BuzzSumo alternatives: 12 social listening tools compared
People look beyond BuzzSumo when they want to watch what is said about a brand and not only which content performs. Its plans are metered in alerts (2 to 50) and start at $199 a month billed yearly. The alternatives below range from €29 mention trackers to quoted enterprise platforms.
Short answer: Looking for a replacement for BuzzSumo? Awario, Mentionlytics and Brand24 come first in our social listening ranking. Our rule for order: vendors outside the big brands go first, and the largest names are not placed in the top three. Start with Awario if you want mention tracking across web, social and news at a fraction of an alert-limited content plan. The 12 entries that follow are all ranked in Best Social Listening Tools in 2026; each one explains what sets it apart from BuzzSumo.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Pricing: Per month by users and alerts, published; trial offered
Established in: United Kingdom
Built for: Content and PR teams tracking articles, authors, competitors and new backlinks
Not for: Teams that need mentions from named social networks
01
Why buyers look past BuzzSumo
01
Monitoring is rationed by alerts
BuzzSumo's pricing page gives the Content Creation plan 2 alerts, PR & Comms 5, Suite 10 and Enterprise 50. An alert is one tracked topic, brand or keyword, so a company watching its name, three competitors and a handful of product terms reaches the second plan quickly. Most tools in this category count mentions and keyword rules instead.
02
The price is quoted per year, with no way out
Every BuzzSumo price on the page is for annual billing ($199, $299, $499, $999 a month) and no monthly price is shown. The page also says cancelling does not refund the rest of the term, and invoicing is limited to annual Enterprise plans. A team that only wants to test listening for a quarter pays for a year.
03
Built for content and PR research first
The home page describes content discovery, a content analyzer, an influencer finder and a media database of 700,000 journalists, with monitoring as one feature among them, and it does not use the term social listening. BuzzSumo Ltd of Brighton became part of Cision in 2021, according to its about page, so buyers who want a standalone listening vendor often look elsewhere.
media relations and listening must come from one vendor and a 12-month contract is acceptable
#13
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What each one does differently
1
Awario
Cyprus · Starter €29, Pro €89, Enterprise €249 per month (lower of two prices per plan, tied to annual billing); free Starter access without card
Awario is the cheapest way to trade BuzzSumo's content index for live brand tracking. Its three plans run on topics and new mentions per month (3 topics and 30,000 mentions on Starter), with unlimited keywords inside each topic. The site says it crawls over 13 billion web pages daily alongside platform APIs. No journalist database or content-ideas index comes with it.
Switch from BuzzSumo if you want mention tracking across web, social and news at a fraction of an alert-limited content plan.
Greece · Basic $49 to Pro $499 per month billed yearly; Business $749; 14-day trial
Mentionlytics prices by keyword rules and monthly mentions, from 3 rules and 5,000 mentions up to 40 or more rules, and it lists X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Bluesky and Threads plus RSS and podcasts. Its page names offices in London and Crete. Reach and top-influencer analytics exist, but nothing resembles a journalist database.
Switch from BuzzSumo if you need social profiles and web mentions tracked by keyword rule with unlimited users on the middle plans.
United States · Individual $199, Team $299, Pro $399, Business $599 per month billed yearly; 14-day trial
Brand24 is a US company in Daytona Beach, Florida, with plans metered in keywords and monthly mentions (3 keywords and 2,000 mentions on Individual, 25 and 100,000 on Business). Its source list reaches Reddit, Quora, Medium, TikTok, Twitch, podcasts and newsletters next to news and blogs. Plans start higher than the cheapest rivals here.
Switch from BuzzSumo if podcasts, newsletters, Quora or Twitch conversations matter and a 14-day trial is wanted before paying.
Romania · Starter $79, Pro $249, Expert $399 per month billed annually; 7-day trial
BrandMentions starts at $79 a month on annual billing for 5 keywords and 5,000 mentions with daily updates and one user. Pro adds hourly updates and two users, and Expert (50 keywords, 75,000 mentions, 10 users) adds white-label reports and Boolean search. A 7-day trial applies. It monitors; it does not index or rank published content.
