The Top 10 Social Listening Tools for 2025
Author :
Craig Kim
Sep 10, 2025
Today, social media isn’t just a place where brands broadcast their messages—it's a rich landscape of real, unfiltered conversations that drive genuine market insights. As consumers flock to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, brands can no longer afford to rely solely on traditional text-based listening methods. Effective social listening now requires tapping into visual storytelling and deciphering audience sentiments hidden in videos and images.
Through advanced social listening, brands can proactively manage their reputation, quickly uncover emerging trends, and grasp authentic consumer perspectives. Listening to what your audience actually says, beyond direct tags and hashtags, gives marketers the power to refine products, launch timely campaigns, and authentically engage with influential voices.
Ultimately, social listening provides actionable intelligence, turning countless hours of audience interaction into smarter, data-driven decisions that put brands ahead of the competition.
Why are Social Listening Tools Important for Your Brand in 2025?
In 2025, simply reacting to consumer sentiment is no longer enough. Brands that want to thrive must proactively anticipate the shifting needs of their customers—particularly the digitally savvy, visually-driven Gen Z and next-gen consumers dominating platforms like TikTok and Instagram. These consumers demand personalized, responsive, and culturally attuned brands that intuitively understand their pain points, interests, and aspirations.
Social listening tools have evolved into essential instruments, empowering brands not only to detect trends but also to capture the rich context behind video-driven conversations. Unlike traditional methods that only scrape textual data, next-gen social listening tools should allow brands to interpret the subtle cues, emotions, and cultural nuances embedded in images and videos. By leveraging these deeper insights, companies can move beyond mere participation but also they can shape conversations, anticipate demands, and position themselves as market leaders rather than followers.
The Best Social Listening Tools for 2025
With countless options in today's market, choosing the right social listening tool can feel daunting. To simplify your decision, we've reviewed the best tools available, highlighting each platform’s standout features, strengths, and areas for improvement. Dive in to find out which solution best aligns with your brand's goals, budget, and workflow needs.
1. Syncly Social
Syncly Social is a next-gen social listening platform specifically designed to navigate the emerging era of video-centric social media. Built for marketers or community teams seeking deeper insights from visual-first platforms like TikTok, Syncly Social leverages advanced video analysis to deliver actionable, contextual intelligence. The intuitive, Chat-GPT style AI interface makes accessing complex insights effortless, significantly reducing the barrier to sophisticated query buildings and analytics.
With powerful influencer discovery and demographic analysis, Syncly Social uncovers genuine audience behaviors and preferences, helping brands tailor hyper-targeted marketing strategies. Additionally, its affordable pricing model ensures even medium and large brands can access robust social listening without paying for unnecessary add-ons.
Strengths:
"We love how Syncly Social specializes in video listening, especially on TikTok. The AI-driven insights make complicated queries and analyses feel simple, enabling our team to quickly uncover deeper insights without expensive, irrelevant add-ons."
Improvements:
"We’re eagerly waiting for Syncly Social to expand its integration beyond TikTok, covering more platforms to fully streamline our workflow."
Best for: Beauty, F&B, Fashion, Mid-Sized to Enterprise Brands
Key features: Next-level video/image analysis, Simple Chat-GPT style AI search, Comprehensive audience insights, Proactive brand perception research and competitor analysis
Has Video & TikTok features: Yes
Pricing: Basic plan costs $199/month (yearly subscription basis), with 7-day free trial
2. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is an all-in-one customer experience platform that integrates social listening with comprehensive social media management, content scheduling, and customer care. Sprinklr leverages AI-powered analytics to deliver precise sentiment tracking and proactive crisis management across diverse digital channels. Its extensive data integration capabilities and customizable dashboards enable brands to maintain unified visibility of social conversations, competitor activities, and emerging trends.
However, due to its extensive functionality, Sprinklr often presents a steep learning curve, making onboarding and initial setup time-consuming.
Strengths:
“The unified dashboard, powerful scheduling tools, real-time engagement tracking, and AI-powered insights make it easy to stay on top of audience interactions while maintaining brand consistency.” (Source)
Improvements:
"The learning curve can be quite steep, especially for new users. Some features are not as intuitive as they could be, and navigating the interface can feel overwhelming at first" (Source)
Best for: Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
3. Meltwater
Meltwater combines social listening with traditional media monitoring and public relations management, making it ideal for companies seeking comprehensive brand intelligence across multiple communication channels. Its key strengths include global media coverage, advanced influencer analytics, and proactive reputation management. Meltwater’s powerful analytics suite allows brands to analyze large volumes of social and traditional media data seamlessly, providing real-time alerts and actionable insights.
