20 Best Social Listening Tools to Track Trends in 2025

Social media is a goldmine of conversations, opinions and trends that shape how your brand connects with its audience. But how do you tap into this chatter to find meaningful insights? This is where social listening can help. 

Social listening is more than just monitoring mentions of your brand or organization — it’s about understanding the context, emotions and trends behind these mentions so your social team can respond strategically. This is a time-consuming but necessary task and with the help of the right social listening tool, you’ll be able to turn insights into action.

To determine which tools to include, we analyzed over 20 leading social listening platforms and reviewed hundreds of G2 reviews from social media professionals. Our rankings were based on several key criteria: the number of features specific to social listening, G2 star ratings and overall positive user sentiment.

1. Dash Social 

Dash Social’s social listening feature lets you get to the heart of your audience. With AI-Powered Social Listening, organizations can see what their audience says about them online, even when they don’t tag your brand. The listening feature pulls in trending keywords, taking the data a step further by providing sentiment analysis that helps you determine which visuals and keywords are perceived as positive, neutral or negative by your audience. 

Along with determining what people say about your brand, you can also monitor what audiences say about your competitors and industry counterparts. 

‍Strengths:

“What I like best about Dash is how user-friendly the platform is from planning, reporting, listening, and strategy. It cuts out the steps of manual reporting and sharing the analytics to the broader team in a way that is digestible and effective. Being able to track campaigns through Campaigns and Boards helps so much. One of my favorite innovations has been TikTok trending sounds! As a social team of 1 for about 6 months, it has saved me so much time and has helped the brand stay relevant. I've also had to message CS through the live chat function a few times and they have been nothing but helpful…” Source 

“Dash Hudson is extremely comprehensive in its capabilities. I love having the ability to schedule, build out reporting, organize our posts, source UGC, and do social listening all within one platform.” Source 

Improvements: 

“The social listening tools (which I know are new) could be more robust.” Source

• Best for: Beauty, Fashion, Enterprise Organizations 
• Key features: Custom search builder, Visual trend prediction, Topic, hashtags and keyword monitoring 
• Used by: Olaplex, Shop with Google, Beats by Dre, The Inkey List 
• Offered for: Instagram, Twitter (X), YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit

2. Sprout Social 

Sprout Social’s listening tool lets you build queries with a range of filters to determine which audience segments are saying what. Their listening feature includes crisis management with a unique alert feature to help brands prepare for impending issues.  The Consumer Research feature provides deeper insights into audience preferences for brands to better understand their audience. 

Sprout users love the platform’s ability to support customer service strategies with its monitoring capabilities, although some users wish its listening features supported more categories, keywords and tracking options. 

‍Strengths:

“One thing we've more recently been playing around with is the social listening, which has helped beef up our brand reports and better track how we are comparing to competitors across the social landscape (and what the conversations are around).” Source 

Improvements:

“The Social Listening feature could be more robust, as it doesn’t always provide in-depth results. We often have to apply multiple filters to refine the data, which can be time-consuming. Enhancing the depth of insights and improving filtering efficiency would make this tool even more powerful.” Source 

• Best for: Enterprise, Travel and Tourism
• Offered for: Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube 

3. Brand24

Brand24’s social listening tool lets you track online brand mentions across social media along with blogs, forums and news sites in real time. It also includes sentiment analysis to help you understand how people feel about your brand, campaign and products. With Brand24, you can monitor keywords, hashtags and competitors on Instagram and set up customizable alerts to stay up-to-date on specific phrases.  

Brand24’s users applaud the platform for how it helps social teams save time, organize their listening data and its cost-effectiveness. However, users notice some issues with software lagging, the need for additional features and limitations in mention management.

