The best social listening tools for people who live on X and Reddit

The best social listening tools for people who spend their day on X and Reddit are the ones that hand you the post, not a chart about the post. Our pick is AyeWatch, which reads new posts against a rule you write in plain English and alerts only on the ones that match; the rest of this list covers reporting suites and free options for other needs.

We ranked these for a specific reader: founders, developer advocates and marketers at tech companies who want to know when someone on X, Reddit or Hacker News is talking about their product, their rival or their category.

The ranking

1. AyeWatch

AyeWatch treats listening as a feed of things to act on. You set up a monitor on an X profile, community or search, a subreddit or a Reddit user, a YouTube channel, LinkedIn posts, Instagram hashtags and searches, or a TikTok profile, and add a filter such as "people asking for a cheaper option than our main rival, not giveaways". AI checks each new post against that sentence, so a common product name does not flood you.

Each alert comes with a short summary and the source. It goes to your feed and phone on every plan, and paid plans can route it to Slack, Discord, email or a webhook. It also watches news and specific web pages, which helps when the story you care about is a competitor's changelog rather than a tweet.

What it does not do: sentiment charts, reach metrics, or Facebook and Threads.

2. Brand24

Brand24 is a full listening suite. Its plans include AI sentiment analysis, and its dashboards cover volume and reach across social, news and blogs. The Individual plan is $249 a month, or $199 a month on yearly billing, and there is a 14-day free trial. If your boss asks for a monthly share-of-voice slide, this is the kind of tool that makes it.

3. Awario

Awario sits lower on price, with a Starter plan at $49 a month or $29 a month billed yearly, and a free trial that needs no credit card. It suits a small team that wants keyword listening with reporting but cannot justify a suite at Brand24's price.

4. F5Bot

F5Bot emails you when a keyword appears on Reddit, Hacker News or Lobsters. The free plan is for personal use; paid tiers start at $12.99 a month. It is keyword matching, so pick unusual terms.

5. Talkwalker Alerts

Talkwalker Alerts is a free email alert service. You choose news, Twitter, blogs or forums as the result type and can get matches as they happen. Good for a quick check on a rare name; no analysis.

How we picked

Tech conversation moves fast and is mostly single posts: a launch thread, an outage complaint, a "what do you use for X?" question. A tool that turns those into charts a week later misses the point. We ranked first the tool that gets the right post to the right person with the least noise, then the suites for people who must report, then the free options.

If you report to a board or a client on sentiment trends, put Brand24 or Awario first instead. For everyone else, try an AyeWatch monitor on the subreddit or X search you already refresh by hand.