7+ Tested Free Social Listening Tools in 2025 -

If you own a business, you already know reputation is everything. Let me explain: reputation can significantly influence whether anyone pays attention to you or, more importantly, makes a purchase. But, with over 5 billion people worldwide using social media to provide a constant flow of information, engagement, and views across dozens of channels, reputations are usually more difficult than ever to sustain. This is why social media listening tools are so valuable.

There is just one problem: these tools do not come cheap.

So, in this article, I will go over the top free social media listening tools I have tried out and why social media listening is important to marketers, among other things.

Key Takeaways

Social listening helps brands stay relevant by tracking real-time conversations across multiple platforms in a crowded digital space.
Most free social media listening tools have limitations like trial periods or restricted features, so users need to maximize them efficiently.
TweetDeck and FollowerWonk are ideal for Twitter, BuzzSumo is excellent for content ideas, and Google Trends helps with keyword tracking.
Monitoring real-time feedback allows brands to respond to complaints early, turning negative experiences into opportunities for stronger customer relationships.
Free tools like Google Alerts and Social Mention can be used to track brand mentions and measure awareness without spending money.
Social listening goes beyond basic monitoring by analyzing the sentiment behind mentions, which helps in making informed strategic decisions.

As promised, here are the top free social media listening tools in 2025. But keep in mind that most of them aren’t entirely free; they just offer free trial periods. If you use these periods efficiently, you should be able to get all you need within that short timeframe.

Tool Name	Free Version?	Platforms Covered	Best For	Limitations
FollowerWonk	✅	Twitter	Follower analytics	One profile only
TweetDeck	✅	Twitter	Real-time monitoring	Twitter only
Answer the Public	✅ (limited)	Search engines	Content idea generation	Daily search limits
Hootsuite	✅ (limited)	Multiple platforms	Social media management	3 social profiles max
Social Mention	✅	100+ platforms	Real-time brand mentions	No deep sentiment analysis
Owler	✅ (basic)	Web + Social Media	Competitor tracking	Limited insights on free plan
BuzzSumo	✅ (trial)	Facebook, Twitter, etc.	Content performance insights	Short trial period
Google Alerts	✅	Web	Brand & topic alerts	No social media mentions

FollowerWonk

Followerwonk is a free social media listening and Twitter analytics tool that helps you identify, evaluate, and optimize for social growth. It allows you to enhance your brand’s social accounts, study people’s social graphs, search Twitter bios using complex filters and parameters, analyze data, track and sort followers, and much more.

Followerwonk is one of the apps on this list that is completely free to use. However, the free version is limited to managing only one social media profile. On the other hand, if you are connecting more social media profiles at once, you’ll have to make payments.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is one of the oldest free social listening tools available. After trying it out, I realized the tool is ideal mainly for small business owners who use Twitter to market their products and services.

For the most part, TweetDeck makes it easier to monitor various timelines on Twitter by combining them into a single interface. It also provides a number of advanced features to help you make the most of Twitter.

More importantly, like many tools you’ll find on this list, it allows you to manage numerous Twitter accounts, schedule tweets to be posted in the future, create tweet collections, and more.

TweetDeck is presently available at tweetdeck.com and the Mac App Store.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is one of the most widely used free social listening tools today. It is always my go-to for social listening or monitoring.

My favorite feature about this tool is that it enables teams to listen to autocomplete data from search engines such as Google, allowing you to identify useful words and questions related to their keyword.

This free social listening tool may be a goldmine of consumer intelligence, allowing your brand to develop new content and provide better customer experiences.

Answer the Public offers a Pro subscription that includes unlimited daily searches, weekly email digests, bespoke data exports, team-specific workspaces, and education and training.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of today’s most popular social media listening platforms. You’ve definitely heard of Hootsuite more than once if you have been in the social media space for at least a month or two.

This platform enables businesses to manage their social media marketing efforts in one place.

Hootsuite customers, every once in a while, like me, also receive insights, analytics, and real-time statistics to better understand and optimize their social media performance.

Hootsuite’s free plan allows users to add up to three social profiles. That’s pretty impressive compared to platforms like FollowerWonk that allow only one profile.

The platform also features a developing App Directory, which allows businesses to integrate existing marketing, content, and other business tools with Hootsuite.

Social Mention is a simple, free social listening tool that collects user-generated content from many social media platforms into a single stream of data.

It enables you to simply track and measure what people are saying about you, your organization, a new product, or any other topic on the web’s social media landscape in real time.

One fascinating feature about Social Mention is that it monitors more than 100 social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, and Google.

Owler

While Owler is not a dedicated social listening tool, it can provide insights to assist you or your team to lay the groundwork for effective social media listening and monitoring.

The tool addresses the question, “What have your competitors been up to?” Owler generates a “Daily Snapshot” or update about your competitors based on several web sources, including social media.

It also specializes in providing reliable, real-time, community-driven business information, allowing you to keep up with the latest industry news and notifications.

When I need to, I use it to build a complete profile of my competitors and track changes in finance, leadership, and acquisitions.

Owler offers both basic free and premium plans.