‍Strengths:

“Brand24 helps us optimize our time spent with social listening. We don't have to collect mentions manually anymore. It also helps with organization. It has some pretty cool features for filtering and configuring the projects so the mentions collected will be the most accurate possible.” Source 

Improvements:

“It stores collected mentions for only about a year, so if you aim to save historical data, Brand24 is not it.” Source 

• Best for: Mid-market, Technology
• Offered for: Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, online sources

4. Emplifi

Emplifi’s social listening tool tracks brand mentions, keywords and hashtags across social platforms and blogs, forums and online news. It includes sentiment analysis to help teams understand how audiences feel about their brand and content. The tool also supports competitive monitoring and customizable alerts, so brands can make real time updates.

Users appreciate Emplifi’s clean interface, customizable listening dashboards and cross-channel monitoring. Although, users mention challenges with data filtering, delays pulling in mentions and a need for deeper analytics.  

‍Strengths:

“Custom content labeling, automation labeling, and listening queries all able to be brought into custom dashboards are all *incredible* features. Companies can use these to segment content based on the custom data valuable to them and draw insights easily.” Source

Improvements:

“I have been using the dashboards and while they are useful, I think there is still room for improvement. In particular, the Listening section could benefit from a feature that would allow us to download the information in an Excel file. Having this capability would make it much easier to analyze and manipulate the data offline. I hope this is something that could be implemented in the near future.“ Source

• Best for: CPG, Mid-Market 
• Offered for: X, Facebook, YouTube, online sources 

5. ListenFirst

ListenFirst is primarily a social media listening software, with some great features, particularly for Instagram. ListenFirst analyzes conversations on Instagram to gauge what audiences care about most and how users engage with your brand. It also tracks sentiment and visual trends across Instagram content so brands can fine-tune messaging and creative assets.  

Reviewers love ListenFirst’s customizable dashboards and comprehensive cross-platform insights. However, some users have pointed out that while the platform’s user interface has improved, it may still fall short of the ease-of-use offered by some competitors. Additionally, features like sentiment analysis may not be as in-depth or intuitive, which could mean users need to spend extra time to unlock their full potential.

‍Strengths:

“Being able to bulk tag posts so I can measure campaigns easily against benchmarks! This is something I asked ListenFirst to improve and they did!” Source 

Improvements:

“ListenFirst's platform is very detailed, though often difficult to learn. The platform could be slightly more user intuitive.” Source 

• Best for: Media and Publishing, Mid-Market 
• Offered for: Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube

6. Exolyt

In addition to regular sentiment analysis, Exolyt’s listening tools can help social teams identify potential influencers to collaborate with and measure the impact of existing influencer partnerships. Its tool also analyzes TikTok trends so brands can stay ahead of emerging trends.

Users love the platform’s ability to track hashtags and trending sounds, along with competitors. Generally, users would like to see more robust data and analytics, along with a more consistent user experience. 

‍Strengths:

“I love being able to instantly understand how big the conversation around a hashtag is. The ability to look at related tags is a gamechanger for unearthing community connections. It's so useful for both identifying trending topics overall, and for your industry while also providing enough data that you can see the bigger picture and look at longer term trends and shifts.” Source 

Improvements:

“We are hoping they can implement Instagram Reels data, similar to the Tiktok analytical data.” Source 

• Best for: Small business, Technology, Agencies 
• Offered for: TikTok

7. Meltwater

Meltwater’s social listening features lets brands monitor mentions of its brand and specific keywords across social platforms and the internet. It offers additional features, Explore and Radarly, that provide real time insights around sentiment, audience behaviour and upcoming trends to support brand’s content and crisis management strategies.  

Meltwater users praise the app for its usability and helpful customer support, which is quick to respond to a myriad of issues. Many users also report a learning curve in navigating the platform, including issues creating reports and filters without assistance from customer support. 