Switch from BuzzSumo if agency-style reporting with white-label output is wanted and monitoring is the whole job.
Croatia · Expand €249 and Command €416 per month billed yearly (€299 and €499 monthly); 5-day trial
Determ d.o.o. in Zagreb sells two published plans, Expand with 5 topics and 5,000 mentions and Command with 10 topics and 10,000, both with unlimited users and keywords. Its sources page names news from 100 million websites plus print, TV and radio where available by region. Monthly cost is higher than Awario for similar volume.
Switch from BuzzSumo if news and traditional media coverage should sit beside social mentions and the whole team needs a login.
Poland · Entry $29.95, Standard $49.95, PRO $119.95 per month; 14-day PRO trial
Syften, from Kraków, tracks keywords in communities rather than whole platforms: Reddit, Hacker News, forums, Stack Exchange, GitHub and Slack communities, with X and YouTube as paid add-ons. Plans count filters and results per day. Alerts go by email, Slack, RSS or webhook, and PRO has an MCP interface. It has no sentiment dashboards or reports.
Switch from BuzzSumo if the conversations you want live in developer or niche communities and you want alerts rather than reports.
Not stated by the vendor · Pro $159 and Scale $499 per month billed annually; 7-day trial
Octolens prices by keywords and mentions and aims at product and developer-led companies: Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV, LinkedIn, X, YouTube and app-store and Trustpilot reviews come on every plan. Pro gives 10 keywords and 15,000 mentions hourly; podcasts, news and general web need Scale. The vendor page does not state a location.
Switch from BuzzSumo if you track what developers and software buyers say on Hacker News, GitHub and review sites.
Finland · Basic €0, Essentials €210 and Advanced €500 per month billed annually; trial without card
Exolyt is a TikTok analytics tool with a social listening layer, and its plan limits count tracked TikTok accounts, hashtags and campaigns. Essentials covers 50 accounts and 3 listening projects, Advanced 300 and 15, and the free Basic plan has no listening project. It does not look at the open web or news, which BuzzSumo's index does.
Switch from BuzzSumo if TikTok is the channel you need to watch and the rest of the web matters less.
Cyprus · Starter €499 per month billed annually; Unlimited by configuration; trial set up after contact
YouScan's Starter plan costs €499 a month billed annually for 15,000 mentions across 3 topics, and the site lists social media, blogs, forums, reviews and news. Its distinct piece is Visual Insights, which finds logos, objects and scenes in images. The Unlimited plan is configured per customer, so a buyer meets a demo before a price.
Switch from BuzzSumo if brand logos and products appear in pictures that text search would miss.
Poland · Social $199, Realtime and Research $399, Business $849 per month, Enterprise from $1,180; demo
SentiOne sells Listen plans from $199 a month for one project, one user and one language, rising to $849 for 10 projects, 5 users and 2 languages, with EU data residency stated for the SaaS. Exports are capped by plan and history ranges from one month to 36. No free trial is listed; a demo is booked first.
Switch from BuzzSumo if you work in several languages or countries and want history of 18 months or more on a published price.
Talkwalker now trades as Lumen by Talkwalker and lists social listening, media monitoring and social benchmarking on one platform. The site shows a demo request and no price. Its page says the company is bringing Hootsuite and Talkwalker closer together, so ownership and packaging are in motion. It suits large communications teams.
Switch from BuzzSumo if a large brand wants listening and media monitoring on one contract and has a budget for quoted pricing.
United States · Quoted; most contracts 12 months minimum; demo
Meltwater sells Starter, Pro, Enterprise and Agency packages through sales only, and its FAQ says most contracts are annual with a minimum of 12 months. Social listening is one capability next to media intelligence, AI visibility tracking and media relations, and the site claims over 27,000 organisations. It is the nearest match to BuzzSumo's PR side at a far higher commitment.
