Every brand, no matter how established or emerging, eventually faces a critical question: how can we truly understand our audience’s voice in a noisy digital world? In an era where online conversations shape perceptions instantly, relying only on surveys or guesswork is no longer effective-it’s time to embrace real-time insights and smarter digital strategies.
Free social listening solution are transforming the way businesses track mentions, analyze sentiment, and uncover trends across social platforms, blogs, and forums. By turning online chatter into actionable intelligence, these tools empower brands with clarity, agility, and customer connection.
So, why does knowing the best free social listening solution matter? In this guide, we’ll explore the Top 16 Free Social Listening Tools.
What is a Social Listening Tool?
A social listening tool is a software solution that helps businesses, marketers, and individuals monitor, track, and analyze conversations happening online about specific keywords, brands, competitors, or industries.
Unlike basic monitoring, social listening goes beyond counting mentions by analyzing sentiment, trends, and audience insights to understand how people feel and what they are saying. These tools scan social media platforms, blogs, forums, news sites, and other digital spaces in real time, allowing organizations to respond quickly to customer feedback, identify potential crises, and uncover new opportunities.
By turning raw online chatter into actionable insights, social listening software enable data-driven decision-making, stronger customer engagement, and more effective marketing strategies in today’s highly connected digital world.
Why is Social Listening Important for Your Brand?
- Reputation Management– Social listening allows brands to instantly detect negative comments or crises online, enabling quick responses that protect reputation, rebuild trust, and prevent small issues from escalating into larger public relations problems.
- Customer Engagement– By tracking brand mentions in real time, businesses can interact directly with customers, answer questions, and acknowledge feedback, strengthening relationships and building loyalty through authentic, timely communication.
- Competitor Insights– Social listening tools provide valuable intelligence about competitor strategies, campaigns, and customer sentiment, helping brands identify gaps, benchmark performance, and create more effective, competitive marketing strategies within their industry.
- Trend Identification– Monitoring online conversations helps businesses discover emerging trends, viral topics, and industry shifts early. Brands can then align campaigns with these insights, staying relevant and positioning themselves as thought leaders.
- Product Development– Social listening reveals unmet customer needs, feature requests, or pain points. Brands can use these insights to improve existing products, design innovative solutions, and ensure offerings match real customer expectations.
- Crisis Prevention– Early detection of negative sentiment or viral complaints enables brands to act quickly, issue clarifications, and address concerns before situations spiral, minimizing damage and demonstrating responsibility to their audiences.
- Content Strategy– By analyzing what audiences talk about, brands gain clarity on preferred topics, language, and formats. These insights inform content strategies that resonate better, improve engagement, and increase marketing effectiveness.
- Influencer Collaboration– Social listening identifies influential voices discussing your brand or industry. Engaging these individuals enables impactful partnerships, extends brand reach, and enhances credibility by leveraging trusted community leaders authentically.