‍Strengths:

“It's incredibly helpful to have a one-stop-shop for monitoring brand coverage (and being able to filter by coverage type!), setting up press release wires, and media list building all in one tool. I use meltwater virtually every day in my role and in many ways it blows other PR tools out of the water. It's easy to navigate and customer support is always on deck to help with any roadblocks.” Source

Improvements:

“One of the main challenges with Meltwater is the learning curve, it takes some time to get familiar with all the features and how to use them effectively. The labelling of certain sections can also be a bit confusing, especially if you’re not using the platform regularly. It’s easy to forget where specific tools or functions are located, which can slow things down when trying to navigate the system.” Source 

• Best for: Non-profits, Enterprise 
• Offered for: X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Podcasts, online sources

8. Storyclash

Storyclash is primarily an influencer marketing platform that helps brands find creators, automate campaigns and measure social media performance. However, it also uses AI-powered search to let brands track mentions, keywords and competitor activity and surface conversations and content tied to influencers, trends and branded campaigns.

Users love Storyclash’s intuitive interface and strong influencer discovery features. They also like the software’s AI-powered search and competitor tracking. However, some find the messaging section cluttered and say campaign reporting lacks depth compared to other tools.

‍Strengths:

“One of the platform's key advantages is its advanced search functionality, which enables highly precise filtering based on criteria such as URLs, keywords, images, and similar profiles. This ensures the identification of creators who are best aligned with our brand. Furthermore, the platform facilitates quick contact via email and offers robust tracking of ongoing collaborations.” Source 

Improvements:

“While the tool is great for finding influencers, its campaign management features don’t measure up to other platforms. Mainly I'm missing a Shopify integration to easily create tracking links and discount voucher. The reporting options are quite basic, lacking the in-depth analytics and customizable insights I’ve seen in competitors.” Source 

• Best for: Direct-to-consumer brands, Mid-market 
• Offered for: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter (X), YouTube

9. Agorapulse 

Agorapulse offers social listening tools for brands to monitor mentions, track hashtags and analyze audience sentiment in real time. It also offers custom search filters, so brands can hone in on trending conversations around specific campaigns and content.

Users on G2 commend Agorapulse for its user-friendly interface and efficient social engagement capabilities. However, some users have noted occasional issues with the listening feature, like disconnected links when clients are tagged by other businesses on Facebook. 

‍Strengths:

“I've really enjoyed the functionality of AgoraPulse. We're able to create a group of posts on the same topic, but it allows us to change the photo, caption, and links to match each channel’s audience. I also love being able to create custom reports! We have specific needs for reporting, and I had to have the agency version in previous tools. Thankfully, we can do this all on our own!“ Source 

Improvements:

“One drawback is that Agorapulse doesn’t offer basic plans suitable for teams. This limitation means the approval process often needs to happen outside the platform, which can slow things down and disrupt workflow efficiency. Adding a more team-friendly option would make it an even better tool.“ Source 

• Best for: Small business, Agencies
• Offered for: Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube 

10. Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence

Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence provides social listening coverage across Instagram, Reddit, YouTube and online forums, reviews and news sites. Its listening features lets you track mentions, sentiment and trends, along with the ability to create custom dashboards to monitor and measure specific mentions. 

Users on G2 appreciate Brandwatch's straightforward interface and the depth of insights it offers. That said, some users express concerns over the software’s complexity and are concerned about data quality depending on the source. 

‍Strengths:

“The ability to have simple or complex search strings that pull data from global media titles (across different types, incl. social media) is so helpful for evaluating campaign impact in the communications world. Plus, the BrandWatch graph and data presentation function is really helpful.“ Source 

Improvements:

“What I like least about Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence is that it is not active on all social networks, for example. In my company, sometimes we need to measure reputation and messages on LinkedIn or TikTok, but it is not enabled to connect there. I also don't like that I can't monitor in real time.” Source 

• Best for: Enterprise
• Offered for: Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, online sources 

11. Keyhole

Keyhole offers social listening tools that allow brands to track public posts, comments and trends related to keywords, hashtags and profiles. It provides real time data and historical insights to help marketers measure campaign performance and audience sentiment. 

One advantage of using Keyhole for Facebook listening is its user-friendly dashboard and automated reporting, which make it easy to extract important metrics. However, its data access is limited to public content due to Facebook’s API restrictions, which can reduce visibility into private groups or user conversations.