Nevertheless, Meltwater’s pricing can be prohibitive for smaller businesses, and navigating its extensive functionality may require significant expertise and dedicated resources.
Strengths:
"Meltwater has the most comprehensive tracking software available to public relations representatives. When compared over the years to its peers, it could consistently gather more data than its competitors, leading to more comprehensive reports." (Source)
Improvements:
"I use this regularly but for the price you would expect it to include a lot more of the other features. At a bear minimum I would expect a reporting feature on the lower tier but it's a purchasable add-on." (Source)
Best for: Enterprise & PR-focused Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $7,000–$20,000+/year (requires quote and demo)
4. Brand24
Brand24 is a cost-effective social listening tool aimed at providing simple, intuitive brand awareness tracking for small to mid-sized businesses. It prioritizes ease of use and accessibility, offering a straightforward interface, real-time alerts, and basic sentiment analysis. Users can quickly track brand mentions and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns without extensive training or configuration.
However, it lacks the advanced analytics and deeper insights required by complex marketing operations. For comprehensive strategic analysis, users might find the tool somewhat limited.
Strengths:
"What I like best about Brand24 is how quickly and accurately it provides real-time insights into online conversations." (Source)
Improvements:
"The mobile app covers the basics well, but adding a few more advanced features would make it even more convenient for users on the go." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$599/month; free trial available
5. Brandwatch
Brandwatch specializes in deep consumer insights and market intelligence, using sophisticated AI analytics to decode vast amounts of social data. Its strength lies in its ability to provide comprehensive competitive benchmarking, real-time sentiment analysis, and trend forecasting. The platform delivers highly customizable analytics dashboards, enabling brands to drill down into specific demographics, sentiments, and conversation contexts.
On the downside, Brandwatch’s dashboards can occasionally experience performance issues, such as slowing down or requiring frequent page refreshes during complex edits.
Strengths:
"I really like the possibility of competitor monitoring through the Consumer Source settings. It has been very helpful for me." (Source)
Improvements:
"Unfortunately, some dashboards that have a lot of components or more than five or six tabs end up crashing or getting slower" (Source)
Best for: Large Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
6. Keyhole
Keyhole specializes in hashtag and keyword-driven analytics, excelling in influencer campaign monitoring and real-time social media tracking. Its platform is particularly effective for brands running targeted marketing campaigns, enabling precise measurement of ROI and influencer performance. It provides clarity around content engagement, audience demographics, and trending topics, ensuring marketing efforts align closely with audience interests.
Despite its strengths, Keyhole’s analytics can occasionally show discrepancies in accuracy compared to other reporting tools. Additionally, the tool’s focus on hashtags and influencer campaigns may not meet the comprehensive listening needs of broader brand monitoring initiatives.
Strengths:
"What I love best is the flexibility in the data that can be tracked and captured. It has made evaluating ROI of different campaigns and tactics much easier." (Source)
Improvements:
"I feel that there is something lacking about social listening. Not as comprehensive as other platforms." (Source)
Best for: Influencer Marketing Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: From ~$79/month; free trial available
7. Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides a comprehensive platform that integrates robust social listening features with social media scheduling, publishing, and audience engagement tools. It’s especially valuable for teams that manage multiple social profiles and require streamlined collaboration across marketing and customer support. The platform’s strong point is its unified inbox and integrated analytics, which allow seamless tracking and response management across multiple social networks.
But Sprout Social’s advanced social listening features require costly add-ons, which might be limiting for businesses on tighter budgets. Users also note that the built-in listening analytics, even with add-ons, can feel limited compared to specialized tools.
Strengths:
"Sprout Social offers a clean, intuitive interface that makes managing multiple social media profiles incredibly easy. The Smart Inbox is especially useful for consolidating messages across platforms, and the scheduling features save a lot of time." (Source)
Improvements:
"This platform is extremely expensive yet many features, like the listening tool, remain behind an additional paywall." (Source)
Best for: Mid-Market Brands needing unified scheduling + listening
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$399/month; listening add-on costs ~$999/month
8. Hootsuite
Primarily recognized for its social media scheduling and content publishing capabilities, Hootsuite now partners with Talkwalker to bolster its social listening features. This combination offers marketers robust scheduling functionality alongside basic real-time social listening. Users benefit from simplified content management, streamlined approval processes, and straightforward brand mention tracking.
