10 Brand24 Alternatives in 2026: What Each One Locks Behind an Upgrade

Brand24 does something almost nobody else in this category does. It publishes every price, from the entry plan to the one that costs $1,499 a month, and it puts the keyword count, the mention cap and the refresh rate next to each one.

After nine years of buying marketing software, I can tell you how rare that is. Four of the tools below will not show you a number at all.

So people do not usually leave Brand24 over the sticker. They leave over the distance between the plan they bought and the plan that does the thing they bought it for.

That distance is the whole subject of this post. The AI that sells the product starts on the third tier. Advanced reports start on the fourth. White-label reports do not exist below $1,499 a month, and API access is a separate $149 on top of whichever plan you are on.

None of that is hidden. It is all on the pricing page, in a column most people skim on the way to the price.

Ours is on this list too, first, which you should factor in. I have put our limitations in the same box as everyone else's and I have not given us a row we did not earn.

Everything below was read off each vendor's own pricing and product pages on 2 October 2026.

What Brand24 actually costs

Five plans, every number published. This is the table the rest of the post argues with.

Brand24 plan	Monthly	Billed annually	Keywords	Mentions a month	Updates
Individual	$249	$199/mo	3	2,000	Every 12 hours
Team	$349	$299/mo	7	10,000	Every hour
Pro	$499	$399/mo	12	40,000	Real-time
Business	$699	$599/mo	25	100,000	Real-time
Enterprise	from $1,499	from $1,499/mo	Custom	Custom	Real-time

The spread is the thing to look at. The cheapest published plan and the cheapest Enterprise plan are seven and a half times apart, and both are sold to people who would describe their job the same way.

Individual, billed annually

$199

Pro, where the AI starts

$399

Enterprise, where white-label starts

$1,499

The three upgrades people actually hit

Nobody cancels because of the entry price. They cancel in month four, when they have worked out which row of the comparison table they are standing on.

Three gates do most of that work.

The AI gate, at Pro. Brand Assistant, AI Insights, AI Events Detection and Lightning Search are the features in most of the marketing. All four start at Pro, $399 a month billed annually. On Individual and Team you get AI sentiment analysis and nothing else from that list. Worth knowing too: AI Insights is limited to 2 projects on Pro and 5 on Business, so the cap follows you up.

The reporting gate, at Business and Enterprise. Advanced Reports begin at Business, $599 a month. White-label reports — the ones with your agency's logo instead of Brand24's — are an Enterprise line, from $1,499 a month. If you are an agency, that is the number that decides this, and it is three tiers above where most agencies start.

The data gate, priced separately. API access is $149 a month on top of Individual, Team or Pro. It is only included at Enterprise. So a team on Pro who wants its own mentions in its own warehouse is at $548 a month, or $6,576 for year one.

Here is the same thing as an invoice, because the monthly figures make it look smaller than it is.

That is a genuinely good product at the top of that ladder. I am not pretending otherwise. But $6,576 buys a lot of listening elsewhere, and the gap between the two boxes above is the reason this page gets searched for.

One honest caveat before the list: a few tools below gate things exactly the same way, and one of them charges more to do it. Cheaper is not the pattern here. Different is.

The short list

If you only have a minute, this is the article in one table. Click a tool to jump to its section.

Tool	Best for	Pricing, as published	What it makes you upgrade for
BrandRobin	Mentions and buyer signals separated, with sourced AI answers	Free for 7 days; paid plans coming soon	Nothing yet, and no price yet either
Awario	Volume, API and white-label on the cheapest plan	From $29/mo billed annually	Seats and topics, not features
Determ	Every AI feature on the entry plan	From €99/mo	Mentions, and only mentions
Mentionlytics	Review sites alongside social	From $49/mo	API at $299, white-label at $749
BrandMentions	The cheapest real entry plan here	From $79/mo billed annually	Real-time at $399, API at $1,099
Mention	Teams already in a procurement process	Not published	Unknown, which is the point
YouScan	Brands whose conversation is photographs	From $499/mo billed annually	Image analysis, on the unpriced plan
Google Alerts	Finding out whether you need this at all	Free	Everything, because there is nothing to upgrade to
Brandwatch	Research teams with a question older than 2019	Not published, demo only	Not published
Meltwater	Comms teams who need licensed press	Not published, 12-month minimum	Not published

How I compared them

I have bought, renewed and cancelled enough of these to know which questions actually predict regret. These five decided every pro and con below, and none of them is the headline price.