BrandWatch

Brandwatch enables your team to collect and analyze data from both social and review platforms, providing valuable insights. With the ReviewTrackers + Brandwatch combination, you can learn what social media critics and negative reviewers desire, resolve consumer issues, identify possibilities to improve your brand’s reputation, and obtain higher ratings.

Brandwatch also offers tools and features like author analysis, page type analysis, and subject and sentiment analysis to assist businesses in studying and interpreting social discussions on a large scale.

Buzzsumo

Using BuzzSumo, I found it to be a great social media listening tool for determining what content works best.

It’s highly valuable for marketers who want to generate fresh ideas, create high-performing content, and connect with social media influencers.

When you type in a topic or URL, BuzzSumo’s database retrieves social media statistics from the most popular channels, ranging from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to even Reddit. You’ll find these data useful for evaluating which content resonates most with your consumers and prospects.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a completely free tool that helps you stay on top of consumer trends and insights. It’s a valuable listening tool that’s free and simple to use. While you may have already set up alerts for mentions of your brand, you can do the same for mentions of your direct competitors or a larger category of indirect competitors.

Don’t forget to include corporate nicknames and alternative spellings. Simply type your brand name (or the names of your competitors) into Google Alerts, and the application will notify you when fresh results are found on the topic. This method is particularly beneficial for easily tracking product changes, new material, and market-related news.

Google Alerts can also be used in conjunction with Google Trends, which provides real-time data to help you determine consumer search interest in your brand and competitors.

Twilert

If Twitter is the best social platform for reaching your target audience and you have a limited budget, this solution is perfect for you and your small business.

This Twitter monitoring program offers three paying services as well as a simple free deal labeled “Free-Forever Daily Alert.”

Furthermore, Twilert allows you to receive “one free daily alert that tracks any topic, any term, any hashtag, or account that will help grow your business.” Twilert can be a low-cost, straightforward approach for marketers to follow specific terms discussed on Twitter.

Twillert’s commercial editions can also serve as a platform analytics tool and a useful reference center for new prospects.

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a versatile tool for tracking mentions on social media, blogs, forums, and news websites. The software offers real-time monitoring and sentiment analysis, helping firms understand how their brand is regarded online. The free trial provides a taste of its impressive capabilities, but full access requires an upgrade to a paid plan.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that monitors the popularity of search queries over time. During my test, it was valuable for identifying trends and comparing keyword performance. Although it does not track social media mentions, it is a useful tool for determining what is popular in your business and how interest in specific topics changes.

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Social listening is an essential approach for any brand that wishes to remain relevant and competitive in today’s digital market. It provides detailed insights into how your brand is perceived, what your customers say, and how you may improve.

Here’s why social listening is important:

#1. Assess Brand Awareness:

To assess brand awareness, use free social listening tools to track online mentions across several platforms. Monitor mentions on social media, blogs, forums, and news outlets to see how frequently your brand is discussed and where those conversations are taking place. This data is extremely useful in determining where your target audience is most engaged and whether your marketing efforts are reaching the correct people.

Regularly analyzing brand awareness allows you to keep ahead of trends and make educated decisions about future marketing.

#2. Improve Customer Service:

Improve customer service by monitoring real-time discussions to address complaints before they escalate. Social listening technologies enable you to monitor feedback, complaints, and inquiries as they occur across several platforms, allowing for rapid replies that can transform unpleasant encounters into positive outcomes.

This proactive approach to customer service not only addresses problems more effectively, but it also shows that your company values consumer feedback, which fosters more loyalty and trust.

#3. Track Brand Reputation:

Social listening may help maintain a solid brand reputation. By researching sentiment surrounding your brand, you can gain a clear picture of how the public perceives your business. This includes detecting possible problems early on, such as negative feedback, critical posts, or viral complaints.

When a potential PR disaster occurs, free social media listening tools enable you to respond quickly to control the issue before it escalates, thereby protecting your brand’s image. Continuously monitoring your reputation ensures that your brand maintains a positive image among your target audience.

Social listening is a relatively recent concept used in digital marketing. It enables marketers and businesses to gain a deeper understanding of internet conversations about certain topics such as their brand, competitors, and market league.

Social media listening is the process of identifying brand-related remarks and conversations on relevant social networks and evaluating them for insights to generate new opportunities.

Furthermore, I found it to be an excellent way to delve deeply into your audience’s monologue, conversation, or soliloquy. For the most part, understanding audience sentiment allows for competition analysis, improves brand reputation, and helps with customer retention.

While both entail tracking mentions, social media monitoring collects data on mentions and interactions, such as comments, shares, and likes. Social listening goes a step further by assessing the sentiment underlying these mentions and using that data to guide strategic decisions, develop products, and communicate with customers.

Free social listening solutions provide basic functionality such as tracking mentions and evaluating simple metrics. However, they frequently have constraints, such as platform limits or data access. Paid products typically offer more complete analysis, real-time tracking, and sophisticated capabilities such as competition analysis, sentiment tracking, and bespoke reports.

7+ Tested Free Social Listening Tools in 2025

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