# Critical Mention alternatives for broadcast and AI-answer monitoring Updated October 2026 Critical Mention, an Onclusive company, monitors TV, radio, online news, podcasts and social media in real time, with a developer API that delivers over two million broadcast segments a day and an AI Brand Visibility product tracking ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Perplexity. Pricing is custom, built around a stated earned-media need. Teams look for an alternative when broadcast is not their main channel, or when a published price matters more than a bespoke package. Every fact below was read off Critical Mention's own site in October 2026. ## Quick answer MarketHQ is the pick when broadcast is not the channel that matters and a published price is: it checks six AI engines weekly on every paid plan from $29 a month, plus news, blogs and social, with gap analysis, an action plan and no custom package required. Critical Mention's own specialty is TV and radio, custom priced, with AI Brand Visibility across five engines. Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI and Brandwatch round out the broadcast and PR field. - MarketHQ publishes Lite at $29, Startup at $99 and Growth at $199 a month; Critical Mention builds a custom package instead. - MarketHQ watches news, blogs and social (labelled mentions, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube on paid plans) and adds gap analysis, an action plan, chat over your evidence, an API and MCP. - Critical Mention's 2,500+ TV and radio channels have no equivalent in MarketHQ; broadcast monitoring is not a lane MarketHQ runs. ## Why choose MarketHQ instead of Critical Mention? MarketHQ is for teams whose buyers are online, not on television, and who want a published price instead of a custom media package. Critical Mention's real strength is broadcast: over 2,500 international TV and radio channels, a developer API delivering more than two million segments a day in JSON, and sentiment and share-of-voice analysis on top. Its AI Brand Visibility product tracks five named engines and scores priority publications to pitch for AI-visibility impact. None of it carries a published price. MarketHQ checks six AI engines weekly on every paid plan from $29 a month, runs gap analysis and an action plan on top, and answers questions about your evidence in chat, with an API and MCP. Countries to track run from 1 on Lite to 10 on Enterprise, with AI questions shared across them. The free plan is news, blogs, forums and a taste of Bluesky. ## 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. - 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 ## List Method: every tool was checked on its own pricing and feature pages in October 2026. A price is quoted only where the vendor publishes one; Critical Mention, Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI and Brandwatch all publish none, so none of those five is quoted a figure. Ordering follows the page's own structure, not a ranking, and MarketHQ is our own product. 1. MarketHQ Market intelligence with a published price: weekly AI-answer checks on six engines plus news, blogs, social and communities in one feed, then gap analysis and an action plan. No broadcast monitoring. This is our own product, listed first because the page is ours. - Best for: Software and consumer brands whose coverage is online, not on TV or radio. - Pricing: Free tier; Lite $29, Startup $99, Growth $199 a month; 7-day trial for $0.99 on Lite and Startup. Tiers differ by tracking capacity only. - Sources covered: News, blogs and forums on the free plan, with a taste of Bluesky; labelled mentions, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bluesky, Product Hunt and weekly AI-answer checks on paid plans. - AI visibility: yes 2. Cision CisionOne pairs real-time media monitoring with a 500,000-plus journalist database and AI Visibility Dashboards tracking nine AI platforms, more named platforms than the other tools here. - Best for: PR teams that need journalist outreach alongside monitoring. - Pricing: No public pricing; sales-led via a request form. - Sources covered: Online, TV, radio, print, podcast, magazine and social. - AI visibility: yes 3. Meltwater An enterprise media-intelligence suite ingesting 1.3 billion-plus documents daily, with Mira AI source-backed insights and an AI Visibility Tracking feature. - Best for: Enterprises that want media relations and social data together. - Pricing: No public pricing; tailored quotes, with a human-guided demo and no self-serve trial. - Sources covered: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter/X, Reddit, YouTube, news media, blogs, forums, review sites and podcasts. - AI visibility: yes 4. Signal AI An enterprise reputation and risk-intelligence platform combining licensed premium data from Dow Jones Factiva, LexisNexis, Moody's NewsEdge, the Financial Times and the Washington Post with its AIQ AI engine, Data APIs and an MCP connector for AI agents. - Best for: Enterprises that need licensed premium media data and board-ready risk alerts. - Pricing: No price published; book a demo. - Sources covered: Traditional media, social media, broadcast, podcasts and LLMs/AI search. - AI visibility: yes 5. Brandwatch A social-intelligence suite monitoring over 100 million sources, with Iris AI analytics and a documented API suite, closer to listening than to broadcast monitoring. - Best for: Teams that want social-listening depth, not TV and radio. - Pricing: No price published; book a demo to get started. - Sources covered: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. - AI visibility: unknown ## Why do teams look for a Critical Mention alternative? Usually because broadcast is not where their buyers are, and the custom package is built around earned-media needs they may not have. Critical Mention's pricing page asks what a team's earned-media needs are and builds a package around them; it names no figure. For a software company whose buyers ask ChatGPT for recommendations rather than watch cable news, that package may be built for a different audience. The second reason is scope. Critical Mention's AI Brand Visibility product sits next to a broadcast monitoring platform covering 2,500-plus TV and radio channels. A team that only wants the AI-answer check may not want that infrastructure attached. ## Which Critical Mention alternative publishes a price? MarketHQ does, at every tier; Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI and Brandwatch all stay sales-led like Critical Mention. MarketHQ's tiers are Lite $29, Startup $99 and Growth $199 a month, visible without a call. Every other alternative on this page routes to a demo or proposal, the same as Critical Mention, so there is no published number to compare against for broadcast-grade monitoring on this page. That makes MarketHQ the only option here for a team that wants to see a number today and decide later whether to talk to anyone. ## Do any of these track AI-answer visibility the way Critical Mention does? Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI and MarketHQ all list AI visibility tracking; MarketHQ adds gap analysis and an action plan on top. Critical Mention names five engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Perplexity. Cision's AI Visibility Dashboards cover nine platforms. Signal AI lists LLMs and AI search among the sources it covers, as part of its broader risk-intelligence product. MarketHQ runs its weekly AI-answer check (on paid plans) alongside news, blog and social monitoring, so a visibility gap and the posts behind it show up together. Meltwater lists AI Visibility Tracking without naming engines; Brandwatch does not list it on the pages we checked. ## Where does Critical Mention still win? Critical Mention wins on broadcast: 2,500-plus TV and radio channels and a developer API delivering over two million segments a day. Choose MarketHQ when the channel is online, not on air. A PR team that needs to catch a mention the moment it airs on television or radio, across 2,500-plus channels, with sentiment and share-of-voice analysis layered on, has a real job that MarketHQ does not attempt. Critical Mention's developer API delivering over two million segments a day suits that scale. MarketHQ does not watch broadcast at all. It watches news, blogs and social (labelled mentions, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube on paid plans) next to weekly AI-answer visibility, and turns what it finds into gap analysis and an action plan, with chat over your evidence, an API and MCP, and a published price from Lite at $29 a month. - Choose Critical Mention if TV and radio coverage across 2,500-plus channels is the core requirement. - Choose Critical Mention if a developer API delivering broadcast segments at scale is a real integration need. - Choose Critical Mention if earned-media reporting for a PR team, not online community coverage, is the job. ## What does the first step look like on each platform? On Critical Mention and its peers here, it is a conversation about scope. On MarketHQ, it is a signup form. The numbers below are illustrative, not measured. Illustrative: a 15-person software company wants to know how AI assistants answer buying questions in its category, with no TV or radio coverage to track. On Critical Mention, Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI or Brandwatch, the first step is a demo or proposal request before any number appears. On MarketHQ, the team opens a Startup workspace at $99 a month, with the weekly AI-answer check, gap analysis and an action plan included from day one. ## FAQ ### How much does Critical Mention cost? Critical Mention publishes no price. Its pricing page asks about earned-media needs and builds a custom package around them, as of October 2026. ### What is the cheapest Critical Mention alternative? MarketHQ: free plan with no card, then Lite at $29 a month with weekly AI-answer checks, the Slack digest, API and MCP included. Every broadcast and PR alternative on this page, including Cision and Meltwater, stays sales-led with no published number. ### Does Critical Mention track AI-answer visibility? MarketHQ checks this weekly across six AI engines, paired with news, blog and social monitoring on paid plans. Critical Mention also tracks it, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Perplexity, through its AI Brand Visibility product; Cision tracks nine platforms. ### Which Critical Mention alternative covers Hacker News and GitHub? MarketHQ, as one part of a wider source list that also covers news, blogs, social and AI answers. Critical Mention, Cision, Meltwater, Signal AI and Brandwatch list broadcast, print, news and social sources, not Hacker News or GitHub. ### Is it worth switching if Critical Mention already works? Choose MarketHQ when broadcast coverage is not the job and a published price matters. Critical Mention fits when TV and radio monitoring at scale is the main requirement. ## Related - [Cision alternatives](https://markethq.ai/alternatives/cision-alternatives) — the journalist-outreach end of the same field - [Best AI visibility tools for developer-tool companies](https://markethq.ai/best/ai-visibility-tools-for-developer-tool-companies) — the AI-answer side of the comparison, ranked - [Track mentions on Hacker News, GitHub and Reddit](https://markethq.ai/use-cases/track-mentions-hacker-news-github-reddit) — the job itself, tool choice aside - [Gap analysis for developer-tool teams](https://markethq.ai/use-cases/gap-analysis-for-developer-tools) — what MarketHQ does with the feed once it exists - [All alternatives](https://markethq.ai/alternatives) — every field we have verified - [Pricing](https://markethq.ai/pricing) — what the four MarketHQ tiers cost ## Sources - Critical Mention AI brand visibility: https://www.criticalmention.com/ai-brand-visibility/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Critical Mention media monitoring: https://www.criticalmention.com/media-monitoring/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Critical Mention pricing: https://www.criticalmention.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Critical Mention API: https://www.criticalmention.com/api/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Cision pricing request form: https://www.cision.com/request-pricing/ (verified 2026-10-08) - CisionOne product page: https://www.cision.com/cisionone/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Cision AI visibility: https://www.cision.com/ai-visibility/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Meltwater home page: https://www.meltwater.com (verified 2026-10-08) - Meltwater pricing: https://www.meltwater.com/en/pricing (verified 2026-10-08) - Signal AI home page: https://www.signal-ai.com/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Signal AI media monitoring: https://www.signal-ai.com/solutions/reputation-intelligence/media-monitoring (verified 2026-10-08) - Brandwatch pricing: https://www.brandwatch.com/pricing/ (verified 2026-10-08) - Brandwatch social media management: https://www.brandwatch.com/products/social-media-management/ (verified 2026-10-08)