Skip to content
MarketHQ
Best

Best media monitoring software

Updated October 2026

Media monitoring software grew up watching press, broadcast and now social coverage for a PR team. That is still most of the category below. A newer question sits next to it: when someone asks an AI assistant about a brand instead of reading the news, does the same monitoring tool catch it.

Quick answer

MarketHQ is the pick for teams that want press coverage tracked alongside forums, social and a weekly check of six AI engines, on every paid plan from $29 a month, with an action plan. Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia are the established PR-industry platforms, several with their own AI-visibility modules already. Talkwalker (now Lumen by Talkwalker), Brandwatch and Mention sell media monitoring as part of a wider listening suite.

Key points

  • MarketHQ runs a weekly AI-answer check across six named AI engines on every paid plan, tied to the press and community mentions behind it.
  • MarketHQ's free plan covers news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky at no cost, with no card and no end date.
  • Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia already publish their own AI-visibility features alongside traditional press monitoring.

What sources does MarketHQ cover?

Free: Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters. Paid plans add Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Perplexity, Product Hunt, Broader web crawl, Bluesky.

Hacker NewsGitHubStack OverflowDev.toLobstersRSSRedditLinkedInXYouTubeBlueskyProduct HuntDocs & changelogs
  • 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
  • 7-day trial for $0.99 on Lite and Startup
  • Free tier with no card and no end date

Method: every tool was checked against its own published pages in October 2026 and included only where the vendor states what it covers. Prices, free plans and AI-engine coverage per tool are pulled live from our vendor directory rather than typed by hand. A tool that only quotes a price after a sales call is marked as such rather than given a guessed figure. Ordering is not a ranking by market share; nothing here is paid placement, and MarketHQ is our own product.

  1. MarketHQ

    Press and community mentions tracked alongside weekly AI-answer visibility, gap analysis and action plans, rather than a press-clippings dashboard on its own. Our own product, listed first because the page is ours.

    Best for
    Teams that want press coverage and AI-answer visibility answered together instead of in two tools.
    Pricing
    Free (paid from $29/mo)
    Sources covered
    Hacker News, GitHub, RSS, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Perplexity, Product Hunt, Broader web crawl, Bluesky
    AI visibility
    Yes

  2. Meltwater

    A media, social and AI-signal intelligence platform for PR and communications teams, with AI Visibility Tracking and an AI assistant called Mira for source-backed insights across the coverage it collects.

    Best for
    Comms teams that want news, social and AI-answer signals in one dashboard.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter/X, Reddit, YouTube, news media, blogs, forums, review sites, podcasts
    AI visibility
    Unknown

  3. Cision

    CisionOne is Cision's all-in-one PR platform combining real-time media monitoring across online, TV, radio, print and podcasts, journalist outreach, social listening and AI Visibility Dashboards.

    Best for
    PR teams that want media monitoring and journalist outreach under one login.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    online, TV, radio, print, podcast, magazine, social
    AI visibility
    Unknown

  4. Critical Mention

    An Onclusive company that monitors TV, radio, online news and podcasts alongside social media, with sentiment analysis, share-of-voice benchmarking and an AI Brand Visibility feature.

    Best for
    Comms teams that need broadcast and podcast monitoring, not just text coverage.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    TV, radio, online news, social media, podcasts, licensed/print content
    AI visibility
    Yes

  5. Isentia

    Part of Pulsar Group, Isentia is an APAC media-intelligence platform covering broadcast, print, online and social, with an AI View feature that benchmarks citation strength against competitors.

    Best for
    Brands and agencies operating primarily in the Asia-Pacific media market.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    broadcast, online, print, social
    AI visibility
    Yes

  6. Mention

    Social listening and media monitoring tracking over a billion sources in real time, with AI content tools for engagement.

    Best for
    Smaller teams that want press and social mentions in one simpler feed.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    web, social media, news, blogs, forums
    AI visibility
    Unknown

  7. Lumen by Talkwalker

    A social listening and consumer-intelligence platform, now Lumen by Talkwalker under Hootsuite, with AI summaries, an AI Agent for questions and LLM Insights on how AI assistants talk about a brand.

    Best for
    Large brands that want social and web coverage, plus LLM insights, under one analytics layer.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    150 million data sources, 30+ social platforms, 100% of tweets, 150M+ websites, print
    AI visibility
    Unknown

  8. Brandwatch

    An enterprise social intelligence suite listening across 100 million-plus sources with AI-driven analytics, media monitoring being one part of a broader product.

    Best for
    Enterprise teams that need media monitoring as one module inside a bigger listening platform.
    Pricing
    Not publicly published
    Sources covered
    Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger
    AI visibility
    Unknown

What does media monitoring software actually track?

Press, broadcast and online news coverage of a brand or topic, usually with social monitoring layered on and increasingly an AI-answer feature as well.

The category skews enterprise. Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia all serve PR and communications teams, and several pair monitoring with journalist databases or outreach. Talkwalker, Brandwatch and Mention sell media monitoring as part of a broader social-listening product rather than a PR-specific tool.

MarketHQ approaches the same search term from the forum and AI-answer side. News, blogs and forums are tracked on the free plan, along with a taste of Bluesky. Reddit and other social sources are on paid plans, and a weekly AI-answer check is included on every paid plan rather than sold as a separate PR module.

Which media monitoring tools already track AI answers?

Five of the tools here already do: Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia, each with a named AI-visibility feature, and Talkwalker with LLM Insights.

This is one of the few categories where the incumbents already publish AI features. Meltwater lists AI Visibility Tracking; Cision's AI Visibility Dashboards track share of voice across nine AI platforms; Critical Mention lists ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Perplexity; Isentia's AI View covers Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude; and Talkwalker lists LLM Insights.

