Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social listening platform owned by Cision, the PR software company. It searches posts, comments, news, forums, reviews and blogs from more than 100 million sources, so you can see what people say about your brand, competitors and industry, how they feel about it, and what is trending. Its AI, Iris, summarises conversations, spots spikes and explains what caused them. Alongside listening, Brandwatch sells social media management (publishing and a shared inbox), influencer marketing, media monitoring and a newer tool that tracks how your brand shows up in AI search.

Pick it when listening is a serious, ongoing job: brand teams, PR and comms teams, agencies and researchers who need deep historical data and detailed queries. Smaller businesses can get basic brand alerts from cheaper tools like Brand24 or Mention, or from the listening features inside Hootsuite. Brandwatch's depth is the reason big brands like the BBC and OnePlus use it.

The catch: it is expensive, with no public pricing and annual contracts that competitors put in the tens of thousands of dollars. Setting up good searches needs its query language, which takes training, and users say that without someone owning it full-time, much of the value goes unused.

• Brand managers
• PR and comms teams
• Insights analysts
• Agencies
• Social media teams

Brand, PR and insights teams at mid-sized and large companies, and the agencies that serve them.

• Consumer research

  Search social posts, news, forums, blogs and reviews to see what people say about any brand or topic.

• Iris AI

  Summarises conversations, finds the causes of spikes and pulls out themes without manual reading.

• Real-time alerts

  Warns you when mentions or negative sentiment jump, so you can respond to a crisis early.

• Social media management

  Publish posts, run a content calendar and reply to comments from a shared inbox.

• Influencer marketing

  Find influencers, manage relationships and report on campaigns.

• Search and AI visibility

  Track how your brand appears in search and in answers from AI assistants.

• Our pick

  Standard to Enterprise

  Custom

  Companies buying one or more Brandwatch products.

  • Priced per product and usage through sales
  • Annual contracts
  • Plans for each product, from standard to enterprise

Prices in USD unless noted, checked 22 October 2026. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on their site before you buy.

Ways Brandwatch can slot into your week.

1. 1

   Catch a PR problem early

   Set alerts on your brand name and product so the comms team hears about a spike in complaints before it becomes news.

2. 2

   Research before a campaign

   Find out how your audience talks about a problem, the words they use and what they complain about, and brief the creative team with it.

3. 3

   Benchmark competitors

   Compare share of voice and sentiment against your main rivals each month.

4. 4

   Report to the board

   Use Iris summaries and dashboards to show how brand perception changed after a launch.

It sits alongside your social scheduler and PR tools. Bigger teams use Brandwatch for listening and its own social management suite for publishing; others pair the listening with Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Cision customers can combine it with media monitoring and press tools.

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