NewsWhip is now part of Sprout Social. What that means for you

Yes, NewsWhip is now part of Sprout Social. NewsWhip announced in July 2025 that it was joining Sprout Social, and the product now carries the name "NewsWhip by Sprout Social". The company said it would keep its focus on real-time data, issue tracking and its AI agents, and that customers would hear about any changes directly. If you are reconsidering your media monitoring because of the deal, the questions below cover what changed, what did not, and what to use instead.

What did NewsWhip say about the acquisition?

In its announcement, NewsWhip's CEO Paul Quigley, who founded the company in 2011, described the deal as a way to build a combined social and news intelligence platform for monitoring reputational risk, trends and social narratives. He said newsrooms use NewsWhip to find stories and Sprout for distribution, while brand teams spot issues on NewsWhip and respond with Sprout. The post said NewsWhip had a team of 70 at the time, and that the Associated Press had invested in it in 2016.

Did the product change?

The products listed on NewsWhip's site are the same family as before:

• Spike, for real-time monitoring, with stories sorted by engagement or predicted engagement.
• Analytics, for engagement history going back to 2014 and periods longer than 90 days.
• The API, for real-time and historical content and engagement data.
• AI monitoring agents, branded Trellis Monitoring Agents, which watch an issue and send briefs when something meaningful changes.

Buying still works the same way: request a demo. There are no published prices.

Should I switch because of it?

Not because of the ownership change alone. Switch if the reasons you were already unhappy still apply. The usual ones are:

• You cannot get a self-serve plan or a public price.
• The stories that matter to you never trend, such as a regulator's notice or a competitor's pricing edit.
• You only needed alerts, not engagement analytics.

If none of those apply and your team relies on predicted engagement, NewsWhip is still the right tool.

What is the best alternative if I do switch?

For most people outside large newsrooms, AyeWatch. It is an AI monitor: you write what you care about in plain English, and it alerts you with a short summary when something matching appears in news, blogs, forums, government pages, academic publications or on X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. It also watches specific URLs.

How much does AyeWatch cost?

The free preview gives three monitoring runs on up to three topics, at daily or slower intervals, with no card. Pro costs $9 a month for up to 50 monitors with hourly checks. Pro+ costs $19 and adds ASAP mode, the fastest setting, for breaking news and market moves. Max is $39 and Ultra $99. Plans run on monitoring credits; most checks use one, and the app shows the expected daily use before you save a monitor. No contracts and no cancellation fees.

Where do the alerts arrive?

In the AyeWatch feed and as push notifications on iOS and Android, on every plan. Paid plans add email, a daily digest email, Slack, Discord, signed webhooks and a REST API, and each monitor can go to its own channel.

What would I lose?

Engagement scores, viral predictions and years of attention history. AyeWatch does not attempt any of these. If you report to leadership on how much attention a story got, keep a tool that measures it.

How do I move over?

Nothing needs exporting. Write each NewsWhip search as one AyeWatch monitor in a sentence, add page monitors for the sources you used to check by hand, and choose channels. Running both side by side for a few weeks is the easiest way to test it. The AyeWatch vs NewsWhip page has the full comparison.