MarketHQ's version runs a weekly check across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek on every paid plan, tied to the gap analysis and action plan that follows, rather than sold as an add-on module inside a larger PR suite.

  • PR platforms with their own AI-visibility feature: Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention, Isentia (and Talkwalker's LLM Insights).
  • Listening suites that include media monitoring as one module: Talkwalker, Brandwatch, Mention.
  • AI-answer visibility bundled with community and press tracking on every paid plan: MarketHQ.

Do you need broadcast and podcast monitoring?

Only if TV, radio or podcast coverage is a real part of your brand's exposure. Critical Mention, Cision and Isentia list broadcast monitoring.

Many brands rarely appear on broadcast or in podcasts, which makes that coverage a narrow feature rather than a core requirement. If it matters to you, it narrows the field fast, since MarketHQ does not monitor TV or radio, and Mention and Brandwatch do not list broadcast among their sources.

If it does not matter, the text-and-social tools in this list are a closer fit than the broadcast-capable platforms.

What does media monitoring software cost?

Every platform here except MarketHQ is quote-based or shows no self-serve price in what we read; MarketHQ starts at $29 a month.

Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia sell through a sales conversation, a demo or a custom proposal. Talkwalker and Brandwatch also quote by demo, and Mention renders no price figure on the page we read. MarketHQ publishes Lite at $29, Startup at $99 and Growth at $199 a month.

The current entry price and free-tier status for every tool above is shown next to that entry, pulled from the vendor's own page rather than repeated here, since quotes and tiers change.

How should you choose media monitoring software?

Match the tool to the channels your coverage actually comes from, and to who has to read the output.

List where your brand was mentioned over the last quarter: trade press, national news, broadcast, podcasts, communities, social, AI answers. Then compare against each vendor's own source list. Cision lists online, TV, radio, print, podcast, magazine and social; Meltwater lists news, blogs, forums, review sites and podcasts alongside social networks.

If your coverage is mostly digital and community conversation, a smaller tool is enough and the journalist database in a PR platform is paying for something you will not use. If journalists are your main channel, pitching and a journalist database matter more than the monitoring feed.

Either way, ask each vendor for a trial or demo with your own brand name before signing: Meltwater and Cision offer a guided demo rather than a self-serve trial, so budget time for the sales process.

How do these tools differ on reporting and team workflow?

The PR-industry platforms are built around reports leadership reads weekly; the lighter tools are built around a feed one person checks daily.

Several of these platforms publish reporting features aimed at a comms team that needs to show impact: Critical Mention lists share-of-voice benchmarking and sentiment analysis, and Cision lists a React Score that flags potentially harmful coverage.

Mention and MarketHQ are closer to a feed a single person reads and acts on, with MarketHQ adding a scoreboard against competitors and a gap analysis. Neither approach is wrong; the mismatch shows up when a comms team buys a feed-first tool and then has to build its own reporting on top, or when a single marketer buys a reporting-first platform and never touches most of what it generates.

How would a Series B startup pick between these?

By deciding whether press coverage is the main signal or one signal among several. The scenario below is illustrative, not a measured result.

Illustrative: a Series B company gets covered in trade press a few times a quarter, but most of the conversation about its category happens in forums, on Reddit and increasingly inside AI answers to buying questions. A PR-first platform like Cision is built around the press side and would track that well.

If the community and AI-answer side matters just as much, a tool built around press coverage alone leaves half the picture untracked. That is the gap MarketHQ is built to close, by treating news as one source among several rather than the center of the product.

The company does not have to choose one over the other permanently. A reasonable path is to run both for a quarter: a press-monitoring tool for the trade coverage that matters to investors and recruiting, and MarketHQ for the community and AI-answer side that matters to the product and growth teams. Whichever one produces more mentions the team actually acts on, rather than simply reads, is the one worth keeping.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best media monitoring software for a PR team?

Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention and Isentia are the established PR-industry platforms, each with journalist-level detail. MarketHQ is the better fit once press coverage needs to sit alongside community and AI-answer tracking rather than stand alone, starting free.

Is there a free media monitoring tool?

Start with MarketHQ's free plan, covering news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky, with no card required. The PR-industry platforms in this list publish no comparable free plan.

Which media monitoring tools track AI-answer visibility?

MarketHQ runs a weekly check across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek on every paid plan, tied to the mentions behind the result. Meltwater, Cision, Critical Mention, Isentia and Talkwalker also publish their own AI features.

Do these tools monitor TV and radio?

Critical Mention, Cision and Isentia list broadcast monitoring. MarketHQ is built around text and social sources and does not monitor TV or radio.

Do media monitoring tools cover podcasts and newsletters?

Meltwater, Cision and Critical Mention list podcasts among their sources. MarketHQ does not monitor podcasts as a source.

How was this list put together?

Every tool was checked on its own site in October 2026 and included only where the vendor states what it covers. Prices shown per tool come from our vendor directory, not a hand-typed figure. No placement was paid for; MarketHQ is our own product.

Related

Start trackingSee pricing

Sources

  • Meltwater one-liner and sources: https://www.meltwater.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Cision one-liner and sources: https://www.cision.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Critical Mention one-liner and sources: https://www.criticalmention.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Isentia one-liner and sources: https://www.isentia.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Mention one-liner and sources: https://mention.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Talkwalker one-liner and sources: https://www.talkwalker.com (verified 2026-10-08)
  • Brandwatch one-liner and sources: https://www.brandwatch.com (verified 2026-10-08)