Switch from BuzzSumo if media relations and listening must come from one vendor and a 12-month contract is acceptable.
BuzzSumo remains the right tool when the work is finding what content performs on a topic, researching questions people ask, and pitching journalists. The Suite plan at $499 a month for 10 users, the Question Analyzer across Amazon, Reddit and Quora, the YouTube Analyzer and the journalist database are not matched by the mention trackers on this page. If brand monitoring is a side task and 2 to 10 alerts cover it, paying for a second tool adds little.
05
What moving off BuzzSumo involves
01
Count the alerts you really use
List every BuzzSumo alert with its keyword string and how often it fired. Each one becomes a keyword rule, topic or filter in the new tool, and the list shows the mention volume to ask for. Check the new tool's monthly mention cap against that figure rather than against the plan name.
02
Export content research before the term ends
BuzzSumo states that exports are unlimited on every plan. Pull saved projects, items and coverage reports while the subscription is live, because annual terms do not refund unused months. Mention trackers rarely rebuild a content analyzer, so decide which of those reports you still need.
03
Run both tools through one overlap month
Start the new tool's trial while the old plan runs, with the same brand and competitor strings. Compare which mentions each catches, and note platforms that need a paid add-on, before the BuzzSumo renewal date.
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Questions about replacing BuzzSumo
6 answers
What is the best alternative to BuzzSumo as social listening software?
Awario ranks first in our list. Its published plans start at €29 a month for 3 topics and 30,000 mentions, against $199 a month billed yearly for BuzzSumo's entry plan with 2 alerts.
Mentionlytics from $49 and Brand24 from $199 follow, and BrandMentions starts at $79 on annual billing.
Which BuzzSumo alternative is cheapest?
Awario Starter at €29 a month is the lowest published price here, and Syften's Entry plan at $29.95 is close. Exolyt has a free Basic plan limited to one TikTok account. BuzzSumo's own cheapest plan is $199 a month with annual billing.
Is there an alternative that covers more than a few alerts?
Yes. Determ gives 5 topics and unlimited keywords and users from €249 a month billed yearly, and Awario Pro allows 15 topics. Mentionlytics Essential has 10 keyword rules and 10 users at $169. BuzzSumo's Suite allows 10 alerts at $499.
Which alternative watches Reddit and Hacker News?
Syften tracks Reddit, Hacker News, forums, Stack Exchange and GitHub by filter, and Octolens includes Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow on every plan. Both fit product teams better than media-wide tools. BuzzSumo reaches Reddit mainly through its Question Analyzer.
Can any of these replace the journalist database?
Not on a published price. BuzzSumo lists 700,000 journalists on its PR & Comms plan and above. Meltwater offers media relations as part of a quoted package with a minimum 12-month contract. The rest here are monitoring tools without that function.
Is BuzzSumo still an independent product?
BuzzSumo's about page says it joined Brandwatch in 2017 and became part of Cision in 2021. The company is registered in Brighton as BuzzSumo Ltd. Talkwalker, another option here, now trades as Lumen by Talkwalker.
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Sources
Checked 5 November 2026
BuzzSumo pricing: Plan prices billed yearly, users, alerts, included features, no refund on cancellation, invoicing only on annual Enterprise.
BuzzSumo home page: Content discovery, monitoring, influencer finder, media database of 700K journalists, platforms covered, no use of social listening term.
BuzzSumo about: Founded 2014, joined Brandwatch 2017, part of Cision since 2021, Brighton address.
Awario pricing: Starter, Pro and Enterprise prices, topics, mention limits, team members, free Starter access.
Awario home page: Sources covered, over 13 billion web pages crawled daily.
Mentionlytics pricing: Plan prices billed yearly, keyword rules, mentions, users, platforms, 14-day trial, offices in London and Crete.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Checked and edited by Sebastiaan Smits, last on 5 November 2026. The editorial process explains the method.