Despite the integration with Talkwalker, Hootsuite's advanced listening features still require separate add-ons, and its analytical depth for listening insights is also limited.
Strengths:
"Hootsuite makes it easy to keep track of all my social media accounts and the scheduling tool is a huge help too and this is what I love most about it." (Source)
Improvements:
"The analytics features are limited with a standard professional plan. Furthermore the social listening is also limited when compared to other competitor products." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Organizations focusing on content workflow
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $99–$739/month; listening often requires add-ons
9. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo excels in real-time content discovery and analysis, making it an essential tool for marketers aiming to identify viral content and trending topics. Its capabilities include powerful influencer discovery, topic research, and content performance tracking, enabling content teams to pinpoint and leverage emerging trends quickly.
However, its lower-tier plans offer limited capabilities in deep sentiment analysis and comprehensive brand monitoring, potentially restricting users needing detailed audience insights. Additionally, navigating between reports can feel less intuitive, slightly hindering overall usability.
Strengths:
"BuzzSumo makes it incredibly easy to discover high-performing content across any topic or industry." (Source)
Improvements:
"The UI, while clean, could be a bit more intuitive in terms of navigation between reports." (Source)
Best for: Content Marketing, SEO Teams, PR Professionals
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$999/month(yearly subscription basis); free trial available
10. Mention
Mention is a lightweight, user-friendly platform focused on real-time brand mention tracking and immediate alerting. Designed specifically for small to mid-sized teams, Mention simplifies the process of brand monitoring across web and social media platforms with minimal setup. But it offers limited analytics, with fewer options for personalization and deeper insights compared to other mid-market tools.
Strengths:
"For consumers, everything is made simpler by its user interface because it is so simple to grasp and utilize." (Source)
Improvements:
"It is almost too simple with not a ton of room for personalization." (Source)
Best for: Small Businesses & Startup Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Starting around $49/month; free trial available
Get Your Social Insights an Upgrade
These days, AI isn't just a nice-to-have feature, but it's transforming into a necessary co-pilot for marketers and strategists. Gone are the days when each task required manual analysis, and tedious workflows. Now, marketers need intuitive solutions that proactively identify customer needs, highlight actionable insights, and reduce operational complexity. Simply put, your workflow deserves an upgrade to match the speed and intelligence demanded by today’s rapidly evolving social landscape.
Selecting the right social listening tool to meet these demands can feel overwhelming, especially given the rise of visually driven platforms like TikTok and Instagram. If your brand is ready for video-context analysis, precise demographic insights, proactive competitive analysis and intuitive AI-driven interactions, Syncly Social is built for you. Effortlessly fitting into your existing workflow, Syncly Social serves not just as another tool, but as your AI-powered teammate—saving you time, uncovering hidden opportunities, and positioning your brand a step ahead in a highly competitive market.
Ready to see the next-gen power of AI-native social listening in action?
Today, social media isn’t just a place where brands broadcast their messages—it's a rich landscape of real, unfiltered conversations that drive genuine market insights. As consumers flock to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, brands can no longer afford to rely solely on traditional text-based listening methods. Effective social listening now requires tapping into visual storytelling and deciphering audience sentiments hidden in videos and images.
Through advanced social listening, brands can proactively manage their reputation, quickly uncover emerging trends, and grasp authentic consumer perspectives. Listening to what your audience actually says, beyond direct tags and hashtags, gives marketers the power to refine products, launch timely campaigns, and authentically engage with influential voices.
Ultimately, social listening provides actionable intelligence, turning countless hours of audience interaction into smarter, data-driven decisions that put brands ahead of the competition.
Why are Social Listening Tools Important for Your Brand in 2025?
In 2025, simply reacting to consumer sentiment is no longer enough. Brands that want to thrive must proactively anticipate the shifting needs of their customers—particularly the digitally savvy, visually-driven Gen Z and next-gen consumers dominating platforms like TikTok and Instagram. These consumers demand personalized, responsive, and culturally attuned brands that intuitively understand their pain points, interests, and aspirations.
Social listening tools have evolved into essential instruments, empowering brands not only to detect trends but also to capture the rich context behind video-driven conversations. Unlike traditional methods that only scrape textual data, next-gen social listening tools should allow brands to interpret the subtle cues, emotions, and cultural nuances embedded in images and videos. By leveraging these deeper insights, companies can move beyond mere participation but also they can shape conversations, anticipate demands, and position themselves as market leaders rather than followers.