‍Strengths:

“A lot of information available. Listening updates in real time. More functionality than we needed.” Source 

Improvements:

“It is a steep price for a singular item like hashtag tracking. I also wish they did a bit better job with the sign-up feature it is really hard to get to the pricing section.” Source 

• Best for: Small business, Technology 
• Offered for: Twitter (X), Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, news sites, blogs, forums

12. Sprinklr 

Sprinklr’s social listening tools let brands access public data. Its listening capabilities monitor user-generated content and visual brand mentions in static and video images. It also lets brands arrange crisis alerts to stay proactive when it comes to potential issues. 

Users value Sprinklr’s advanced data analysis and analytics, although many users mention a steep learning curve to accurately navigate the platform and issues with customer support. 

‍Strengths:

“What I like best about Sprinklr Social is its exceptional ability to be customized to meet our brand's unique needs. The platform allows us to tailor social listening, engagement, and analytics specifically for our goals, ensuring we get the most relevant insights and effective management tools. This customization helps us maintain a consistent brand voice and respond to our audience more efficiently.” Source

Improvements:

“Sprinklr can feel like a spaceship pilot controls. Lots of configuration options provide flexibility and robust customization choices but is definitely harder to wrap your head around if you're looking for an easy button.” Source 

• Best for: Enterprise, Finance
• Offered for: Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Yelp, Google My Business, Google Play, Apple App Store, Trustpilot

13. Mention

Mention is a social analytics platform with a focus on monitoring blogs, forums, news sites and social media for brand mentions. 

Overall, users are happy with the breadth of online options the tool can pull in, but also note that sourcing information with filters and search can be a touch clunky, making it challenging to pull in information efficiently. Despite these concerns, Mention remains a valuable tool for businesses aiming to enhance their online presence and brand reputation.​ 

‍Strengths:

“Mention allows us to create alerts and allow us to perform searches with our filters. We can easily monitor the profiles of our brand. With the searched keywords we can easily review and digest the email list. Their dashboards and is very simple to use and we do not have to learn many skills to use their dashboards. There are exceptional packages for the filters and Boolean search. It has a simple interface and is very easy to navigate.“ Source 

Improvements:

“The search option can be modified a lot and can be made much better. It is not something that can be compared to Google but it is not that bad too. Just a little improvement will enhance its functionality manifold. Apart from that, it did not understand abbreviations or mentions. Cost is always an issue, and the pricing of the package should be reconsidered as smaller-scale businesses might find it too expensive. I am also not a fan of the features being moved behind the paywall.” Source 

• Best for: Small Business to Mid-Market
• Offered for: Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, news sites, forums

14. Google Trends 

Google Trends is a free listening tool that lets you track online searches, compare two different subjects and filter by date range, country and even category. This allows you to compare metrics over time and even related queries.  

Users like the simple interface and the different options for filtering data visualization. However, as Google Trends monitors mentions on Google and YouTube, some users note it’s limited as a complete social listening tool.  

‍Strengths:

“I like the data of search results. It gives an idea about what are the trending topics and how we can use the keywords in our SM and SEO strategies. I use it weekly so that I make my content more searchable. It has been an important part of my content writing process. Knowing what is trending is very helpful in being more visible and searchable. Google trends makes my work easy.“ Source 

Improvements:

“The search data lacks specifics - we can't see the exact questions or delve into the motivations behind them. This makes it challenging to directly translate trends into tailored health insurance solutions that truly address our customers' evolving needs.“ Source

• ‍Best for: Small business ‍
• Offered for: Google search

15. Talkwalker 

Talkwalker is owned by Hootsuite, but also offers a real time campaign and hashtag tracking tool that helps brands monitor conversations across social media, news sites, blogs and forums. It can track brand mention, sentiment emerging trends and campaign performance in real time. 

