Tools like Brandwatch, minus the sales call

Every few months someone on the timeline asks for tools like Brandwatch that do not start with "book a demo". Fair question. Brandwatch is a serious consumer intelligence suite, now part of Cision, and its plans page lists no prices at all. If you only want to know when people are talking about your product, here are six options, with one plain verdict each. Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked in October 2026.

1. AyeWatch: the one most people actually want

AyeWatch skips the query builder. You write a sentence ("complaints about our checkout on Reddit and X, skip memes"), and it pings you with a short summary when something new fits. It covers news, blogs, forums and specific web pages, plus X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

• Price: Free Preview with three runs and no card, then paid plans from $9 a month.
• Why it wins: the AI reads meaning, so a post that names you in passing stays quiet, and each alert brings a short summary.
• Delivery: push on iOS, Android and web; paid plans add email, Slack, Discord, signed webhooks and an API.
• Verdict: the right call if your job is reacting, not writing quarterly research decks.

2. Talkwalker: the other enterprise suite

Talkwalker now goes by Lumen by Talkwalker and is moving closer to Hootsuite. It does social listening, media monitoring and benchmarking. The pricing page asks you to pick a plan and request a custom quote.

• Verdict: a sideways move from Brandwatch, not a cheaper one.

3. YouScan: for brands whose logo shows up in photos

YouScan's Starter plan is $499 a month billed annually, for three topics and up to 15,000 mentions. Its bigger plans read image content such as brand logos and add audience insights.

• Verdict: worth it if your product appears in pictures more than in captions.

4. Brand24: public prices, AI sentiment

Brand24 starts at $199 a month billed annually for three keywords and 2,000 mentions, with updates every 12 hours. There is a 14-day free trial.

• Verdict: good if you want dashboards and sentiment without talking to sales.

5. Mentionlytics: the budget dashboard

Mentionlytics Basic is $49 a month billed yearly, or $69 monthly, for two users. An add-on that tracks how AI assistants mention your brand starts at $49 a month.

• Verdict: decent if you want a cheap listening dashboard and care about AI answers.

6. Awario: Boolean search on a small budget

Awario's Starter plan is $29 a month billed annually ($49 monthly): three topics, unlimited keywords per topic, 30,000 new mentions a month and one seat. API access is on every plan.

• Verdict: fine if you enjoy writing Boolean queries. Many people do not.

The cheat sheet

The honest caveat

None of these replaces Brandwatch if your team lives inside its archive. Brandwatch Consumer Research keeps posts back to 2008 and is built for audience segmentation and long-range research. AyeWatch does not analyze the past at all; it only watches for what is new.

So which one

For most startups, agencies and solo marketers, the need is "tell me when it matters", and that is the job AyeWatch was built for. Try it on the noisiest topic you track and see how many alerts you would have ignored anyway. The AyeWatch and Brandwatch comparison lays the features side by side if you need to send a link to your manager.