The Best Social Listening Tools for 2025
With countless options in today's market, choosing the right social listening tool can feel daunting. To simplify your decision, we've reviewed the best tools available, highlighting each platform’s standout features, strengths, and areas for improvement. Dive in to find out which solution best aligns with your brand's goals, budget, and workflow needs.
1. Syncly Social
Syncly Social is a next-gen social listening platform specifically designed to navigate the emerging era of video-centric social media. Built for marketers or community teams seeking deeper insights from visual-first platforms like TikTok, Syncly Social leverages advanced video analysis to deliver actionable, contextual intelligence. The intuitive, Chat-GPT style AI interface makes accessing complex insights effortless, significantly reducing the barrier to sophisticated query buildings and analytics.
With powerful influencer discovery and demographic analysis, Syncly Social uncovers genuine audience behaviors and preferences, helping brands tailor hyper-targeted marketing strategies. Additionally, its affordable pricing model ensures even medium and large brands can access robust social listening without paying for unnecessary add-ons.
Strengths:
"We love how Syncly Social specializes in video listening, especially on TikTok. The AI-driven insights make complicated queries and analyses feel simple, enabling our team to quickly uncover deeper insights without expensive, irrelevant add-ons."
Improvements:
"We’re eagerly waiting for Syncly Social to expand its integration beyond TikTok, covering more platforms to fully streamline our workflow."
Best for: Beauty, F&B, Fashion, Mid-Sized to Enterprise Brands
Key features: Next-level video/image analysis, Simple Chat-GPT style AI search, Comprehensive audience insights, Proactive brand perception research and competitor analysis
Has Video & TikTok features: Yes
Pricing: Basic plan costs $199/month (yearly subscription basis), with 7-day free trial
2. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is an all-in-one customer experience platform that integrates social listening with comprehensive social media management, content scheduling, and customer care. Sprinklr leverages AI-powered analytics to deliver precise sentiment tracking and proactive crisis management across diverse digital channels. Its extensive data integration capabilities and customizable dashboards enable brands to maintain unified visibility of social conversations, competitor activities, and emerging trends.
However, due to its extensive functionality, Sprinklr often presents a steep learning curve, making onboarding and initial setup time-consuming.
Strengths:
“The unified dashboard, powerful scheduling tools, real-time engagement tracking, and AI-powered insights make it easy to stay on top of audience interactions while maintaining brand consistency.” (Source)
Improvements:
"The learning curve can be quite steep, especially for new users. Some features are not as intuitive as they could be, and navigating the interface can feel overwhelming at first" (Source)
Best for: Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
3. Meltwater
Meltwater combines social listening with traditional media monitoring and public relations management, making it ideal for companies seeking comprehensive brand intelligence across multiple communication channels. Its key strengths include global media coverage, advanced influencer analytics, and proactive reputation management. Meltwater’s powerful analytics suite allows brands to analyze large volumes of social and traditional media data seamlessly, providing real-time alerts and actionable insights.
Nevertheless, Meltwater’s pricing can be prohibitive for smaller businesses, and navigating its extensive functionality may require significant expertise and dedicated resources.
Strengths:
"Meltwater has the most comprehensive tracking software available to public relations representatives. When compared over the years to its peers, it could consistently gather more data than its competitors, leading to more comprehensive reports." (Source)
Improvements:
"I use this regularly but for the price you would expect it to include a lot more of the other features. At a bear minimum I would expect a reporting feature on the lower tier but it's a purchasable add-on." (Source)
Best for: Enterprise & PR-focused Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $7,000–$20,000+/year (requires quote and demo)
4. Brand24
Brand24 is a cost-effective social listening tool aimed at providing simple, intuitive brand awareness tracking for small to mid-sized businesses. It prioritizes ease of use and accessibility, offering a straightforward interface, real-time alerts, and basic sentiment analysis. Users can quickly track brand mentions and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns without extensive training or configuration.
However, it lacks the advanced analytics and deeper insights required by complex marketing operations. For comprehensive strategic analysis, users might find the tool somewhat limited.