Quick Comparison
| Tool | Pros | Cons |
| BrandMentions | Full web + social coverage with top-tier sentiment analysis | Some advanced analytics require upgrade |
| Google Alerts | 100% free and easy to set up for monitoring brand mentions across the web. | Lacks social media tracking and sentiment analysis. |
| Fedica | Provides detailed audience segmentation and follower insights. | Focuses heavily on Twitter/X, with limited broader platform coverage. |
| Social Searcher | Monitors mentions across multiple channels, including blogs and forums. | Free version restricts historical data and advanced search depth. |
| Mention | Offers real-time monitoring with sentiment analysis. | Free plan limited to a small number of alerts and mentions. |
| Hootsuite | Combines listening with publishing and scheduling in one platform. | Free version allows only very limited social listening features. |
| Talkwalker Alerts | Better coverage than Google Alerts, with some social monitoring included. | Still lacks advanced analytics and deeper sentiment tracking. |
| Websays | Strong AI-driven insights with visualization dashboards. | Advanced features are mostly reserved for enterprise-level pricing. |
| Brand24 | Excellent sentiment analysis and influencer identification features. | Free access is trial-only, requiring paid subscription for continuous use. |
| AIM Insights | Focuses on deeper campaign and community impact measurement. | Less known tool with limited integration compared to major platforms. |
| Keyhole | Industry-leading hashtag and campaign tracking capabilities. | Free trial is short and lacks access to full analytics. |
| EmbedSocial | Captures and analyzes social proof like reviews and user content. | Stronger on content aggregation than broad social listening. |
| Syften | Monitors niche communities such as Reddit, Quora, and Hacker News. | Doesn’t support mainstream platforms like Instagram or Facebook. |
| Social Mention | Simple, real-time sentiment and keyword analysis in one dashboard. | Outdated interface with limited depth in analytics. |
| Twilert | Real-time Twitter monitoring with email alerts. | Restricted only to Twitter/X, missing cross-platform coverage. |
| Redmonitor.io | Specialized in Reddit monitoring with focused keyword alerts. | Limited exclusively to Reddit, lacks multi-platform insights. |
List of 16 Best Free Social Listening Tools
1. BrandMentions
BrandMentions helps you track every conversation about your brand across social media, news sites, blogs, and forums, all in real time. Unlike most other tools, it includes advanced sentiment and emotion analysis, giving you a clear view of how people feel about your brand, not just what they say.
Even on the free trial, you get access to trend detection, influencer insights, and real-time alerts, making it one of the most complete options for both individuals and businesses that want deeper, actionable data.
Key Features:
- Real-time tracking across social, web, news, and forums
- Advanced sentiment & emotion analysis powered by AI
- Trend and spike detection to identify viral topics early
- Influencer and competitor insights in one unified dashboard
- Custom alerts & branded reports with export options
- Multilingual monitoring for global coverage
- Historical data access and flexible filtering
2. Google Alerts
One of the simplest free social listening solutions is Google Alerts, where one can monitor a certain keyword being mentioned on the web.
Through establishing alerts, businesses, marketers, and individuals are notified through email messages whenever pertinent news articles, blogs, forums, and others publish content bearing selected terms. Even though it does not deal with social media platforms, it is very useful in tracking online reputation, competitors, or industry trends, making it one of the most basic yet effective Online Reputation Management Tools available.
Its simplicity, free nature, and easy installation make it a popular choice among people with little or no technical experience trying to keep up with discussions going on outside of social networking sites.
Website: https://www.google.com/alerts
Key Features:
- Real-time or daily email alerts for chosen keywords
- Monitors blogs, news, and websites globally
- Easy setup with no account upgrades needed
- Customizable language, region, and frequency filters
- 100% free with unlimited alerts
3. Fedica
Fedica is an intelligence-based social media platform that allows individuals and brands to track interactions, conversations, and gain audience insights. Fedica has started as a Twitter-based analytics provider and has grown to track multiple platforms and optimize content.
It can monitor keywords, mentions, and hashtags in real time, so users can measure sentiment, track trends, and evaluate the performance of a campaign. Fedica also has audience segmentation, publishing tools, and growth analytics, which is why it is a universal suggestion for marketers.
Fedica helps businesses to compete in the competitive digital space by enabling them to conduct genuine engagement and enhance decision-making through its intuitive dashboard and actionable insights.
Website: https://fedica.com
Key Features:
- Real-time monitoring of keywords, mentions, and hashtags across multiple platforms.
- Audience segmentation and demographic insights for precise targeting.
- Advanced analytics for sentiment, engagement, and trend tracking.
- Social media publishing tool and Social media scheduling tools for streamlined management.
- Growth tracking and campaign performance reporting with actionable insights.
4. Social Searcher
Social Searcher is a freemium social listening tool to monitor mentions on various social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Reddit and blogs. It offers sentiment analysis, engagement rates, and information about how users are interacting with tracked keywords or hashtags.
The free version lets you perform only a certain number of searches per day, so it is suitable when the company is small or when an individual is trying social monitoring. The analytics dashboard of Social Searcher assists the user to be aware of the sentiment of the audience and reach of the content within a short time.
