Brand24 vs Mention: Budget Social Listening Head-to-Head

TL;DR: Brand24 and Mention get shortlisted together because both built their reputation as accessible, self-serve monitoring tools — but only one of them still is. Brand24 still offers five tiers starting at $199/month, letting a team enter at a real budget price and scale up. Mention discontinued its Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus plans in July 2025; the only plan new customers can buy today is the Company Plan at $599/month, annual-only, with a hard 50,000-mention monthly cap. At that identical $599/month price, Brand24's Business tier delivers double the mention volume (100,000/month) and five times the alert capacity (25 keywords vs. 5 alerts). Neither platform transcribes audio or reads on-screen text in TikTok or Reels video — both are caption-and-hashtag monitoring tools at every tier.

Brand24 and Mention show up on the same "budget social listening" shortlists for a reason: both started as the accessible alternative to enterprise tools like Brandwatch and Talkwalker. The comparison used to be straightforward — cheaper self-serve option A versus cheaper self-serve option B.

That comparison broke in 2025. Mention quietly discontinued its lower tiers, and the platform that used to start under $50/month now has exactly one plan, priced at what used to be enterprise-adjacent money. Brand24 didn't follow — it still runs a genuine five-tier ladder.

This is a straight price-and-value comparison: what does each platform actually give you per dollar in 2026, and which one still deserves the "budget" label.

Brand24's Tier Ladder vs. Mention's Single Plan

Brand24 figures confirmed directly from its current pricing page (Source: Brand24 Pricing, 2026). Mention figures confirmed via its pricing page and third-party pricing trackers (Source: Mention Pricing, 2026; CheckThat.ai, Mention Pricing 2026).

Brand24: Still a Real Budget Ladder

Brand24 runs five genuine tiers, from Individual at $199/month up to a custom Enterprise quote above $1,499/month (Source: Brand24 Pricing, 2026). Even the entry tier is self-serve — no sales call required to start at $199/month for 2,000 mentions and 3 keywords, with 12-hour update cycles.

Move up the ladder and the value scales sensibly: Team ($299/mo) jumps to 10,000 mentions and hourly updates; Pro ($399/mo) adds real-time updates and the first AI layer (sentiment, Events Detection, AI Insights on 2 projects); Business ($599/mo) triples mention volume again to 100,000/month and expands to 25 keywords with priority support. Reviewers rate the platform 4.2/5 across G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot, with 93% saying they'd recommend it (Source: Reddinbox, Brand24 Alternative Analysis, 2026).

Where Brand24 wins on value: A genuine entry price under $200/month, five tiers that each meaningfully expand mention volume and features, and no annual-contract requirement to get started.

Mention: The Budget Plan That Isn't Budget Anymore

Mention's pricing story changed in July 2025, when the platform discontinued its Solo ($49/month), Pro ($99/month), and Pro Plus ($179/month) tiers for new signups (Source: CheckThat.ai, Mention Pricing 2026). Existing subscribers on those plans were grandfathered in, but "if you cancel a legacy subscription, Mention will not reactivate it" (Source: same). The only plan a new customer can buy today is the Company Plan: $599/month, annual-commitment-only, with a hard cap of 50,000 mentions per month shared across every alert and workspace — once you hit it, "Mention stops collecting new data entirely until your 30-day cycle resets" (Source: CheckThat.ai, 2026).

That cap comes with only 5 alerts included, versus Brand24's 25 keywords at the identical $599 price point. Historical data access — up to two rolling years — is a paid add-on with unpublished pricing, requiring a direct account-manager conversation (Source: same). Mention also retired its Publish and Respond features in January 2026, redirecting customers who need social publishing to a separate Agorapulse subscription (Source: Mention Pricing FAQ, 2026) — the result of Mention's 2025 acquisition by Agorapulse following a 2024 bankruptcy (Source: FrenchWeb, 2026; reported deal value ~€4.67M).

