---
title: "The 10 best free social listening tools in 2026 (and what each one misses) | Mentio"
description: "Ten free ways to watch for brand mentions, from Google Alerts and F5Bot to Reddit and Hacker News feeds, what each one misses, and the free credit that comes with an API."
canonical: https://mentio.dev/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/
markdown: https://mentio.dev/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/index.md
last-updated: 2026-09-23T16:19:37.703Z
---

# The 10 best free social listening tools in 2026 (and what each one misses) | Mentio

> Ten free ways to watch for brand mentions, from Google Alerts and F5Bot to Reddit and Hacker News feeds, what each one misses, and the free credit that comes with an API.

Source: https://mentio.dev/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/

“Free social listening tools” (and its older name, free social media monitoring tools) is one of the most searched phrases in this category, and the honest answer is that no free tool watches every platform. There are free tools that watch one place well, free feeds you can wire up yourself, free trials of paid tools, and one prepaid API that starts with credit. This is the list I would give a friend, checked against each vendor’s own page on September 13, 2026, with what each one covers and where it stops.

## What social listening tools do, in one paragraph

A social listening tool watches public platforms for words you care about (your product, your competitors, the problem you solve), collects the posts that match, and delivers them somewhere useful. The expensive part is not the watching. It is deciding which of the hundreds of matches are worth a human’s minute, and getting that shortlist into Slack, an inbox, a webhook or an AI agent without anyone refreshing a dashboard.

Key takeaways

-   No free tool watches every platform. Each one watches one place well, and none of them scores what it finds.
-   F5Bot emails Reddit and Hacker News posts and comments for a distinctive keyword; KWatch puts up to four Reddit and Hacker News alerts in Slack; Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts cover press and blogs.
-   Reddit search RSS and hnrss turn any keyword into a feed for nothing, if you will read it.
-   A trial covers a launch week. Mentio’s $5.80 of credit covers one keyword for a month plus 100 mentions, searched, scored and delivered to Slack or an agent.

![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lXJK6neMRi4/hq720.jpg)[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXJK6neMRi4)

A vendor's explainer, but a clear one: what listening is for and the five questions it answers. [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXJK6neMRi4)

## 1\. Google Alerts

The oldest free option and still the first thing people set up. You enter a query, pick a frequency, and Google emails you new web pages that match.

![The Google Alerts setup form](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/google-alerts.jpg)

Google Alerts: one query, one email frequency, and whatever Google decided to index.

**Covers:** news sites, blogs and web pages Google chooses to index. **Misses:** almost all of social. Reddit threads show up late or not at all, X is absent, Hacker News and GitHub are hit and miss. Alerts also arrive without any judgement: a page that quotes your name in passing and a review that could sink a launch look identical in the email.

Use it for press and long-form web mentions. Do not rely on it for communities.

## 2\. Talkwalker Alerts

Talkwalker Alerts is the free Google Alerts alternative most marketers already know, and it has outlived a lot of paid tools. You enter a query, choose news, blogs, discussions or everything, and it sends new matches by email, as an RSS feed, or into Slack.

![The Talkwalker Alerts page](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/talkwalker-alerts.jpg)

Talkwalker Alerts: web-wide mentions plus some X posts, by email, RSS or Slack, still free.

**Covers:** news, blogs, forums and websites, plus some public X posts, which Google Alerts never had. **Misses:** Reddit, Hacker News and GitHub in any reliable way, and any judgement about what it found. Like Google Alerts it reports pages, not conversations, so a thread with forty comments about your outage is one line in an email.

Use it beside Google Alerts for press, and for the X posts Google does not index.

## 3\. F5Bot

F5Bot is a one-person project that does one thing: it emails you when a keyword appears in a Reddit post or comment, on Hacker News, or on Lobsters. The free plan is still free with no card. It now has paid tiers too: Silver at $9.99 a month for 20 keywords with Slack, Discord, RSS and an API, and Gold at $49.99 for 200 keywords and AI filtering.

![The F5Bot homepage](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/f5bot.jpg)

F5Bot: keyword in, email out, and the only free tool here that reads Reddit comments.

**Covers:** Reddit posts and comments, Hacker News, Lobsters, within minutes. It is the only free tool on this list that sees Reddit comments. **Misses:** everything else, and on the free plan everything after the match: no relevance scoring, no Slack, email only. A common word produces a flood; a brand name that is also an English word is unusable.

It is the right free tool if you have one distinctive brand name and only care about Reddit and Hacker News. Many teams graduate from it the week their keyword list grows past three.