Strengths:
"What I like best about Brand24 is how quickly and accurately it provides real-time insights into online conversations." (Source)
Improvements:
"The mobile app covers the basics well, but adding a few more advanced features would make it even more convenient for users on the go." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$599/month; free trial available
5. Brandwatch
Brandwatch specializes in deep consumer insights and market intelligence, using sophisticated AI analytics to decode vast amounts of social data. Its strength lies in its ability to provide comprehensive competitive benchmarking, real-time sentiment analysis, and trend forecasting. The platform delivers highly customizable analytics dashboards, enabling brands to drill down into specific demographics, sentiments, and conversation contexts.
On the downside, Brandwatch’s dashboards can occasionally experience performance issues, such as slowing down or requiring frequent page refreshes during complex edits.
Strengths:
"I really like the possibility of competitor monitoring through the Consumer Source settings. It has been very helpful for me." (Source)
Improvements:
"Unfortunately, some dashboards that have a lot of components or more than five or six tabs end up crashing or getting slower" (Source)
Best for: Large Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
6. Keyhole
Keyhole specializes in hashtag and keyword-driven analytics, excelling in influencer campaign monitoring and real-time social media tracking. Its platform is particularly effective for brands running targeted marketing campaigns, enabling precise measurement of ROI and influencer performance. It provides clarity around content engagement, audience demographics, and trending topics, ensuring marketing efforts align closely with audience interests.
Despite its strengths, Keyhole’s analytics can occasionally show discrepancies in accuracy compared to other reporting tools. Additionally, the tool’s focus on hashtags and influencer campaigns may not meet the comprehensive listening needs of broader brand monitoring initiatives.
Strengths:
"What I love best is the flexibility in the data that can be tracked and captured. It has made evaluating ROI of different campaigns and tactics much easier." (Source)
Improvements:
"I feel that there is something lacking about social listening. Not as comprehensive as other platforms." (Source)
Best for: Influencer Marketing Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: From ~$79/month; free trial available
7. Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides a comprehensive platform that integrates robust social listening features with social media scheduling, publishing, and audience engagement tools. It’s especially valuable for teams that manage multiple social profiles and require streamlined collaboration across marketing and customer support. The platform’s strong point is its unified inbox and integrated analytics, which allow seamless tracking and response management across multiple social networks.
But Sprout Social’s advanced social listening features require costly add-ons, which might be limiting for businesses on tighter budgets. Users also note that the built-in listening analytics, even with add-ons, can feel limited compared to specialized tools.
Strengths:
"Sprout Social offers a clean, intuitive interface that makes managing multiple social media profiles incredibly easy. The Smart Inbox is especially useful for consolidating messages across platforms, and the scheduling features save a lot of time." (Source)
Improvements:
"This platform is extremely expensive yet many features, like the listening tool, remain behind an additional paywall." (Source)
Best for: Mid-Market Brands needing unified scheduling + listening
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$399/month; listening add-on costs ~$999/month
8. Hootsuite
Primarily recognized for its social media scheduling and content publishing capabilities, Hootsuite now partners with Talkwalker to bolster its social listening features. This combination offers marketers robust scheduling functionality alongside basic real-time social listening. Users benefit from simplified content management, streamlined approval processes, and straightforward brand mention tracking.
Despite the integration with Talkwalker, Hootsuite's advanced listening features still require separate add-ons, and its analytical depth for listening insights is also limited.
Strengths:
"Hootsuite makes it easy to keep track of all my social media accounts and the scheduling tool is a huge help too and this is what I love most about it." (Source)
Improvements:
"The analytics features are limited with a standard professional plan. Furthermore the social listening is also limited when compared to other competitor products." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Organizations focusing on content workflow
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $99–$739/month; listening often requires add-ons
9. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo excels in real-time content discovery and analysis, making it an essential tool for marketers aiming to identify viral content and trending topics. Its capabilities include powerful influencer discovery, topic research, and content performance tracking, enabling content teams to pinpoint and leverage emerging trends quickly.
However, its lower-tier plans offer limited capabilities in deep sentiment analysis and comprehensive brand monitoring, potentially restricting users needing detailed audience insights. Additionally, navigating between reports can feel less intuitive, slightly hindering overall usability.
Strengths:
"BuzzSumo makes it incredibly easy to discover high-performing content across any topic or industry." (Source)
Improvements:
"The UI, while clean, could be a bit more intuitive in terms of navigation between reports." (Source)
Best for: Content Marketing, SEO Teams, PR Professionals
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$999/month(yearly subscription basis); free trial available
10. Mention
Mention is a lightweight, user-friendly platform focused on real-time brand mention tracking and immediate alerting. Designed specifically for small to mid-sized teams, Mention simplifies the process of brand monitoring across web and social media platforms with minimal setup. But it offers limited analytics, with fewer options for personalization and deeper insights compared to other mid-market tools.