Where Mention still wins: Broad platform coverage (1 billion+ sources across social, news, blogs, forums, and 75+ review sites) and no keyword-count ceiling within its 5 alerts — each alert can run more complex Boolean queries (up to 22 operators, 2,000 characters) than Brand24 allows per keyword.

Where it's lost ground: There's no longer a genuinely cheap entry point. A solo marketer or small team that used to start at $49/month now has to commit to $599/month annually — the same price as Brand24's fourth tier out of five — just to get in the door.

The Real Insight: Same Price, Different Value

Line the two platforms up at their closest comparable price point and the gap is stark. At $599/month:

• Brand24 Business gives you 100,000 mentions/month and 25 keywords, real-time updates, and AI Insights across 5 projects.

• Mention Company gives you 50,000 mentions/month and 5 alerts, with historical data and API access both requiring separate negotiation.

Brand24 delivers roughly double the mention volume and five times the keyword/alert capacity for the identical monthly spend. Mention's remaining advantage — source breadth and per-alert query complexity — matters more for teams tracking a small number of very specific, high-nuance topics than for teams that need to cover a lot of ground on a budget.

Neither platform closes the gap that matters most for beauty, F&B, and fashion brands in 2026: video content. Brand24's own TikTok tracking is "public mentions, hashtags, and virtually any keyword associated with your brand" — a text-matching mechanism with no audio transcription or on-screen text detection at any tier (Source: Brand24, TikTok Mentions, 2026). Mention's TikTok coverage is similarly caption-and-hashtag-based. Untagged mentions: brand conversations spoken aloud or shown on-screen inside a video — never typed into a caption, tag, or hashtag — are structurally invisible to both platforms, regardless of which tier or plan you're on. Syncly Social was built specifically to catch what neither budget tool can: video-content analysis that transcribes what's actually said and reads what's actually shown on-screen.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

• If you want the cheapest genuine entry point and room to scale up gradually → Brand24, starting at $199/month.

• If you need very complex Boolean queries on a small number of topics and can absorb the $599/month annual commitment → Mention's Company Plan.

• If your budget caps out around $599/month and you want the most mention volume for that spend → Brand24 Business beats Mention Company on raw capacity.

• If you're specifically weighing Mention against enterprise-tier options too → see our Determ vs Awario vs Mention comparison for how Mention's instability plays out against other budget monitoring tools.

• If you want the fuller list of Brand24 alternatives, including enterprise options → see our Brand24 alternatives roundup.

• If your category lives in spoken or on-screen TikTok and Reels content neither tool can hear or see → add Syncly Social on top of whichever budget tool you keep.

Key Takeaways

• Mention discontinued its Solo ($49/mo), Pro ($99/mo), and Pro Plus ($179/mo) tiers in July 2025 — the only plan available to new customers now is $599/month, annual-only

• Brand24 still runs a genuine five-tier ladder from $199/month to a custom Enterprise quote, with no annual-contract requirement to start

• At the identical $599/month price point, Brand24 Business gives 100,000 mentions/month and 25 keywords versus Mention Company's 50,000 mentions/month and 5 alerts

• Mention retired its Publish and Respond features in January 2026 following its 2025 acquisition by Agorapulse, redirecting those needs to a separate subscription

• Neither platform transcribes audio or detects on-screen text in TikTok or Reels video at any tier — both remain caption-and-hashtag monitoring tools

Is Mention Still a Budget Tool?

Not for a new customer in 2026. The "budget" label made sense when Mention's entry price was $49/month; it doesn't at $599/month annual-only, especially when a direct competitor delivers twice the mention volume at the same price with no annual lock-in required. Brand24 has kept its budget positioning intact — a real sub-$200 entry point, a ladder that scales sensibly, and month-to-month flexibility. If price-per-mention is the deciding factor and video coverage isn't a requirement, Brand24 is the stronger budget pick in 2026. If your team's real gap is that neither tool can hear what a creator says or see what's shown on-screen in a video, that's a different problem — and it's the one worth solving before optimizing the rest of the budget.

See what your budget monitoring tool is missing in video. Start your free trial with Syncly Social →