Searching for the top social listening tools in 2025? This guide breaks down the top 10 platforms from enterprise insights, including Sprinklr and Brandwatch, to SMB-friendly monitoring (Mention, Awario, or Brand24). Find out about features, pricing, and use cases to help you forecast trends, mitigate crises, and enhance customer relationships.
Social listening tools are essential in 2025, with brands keen to understand their audience beyond a mention. These new-gen publishers have state-of-the-art AI that looks at sentiment, intent, images, videos, and trends before they go viral. Unlike elementary social monitoring, advanced social listening offers better data and is also used by brands to head off crises, gather feedback on their products, make friends with real influencers, and tie in closely with CRM and analytics systems in order to improve the user experience.
The right AI technology helps businesses turn massive social data into actionable insights that protect reputation, drive growth, and cultivate strong digital communities. Here in this blog, let’s deep dive into the 2025 Top 10 Best Social Listening Tools and read more interesting things about them.
Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring
Social monitoring is your brand’s security camera; it captures what is happening in the moment. Does someone mention your company? You get an alert. Simple as that. It is responsive, and it’s about my face, the way a friend might text me every time they hear my name at a party.
Social listening is nothing short of detective work. It doesn’t just relay what people are saying; it helps you understand what they mean and the impact this will have on your business.
Here’s a real change you can make: monitoring could alert someone to the fact that 50 people have complained about your new app update. But listening in on your customers will tell you if they’re actually upset that the feature is broken, or mad because they need a while to adjust to things. Big difference, right?
By 2025, social listening is straight up creepy with AI that can dissect images, videos, and even ‘predict’ trends before they go viral.
Social Listening: The Big Deal in 2025
See why this is a big deal in the coming time –
Prevent emergencies before they happen
No one wants to wake up and find that they are trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. Social listening delivers early warnings so you can tackle a problem before it spins wildly out of control.
Your Customers Are Doing R&D for You, For Free
People are out here telling you what they want and what doesn’t work. Social listening records these golden nuggets of inspiration in the moment, allowing you to create what customers really want, not just something you think they want.
Find Your Real Brand Champions
Forget about the follower count, social listening lets you find out who is really enthusiastic about your brand and has true influence among their followers. These are the people who will actually lead sales and conversions, not just look good on paper.
Turn Complaints Into Revenue
When someone’s disappointed by your product, social listening can direct that feedback straight to your customer service team. Satisfied customers stick around and spend more money. Pretty simple math.
What’s Changing in Social Listening?
Look at the change agents in social listening quickly –
AI is getting smarter
Tools can now recognize emotions and nuance, rather than just deciding whether something is positive or negative.
Visual surveillance is everywhere.
Your logo rear-ended someone’s Instagram story? Tracked. Your product in a TikTok clip? Captured.
Audio/video
Podcasts, livestreams, TikTok audio, nothing is safe from contemporary listening devices.
Crystal ball analytics
Some algorithms can predict what is going to trend.
Your social data is now also being piped directly into your CRM and customer service tools, and then there are those who have actual business models which you can – very, very clearly – see.
Privacy is complex
GDPR and platform shifts make you more wary of what data can be used.
List of Top 10 Social Listening Tools 2025 to Look For
By 2025, businesses will be utilizing social listening tools to track conversations on the go and distill rich insights with advanced AI. They analyze sentiment, trends, images, and videos to help companies respond quickly during a crisis or optimize their campaigns, and use social media across platforms.
By integrating with CRM and analytics, these solutions offer a unified data-powered brand reputation management roadmap to success in the disruptive digital economy.
Sprinklr Insights
This is the heavyweight champion for large companies that need to watch everything, everywhere. Sprinklr supports 30+ channels and AI to determine not just what folks are saying, but how they’re saying it. It can even identify your logo in a random Instagram photo, which is pretty neat.
Top features
- Monitoring practically every platform
- AI detects emotions
- Spotting your products in images and videos automatically
- Catching potential PR disasters
- Predicting what might trend next
- Connecting with your existing business tools
Pricing
This is enterprise-level stuff, so expect to pay enterprise prices; we are talking $200+ monthly, and that is just the starting point. If you are a small business, this is probably overkill.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is just like having a super-intelligent research assistant that never sleeps. It surveys social media, press sites, blogs, and forums to give you the complete picture of what people say about your brand. The dashboards even make some sense, for once, which is more unusual than you’d think.