Its free option has limitations, but its multi-channel coverage makes it a great option when someone requires more than web or twitter monitoring.
Website: https://www.social-searcher.com
Key Features:
- Tracks mentions across multiple social networks and blogs
- Provides sentiment analysis of user-generated content
- Delivers engagement metrics like likes, shares, and comments
- Supports real-time search results for quick monitoring
- API access for integration with custom workflows
5. Mention (Free Plan)
Mention is a powerful social listening platform with a free option that can meet the needs of small businesses and individuals. It tracks references on the social media platform, blogs, news pages, and forums.
To monitor their brand reputation or industry trends, users can create alerts, monitor competitors, and be alerted via keyword related notifications. The free version includes one alert per month with a limited number of mentions, which is suitable for the situations when you are not doing serious monitoring.
Its clean interface, sentiment analysis and reporting capabilities make Mention a hugely popular freemium solution. It is a viable beginning of systematic listening strategies because of its wide scope.
Website: https://mention.com
Key Features:
- Multi-channel monitoring (web, social, news, blogs)
- Keyword alerts delivered directly via email
- Real-time updates on mentions and discussions
- Sentiment analysis to assess brand perception
- Intuitive dashboard for alerts and analytics
6. Hootsuite Free Plan
Hootsuite’s free plan provides both publishing and basic social listening features in one platform. It allows users to manage up to two or three social media accounts, schedule posts, and set up monitoring streams for keywords, mentions, and hashtags.
The dashboard helps businesses and individuals track conversations across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While the free tier lacks advanced analytics and deep monitoring capabilities, it’s ideal for startups or individuals seeking an all-in-one tool.
Hootsuite’s strong reputation and easy-to-use interface make it a popular freemium choice for combining social listening with publishing management.
Website: https://hootsuite.com
Key Features:
- Manage up to 2–3 social accounts for free
- Custom streams to monitor keywords and mentions
- Social publishing and post scheduling tools
- Basic analytics to measure engagement performance
- User-friendly dashboard consolidating all activity
7. Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts has been referred to as “Google Alerts on steroids”, offering free search of the web and social sites, including Twitter, via keyword monitoring. Users receive notifications (real-time or on the daily basis) in a form of email which makes them fail to miss any mention which is relevant to them.
It is versatile and effective enough that its filtering options can be adjusted by source type and frequency. Talkwalker Alerts may not be the most advanced in terms of dashboards and analytics, but its simplicity and reliability make it ideal when tracking brand mentions, competitor activity, or news in the industry.
Talkwalker Alerts is one of the best tools that a marketer and anyone interested in a free, no-fuss tool can use.
Website: https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts
Key Features:
- Free keyword alerts with web and Twitter coverage
- Customizable frequency: real-time, daily, or weekly
- Filters by result type such as news, blogs, or discussions
- Email notifications for quick access to mentions
- Simple setup with unlimited keyword monitoring
8. Websays (Free Tier)
Websays is a free and premium social listening platform with extensive monitoring features on various platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Reddit, and forums. Its free service offers limited access, though it still includes useful details in the form of dashboards, sentiment analysis and custom-made alerts.
Websays does this especially well, by providing visual reports and enabling users to quickly view emerging discussions or potential crises. Although the free plan is an excellent starting point, the premium features are more in-depth and can be combined with the free version to unlock the full features and options that this platform offers to its users.
Its analytical and clean interface enables people to consume huge volumes of social data more easily.
Website: https://websays.com/en/home/
Key Features:
- Tracks conversations across major social networks and forums
- Offers dashboards with customizable visual reports
- Provides sentiment analysis for mentions and trends
- Real-time alerts for critical conversations
- Free tier access for small-scale monitoring
9. Brand24 (Free / Trial)
Brand24 provides a freemium model in which customers can first get limited free features or trials to use the powerful social listening tools. It tracks the mentions on such platforms as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and online forums.