Strengths:
"For consumers, everything is made simpler by its user interface because it is so simple to grasp and utilize." (Source)
Improvements:
"It is almost too simple with not a ton of room for personalization." (Source)
Best for: Small Businesses & Startup Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Starting around $49/month; free trial available
Get Your Social Insights an Upgrade
These days, AI isn't just a nice-to-have feature, but it's transforming into a necessary co-pilot for marketers and strategists. Gone are the days when each task required manual analysis, and tedious workflows. Now, marketers need intuitive solutions that proactively identify customer needs, highlight actionable insights, and reduce operational complexity. Simply put, your workflow deserves an upgrade to match the speed and intelligence demanded by today’s rapidly evolving social landscape.
Selecting the right social listening tool to meet these demands can feel overwhelming, especially given the rise of visually driven platforms like TikTok and Instagram. If your brand is ready for video-context analysis, precise demographic insights, proactive competitive analysis and intuitive AI-driven interactions, Syncly Social is built for you. Effortlessly fitting into your existing workflow, Syncly Social serves not just as another tool, but as your AI-powered teammate—saving you time, uncovering hidden opportunities, and positioning your brand a step ahead in a highly competitive market.
Ready to see the next-gen power of AI-native social listening in action?
Today, social media isn’t just a place where brands broadcast their messages—it's a rich landscape of real, unfiltered conversations that drive genuine market insights. As consumers flock to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, brands can no longer afford to rely solely on traditional text-based listening methods. Effective social listening now requires tapping into visual storytelling and deciphering audience sentiments hidden in videos and images.
Through advanced social listening, brands can proactively manage their reputation, quickly uncover emerging trends, and grasp authentic consumer perspectives. Listening to what your audience actually says, beyond direct tags and hashtags, gives marketers the power to refine products, launch timely campaigns, and authentically engage with influential voices.
Ultimately, social listening provides actionable intelligence, turning countless hours of audience interaction into smarter, data-driven decisions that put brands ahead of the competition.
Why are Social Listening Tools Important for Your Brand in 2025?
In 2025, simply reacting to consumer sentiment is no longer enough. Brands that want to thrive must proactively anticipate the shifting needs of their customers—particularly the digitally savvy, visually-driven Gen Z and next-gen consumers dominating platforms like TikTok and Instagram. These consumers demand personalized, responsive, and culturally attuned brands that intuitively understand their pain points, interests, and aspirations.
Social listening tools have evolved into essential instruments, empowering brands not only to detect trends but also to capture the rich context behind video-driven conversations. Unlike traditional methods that only scrape textual data, next-gen social listening tools should allow brands to interpret the subtle cues, emotions, and cultural nuances embedded in images and videos. By leveraging these deeper insights, companies can move beyond mere participation but also they can shape conversations, anticipate demands, and position themselves as market leaders rather than followers.
The Best Social Listening Tools for 2025
With countless options in today's market, choosing the right social listening tool can feel daunting. To simplify your decision, we've reviewed the best tools available, highlighting each platform’s standout features, strengths, and areas for improvement. Dive in to find out which solution best aligns with your brand's goals, budget, and workflow needs.
1. Syncly Social
Syncly Social is a next-gen social listening platform specifically designed to navigate the emerging era of video-centric social media. Built for marketers or community teams seeking deeper insights from visual-first platforms like TikTok, Syncly Social leverages advanced video analysis to deliver actionable, contextual intelligence. The intuitive, Chat-GPT style AI interface makes accessing complex insights effortless, significantly reducing the barrier to sophisticated query buildings and analytics.
With powerful influencer discovery and demographic analysis, Syncly Social uncovers genuine audience behaviors and preferences, helping brands tailor hyper-targeted marketing strategies. Additionally, its affordable pricing model ensures even medium and large brands can access robust social listening without paying for unnecessary add-ons.
Strengths:
"We love how Syncly Social specializes in video listening, especially on TikTok. The AI-driven insights make complicated queries and analyses feel simple, enabling our team to quickly uncover deeper insights without expensive, irrelevant add-ons."
Improvements:
"We’re eagerly waiting for Syncly Social to expand its integration beyond TikTok, covering more platforms to fully streamline our workflow."