Prime features
- Real-time monitoring
- AI is good at understanding context and intent
- Dashboards you can customize
- Tracking how you stack up against competitors
- Finding influencers who might actually influence people
- Good with your CRM and other business tools
Pricing
Expect to pay $100-300+ monthly, depending on what you need. Not cheap, but believe us, the data quality is solid.
Hootsuite Insights
It is essentially Brandwatch technology dressed in Hootsuite clothing. This makes sense if you are already using Hootsuite for social media management, because everything plays together so nicely.
What is it good at?
- Sentiment analysis that goes beyond basic positive/negative
- Tracking your stand against competitors
- Publishing and listening on the same platform
- Reports that actually tell you useful stuff
- Finding and measuring influencer partnerships
Pricing
Starts at $49/month but scales up fast to $739/month for advanced features.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker is aiming to be a pro in social listening. It spans the categories of social media, news, podcasts, livestreams, and can even analyze what’s happening in an image or video. The crisis detection ability is especially good.
What is it good at?
- AI is surprisingly good at understanding context
- Broad coverage, including podcasts and live video
- Visual recognition that can spot logos and products
- Crisis alerts
- Custom reporting
Pricing
Professional plans start around $750/month, so this is not for everyone.
Mention
Made for small businesses and startups that want social listening without the enterprise complications. Mention doesn’t over-complicate things, yet still provides you with all the necessary insight to keep a watchful eye on your brand reputation.
Why choose Mention?
- Real-time alerts
- Finding influencers in your space
- Competitive benchmarking without information overload
- Basic sentiment analysis
- An interface that doesn’t require training to use
Pricing
Plans start at $29/month for solo users and go up to $450+ for bigger teams.
Brand24
Brand24 is the small guy that fights like a bigger one. It tracks 25 million online sources and provides news in an instant, without the drag of enterprise tools. Great for businesses looking for solid social listening without the migraines.
Best-in-class Features
- Monitoring everywhere people may mention you
- Sentiment analysis
- Spotting reputation risks
- Scoring influencers based on actual influence
- Quick setup and easy-to-understand alerts
Pricing
$49-199/month depending on features.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is the content marketer’s BFF. It’s not general social listening; it’s more about discovering what content is working, what’s trending, and who the actual influencers are within your space.
What is special about BuzzSumo?
- Finding content that is actually performing well
- Tracking social mentions of your content
- Analyzing influencers who matter
- Competitive content analysis
- Detailed reporting on what is working and what is not
Pricing
$99-499/month, with enterprise options.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social integrates social listening and customer relationship management, allowing you to actually take action on mentions from the same tool. Great for teams that want everything in one place.
Key Elements
- Listening and engagement in one platform
- Sentiment analysis tied to customer workflows
- CRM integration
- Tracking competitors and influencers
- Reports that connect social activity to business outputs
Pricing
$249 per user per month to start, with higher tiers available. Expensive but comprehensive.
Awario
Awario is an affordable alternative that doesn’t skimp on features. Real-time listening, sentiment analysis, and competitive insights at a price that won’t break the bank. No wonder it’s popular among small businesses.
USPs of Awario
- Real-time monitoring
- Sentiment analysis
- Competitive monitoring
- Multiple language support
- Access to historical data
Pricing
$49-299/month based on what you need. Good value for money.
Keyhole
Keyhole hashes out hashtags, rallies, and influencers. This is your tool if you are in social campaigns and need to track reactions immediately.
Why choose Keyhole?
- Hashtag tracking for real results
- Influencer analytics
- Campaign ROI measurement
- Predicting what might trend next
- Real-time reporting during campaigns
Pricing
$79-399+/month with enterprise options.