## 4\. KWatch

KWatch is the newer entry in the same bracket. Its free plan gives you two keyword alerts on Reddit and two on Hacker News, delivered by email, to Slack, or to a webhook, usually within a minute of the post. Paid plans start at $19 a month and add LinkedIn, X, Facebook and YouTube.

![The KWatch homepage](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/kwatch.jpg)

KWatch: two free alerts each on Reddit and Hacker News, with Slack and webhooks on the free plan.

**Covers:** Reddit and Hacker News on the free plan, with the Slack and webhook delivery that F5Bot keeps for paying users. **Misses:** the other platforms until you pay, and there is no scoring, so every match is an alert. Four keywords is the whole free allowance.

Pick it over F5Bot if you want the alert in Slack rather than an inbox.

## 5\. Reddit search, on a schedule

Reddit’s own search accepts a query and can be sorted by newest, and every listing has an RSS feed. Put `https://www.reddit.com/search.rss?q=yourbrand&sort=new` into any feed reader and you have a free, if crude, Reddit monitor.

**Covers:** Reddit posts, every subreddit. **Misses:** comments (Reddit’s search covers posts only, and so does every tool built on its API), relevance, delivery anywhere but a feed reader. You will also learn quickly why phrase matching matters: “acme cloud” becomes “acme” and “cloud” unless you quote it.

For the full picture of what Reddit does and does not expose, see [what monitoring Reddit really costs](/blog/reddit-api-pricing/).

## 6\. Hacker News feeds with hnrss

Hacker News has no keyword alerts of its own, but hnrss, a free open-source service, turns its search into RSS. `https://hnrss.org/newest?q=yourbrand` is a feed of new stories that match your keyword, and there are feeds for comments and for individual users too.

**Covers:** new stories and comments that mention your keyword, in any feed reader, for nothing. **Misses:** everything a feed reader misses. Nothing pushes it to Slack, nobody scores it, and a keyword that is also a common word will bury you. The [Hacker News page](/hacker-news/) shows what an hourly, scored watch looks like instead.

## 7\. X advanced search and lists

X’s advanced search is genuinely good: exact phrases, exclusions, minimum likes, language, date ranges. It is free, and it is manual. TweetDeck, which used to make this a live column, became X Pro and now sits behind a paid X Premium subscription.

**Covers:** public posts and replies, with the best query syntax of any platform. **Misses:** any form of push. Nobody refreshes a search tab at 3am, which is when the thread about your outage starts.

If X is the platform that matters to you, the [X monitoring page](/x/) explains what the official API allows and how hourly alerts work.

## 8\. Social Searcher

Social Searcher is a free search engine for social networks: type a brand or a hashtag and it shows public posts from the big networks side by side, with no account needed.

![The Social Searcher homepage](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/social-searcher.jpg)

Social Searcher: one search box across several networks, no account, no alerts unless you pay.

**Covers:** a quick, one-off look across several networks at once, which none of the alert tools above give you. **Misses:** push. It is a search box, not a watcher; saved searches and email alerts sit on its paid plans. Coverage also follows what each network still exposes to third parties, which for X is not much.

Use it for a one-time audit before you set up alerts anywhere.

## 9\. Free trials that are worth taking

Four paid tools have trials generous enough to solve a launch week for free.

![The Syften homepage](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/syften.jpg)

Syften: fourteen days on any plan, no card, community monitoring first.

-   **Syften**: 14 days free on any plan, no card. Strong on communities (Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, forums, Slack and Discord groups), with X and YouTube as paid add-ons. Plans from $29.95 a month; Slack from the $49.95 plan, webhooks and MCP on the $119.95 plan.
-   **Awario**: a free trial of the Starter plan (3 topics, 30,000 mentions a month), then from €29 a month. Broad platform coverage and Boolean queries.
-   **Octolens**: a 7-day trial with the Pro features and up to 5,000 mentions, then from $159 a month billed annually for 10 keywords and 15,000 mentions. AI filtering and Slack delivery, aimed at the same developer-facing companies Mentio is.
-   **Brand24**: 14 days, no card, then $249 a month for 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions ($199 on annual billing). Every plan covers Reddit and X, and it is the enterprise shape: a plan, a cap, and a jump to the next plan when you cross it. Good if you need PR-style reports.

![Awario's Reddit monitoring page](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/awario.jpg)

Awario: the widest platform list of the four, priced in euros.

