Awario is the lowest-priced general social listening entry point in this reviewed shortlist at $29 per month billed annually or $49 monthly. BrandJet starts at $79 per month for a broader B2B signal workflow, while Brand24 starts at $199 per month billed annually. Price alone is not enough: source coverage, update cadence, mention limits, users, and stored history differ materially.
Current lower-cost shortlist
Prices below were verified from first-party pages on July 15, 2026 and can change.
| Tool | Published entry price | Useful starting point | Important limit to test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awario | $29 monthly billed annually, or $49 month to month | Three topics, Boolean queries, alerts, reports, and a large new-mention allowance | One user, stored-mention caps, plan-based exports, and API source restrictions |
| BrandJet | $79 monthly | Keyword signals, alerts, competitor tracking, verified leads, and outreach context | Independently test source access, latency, identity, and signal relevance |
| Brand24 | $199 monthly billed annually, or $249 month to month | Broad listed social and web sources, reports, sentiment, and alerts | Entry cadence, keyword count, monthly mentions, one user, and limited initial history |
Mention currently starts much higher for its Company plan, and YouScan’s visual-listening entry plan is also above this small-team shortlist. Enterprise tools commonly use custom pricing.
Calculate usable cost, not subscription price
Include:
- Extra users, topics, keywords, and mentions.
- History, exports, API access, and integrations.
- Update frequency and alert delivery.
- Analyst time required to remove noise.
- Separate publishing, engagement, or CRM tools.
- Overage rules and retained-data limits.
A cheap plan that misses the target network or deletes useful history is not economical. A higher-priced plan can be cheaper operationally if it reduces manual review and supports the required workflow.
Decide what the small team can operate
List the recurring work before choosing a plan: query maintenance, false-positive review, urgent escalation, weekly reporting, CRM handoff, and deletion requests. Assign an owner and estimate hours per month.
If nobody can review daily alerts, pay for a digest and narrow queries rather than high-frequency volume. If the use case is crisis response, a slow entry-plan cadence may be unacceptable even at a low price. If the use case is monthly competitor research, immediate alerts may have little value.
Start with the minimum number of topics that represent real decisions. One brand query, one competitor query, and one problem-intent query can reveal whether the platform fits before the team pays for additional allowances.
Free Google Alerts or native network searches can support a manual baseline. They do not prove the coverage, history, or workflow of a dedicated listening product, but they help define known results for a trial.
Keep a cancellation and export plan. Before paying, confirm how to retrieve saved queries, reports, labels, and historical mentions, and what happens to retained data when the subscription ends.
Run a seven-day trial with known mentions
Create the same brand, competitor, and problem queries in every candidate. Seed or identify known public mentions across the target sources, then record recall, false positives, collection delay, alert delay, and analyst time.
Review source documentation instead of assuming every social network is equally available. Awario publishes alert settings and filters. Brand24 explains its data collection and historical-data behavior. BrandJet’s current competitor-monitoring page describes its first-party workflow claims.
For the full market comparison, see BrandJet’s guide to social listening tools for B2B.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free social listening tool?
Free tools and limited alerts can cover narrow use cases, but they rarely provide the same source breadth, Boolean logic, history, reporting, and team controls as paid listening products.
Is Awario enough for a small team?
It can be a practical pilot when its sources, stored history, one-user entry plan, and export requirements fit. Test the exact mentions you need.
Why is BrandJet included in a social listening shortlist?
BrandJet publishes B2B keyword, competitor, lead, and outreach workflows. Those are vendor claims and should receive the same independent source and relevance test as every other tool.
How often should pricing be rechecked?
Recheck on the purchase date and before publishing any comparison. Billing cadence, included usage, and plan names can change without notice.