Users like Talkwalker's monitoring capabilities and easy-to-navigate interface. However, some have noted that the free version offers limited historical data, which may restrict in-depth analysis. Additionally, users in paid packages mention the platform's extensive features can present a learning curve for new users. ​

‍Strengths:

“Talkwalker has the ability to full customize your search terms while looking at sentiment, geographic locations, and media types.” Source 

Improvements:

“Talkwalker isn't without its glitches. Tagging in Talkwalker can be slow to update, without notifications when tagging is complete, and delays in updating new tags to the filters section.“ Source

• Best for: Small and mid-size business, consumer goods  
• Offered for: Google web search

16. Hootsuite

While Hootsuite offers more detailed social listening features for Enterprise customers, the platform does offer some free features found in its ‘Listening Basics’ package. With Hootsuite’s free package, brands can look back on data from the past seven days, compare two searches, analyze sentiment and search social platforms like X and Reddit, along with news, newsletters, blogs and Quora. 

‍Strengths:

“It's a one-stop-shop for social media. Content and copy creation and generation, product integrations, social listening, backend management, community engagement, etc. Previously, I was having to do everything natively. Having everything in one location immediately simplifies and centralizes my workflow.“ Source 

Improvements:

“That said, the pricing can be steep, especially for smaller teams or individuals, and some of the advanced features are locked behind higher-tier plans. Occasionally, the interface can feel slightly clunky, and specific integrations could be smoother.“ Source 

• Best for: Non-profits, Small business 
• Offered for: Facebook, X, BlueSky, YouTube, and Quora, podcasts, news websites, newsletters, blogs and forums

17. Determ

Determ offers real time online listening across social media, news, blogs and forums to help brands track relevant conversations. It captures mentions, provides sentiment analysis and identifies trends or potential crises, so you can catch them before they escalate. 

Users enjoy the well-designed dashboard, integration options and ability to generate reports easily. However, some users report high costs, which can be prohibitive for some businesses and a lack of filtering options to segment listening queries and data more effectively. 

‍Strengths:

“It's like having a Facebook feed of what my competitors are doing that I can check. I like the simplicity of the tool. It is very easy for me to install it on my phone and then just get a notification when something new happens. I also like the customer support, they help me with everything.“ Source 

Improvements: 

“Navigation is more difficult when we need to search broadly. Insights are not as much expected. Only 90 days of data can we get from the tool. Multi-account management is complex.“ Source 

• Best for: Small business, Public Relations 
• Offered for: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest

18. Reputation 

​Reputation's social listening tool, Social Suite, offers comprehensive online listening capabilities. It enables businesses to monitor and engage with conversations across various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Reddit, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, news sites and RSS feeds. 

G2 users appreciate Reputation’s centralized dashboard, which helps condense customer feedback and reviews so teams can respond more efficiently. Some users note that metrics could be clearer and that some popular review platforms, like Yelp, are excluded from monitoring results. 

‍Strengths:

“Extremely easy to use and allows me to manage and measure performance in real time. The best feature is the focus suggestions to approve your scores. Also, sending reviews is simple and I love it!” Source

Improvements:

“I think reputation has area's for improvement by allowing us to be able to manage all platforms that allow reviews. My properties often get reviews on Yelp and I am unable to respond to those as they are not part of my platform. Additionally responding to review on Apts.com or Apartment List. All in one place would be great.” Source 

• Best for: Enterprise, Finance 
• Offered for: Facebook, X, Instagram

19. Mentionlytics 

​Mentionlytics is an AI-powered social media monitoring tool that enables businesses to track and analyze online conversations across various platforms. It offers features like sentiment analysis, competitor analysis and influencer identification to help monitor online presence. 

Users on G2 commend Mentionlytics for its user-friendly interface, efficient customer support and ability to streamline relevant information in one place to help social teams save time. However, some users mention a learning curve due to the platform's extensive features and suggest that more detailed documentation would be beneficial. 