Best for: Beauty, F&B, Fashion, Mid-Sized to Enterprise Brands
Key features: Next-level video/image analysis, Simple Chat-GPT style AI search, Comprehensive audience insights, Proactive brand perception research and competitor analysis
Has Video & TikTok features: Yes
Pricing: Basic plan costs $199/month (yearly subscription basis), with 7-day free trial
2. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is an all-in-one customer experience platform that integrates social listening with comprehensive social media management, content scheduling, and customer care. Sprinklr leverages AI-powered analytics to deliver precise sentiment tracking and proactive crisis management across diverse digital channels. Its extensive data integration capabilities and customizable dashboards enable brands to maintain unified visibility of social conversations, competitor activities, and emerging trends.
However, due to its extensive functionality, Sprinklr often presents a steep learning curve, making onboarding and initial setup time-consuming.
Strengths:
“The unified dashboard, powerful scheduling tools, real-time engagement tracking, and AI-powered insights make it easy to stay on top of audience interactions while maintaining brand consistency.” (Source)
Improvements:
"The learning curve can be quite steep, especially for new users. Some features are not as intuitive as they could be, and navigating the interface can feel overwhelming at first" (Source)
Best for: Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
3. Meltwater
Meltwater combines social listening with traditional media monitoring and public relations management, making it ideal for companies seeking comprehensive brand intelligence across multiple communication channels. Its key strengths include global media coverage, advanced influencer analytics, and proactive reputation management. Meltwater’s powerful analytics suite allows brands to analyze large volumes of social and traditional media data seamlessly, providing real-time alerts and actionable insights.
Nevertheless, Meltwater’s pricing can be prohibitive for smaller businesses, and navigating its extensive functionality may require significant expertise and dedicated resources.
Strengths:
"Meltwater has the most comprehensive tracking software available to public relations representatives. When compared over the years to its peers, it could consistently gather more data than its competitors, leading to more comprehensive reports." (Source)
Improvements:
"I use this regularly but for the price you would expect it to include a lot more of the other features. At a bear minimum I would expect a reporting feature on the lower tier but it's a purchasable add-on." (Source)
Best for: Enterprise & PR-focused Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $7,000–$20,000+/year (requires quote and demo)
4. Brand24
Brand24 is a cost-effective social listening tool aimed at providing simple, intuitive brand awareness tracking for small to mid-sized businesses. It prioritizes ease of use and accessibility, offering a straightforward interface, real-time alerts, and basic sentiment analysis. Users can quickly track brand mentions and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns without extensive training or configuration.
However, it lacks the advanced analytics and deeper insights required by complex marketing operations. For comprehensive strategic analysis, users might find the tool somewhat limited.
Strengths:
"What I like best about Brand24 is how quickly and accurately it provides real-time insights into online conversations." (Source)
Improvements:
"The mobile app covers the basics well, but adding a few more advanced features would make it even more convenient for users on the go." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$599/month; free trial available
5. Brandwatch
Brandwatch specializes in deep consumer insights and market intelligence, using sophisticated AI analytics to decode vast amounts of social data. Its strength lies in its ability to provide comprehensive competitive benchmarking, real-time sentiment analysis, and trend forecasting. The platform delivers highly customizable analytics dashboards, enabling brands to drill down into specific demographics, sentiments, and conversation contexts.
On the downside, Brandwatch’s dashboards can occasionally experience performance issues, such as slowing down or requiring frequent page refreshes during complex edits.
Strengths:
"I really like the possibility of competitor monitoring through the Consumer Source settings. It has been very helpful for me." (Source)
Improvements:
"Unfortunately, some dashboards that have a lot of components or more than five or six tabs end up crashing or getting slower" (Source)
Best for: Large Enterprise Organizations
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Custom (requires quote and demo)
6. Keyhole
Keyhole specializes in hashtag and keyword-driven analytics, excelling in influencer campaign monitoring and real-time social media tracking. Its platform is particularly effective for brands running targeted marketing campaigns, enabling precise measurement of ROI and influencer performance. It provides clarity around content engagement, audience demographics, and trending topics, ensuring marketing efforts align closely with audience interests.
Despite its strengths, Keyhole’s analytics can occasionally show discrepancies in accuracy compared to other reporting tools. Additionally, the tool’s focus on hashtags and influencer campaigns may not meet the comprehensive listening needs of broader brand monitoring initiatives.