• What the cheapest plan actually does. Not what it is called. How many keywords, how many mentions, how many logins, and how often it looks. An entry plan that checks twice a day is a daily digest with a subscription attached, and it should be priced against one.
• Which tier holds the feature from the advertising. Every tool in this market leads with something. The only question that matters is how far up the ladder that something lives, because that is the plan you will be on by month four, not the one you are reading about now.
• What is sold on top rather than included. An add-on with no price is a sales call, and an add-on with a price is a second subscription. I add both to the annual figure before I compare anything.
• Which limit runs out first. Keywords and mentions are different constraints and they fail differently. Running out of keywords means you stop watching a competitor. Running out of mentions means the month goes dark halfway through, usually in the week you most needed it.
• What leaves with you. Years of mentions, saved reports and tuned queries live inside whichever tool you are in. Before I sign, I ask what the export looks like and whether it still works on the last day of the contract.

If you want the wider version of this argument, I broke down what social listening actually costs, including where the jumps sit across the whole category.

First, work out which Brand24 you are replacing

This is the step people skip, and it is why so many switches end up sideways. "Brand24" is five quite different products, and the right alternative depends entirely on which one you have been living in.

If you are on Individual, you are replacing a watchlist. Three keywords, 2,000 mentions and a twice-daily refresh is a tool that tells you your name came up, eventually. Almost everything below does that for less, and one of them does it for nothing.

If you are on Team, you are replacing coverage. Seven keywords and 10,000 mentions at $299 a month is a real working setup, and the things to compare are the named channel list and how many mentions you actually burn in a busy month.

If you are on Pro or Business, you are replacing the AI layer and the reporting, which is a harder swap than it looks. You are not shopping for a cheaper feed. You are shopping for something that answers questions and produces a document somebody else will read.

If you are on Enterprise, you are replacing white-label and the API, and your real comparison is against tools that include both at the bottom of the range rather than the top. Awario is the obvious first call, and it will feel almost rude how much less it costs.

Work out which of those four you are. Most of the bad switches I have watched came from someone on Pro shopping as though they were on Individual, then discovering in week three that the cheap thing they bought has no reports.

BrandRobin

brandrobin.ai

Ours, and first because it is ours. Read this section with that in mind, and hold it to the same standard as the nine below it.

Why it is on this list: because the thing Brand24 charges $399 a month for is the thing we think the product is. The AI analyst is not a tier, and neither are the buyer signals. If you are leaving Brand24 because the answer layer sits two upgrades above you, that is the specific gap we built for.

And the honest counterweight: we have not published a price. I have spent four sections criticising companies for exactly that, so I am not going to pretend it does not apply to us. It does. Judge us on the trial, where you can see your own data before anybody asks you for anything.

Awario

awario.com

My take: if the reason you are reading this page is the $149 API add-on or the $1,499 white-label tier, stop here and go and look at Awario. It gives both away at the bottom of its range. Just check the channel list against where your customers actually post first, because 30,000 mentions from the wrong places is not a bargain, it is noise you have paid for.

Determ

determ.com

My take: Determ is the proof that Brand24's gates are a choice rather than an industry law — you really can put the whole AI layer on the entry plan. But look hard at that mention cap before you get excited. Determ rations volume where Brand24 rations features, and if you are a consumer brand, 1,000 mentions is a quiet fortnight. For a small B2B comms team with a precise brand name, it is a genuinely good trade.

Mentionlytics

mentionlytics.com

My take: the closest like-for-like swap on this list, and cheaper at every comparable rung. It is not a different philosophy — the gates are still there — but Advanced at $299 gets you API access for less than Brand24 Pro costs without it. If reviews are a real part of your week, this is the first one to trial.

BrandMentions

brandmentions.com

My take: the white-label line is the story. If you are an agency who looked at Brand24's $1,499 Enterprise tier and closed the tab, BrandMentions sells you the same capability at $399. Read the refresh column before you celebrate, though — daily updates up to $249 a month is slow for anything that could become a crisis.

Mention

mention.com

My take: solid coverage, especially on reviews, and the white-label position is better than Brand24's. But think about what you are doing before you book the call. You are leaving the one vendor in this category that tells you the price, for one that will not, and the quote you get depends on how large your company looks on the form.

