This guide breaks down ten of the best sentiment analysis tools you can use to track brand mentions, spot customer frustrations, and understand how people feel about your product across the major social platforms. You’ll get a simple look at each tool’s features, pricing, and strengths so you can choose the one that actually fits your workflow.

The challenge? These conversations happen everywhere at once. Reddit threads, Twitter replies, LinkedIn posts, and Instagram comments, so manually keeping up is almost impossible.

That’s where sentiment analysis tools come in. They pull everything into one place, score the tone, and help you understand whether conversations around your brand are moving in a good direction… or if something needs your attention.

Let’s get started.

Instead of digging through posts one by one, these tools use AI to group patterns, highlight trends, and point out shifts in public opinion. You get a clearer picture of what customers love, what frustrates them, and where conversations about your brand might be heading.

Why are Social Media Sentiment Analysis Tools Important?

• Reputation management: Monitor brand mentions and respond to negative feedback before it escalates.

• Customer insights: Understand customer preferences and pain points to tailor and adapt marketing strategies.

• Trend identification: Spot emerging trends and topics relevant to your brand or industry.

• Competitive advantage: Compare sentiment around your brand vs. competitors to refine your positioning.

• Proactive engagement: Stay ahead of potential issues and engage with customers more effectively.

10 Best Social Media Sentiment Analysis Tools

• ForumScout

• Brand24

• Sprout Social

• Meltwater

• Brandwatch

• Mention

• Awario

• YouScan

• Chatmeter

• Keyhole

Setting up a scout is quick and doesn’t require any Boolean logic. You just type what you want to track, and it works. Mentions come in cleanly, without the usual spam, making it easy to stay on top of conversations without checking the tool all day.

Key Features

• Keyword Monitoring: Track specific keywords, phrases, or brand mentions across multiple platforms.

• AI-Powered Filtering: Uses AI to filter out irrelevant posts, ensuring that only relevant mentions are displayed.

• Sentiment Analysis: Provides sentiment breakdowns of mentions, categorizing them as positive, neutral, or negative.

• Competitor Tracking: Monitor competitor mentions, revealing strengths, weaknesses, and customer opinions.

• Audience Insights: Gain detailed analytics on the communities engaging with your brand, including top posters and audience interests.

• Smart Notifications: Get real-time alerts when posts match your filter criteria.

• Custom Retention: Choose how long you want to retain posts, with options ranging from 14 days to 180 days.

Pricing

• Free Trial (7 Days): Start with our 7-day free trial, no credit card required. Most users see ForumScout pay for itself within the first week.

• Growth ($19/month): Includes 5,000 mentions per month, 10 keywords, hourly updates, and 3-months historical data. Comes with AI-powered filtering for cleaner, more relevant results.

• Business ($49/month): Everything in Growth, plus 25,000 mentions per month, 20 keywords, and 6-months historical data. Unlock competitive intelligence, sentiment and emotion analysis, audience insights, and AI-driven mention sorting.

• Enterprise ($129/month): Includes everything in Business, plus 100,000 mentions per month, 25 keywords, and extended 12-months historical data for long-term monitoring.

Pros

• Monitors a wide range of social media platforms and forums.

• User-friendly interface with a minimal learning curve.

• Advanced filtering capabilities to reduce irrelevant posts.

• Offers detailed sentiment analysis to understand audience reactions.

• Enables direct competitor comparison with customizable alerts.

• Plans are suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.

Cons

• Does not support a wide range of languages for non-English platforms.

Key Features

• Keyword & Mention Tracking: Scans social media, blogs, news sites, forums, video descriptions, podcasts, and the wider web for your keywords.

• Sentiment & Emotion Analysis: Tags mentions as positive, negative, or neutral, and detects emotional context.

• Reach & Share‑of‑Voice Metrics: Estimates how many people saw mentions and compares visibility across keywords or brands.

• Custom Alerts: This lets you set notifications (via email or tools like Slack) when mentions hit certain thresholds or meet certain filters.

Pricing

• Individual ($199/month): 3 keywords, 2K mentions, 1 user, updates every 12 hours, sentiment analysis.

• Team ($299/month): 7 keywords, 10K mentions, hourly updates, unlimited users, priority support.

• Pro ($399/month): 12 keywords, 40K mentions, real-time updates, AI Insights, AI Topics (2 projects).

• Business ($599/month): 25 keywords, 100K mentions, 5 AI projects, advanced analytics, audience insights.

• Enterprise (from $999/month): Custom limits, unlimited AI Insights and Topics, consulting support, and advanced reporting.