Comparison of Top Social Listening Tools in 2025
| Tool | Platforms & Coverage | Influencer Tracking | Pricing (from) | Best For |
| Sprinklr Insights | 30+ channels, enterprise-wide | Yes | $200+/mo (enterprise) | Large enterprises needing full-scale monitoring |
| Brandwatch | Social, press, blogs, forums | Yes | $100–300+/mo | Research-heavy teams, competitor benchmarking |
| Hootsuite Insights | Powered by Brandwatch, within Hootsuite | Yes | $49–739+/mo | Teams already on Hootsuite |
| Talkwalker | Social, news, podcasts, livestreams | Yes | $750+/mo | Enterprises needing broad coverage |
| Mention | Social + online media (SMBs) | Yes (basic) | $29–450+/mo | Startups/SMBs wanting simple monitoring |
| Brand24 | 25M+ sources (news, forums, blogs) | Yes (scoring system) | $49–199/mo | SMEs wanting value + quick setup |
| BuzzSumo | Content + social mentions | Yes | $99–499+/mo | Content marketers & publishers |
| Sprout Social | Social + CRM workflows | Yes | $249/user/mo | Teams needing unified listening + engagement |
| Awario | Real-time global monitoring | Yes | $49–299/mo | SMBs need affordable real-time insights |
| Keyhole | Social campaigns + hashtags | Yes (campaign ROI, hashtag analytics) | $79–399+/mo | Campaign tracking, hashtag analysis, influencer ROI |
How to Choose a Social Listening Tool that Really Works
So here, we’ll discuss how to choose the best social media listening tool for a small and mid-sized business (SMB) in all industries –
Platform Coverage That Matters
Make sure your tool includes where your audience actually is. If your readers are on TikTok and Reddit, don’t use a tool that only monitors Twitter and Facebook. Also, look to see if it includes review sites, forums, and news mentions: conversations are everywhere.
Live Alerts (When They’re Really Important)
You really want to know the issues when you can do something about them, not three days later when it’s gone viral.
AI That Makes Sense
The good tools don’t merely dump it on top of you; they arrange it in ways that are meaningful and useful to you. Look for brief sentiment analysis that does actually get context and can bucket a like conversation.
Beyond Text: Images and Videos
Your products are constantly being featured in other people’s photos and videos. With Photoshop and Vector Magic at our disposal today, there’s no reason your logo won’t be legible when it pops up on an Instagram post or is lifted off of mentions in TikTok videos.
Global Reach (If You Need It)
If you are a global firm, ensure the platform is flexible across languages and geographies. Sarcasm is positive sounding comments in one language and harmful in another.
Smart Search Options
You’ve got to cut through the noise. Try to look for tools that allow for very specific searches otherwise you will be inundated with irrelevant mentions.
Reports People Actually Understand
No fancy dashboards are useful if your team can’t understand them. The finest tools expose data in dignified ways that appeal to people, not only data scientists.
Plays Nicely With Your Other Tools
The things you learn and the feedback you receive from your social listening should be added to your CRM, help desk, and business intelligence solutions. When you’re stuck inside quarantine, it’s only half the fun.
Enterprise Stuff (If you’re Enterprise)
Larger companies need audit trails, user permissions, and compliance features. Boring but necessary.
Try Before You Buy
And a good tool will give you an actual trial. If they won’t let you test it in the way that’s most helpful to you, there’s a red flag.
Long-term, social listening tools should be making your work easier, not harder. Select the one that actually matches how your team works and gives you information you can use, not just pretty charts you’re never going to look at.
Real-World Examples of Social Listening That Actually Work
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Stopping PR Disasters Before They Explode
They did this so they wouldn’t freak out when a big brand saw one of these viral complaints making the rounds within hours of it going live. Their social listening tool picked up the spike in negative mentions early, and within hours, they were able to identify what was really happening, understand that it was the very opposite of what each person working in an office thought would happen, and respond with something that actually answered what everyone cared about. Crisis prevented.
What to listen for?
How quickly you respond, whether sentiment goes up after your reply, and how many people are discussing the issue.
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Building Products People Actually Want
A tech company was receiving complaints about their app’s usability, but they weren’t sure which of the features were causing trouble. Social listening pinpointed what those complaints actually were. They corrected those problems by the next update, and user satisfaction suddenly shot up.
What to measure?
How frequently people ask for particular features, whether sentiment improves after an update, and how many more people are engaging with your product.
