwhelming. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you choose the ideal brand monitoring software painlessly. 

Step 1: Clarify your objectives 

Before committing to a tool, identify what you want to achieve with it. For example, if your primary goal is reputation management, you might prioritize tools that offer crisis detection and communication. Alternatively, if competitive analysis is a top focus, look for tools offering competitor benchmarking and share-of-voice metrics. 

Step 2: Identify key requirements 

Outline the must-have features based on your business goals. For instance, if you need real-time alerts to stay on top of urgent brand mentions, ensure the monitoring software provides this capability. Similarly, if influencer tracking or visual brand monitoring (like spotting your logo in images or videos) is important for your brand, check for tools designed to deliver these features. 

Here’s another example. Let’s say your goal is to monitor customer feedback to enhance product development. Your key requirements might include sentiment analysis, customer review tracking, and in-depth demographic insights. Tools like Sprinklr Insight are equipped for this, enabling you to gather nuanced feedback about your product. 

Step 3: Assess integration potential 

Integration is a must-have feature if you’re working with multiple software and platforms. Look for tools that integrate seamlessly with your existing software to create a unified workflow. Tools like Sprinklr or Meltwater are known for integration flexibility, allowing data to flow smoothly across marketing, sales, and customer service platforms. Check out all of Sprinklr’s integrations. 

If your team uses Slack for internal communication and Salesforce for CRM, choose a brand monitoring tool that integrates with these systems. This way, important brand mentions or sentiment alerts can be sent directly to these platforms, ensuring quick action. 

Step 4: Consider scalability 

Your business needs and size will likely expand over time, so pick tools that offer cloud integration and quick deployment. Additionally, opt for sophisticated tools with cutting-edge features like generative AI for deeper insights.  

To start, create a shortlist of top tools like Sprinklr for its avant-garde social listening capabilities or Cision for comprehensive media tracking. Then, perform a feature comparison to see which gives the best bang for your buck.  

Step 5: Test and trial 

Taking advantage of free trials or demos is one of the most effective ways to judge a tool’s efficacy before signing on the dotted line. During your trial, assess how well the tool fits into your day-to-day operations, supports your monitoring needs, and integrates with your tech stack. 

For example, during a demo of Sprinklr, you might set up alerts for key brand terms, test how quickly notifications come through and determine if the platform’s sentiment scoring accurately reflects real-world sentiment. This hands-on testing helps you confirm whether the software meets your expectations. 

Step 6: Check usability 

A brand monitoring tool should be intuitive to use. Plus, it should not require extensive training to operate. User-friendly software will minimize the learning curve for your team, allowing for quicker adoption. Reviewing case studies and testimonials can offer insights into how other users perceive the tool’s usability and effectiveness. 

Step 7: Scrutinize the pricing 

Check if the tool offers scalable plans or upgrade paths, allowing you to access more features as your brand monitoring needs expand. 

Suppose you’re a startup with a limited budget but big growth plans. Look for a platform like Sprinklr and Talkwalker that offers different pricing tiers and easy upgrade options. This allows you to start with essential features and add more advanced capabilities, like competitor benchmarking as your business grows. 

Step 8: Consider support resources 

Evaluate the quality of customer support. Does the software provider offer comprehensive onboarding, tutorials and a responsive support team? These resources can be invaluable when you need help with configuration or troubleshooting. 

Step 9: Protect your data 

Security features can’t be missed at any cost, especially if your brand handles sensitive customer or business data. Look for software that complies with industry standards in data protection, including data encryption and regular security audits. This ensures your brand data remains protected, particularly if you operate in highly regulated industries like healthcare or finance. 

Step 10: Make the final call 

After gathering insights, compare your notes to make an informed decision. Choose the tool that best aligns with your monitoring needs, integrates smoothly with your workflows and offers the best long-term value. Remember to balance feature depth, scalability, usability, and data protection in your final selection. 

Ready to pick a winning brand monitoring tool for your business? 

Whether you’re seeking real-time insights or a deeper understanding of audience sentiment, the right platform can give you a valuable edge in protecting and managing your brand. Curious to see what a powerful monitoring solution can do? 

Sign up for a quick Sprinklr Insights demo and experience how it can fuel your brand strategy with meaningful, real-time insights.