Pros

• Reports are flexible and exportable, making it easy to share or analyze data.

• Filtering options allow you to refine results by sentiment, source, language, or date.

• It supports reputation management and competitor monitoring with actionable insights.

Cons

• Sentiment analysis may misclassify tone for older mentions

• If your brand name or keywords are common, there may be irrelevant mentions, which means you’ll need careful filtering to make insights useful.

Key Features

• Unified “Smart Inbox”: Combines all messages, mentions, comments, and reviews from your social profiles into a single stream so you can monitor and reply in one place.

• Content Planning & Publishing: Includes a calendar for scheduling, queueing, or drafting posts; supports scheduling across multiple social networks from one dashboard.

• Social Listening: Lets you track brand keywords, hashtags, mentions, and conversations (even when you're not tagged), to monitor brand sentiment, trends, and what people are saying about you.

• Analytics & reporting: Offers detailed performance metrics (engagement, impressions, follower growth, post performance, cross-network analytics) and lets you export or schedule reports.

• Standard ($199/month): 5 social profiles, 3 keywords, 5K mentions, hourly updates, sentiment analysis.

• Professional ($299/month): 10 social profiles, 10 keywords, 25K mentions, real-time updates, competitor insights, AI-powered features.

• Advanced ($399/month): 20 social profiles, 20 keywords, 50K mentions, AI-driven sentiment and emotion analysis, audience insights.

• Enterprise (from $499/month): Custom profiles, keywords, and mentions, unlimited AI insights, dedicated account manager, custom reporting.

Pros

• Combines listening, scheduling, and engagement in one platform.

• Provides in-depth insights into audience behavior and content performance.

• Intuitive dashboard and tools for easy navigation.

Cons

• Plans can be expensive for smaller teams with limited budgets.

• Advanced analytics and reporting are only available on higher-tier plans.

Key Features

• Unlimited Keyword Searches: Allows tracking of as many keywords, hashtags, or topics as you need without caps.

• Cross‑Channel Monitoring: Covers 15+ social networks, 270,000+ global news sources, blogs, podcasts, broadcast, print media, and forums.

• Sentiment & Trend Analysis: Tags mentions with sentiment labels and surfaces trending themes or spikes in conversation volume.

• Historical Data Archive: Provides up to 15 months of past social data for trend comparison and historical insights.

Pricing

Meltwater does not list fixed pricing online. Plans are custom and priced based on factors such as data volume, channels monitored, number of users, and level of analysis.

Pros

• Covers social media, news, broadcast, blog, and podcasts in one place

• Offers historical archives for longitudinal trend analysis

• Delivers sentiment tagging and trend detection across wide data sources

Cons

• Cost may exceed value for small teams or light users

• Requires sales‑team contact for pricing clarity and often involves a lengthy setup process

Key Features

• Massive Historical Archive + Broad Coverage: It gives access to years of historical data (back to 2010, and for some data sources even earlier), which helps with long-term trend analysis and benchmarking.

• Custom Querying & Boolean Search Capabilities: Users can build very precise searches with advanced Boolean logic, which helps narrow down relevant mentions and avoid noise.

• Influencer & Audience Insights: Brandwatch helps identify influential users, key audience segments, demographic insights, and content that resonates, which supports influencer marketing, targeting, and better audience understanding.

• Competitive Intelligence & Benchmarking: You can track competitors, their mentions, share of voice, sentiment trends, and benchmark your own brand’s performance relative to others.

Pricing

Brandwatch offers customized pricing based on factors such as the number of mentions and the level of features required.

Pros

• Brandwatch delivers very comprehensive data gathering
• It provides customizable dashboards and strong data visualization/reporting tools
• Its Boolean querying and filtering capability enables precise searches, saving time for large data sets.

Cons

• It may not be affordable for small businesses or startups.

• The tool can be overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features.

Key Features

• Sentiment & Volume Analytics: Provides data on mention volume over time and sentiment trends to gauge public opinion.

• Custom Alerts: Sends notifications when keywords or brand mentions meet defined criteria, so you don’t miss important signals.

• Report Generation & Visualisation: Lets you build reports and visual charts to analyse reach, engagement, sentiment, or share‑of‑voice data.

• Social Publishing & Inbox: Lets you schedule posts and manage messages from multiple social accounts in one inbox.

Pricing

• Company ($599/month): Full media monitoring, advanced social listening, sentiment analysis, competitor insights, team collaboration, API access, and custom reporting.

• Free Trial: Demo available upon request.

• Company Plan: Custom pricing with team management, API access, and dedicated support.

