Mention alternatives with published pricing and AI visibility
Updated October 2026
Mention is a social-media monitoring and publishing suite, and a reasonable one. People look for an alternative for reasons you can confirm on its own site: as of October 2026 its self-serve Solo, Pro and Pro Plus plans are discontinued, leaving a single enterprise-only Company plan with no public price; no AI-answer visibility is named among its features; and half the product is publishing rather than listening. Every fact below was read off each vendor's own site.
Quick answer
MarketHQ publishes its prices, from Lite at $29, checks six AI engines weekly on every paid plan, and turns the gaps into an action plan, with chat and an API and MCP on paid plans. Mention's self-serve plans are discontinued, so the others worth considering are Syften, Brand24, Awario, Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Talkwalker Alerts and Google Alerts.
Key points
- MarketHQ publishes prices from Lite at $29; Mention's self-serve plans are discontinued and its Company plan renders no price.
- Four of the eight here publish a price you can read without a sales call: MarketHQ, Syften, Brand24 and Awario.
- MarketHQ and Brand24 are the only two here with AI-answer visibility; MarketHQ includes it on every paid plan from $29, Brand24 gates it to Enterprise.
Why choose MarketHQ over Mention?
MarketHQ publishes every price and includes weekly AI visibility, gap analysis and an action plan on every paid plan, which Mention's own site doesn't name at all.
As of October 2026 Mention no longer sells a self-serve plan, and its listed platforms are mostly consumer social and review sites. MarketHQ covers news, blogs and social, and adds chat over your evidence, plus an API and MCP on paid plans.
Lite is $29 a month and covers blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky, plus labelled mentions, X, Reddit, LinkedIn and AI answers. Countries run from 1 on Lite to 3 on Startup, 5 on Growth and 10 on Enterprise, with AI questions shared across them. Mention requires a sales conversation before you see any price at all.
What sources does MarketHQ cover?
Every plan: Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Perplexity, Broader web crawl, Bluesky.
- Grouped Slack daily digest
- Drafted replies from your own strengths
- Gap analysis and action plans
- Weekly AI-answer visibility (paid plans)
- Chat over your own evidence
- API and MCP on every paid plan
- Flat capacity pricing, tiers differ by tracking volume only
- 4-day trial on Lite and Startup, charged on day 4
- Free one-time check, no account needed
Each tool was checked on its own pricing and product pages, most recently 1 October 2026; entries are ordered by fit, not by price.
MarketHQ
Market intelligence rather than a mention feed: a weekly check of six AI engines on every paid plan from $29, gap analysis, an action plan, competitor page-change monitoring on paid plans, chat instead of a dashboard, and social, news and blog monitoring. Our own product.
- Best for
- Teams where nobody has time to read a mention stream and who want AI visibility plus a next-step plan.
- Pricing
- Lite $29, Startup $99, Growth $199/mo. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4. Growth is charged at signup. Tiers differ by tracking capacity only, and API keys and MCP access are on every paid plan from Lite up.
- Sources covered
- Social, news and blogs, a weekly AI-answer check, and public communities such as Reddit, Hacker News and GitHub.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Syften
Keyword monitoring across a long list of developer and startup communities, with AI filtering over the stream to suppress spam, duplicates and weak matches.
- Best for
- Teams that want the widest developer-and-forum feed and will read it themselves.
- Pricing
- Entry $29.95, Standard $49.95, PRO $119.95 a month, plus a tailor-made tier. 14-day free trial on PRO, no card. Slack, AI filtering and API start at Standard; webhooks and MCP at PRO.
- Sources covered
- Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Dev.to, the Stack Exchange family, Lobste.rs, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, forums, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon and X/Twitter.
- AI visibility
- No
Brand24
The closest like-for-like replacement on shape: media and social monitoring with sentiment and reporting, plus AI Visibility tracking how a brand appears in AI chatbot answers, sold separately below the top tier.
- Best for
- Marketing teams that need mainstream media coverage and will pay for AI visibility as an add-on.
- Pricing
- Individual $249 a month or $199 billed annually; Team $349/$299; Pro $499/$399; Business $699/$599; Enterprise from $1,499. First 14 days free. AI Visibility is an add-on below Enterprise, included on Enterprise.
