Key takeaways

  • AyeWatch covers Meltwater's alerting job on monthly plans from $9, without a journalist database or reports.
  • Brandwatch is the closest enterprise peer and, like Meltwater, shows no prices and asks for a demo.
  • Brand24 and Awario publish their prices, from $199 and $29 a month billed yearly.

People searching for tools like Meltwater usually want one of two things: the same enterprise suite from a different logo, or the useful 20 percent of it without the annual contract. Below are five options, each with a verdict short enough to post, plus prices taken from each vendor's own site in October 2026.

The short version

Tool Price you can see One-line verdict
AyeWatch Free Preview, then $9 to $99 a month The alert layer of Meltwater, sold by the month
Brandwatch No public prices Meltwater's peer, built around consumer research
Brand24 From $199 a month billed yearly Self-serve listening with a sentiment score
Awario From $29 a month billed yearly Budget listening that counts topics, not keywords
Talkwalker Alerts Free An email nudge, and it knows it

1. AyeWatch

Verdict: the part of Meltwater you used every morning, without the sales call.

AyeWatch is an AI monitor. You write what you want to know in a sentence, such as "trade press coverage of our company, skipping syndicated copies", and it reads news, blogs, forums, social platforms and specific web pages for items that match by meaning. Each alert has a short summary. Alerts land in a feed and push notifications on any plan; paid plans add Slack, Discord, email, a daily digest, webhooks and a REST API.

Paid plans start at $9 a month, with monthly billing and no contract. Each alert comes with a short summary, and Auto mode checks more often when a topic heats up and less when it is quiet.

What it skips: a journalist database, outreach, dashboards and reports. If those were the reason you bought Meltwater, this is not a full swap. See how it lines up against Meltwater.

2. Brandwatch

Verdict: if you want another enterprise suite, this is the obvious one.

Brandwatch sells consumer intelligence, social media management, influencer marketing and search intelligence with GenAI monitoring. It says it collects conversations from 100 million unique sites and has an AI assistant called Iris. It is affiliated with Cision. Its pricing page lists standard to enterprise plans per product and asks you to book a demo, so expect the same sales process as Meltwater.

3. Brand24

Verdict: Meltwater's listening side with a price tag you can read.

Brand24 publishes every plan. Individual costs $249 a month, or $199 billed yearly, for 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions and updates every 12 hours. Team costs $349 ($299 yearly) for 7 keywords, unlimited users and hourly updates. AI sentiment is on every plan, and there is a 14-day free trial. The API is a $149 extra.

4. Awario

Verdict: the cheapest way to get a dashboard of mentions.

Awario Starter costs $49 a month, or $29 billed yearly, for 3 topics with unlimited keywords inside each and 30,000 new mentions a month. Boolean search, CSV export and PDF reports are listed. No journalist tools, but for a small brand that wants charts, it is hard to beat on price.

5. Talkwalker Alerts

Verdict: free, honest about being basic.

Talkwalker Alerts sends results from news, blogs, forums and X by email, RSS or Slack, in 22 languages, with Boolean operators and an "as it happens" option. No analytics and no summaries. It works as a stopgap while you decide.

Which tool like Meltwater should you pick

Pick AyeWatch if your team mostly read Meltwater's alerts and morning email. It covers that job for a fraction of a suite's cost, and you can try it without a card.

Pick Brandwatch if you want a full suite and are happy to negotiate one.

Pick Brand24 or Awario if you want sentiment charts and mention counts with public prices.

And stay on Meltwater if you pitch journalists from its media database or send releases through it. None of the cheaper tools on this list does that.

Frequently asked questions

What is the closest tool to Meltwater?

Brandwatch is the closest full suite. For the daily alerts most teams use, AyeWatch is the closest match at a much lower price.

Are there apps like Meltwater with public pricing?

Yes. AyeWatch, Brand24 and Awario all publish prices on their own sites. Meltwater and Brandwatch quote through sales.

Sources

  1. AyeWatch plans and featuresAyeWatch
  2. AyeWatch pricingAyeWatch
  3. Brandwatch pricing and plansBrandwatch
  4. Brandwatch Consumer IntelligenceBrandwatch
  5. Brand24 pricing and plansBrand24
  6. Awario pricingAwario
  7. Talkwalker AlertsTalkwalker
  8. AyeWatch vs MeltwaterAyeWatch