‍Strengths:

“Mentionlytics is a powerful tool for monitoring online mentions and managing brand reputation. Its intuitive interface and robust analytics make tracking social media engagement and sentiment effortless. Highly recommended for businesses seeking comprehensive social listening solutions.“ Source 

Improvements:

“The minor drawback is that it cannot restrict keywords for social media platforms, so it will still collect the words. Sometimes, we don't want to collect live comments or giveaway comments from competitors, leading to the collection of too many irrelevant comments. You can only purchase additional mention quotas, but I believe the price for this additional purchase is reasonable.” Source 

• Best for: Enterprise, Agencies 
• Offered for: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, forums, blogs, news sites

20. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a free tool used for scheduling, posting and monitoring activity on X and is often used to monitor replies, comments, brand mentions and other custom keywords or phrases. 

Users like TweetDeck’s manageable interface and the ability to monitor multiple feeds simultaneously, which enhances engagement and organization. This feature is particularly helpful if you have multiple X accounts. However, some limitations include the lack of integration with other social media platforms and the absence of a mobile app, which can hinder on-the-go management.

‍Strengths:

“It can be a little confusing at first when using it. It can be overwhelming seeing your homepage, notification, messages, and activity all at once but once you get the hang of it, it's simple to use. The nice thing is that you are confused, on the left hand side, they have an icon for each section that you can click on and it will highlight where it is on the page.” Source

Improvements:

“TweetDeck is specifically only for Twitter so other social media platforms cannot be integrated. There is no mobile app - I think that would be userful for users who are managing their accounts on the go. For new users, it may take awhile to learn how the platform works.” Source 

• Best for: Small business
• Offered for: X

Using a social listening tool is like having your ear to the ground 24/7. These tools let you monitor real time conversations about your brand, industry and even competitors. This helps social media managers and their teams identify trends to incorporate into their content, gauge existing audience sentiment and respond to potential issues before they escalate. 

Social monitoring tools offer insights that help you take action and refine everything from product development to content marketing strategies. Essentially, a great social listening tool turns raw data into a competitive edge for marketing teams.

Without social listening, you’re only getting half the story. While social media analytics help you measure and compare performance, social listening tools uncover the why behind the numbers, surfacing real opinions, emotions and trends that can shape your strategy. Here’s how social media listening software can drive smarter decisions across your business: 

Spot Emerging Trends Early 

Social listening, particularly at the competitor or industry level, help you proactively see which trends are happening in your space. This can help you determine which memes or social media trends you want to participate in based on audience preferences. Beyond social trends, this can even shape product development — are you a fragrance brand with an audience searching for scents inspired by the beach, coconut, salt or solar notes? Your social team can bring that intel straight to product development.

Uncover Real Product Feedback 

While metrics like LikeShop clicks, product tag clicks and cart abandonment rates help you figure out which products resonate with your social media audience, social listening gives you access to unfiltered customer opinions, like a focus group at scale. Understand how people feel about new product launches, reformulations or discontinued items so you can make more customer-informed decisions.

Catch Issues Before They Escalate

Crisis management is often what brands think of when they consider a social listening tool. Crisis management lets brands be as proactive as possible when dealing with negative comments, identifying negative sentiment attached to comments and other major controversies from concerns about online campaigns or even products. 

Optimize Campaigns in Real Time

Understand not just what’s performing, but why. Are people engaging because they love your campaign, or because they’re criticizing it? Tapping into what users say about your campaigns and how they feel about your creative vision, brand ambassadors and even the trends you share, can help you shift your social media strategy to align — or subvert — with user expectations. 

Find the Right Influencers and Partners

Social listening programs can help you determine which nano, micro and macro influencers to work with on future social media campaigns. Along with potential brand partnerships and influencer collaborations, social listening software also alerts you to the thought leaders in your sphere. Maybe there’s a tech leader who’s particularly influential for your software company you’d like to speak to your team or another thought leader you might want to collaborate with behind the scenes — listening tools help you identify collaborations for your social campaigns and beyond. 

Social listening tools help you get to the heart of social media data, what users are saying and how they feel. Dash Social’s Social Listening Tools let you monitor topics, hashtags and keywords so you can stay ahead of the conversations that matter most.