Sentiment analysis, alerts, and real-time monitoring, are all tools that enable the business to monitor the brand reputation and customer feedback. Its free version is limited, but it still offers sufficient functionality to attempt listening strategies by a person or a small team.
Brand24 is perfect as it has a more professional interface and smarter reporting, and in the future, you may want to upgrade to a full-fledged solution.
Website: https://brand24.com
Key Features:
- Real-time monitoring of social media, blogs, and news
- Sentiment analysis to evaluate brand reputation
- Influencer identification and reach measurement
- Email and in-app alerts for fast updates
- Free trial access to explore premium capabilities
10. AIM Insights
AIM Insights is a modern, AI-powered free social listening tool that helps businesses track brand mentions, sentiment, influencer activity, and trending topics across platforms. It emphasizes artificial intelligence to provide deeper context and smarter recommendations compared to traditional tools.
Users can access dashboards with alerts and strategic insights designed to inform marketing decisions and customer engagement strategies. Its free tier makes advanced analytics more accessible for startups or small teams.
While it may offer limited usage, AIM Insights stands out for integrating AI-driven analysis into social listening, making it valuable for organizations seeking smarter monitoring.
Website: https://www.aimtechnologies.co/insights/
Key Features:
- AI-powered sentiment analysis and trend detection
- Multi-platform social and web monitoring
- Influencer identification with audience insights
- Customizable dashboards for strategic decision-making
- Free access to core AI-driven listening features
11. Keyhole (Limited Free Features)
Keyhole is a social listening and analytics platform known for real-time monitoring of hashtags, keywords, and influencer data. While primarily a paid tool, it offers limited free features that allow users to test its core functionality.
Businesses can track campaign performance, sentiment, and audience engagement, making it particularly useful for short-term campaigns or event monitoring. Keyhole’s clean interface and real-time dashboards simplify tracking social conversations across Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.
Although its free tier is restricted, it’s a practical option for testing influencer marketing, campaign listening strategies, and exploring how it compares with other Influencer Marketing Platforms without immediate investment.
Website: https://keyhole.co
Key Features:
- Real-time hashtag and keyword tracking
- Campaign and event monitoring dashboards
- Influencer performance and engagement analysis
- Sentiment tracking for conversations
- Free limited access to core features
12. EmbedSocial (Free Plan)
EmbedSocial is a freemium tool that combines social listening with user-generated content (UGC) aggregation. It monitors mentions across platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and reviews, providing sentiment analysis and content integration features.
Users can display collected UGC on websites using customizable widgets, helping brands build social proof. Its free plan is limited but useful for small businesses seeking to gather social mentions and incorporate them into their online presence.
EmbedSocial bridges the gap between listening and engagement by turning customer conversations into website-ready content, making it especially appealing for e-commerce stores and content-driven businesses.
Website: https://embedsocial.com
Key Features:
- Aggregates mentions and user-generated content (UGC)
- Supports platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and reviews
- Provides sentiment analysis of customer feedback
- Website widgets to showcase UGC seamlessly
- Free plan with limited but valuable functionality
13. Syften
Syften is a lightweight social listening tool designed to help startups, marketers, and SaaS businesses monitor online conversations.
Unlike broader tools that cover every platform, Syften specializes in niche communities such as Reddit, Quora, and Hacker News, where authentic discussions often shape brand perceptions. Its real-time alerts notify users whenever keywords, brand names, or competitors are mentioned, making it easier to track opportunities and respond quickly.
With its freemium model, Syften is accessible to small teams and individuals who need focused, budget-friendly monitoring. It’s especially valuable for discovering leads, industry chatter, and product feedback in highly engaged online spaces.
Website: https://syften.com
Key Features:
- Monitors conversations across Reddit, Quora, Hacker News, and other community platforms.
- Offers freemium access tailored for SaaS startups and small businesses.
- Tracks real-time mentions and sentiment to uncover industry discussions.
- Lightweight and cost-effective, suitable for early-stage monitoring needs.
- Simple interface with focused coverage makes it easy to spot niche conversations.