Pros

• Covers web and social sources broadly

• Real‑time alerts catch important mentions fast

• Flexible alert criteria help focus on what matters

Cons

• Search accuracy can lag behind major search engines

• Some advanced features require higher-tier plans

Key Features

• Boolean & Multilingual Search: Allows for complex searches with Boolean logic and supports multiple languages.

• Mention Reach & Filtering: Measures the reach of mentions and filters out irrelevant posts for focused tracking.

• Lead & Sales Opportunity Alerts: Identifies conversations where users are looking for product recommendations or discussing needs, ideal for sales outreach.

• White-Label Reports and Export: Provides the ability to generate branded reports and export data for easy sharing.

Pricing

• Starter ($49/month): 3 topics to monitor, unlimited keywords per topic, 30,000 new mentions, and more.

• Professional ($149/month): 15 topics to monitor, unlimited keywords per topic, 300,000 new mentions, and more.

• Enterprise ($399/month): 100 topics to monitor, unlimited keywords per topic, 1,000,000 new mentions, and more

• Custom Plan (from $499/month): Custom profiles, keywords, and mentions, unlimited AI insights, dedicated account manager, and custom reporting.

Pros

• Monitors social media, blogs, news, and forums for brand mentions.

• Provides immediate notifications for new mentions to allow timely responses.

• Boolean logic and multilingual support help tailor tracking.

Cons

• Sometimes overlooks mentions from certain platforms or restricted sources.

• Some users find the renewal fees to be higher than expected and cancellation difficult.

Key Features

• Text & Visual Listening: Detects brand mentions in written posts and in images containing logos or relevant items.

• Sentiment & Emotion Analysis: Labels mentions as positive, negative, or neutral, and captures emotional context and underlying tone.

• Insights Copilot (AI Agent): Allow teams to ask plain‑language questions about their social data and get instant insights.

• Audience & Demographic Data: Breaks down who is talking — demographics, interests, and other traits.

Pricing

• Starter ($499/month, billed annually): 3 topics, 15,000 mentions/month, full coverage of social media, blogs, forums, and news sources, Insights Copilot AI (10 questions/month), and more.

• Unlimited Plan (custom pricing): Unlimited topics, mentions, and custom dashboards, data collection from text and images, and more.

Pros

• Excellent mix of text and image‑based listening for full coverage

• The AI agent makes data easy to query and digest quickly

• Solid sentiment detection and context awareness

Cons

• Interface can feel complex and has a learning curve

• Mobile experience is weak.

Key Features

• Pulse AI Sentiment Analysis: Processes reviews, comments, and social posts to extract sentiment and emotion signals.

• Social Media & Review Monitoring: Tracks brand mentions and reviews across multiple review sites and social channels.

• Local Listings & SEO Management: Updates and maintains accurate location listings across directories to improve local visibility.

• Custom Reports & Dashboards: Lets you build dashboards and get reports on sentiment trends, review volume, listing health, and competitive comparisons.

Pricing

Chatmeter does not provide fixed public pricing. Costs are custom and depend on factors such as the number of locations, scope of monitoring, and selected modules.

Pros

• Manage reviews, social mentions, listings, and reputation from one dashboard.

• Pulse AI surfaces trends and common pain points across all feedback.

• Automates review requests and responses across locations.

Cons

• Hard to estimate costs without contacting sales.

• A full suite may exceed the needs of small teams.

Key Features

• Real‑Time Monitoring: Tracks hashtags, keywords, and account mentions across social networks as they happen.

• Sentiment & Trend Analysis: Detects sentiment and highlights emerging trends or spikes in activity.

• Influencer Analytics: Identifies influencers, measures their reach and engagement, and assesses their fit for campaigns.

• Campaign & Hashtag Tracking: Measures reach, engagement, impressions, and share‑of‑voice tied to specific hashtags or campaigns.

Pricing

• Keyhole doesn’t state fixed pricing publicly. All plans are custom, with costs depending on factors like data volume, monitored channels, number of users, and the depth of analytics required.

Pros

• Real‑time tracking lets you respond to mentions and trends immediately.

• Helps identify and evaluate influencers accurately.

• Measures hashtag and campaign performance across platforms.

Cons

• Data accuracy sometimes questioned: Some users report discrepancies when comparing to other analytics.

• Learning curve for new users: Setup and interpretation can feel complex for beginners.

Forum Scout helps brands turn insights into action. With real-time monitoring, easy-to-use dashboards, and clear analytics, it makes brand listening simple so teams can focus on strategy, not busy work.

Want to take your brand monitoring to the next level? Try Forum Scout today and get faster, clearer, and smarter social insights.