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Keeping Up With the Competition
A retail brand employed social listening to monitor what their competitors were doing, noting promotions, customers’ reactions, and adjusting their own marketing spend according to what was working. Smart move.
What to monitor?
Share of conversation versus competition, campaign performance against theirs, and what people think about your competition.
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Finding Influencers Who Actually Influence
One fashion brand stopped paying attention to follower numbers and started seeing who was making real engagement around its products. They discovered small creators that really did move the needle with their audience, and they found a much better ROI on those partnerships.
What to Track?
Real engagement rates (not just likes), how many people actually make a purchase after viewing influencer content, and what people say about the post.
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Turning Complaints Into Happy Customers
A telecom company rigged its social listening to automatically generate support tickets every time someone complained online. Rather than relying on angry consumers to call in (they rarely do), they got in touch first. Result? Complaint resolution is 30% faster, and customers are much happier.
What to measure?
Satisfaction scores, how quickly you respond to issues, and how many complaints you resolve.
How Can You Tell This Is Even Worth Your Time?
After all, no one really wants to spend money on tools that merely create more busywork. Here’s what really matters: Are people saying nicer things about your brand, on average, over time? How much of the conversation in your industry covers your top competitors? When customers voice their dissatisfaction, how long does it take until you prioritize the issue? Finally, let’s say the most revealing for last: are you actually addressing what you see is wrong with your workflow by solving these problems, or are you just drawing charts?
The real question is not whether you receive better reviews from your customers, but whether their satisfaction scores are increasing on the basis of your having discovered problems before they blow up. What are some of the campaigns that existed better because of social insights? That’s the stuff we pay bills with.
As for the ROI? Consider those disasters you avoided. Maybe you got in front of one viral complaint, avoided a devastating PR fiasco that might have gutted your stock price. Or you’ve stopped customers from cancelling by replying to them when they’re angry online. Those wins add up fast.
Conclusion
Social listening has grown up. No longer is it enough to count mentions; listening begins with reading about how those mentions of you and your company are affecting the universe. But now, with A.I. getting smarter and image- and video-analysis tools in place, and the plumbing already connected to your existing systems, brands can finally just move fast; learn from real feedback from the world while building actual relationships with customers.
Yes, there are still headaches to be had around privacy laws and A.I. that don’t always pick up on sarcasm, but when you choose the right platform and implement it correctly, social data is your secret weapon. The brands that win in 2025 will be those who are actually listening to more than just what people say; they’re also listening to what they don’t.
FAQs
What’s the actual difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Think of monitoring as your brand’s security camera; it spots mentions and sends you alerts in real-time. Social listening is more like being a detective who figures out what those mentions actually mean and why people are saying what they’re saying. One gives you data, the other gives you insights you can actually use.
Can these tools actually see what’s in photos and videos?
Yep, the good ones can now spot your logo in someone’s Instagram story or catch mentions of your product in TikTok videos. It’s pretty impressive tech; they can even transcribe audio content from podcasts and livestreams. Finally, we’re not limited to just text anymore.
How often does sentiment analysis get it wrong?
It’s gotten way better with AI, but it’s still not perfect. Most tools can now pick up on subtle emotions and context pretty well, but sarcasm still trips them up sometimes. Think of it as a really smart assistant who gets it right most of the time but occasionally misses the joke.
Will I get in trouble for using these tools legally?
The reputable tools handle all the GDPR and privacy compliance stuff for you, but you still need to be careful. They use personal data and stay up to date with platform rules, but make sure you read the fine print and get your legal team involved if you are doing anything sensitive.
Which tool works best for TikTok monitoring?
Look for tools like Sprinklr or Brandwatch that have strong multimedia capabilities and actual TikTok API access. TikTok is all about video and audio, so you need something that can handle more than just text mentions.
Can I connect this to my existing customer service tools?
Absolutely, and you should. Most good tools can plug right into your CRM or help desk software, so when someone complains on social media, it automatically creates a support ticket. No more manually copying and pasting angry tweets.
What numbers should I actually be watching?
Focus on whether sentiment is improving, how much of the online conversation is about you versus competitors, how quickly you respond to issues, and whether you are actually solving problems. Also, track your customer satisfaction scores.