14. Social Mention
Social Mention is a free, real-time social media search and analysis tool that aggregates user-generated content across multiple platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs. As one of the simplest social media analytics tools, it provides sentiment analysis, top keywords, sources, and basic metrics like reach and strength.
Though its interface is dated, it remains popular for its simplicity and no-cost accessibility. Social Mention is ideal for quick checks on brand mentions or industry conversations without needing a paid subscription. While not suitable for deep insights, it is a valuable, lightweight tool for beginners wanting to understand audience sentiment and online conversations quickly.
Website: http://www.socialmention.com
Key Features:
- Aggregates mentions from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more
- Real-time sentiment analysis of online discussions
- Provides strength, passion, and reach metrics
- Keyword cloud showing top associated terms
- Free, registration-free access to monitoring features
15. Twilert
Twilert is a freemium tool designed exclusively for monitoring Twitter conversations. It allows users to set up keyword, hashtag, or account-based alerts, which are delivered via daily email updates.
Its free tier is limited to one daily alert, making it best suited for individuals or small teams seeking simple Twitter monitoring. Twilert is particularly useful for keeping track of brand mentions, customer feedback, or competitor updates in real time.
While more advanced features require paid plans, its focused design and reliable alert system make Twilert an accessible starting point for Twitter-specific social listening strategies.
Website: https://twilert.com
Key Features:
- Twitter-only keyword and hashtag monitoring
- Customizable daily email alerts
- Tracks mentions from competitors and customers
- Advanced search filters for precise tracking
- Free tier offers one daily alert
16. Redmonitor.io
Redmonitor.io is a dedicated Reddit listening tool built for brands and individuals who want to monitor discussions within the world’s largest forum-based community. It tracks specific keywords across multiple subreddits, providing alerts when relevant mentions appear.
This makes it especially useful for companies seeking authentic customer feedback, spotting emerging trends, or addressing community questions in real time. Unlike complex, multi-channel platforms, Redmonitor.io is simple, streamlined, and affordable, focusing entirely on Reddit’s vast ecosystem.
By capturing conversations from niche communities, it empowers businesses to engage directly with target audiences, improve brand visibility, and uncover valuable insights hidden within organic user discussions.
Website: https://redmonitor.io
Key Features:
- Dedicated Reddit listening tool that tracks keyword mentions across subreddits.
- Provides alerts for mentions, helping monitor discussions in real time.
- Designed for simplicity—perfect for users needing focused Reddit monitoring.
- Affordable and more accessible compared to broader social listening tools.
- Ideal for brands or individuals wanting to stay on top of niche community chatter.
Ending Thoughts
In today’s digital-first world, social listening has become a powerful necessity for every brand seeking growth, credibility, and deeper customer connections. By actively monitoring conversations across social media, blogs, forums, and news outlets, brands gain valuable insights into audience sentiment, industry trends, and competitor activities.
Many businesses even start by exploring Free Social Listening Tools, which provide an accessible way to gather real-time insights before scaling up to advanced solutions. Unlike traditional market research, social listening provides real-time, actionable intelligence that helps businesses respond quickly, engage effectively, and innovate continuously.
It not only strengthens reputation management and customer engagement but also supports smarter product development, content strategies, and influencer collaborations. Ultimately, social listening transforms online chatter into meaningful opportunities, empowering brands to stay relevant, proactive, and competitive in an ever-evolving digital marketplace. Ignoring it means missing opportunities and risking reputational setbacks.
FAQs
What is the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Social monitoring focuses on tracking mentions, keywords, or hashtags, while social listening goes deeper by analyzing sentiment, trends, and insights to understand the “why” behind conversations and guide strategic decisions.
Can small businesses benefit from social listening tools?
Yes. Social listening is not just for large brands. Small businesses can use free or affordable tools to track customer feedback, improve engagement, identify trends, and stay competitive in their niche.
Which platforms do social listening tools monitor?
Most tools monitor major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn, along with blogs, forums, news sites, and review platforms, depending on the tool’s features.