Overview

Brandwatch Listen is a social and web listening tool for tracking discussion around brands, products, and competitors. It is best suited to social media and content teams that need broad monitoring and analysis, particularly within an organization using Brandwatch’s social media management suite.

Its combination of wide source coverage, historical insights, and alerts makes it a serious option for ongoing monitoring; access to saved searches and some controls depends on the organization’s contract and user role.

Key features

Listen covers X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, Bluesky, and QQ, as well as web and news sources. Brandwatch says it draws insights from 100 million online sources. That breadth helps teams follow discussion across platforms and beyond social channels, although broad coverage is not a guarantee that every relevant mention will appear.

Search includes unlimited queries and 48 Boolean operators, which gives analysts room to define focused topics and competing terms. The distinction between quick and saved searches matters in daily use: quick searches are unlimited but cover only the past month and cannot be revisited, shared with a team, or used to create alerts. Saved searches retain up to a year of mentions and insights, but their availability is tied to the organization’s Social Media Management contract.

Analysis classifies sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral and supports multiple languages. Graphs and metrics cover mention volume, sentiment, and demographics; filters such as platform, language, and location help narrow results. AI smart alerts flag spikes or drops in mentions, and teams can be alerted to negative comments. These tools are useful for spotting changes in conversation, but only Team Leaders and Admins can manage email alerts or add targeted data sources.

Integration with Brandwatch Engage lets teams view and act on mentions through a customized feed. The product also supports surveys, qualitative analysis, competitor tracking, creator discovery, campaign management, performance analytics, a unified social inbox, comment management, reply automation, team assignment, automated rules, and PDF report export. That wider set of capabilities may suit teams combining listening with social operations, though competitor benchmarking and web traffic data are not supported.

Brandwatch offers product help through its Help Center, Academy courses, and user community. Its legal hub links security documents, and its security team follows confidentiality, integrity, and availability principles.

Pricing

Brandwatch Listen is paid, with custom pricing; there is no free plan. The plan’s price is not published, and saved-search allotments depend on the organization’s Social Media Management contract. This makes it a better fit for teams evaluating a broader organizational arrangement than for individuals who want to start with a clearly priced subscription. All users can create unlimited quick searches, but those searches have a shorter data window and fewer collaboration and alert options.

Platforms

Listen is available on web and through an API. Brandwatch also identifies a mobile app, alongside web and API access.

Who it's for

Listen makes the most sense for social media managers, content marketers, and larger teams that need multilingual sentiment analysis, long-running monitoring, and alerts across social, web, and news sources. It is less suitable for a solo user or a team seeking a self-serve listening tool: saved-search availability is contract-dependent, and only Team Leaders and Admins can save searches, manage tags and alerts, or add targeted sources.

Pros and cons

Pros: Broad coverage across ten named social networks plus web and news sources supports monitoring beyond a single platform.
Pros: Saved searches can draw on up to a year of mentions, with Boolean search, filters, and multilingual sentiment analysis for deeper review.
Pros: AI alerts and the Engage feed connect monitoring to follow-up when mentions change or need attention.
Cons: Quick searches retain only a month of data and cannot be revisited, shared, or used for alerts.
Cons: Saved-search access depends on the Social Media Management contract, while key search and alert controls are limited to Team Leaders and Admins.
Cons: Custom pricing and no free plan make it harder to assess as a lightweight or individual purchase.

Alternatives

For a broader comparison of listening products, browse Social Media Listening Software or AI Social Listening Tools. Teams focused on adjacent needs can also compare Influencer Marketing Analytics Software, Social Media Advertising Software, Social Media Analytics Software, and Social Customer Service Software.

Choose Meltwater Social Listening if a paid tool with Android and iOS as well as web and API access is a better fit; its Starter plan is aimed at small communications or marketing teams, startups, scale-ups, and teams with limited in-house analytics.

Sprinklr Social Listening is another paid, web-and-API option, positioned as an enterprise product with demos available through Sprinklr.

Choose dig if a freemium option with a stated entry price matters: its free plan includes 10 credits per month, while Pro costs 25.00 USD per month and includes 50 credits per month, influencer vetting, crisis detection, and trend discovery.

Brand Intel offers a free plan for one user and one project, capped at 30 monthly channel calls; its Individual plan is for one user and one project with six Listen channels and 173 monthly channel calls.

Muck Rack is a freemium media-monitoring option with a Starter plan that includes monitoring and alerts, a media database and pitching, reporting and analytics, and self-led onboarding.

Truescope offers a free plan and a Campaign plan for five users; its Essentials plan includes unlimited users and search features, plus dashboards with unlimited charts.

Social Searcher is worth considering for free, no-login real-time searching: its Free plan allows 100 searches per day, one monitoring, and 500 saved posts per month.

Cision is a paid option with web and iOS access.

Verdict

Choose Brandwatch Listen if your team needs broad conversation monitoring, year-long saved-search insights, and analysis and alerts that connect to Brandwatch’s social workflow. Look elsewhere if you need a free or clearly priced entry point, or if your organization cannot support contract-dependent saved searches and role-restricted controls.

	Brandwatch Listen	Hunch
Free plan	No	No
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	—	$2,500/mo
Open source	No	No
Platforms	api, Web	Web
Cross-network campaigns	Yes	Yes
Automated rules	Yes	Yes
Report export	Yes	Yes
Creative testing	—	Yes

Brandwatch Listen vs Hunch

Brandwatch Listen

Hunch