Strengths:
"What I love best is the flexibility in the data that can be tracked and captured. It has made evaluating ROI of different campaigns and tactics much easier." (Source)
Improvements:
"I feel that there is something lacking about social listening. Not as comprehensive as other platforms." (Source)
Best for: Influencer Marketing Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: From ~$79/month; free trial available
7. Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides a comprehensive platform that integrates robust social listening features with social media scheduling, publishing, and audience engagement tools. It’s especially valuable for teams that manage multiple social profiles and require streamlined collaboration across marketing and customer support. The platform’s strong point is its unified inbox and integrated analytics, which allow seamless tracking and response management across multiple social networks.
But Sprout Social’s advanced social listening features require costly add-ons, which might be limiting for businesses on tighter budgets. Users also note that the built-in listening analytics, even with add-ons, can feel limited compared to specialized tools.
Strengths:
"Sprout Social offers a clean, intuitive interface that makes managing multiple social media profiles incredibly easy. The Smart Inbox is especially useful for consolidating messages across platforms, and the scheduling features save a lot of time." (Source)
Improvements:
"This platform is extremely expensive yet many features, like the listening tool, remain behind an additional paywall." (Source)
Best for: Mid-Market Brands needing unified scheduling + listening
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$399/month; listening add-on costs ~$999/month
8. Hootsuite
Primarily recognized for its social media scheduling and content publishing capabilities, Hootsuite now partners with Talkwalker to bolster its social listening features. This combination offers marketers robust scheduling functionality alongside basic real-time social listening. Users benefit from simplified content management, streamlined approval processes, and straightforward brand mention tracking.
Despite the integration with Talkwalker, Hootsuite's advanced listening features still require separate add-ons, and its analytical depth for listening insights is also limited.
Strengths:
"Hootsuite makes it easy to keep track of all my social media accounts and the scheduling tool is a huge help too and this is what I love most about it." (Source)
Improvements:
"The analytics features are limited with a standard professional plan. Furthermore the social listening is also limited when compared to other competitor products." (Source)
Best for: Small to Mid-Sized Organizations focusing on content workflow
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $99–$739/month; listening often requires add-ons
9. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo excels in real-time content discovery and analysis, making it an essential tool for marketers aiming to identify viral content and trending topics. Its capabilities include powerful influencer discovery, topic research, and content performance tracking, enabling content teams to pinpoint and leverage emerging trends quickly.
However, its lower-tier plans offer limited capabilities in deep sentiment analysis and comprehensive brand monitoring, potentially restricting users needing detailed audience insights. Additionally, navigating between reports can feel less intuitive, slightly hindering overall usability.
Strengths:
"BuzzSumo makes it incredibly easy to discover high-performing content across any topic or industry." (Source)
Improvements:
"The UI, while clean, could be a bit more intuitive in terms of navigation between reports." (Source)
Best for: Content Marketing, SEO Teams, PR Professionals
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: $199–$999/month(yearly subscription basis); free trial available
10. Mention
Mention is a lightweight, user-friendly platform focused on real-time brand mention tracking and immediate alerting. Designed specifically for small to mid-sized teams, Mention simplifies the process of brand monitoring across web and social media platforms with minimal setup. But it offers limited analytics, with fewer options for personalization and deeper insights compared to other mid-market tools.
Strengths:
"For consumers, everything is made simpler by its user interface because it is so simple to grasp and utilize." (Source)
Improvements:
"It is almost too simple with not a ton of room for personalization." (Source)
Best for: Small Businesses & Startup Teams
Has Video & TikTok features: No
Pricing: Starting around $49/month; free trial available
Get Your Social Insights an Upgrade
These days, AI isn't just a nice-to-have feature, but it's transforming into a necessary co-pilot for marketers and strategists. Gone are the days when each task required manual analysis, and tedious workflows. Now, marketers need intuitive solutions that proactively identify customer needs, highlight actionable insights, and reduce operational complexity. Simply put, your workflow deserves an upgrade to match the speed and intelligence demanded by today’s rapidly evolving social landscape.
Selecting the right social listening tool to meet these demands can feel overwhelming, especially given the rise of visually driven platforms like TikTok and Instagram. If your brand is ready for video-context analysis, precise demographic insights, proactive competitive analysis and intuitive AI-driven interactions, Syncly Social is built for you. Effortlessly fitting into your existing workflow, Syncly Social serves not just as another tool, but as your AI-powered teammate—saving you time, uncovering hidden opportunities, and positioning your brand a step ahead in a highly competitive market.
Ready to see the next-gen power of AI-native social listening in action?
Build a brand customers love with Syncly
Build a brand customers love with Syncly