YouScan

youscan.io

My take: the clearest example on this page of the pattern this post is about. The published plan is not the product in the marketing, and the plan that is has no published price. If images genuinely are your category, confirm in writing that your quote includes Visual Insights before you sign. If they are not, this is an expensive way to buy a feed.

Google Alerts

google.com/alerts

My take: I put this here deliberately, because a fair number of people paying $199 a month for Brand24 Individual are getting something Google Alerts would largely cover. Three keywords, no social beyond the indexed web, and a refresh measured in half-days is close to a free product with a subscription attached. Run both for two weeks. If the paid feed is not finding things the free one misses, you have your answer and it costs nothing.

Brandwatch

brandwatch.com

My take: this is a step up rather than an alternative. If your question is "how has our category's conversation shifted since 2019", nothing on this page competes. If your question is "what did people say about us this week", you are buying a research library to read the news, and Brand24 Pro was already more tool than you needed.

Meltwater

meltwater.com

My take: the only tool here that solves a problem Brand24 genuinely cannot, which is licensed press. That is worth real money if your week involves journalists. If it does not, twelve months is a long time to find that out.

Which one I would shortlist, by situation

If you are leaving over…	Shortlist	Why
The answer layer sitting two tiers above you	BrandRobin	The AI analyst and the buyer-signal feed are the product, not a tier
The $149 API add-on	Awario, Mentionlytics	Awario includes it at $29; Mentionlytics at $299, still less than Pro without it
The $1,499 white-label tier	Awario, BrandMentions	Included at $29 and $399 respectively
The 12-hour refresh on the entry plan	Determ	Real-time on every plan, including the cheapest
Mentions running out mid-month	Awario	30,000 a month at $29, fifteen times Brand24's entry allowance
Paying at all, before you are sure you need to	Google Alerts	Free, and an honest test of whether the paid feed is finding more
Not enough depth rather than too much cost	Brandwatch, Meltwater	History, licensed press and analyst-grade queries

How to switch without losing a year of data

Switching away from a tool you already pay for is a different exercise from buying your first one, and most of the mistakes happen in a particular order.

1. 01

   Find out which plan you are actually on

   Open the invoice, not the memory. Teams routinely shop against the plan they signed up for rather than the one they upgraded to in a busy month, and the whole comparison is wrong from the first row if you do.

2. 02

   Export your history before you give notice

   Mentions, saved reports and tuned boolean queries all live inside the tool, and access tends to stop on the final day of the contract rather than tapering. Do this in month one of the trial, while you still have two logins.

3. 03

   Rebuild one query, not all of them

   Take the single alert that has earned its keep, and build only that one in the new tool. If it cannot reproduce your most valuable query, nothing else about the comparison matters.

4. 04

   Run both tools through one noisy week

   Overlap deliberately, and pick a week with a launch, a campaign or a complaint in it. Two quiet weeks make every tool in this category look identical, which is exactly how people end up switching sideways.

5. 05

   Price the plan you will be on in month six

   Not the entry one. Add the add-ons, count the seats, and check which limit runs out first. That number is the real comparison, and it is usually the one nobody does until renewal.

For the wider market rather than the Brand24-shaped part of it, I compared the best social listening tools on coverage and accuracy, and the best social media monitoring tools on how fast the alert actually arrives. If you are leaving a social suite rather than a listening tool, the Sprout Social alternatives post covers that differently shaped problem. And if mention volume is doing the deciding for you, mention counts lie is worth ten minutes first.

The short answer

Brand24 is not a bad product and it is not badly priced. It is laddered, and the rung you want is higher than the rung you priced. That is the entire reason this page exists.

So do not shop for a cheaper Brand24. Shop for whichever gate annoyed you. If it was the API, Awario hands it to you at $29. If it was white-label, Awario again, or BrandMentions at $399. If it was the AI sitting at $399, Determ puts the whole layer on its entry plan, and we think it should not be a tier at all. If it was the twelve-hour refresh on a $199 plan, run Google Alerts for a fortnight first and find out what you are actually missing.

And whichever you shortlist, run it on your own brand name during a week when something is happening. See how social listening works with your own conversations in it. Every tool in this category looks excellent on somebody else's data, in a quiet week, on a demo account.