- Sources covered
- Social platforms, news, blogs, video and the web. Its features page describes the categories rather than naming every platform, so we don't list them.
- AI visibility
- Yes
Awario
Social listening priced between the free tools and the enterprise suites, and one of the few in this category that publishes its prices. Reddit is covered; no AI-answer tracking is named.
- Best for
- Teams that want published pricing and high mention volume for the money.
- Pricing
- Starter $49 a month billed monthly or $29 billed annually; Pro $149 or $89; Enterprise $399 or $249. The trial grants Starter access with up to 3 alerts and 30,000 mentions, no card, duration not stated.
- Sources covered
- X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Vimeo, blogs, forums, news and the web.
- AI visibility
- No
Brandwatch
The enterprise end of the same category: consumer intelligence over a very large archive, with segmentation, image analysis and AI-assisted search. Bigger, slower to buy, and priced by conversation.
- Best for
- Large brands and agencies with an analyst to run it.
- Pricing
- No price is published. Buyers are routed to a demo request, with standard to enterprise plans available for each solution.
- Sources covered
- Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr, broadcast and reviews, plus conversations from 100 million unique sites.
- AI visibility
- Unknown
Sprout Social
A social management suite where listening is an add-on rather than the product. If you already publish and reply from one place, adding listening there can beat buying a second tool.
- Best for
- Teams that manage social publishing and support in the same seat.
- Pricing
- Essentials $79 per seat a month on annual billing ($99 billed monthly), Standard $199, Professional $299, Advanced $399, Enterprise custom. 30-day free trial, no card. Listening is an add-on from the Standard plan up.
- Sources covered
- Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Pinterest and TikTok.
- AI visibility
- Unknown
Talkwalker Alerts
A free alerting service, useful as a second net rather than a replacement. Same shape as Google Alerts, with Slack as an extra delivery target and no tie to a Google account.
- Best for
- Free web alerts routed into the channel your team already reads.
- Pricing
- Free. The paid social listening product is demo-gated.
- Sources covered
- News platforms, blogs, forums, websites and Twitter/X.
- AI visibility
- No
Google Alerts
The free baseline worth running regardless of what else you buy. A saved query, a frequency, an email. Strong on the indexed web, silent on named communities.
- Best for
- Press, blog and documentation coverage at no cost.
- Pricing
- No price is stated on the product page; a Google account is required.
- Sources covered
- Whatever Google indexes, narrowed by source type: Automatic, News, Blogs, Web, Video, Books, Discussions or Finance.
- AI visibility
- No
What does Mention actually do?
It tracks mentions across consumer social, news, blogs, forums and review sites, then adds sentiment, share of voice, dashboards and a publishing side for posting and replying.
Its own pages describe keyword and page-based alerts, sentiment and influence indicators, dashboards and social inboxes, with data reaching back up to two years. The Company plan covers Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube plus news, blogs, forums and more than 75 review sites.
The pricing section renders no figures, and the trial link states no duration. We won't guess at a number Mention has chosen not to publish.
Has Mention's pricing changed?
Yes. As of October 2026, Mention discontinued its self-serve Solo, Pro and Pro Plus plans; the only option sold to new customers is Company, with no public price.
That's a real shift for anyone who used to compare Mention's self-serve tiers against a published competitor. Today there's nothing to compare until a sales conversation decides the real figure.
MarketHQ publishes a price at every tier instead, from Lite at $29 through Growth at $199 a month.
Which alternatives publish a price you can read?
Four of the eight: MarketHQ, Syften, Brand24 and Awario all show plan prices on their own pricing pages, and two more, Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts, are free.
Sprout Social also publishes per-seat prices, though listening is an add-on on top of them from the Standard plan up, so the listed seat price isn't the listening price. Brandwatch publishes nothing and routes buyers to a demo.
Published pricing is worth something beyond convenience: it tells you whether a tool is aimed at a two-person team or at a brand with an agency, before you spend a week finding out. The spread here runs from free to $1,499 a month.
Which ones track how AI assistants answer buying questions?
