MarketHQ vs Brand24: social listening, or AI answers and the web together?

Brand24 is a capable social-listening platform: broad coverage across social media, news, blogs, reviews and video, with sentiment and reporting built for a marketing team. MarketHQ tracks the same kind of mentions for any company, adds AI-answer visibility on every paid plan rather than gating it to the top tier, and turns the gaps into an action plan. Every Brand24 figure below is dated 1 October 2026 and cited to brand24.com.

Why choose MarketHQ instead of Brand24?

MarketHQ includes weekly AI-answer visibility, gap analysis and an action plan on every paid plan from $29 a month, for any company tracking its brand and competitors.

Brand24 starts at $199 a month billed annually and is built for broad social and review coverage: Instagram, TikTok, Quora, YouTube, review sites and newsletters. MarketHQ covers news, blogs and social too, with blogs, forums, RSS feeds you add and Bluesky included from Lite up. Public communities, including Hacker News and GitHub, stay on the source list rather than defining the product.

The bigger gap is AI visibility. Brand24 sells it as a paid add-on on Individual, Team, Pro and Business, and includes it standard only on the $1,499-a-month Enterprise plan. MarketHQ checks six AI assistants weekly on every paid tier from Lite at $29, and turns gaps into gap analysis and an action plan rather than a dashboard to interpret. Chat answers questions about your evidence, and paid plans include an API and MCP.

What does Brand24 cost as of October 2026?

Individual starts at $249 a month, or $199 billed annually, rising to Team, Pro, Business and a custom Enterprise plan from $1,499.

Every tier includes 14 days free with no card. The gap that matters most for AI-answer visibility isn't between the middle tiers; it's between Business and Enterprise, because that's where the AI Visibility module stops being a paid add-on and becomes included.

For a budget-conscious team, that's a real decision: pay for the add-on at a lower tier, or move all the way to Enterprise to get AI visibility bundled in.

Does Brand24 track AI-answer visibility on every plan?

No. AI Visibility is a paid add-on on Individual, Team, Pro and Business, and included standard only on the $1,499-a-month Enterprise plan.

That matters because buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity directly rather than searching or browsing review sites. If your plan doesn't include AI visibility, you won't see whether an assistant recommends a competitor instead of you.

MarketHQ checks six AI assistants weekly on every paid plan from Lite at $29, with no add-on pricing and no Enterprise-only gate. It feeds the result into the same gap analysis as the rest of your mentions.

Which sources does each tool actually cover?

Brand24 covers the broader consumer-social surface: Instagram, TikTok, Quora, reviews, newsletters. MarketHQ covers news, blogs, social and public communities, and checks AI answers weekly on paid plans.

Neither tool covers everything. Brand24's own site doesn't name GitHub, Hacker News or Stack Overflow among its sources. MarketHQ, in turn, doesn't track Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or review sites today, worth saying plainly if those channels matter to your brand.

Those communities can matter when your buyers talk there, and they are one part of the source list. For a brand whose conversations are mostly on Instagram or in reviews, Brand24's breadth is the better fit.

Which should you choose: MarketHQ or Brand24?

Choose Brand24 for the widest consumer-channel coverage. Choose MarketHQ for AI-answer visibility, gap analysis and an action plan on every paid plan from $29.

Both serve real needs, and neither replaces the other's full source list. Paid plans also include chat over your evidence, an API and MCP, and countries from 1 on Lite to 10 on Enterprise.

• Choose MarketHQ if you want AI-answer visibility included rather than a paid add-on.
• Choose MarketHQ if you want gap analysis, an action plan, and chat over your own evidence.
• Choose Brand24 if Instagram, TikTok or review-site coverage is a requirement MarketHQ doesn't meet.

Where does Brand24 win?

Brand24 wins on consumer-channel breadth: Instagram, TikTok, review sites and newsletters, none of which MarketHQ tracks today. Choose MarketHQ when AI-answer visibility included at every tier matters more than that breadth.

If your buyers and detractors show up mainly on Instagram, TikTok or review sites, Brand24's coverage there is real and MarketHQ doesn't match it.

MarketHQ wins on AI visibility: checked weekly on every paid plan from $29, with gap analysis and an action plan, not gated to a $1,499 Enterprise tier.

• Choose Brand24 if Instagram, TikTok or review-site monitoring is a requirement.
• Choose Brand24 if you need white-label reporting for multiple client brands.
• Choose Brand24 if enterprise-grade compliance and crisis monitoring are procurement requirements.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• MarketHQ vs Mention — another social-listening comparison, this one against an enterprise-only tool
• MarketHQ vs Peec AI — the comparison against a tool that tracks AI answers only, no social coverage
• All comparisons — every head-to-head we verified
• Pricing — what the four tiers cost

Sources

• Brand24 pricing: https://brand24.com/prices/ (verified 2026-10-01)