Trials are the right tool for a one-off event. They are the wrong tool for a keyword you want watched all year, because the trial ends and the first plan is a monthly fee whether or not anything was mentioned that month.

## 10\. Mentio: free credit on a prepaid API

I built Mentio because the free tools stop at one platform and the paid tools start at a plan. Every account starts with $5.80 of credit and no card: one keyword for a month plus 100 mentions, across Reddit, X, Hacker News, GitHub, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, DEV, YouTube and news.

![Mentio's Reddit monitoring page](/blog/best-free-social-listening-tools/mentio-reddit.jpg)

Mentio: ten platforms, AI relevance scoring, delivery over Slack, webhooks, REST and MCP.

**Covers:** ten developer platforms in one feed, each match scored for relevance, sentiment and intent, delivered to Slack, Telegram, email, a webhook, or an AI agent over MCP. **Misses:** Reddit comments (nobody has them through the official API), Instagram, TikTok and Facebook (not our audience), and anything the welcome credit does not cover. After the credit it is $5 per keyword per month, charged per day, and $0.008 per matched mention, with no subscription to cancel.

## How to choose

If you need

Use

Press and blog mentions, no urgency

Google Alerts or Talkwalker Alerts

Reddit comments as well as posts, one distinctive keyword, email is fine

F5Bot

Reddit and Hacker News alerts in Slack, up to four keywords

KWatch

A do-it-yourself feed for Reddit or Hacker News

Reddit search RSS, hnrss

A one-off look across several networks

Social Searcher

A launch week on one platform

A trial: Syften, Awario, Octolens or Brand24

Several platforms, Slack or an API, and paying only for what runs

[Mentio](/pricing/)

Whatever you pick, set it up before you need it. The thread that matters is the one you find out about a week late.

## Frequently asked questions

Is there a completely free social listening tool?

Yes, one platform at a time. Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts watch the web, F5Bot watches Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters, KWatch gives two free alerts each on Reddit and Hacker News, and Reddit and hnrss serve RSS feeds you can read for nothing. No free tool watches every platform, scores what it finds, or posts to Slack; that is where paid tools and Mentio's welcome credit start.

Is Google Alerts a social listening tool?

Only partly. It emails you new web pages Google indexes that match a query, so it catches press and blog posts. It misses most of Reddit, all of X, and much of Hacker News and GitHub, and it cannot tell a passing mention from a complaint.

What is the best free tool to monitor Reddit?

F5Bot, if your keyword is distinctive: it emails matches from posts and comments within minutes. Reddit's own search RSS feed works in any feed reader. Mentio starts with $5.80 of free credit, which covers one keyword for a month plus 100 mentions, searched every 30 minutes and scored by AI.

Can I monitor Hacker News for free?

Yes. F5Bot and KWatch both alert on Hacker News for free, and hnrss.org turns any keyword into an RSS feed of new stories. Mentio checks Hacker News stories and comments every hour and scores each one; the welcome credit covers the first month of one keyword.

What is the difference between social listening and social media monitoring?

Monitoring is collecting the mentions; listening is deciding what they mean and acting on them. Vendors use the two terms interchangeably, and so do the people searching for free tools. Every tool on this list monitors; the ones that score relevance, sentiment and intent are the ones that listen.

Which free social listening tools cover X (Twitter)?

Talkwalker Alerts includes some public X posts in its email alerts, X's own advanced search is free but manual, and KWatch and Syften add X on paid plans. Mentio searches X every hour through the official API, and its welcome credit covers the first keyword.

Where this applies

-   [Reddit monitoringKeyword alerts from every subreddit, every 30 minutes.](/reddit/)
-   [X (Twitter) monitoringPosts and replies through the official API, every hour.](/x/)
-   [Hacker News monitoringStories and comments, hourly.](/hacker-news/)
-   [Pricing$5 per keyword per month, $0.008 per mention, no plan.](/pricing/)

Written by Pau Guirao, founder of Mentio. Prices and product facts were checked on September 13, 2026; if one has changed, [tell us](/contact/) and we will fix it.

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Sep 14, 2026

## [Twitter keyword alerts in 2026: what still works on X](/blog/twitter-keyword-alerts/)

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-   [Platforms](/blog/tag/platforms/)
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## Start monitoring brand mentions

One request tracks your first keyword. The first scored mention lands within minutes, in Slack, a webhook, or your agent.

[Get your API key ›](https://app.mentio.dev/login?mode=signup)[Read the docs ›](https://docs.mentio.dev)

$5.80 free credit · no card · no subscription