Two: MarketHQ, which checks weekly as part of the product on every paid tier, and Brand24, which sells AI Visibility as an add-on below Enterprise and includes it on Enterprise.
Nothing on Mention's own pages lists an AI-visibility or AI-answer tracking feature; the AI it advertises is content assistance and analysis over mentions already collected. The same is true of Awario, Syften and the two free alert tools.
The distinction matters because the two jobs have different inputs. Mention-style monitoring reads pages that exist. AI-answer visibility asks a question and reads the generated answer, which no crawler can find, because there's no URL. MarketHQ turns that answer into a gap analysis: which competitor is named where you aren't, and one move for each absence.
Where does Mention still win?
Mention wins on review-site breadth and bundled publishing. Choose MarketHQ when AI visibility, gap analysis and an action plan matter and you want a price you can read before talking to sales.
Its review coverage is the strongest single thing on this list for a company that gets judged on Google, Trustpilot or Capterra: more than 75 review sites, monitored alongside social and news.
For teams that want AI visibility included, MarketHQ is the different path: weekly AI checks on six engines, gap analysis and an action plan, plus social, news and blog monitoring, at a published price starting at $29 a month. If your team also runs social publishing, Mention's combined seat may still justify its cost for that half of the job.
- Choose Mention if review-site monitoring across 75+ platforms is the job you're hiring for.
- Choose Mention if your team needs listening, publishing and scheduling in one seat.
- Choose Mention if two years of historical mention data is part of the evaluation and an enterprise contract is fine.
What does switching actually change?
It changes which conversations you see and whether AI-answer visibility is included, more than it changes the number of alerts. The scenario below is illustrative, not measured.
Illustrative: a week's mentions split into a launch write-up, four social comments, a review, and two AI-answer checks where a competitor is named instead of you. A consumer-social tool like Mention sees the first three and nothing of the AI side.
On MarketHQ the social and news mentions arrive grouped in one Slack daily digest, alongside the weekly read on whether assistants name you when someone asks which product to use.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Mention cost?
As of October 2026, Mention discontinued its self-serve Solo, Pro and Pro Plus plans. Its pricing page lists one Company plan with no public figure; you have to contact sales for a quote, which is the main reason people compare alternatives.
Does Mention still offer a free trial?
MarketHQ has no free plan. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4. Growth is charged at signup. Mention offers a free trial with no duration stated on its one remaining Company plan. Brand24 offers 14 days; Sprout Social 30 days with no card.
Does Mention monitor GitHub, Hacker News or Stack Overflow?
MarketHQ names GitHub, Hacker News and Stack Overflow among its sources. Mention doesn't: its listed platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube, plus news, blogs, forums and reviews.
What is the cheapest Mention alternative?
MarketHQ Lite and Awario's annual Starter are both $29 a month among paid tools, and Syften Entry is $29.95. Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts are free.
Which Mention alternative should I pick for AI-answer visibility?
MarketHQ. It includes weekly AI visibility on six engines on every paid plan from $29, plus gap analysis, an action plan and social, news and blog monitoring. Brand24 also tracks AI visibility, but only as a paid add-on below its $1,499 Enterprise plan.
Related
- MarketHQ vs Awario — the head-to-head with the one social-listening tool here that publishes its prices
- Brand24 alternatives — the same question from the other big suite in this category
- Peec AI alternatives — the AI-answer-only side of the category, for comparison
- All alternatives — every field we have mapped
- Pricing — what the four MarketHQ tiers cost
Sources
- Mention pricing: https://mention.com/en/pricing/ (verified 2026-10-01)
- Mention home page: https://mention.com/en/ (verified 2026-10-01)
- Syften pricing: https://syften.com/pricing (verified 2026-09-14)
- Brand24 pricing: https://brand24.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-10-01)
- Awario pricing: https://awario.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-10-01)
- Brandwatch consumer intelligence: https://www.brandwatch.com/products/consumer-intelligence/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Brandwatch pricing: https://www.brandwatch.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Sprout Social pricing: https://sproutsocial.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-09-14)
- Talkwalker Alerts: https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts (verified 2026-09-14)
- Google Alerts: https://www.google.com/alerts (verified 2026-09-14)