Looking for a Brand24 free alternative? First, the plain answer about Brand24 itself: it has no free plan. You get a 14-day trial, and after that the cheapest option is $249 a month, or $199 a month if you commit to a year. For a hobby project, a small game studio, a streamer or a club, that is out of reach. Here is what you can use for nothing, or close to it, and what each free option really gives you.
Why the free part is tricky
Social listening costs money to run. Someone has to crawl news sites, forums and social platforms all day. So free tools tend to cut one of three things: how many topics you can watch, how often they check, or how much they cover. The trick is to pick the cut that hurts you least.
1. AyeWatch Free Preview
AyeWatch is the pick here, with one condition you should know up front. Its Free Preview is a taste, not a forever plan: three lifetime monitoring runs across up to three topics, at a daily or slower pace, with no credit card. The runs do not renew.
What makes those three runs useful is how you set them up. You do not type keywords. You write a sentence, like "news or posts about our game's next update, or anyone reporting a bug in the new level; ignore fan art". AyeWatch reads what it finds, decides whether it matches, and gives you a short summary with links. Alerts show up in the app feed and as push notifications on iOS and Android.
If it works for you, the paid step is small. Pro is $9 a month for up to 50 monitors checked every hour, which is less than a twentieth of Brand24's monthly price.
2. Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts costs nothing and has no trial period. You type a keyword, pick result types (news, X, blogs or forums), pick one of 22 languages and choose how often you get emails. It supports Boolean operators, so you can write a query like a brand name minus a common word that shares it.
The limits: results arrive by email only, there is no analytics, and it matches words rather than meaning. Expect to see mentions of things that just share a name.
3. Free trials, used wisely
Brand24 gives 14 days. Awario gives a free trial of its Starter plan with 3 topics. Syften gives 14 days on its Pro plan with no card and shows mentions from the last two months right away. A trial will not replace a tool, but it is a decent way to see what people already said about you before you settle on something cheaper.
Free options side by side
| Option | Cost | Lasts | What you can watch | How alerts arrive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AyeWatch Free Preview | $0, no card | 3 runs total | Up to 3 topics, pages or social feeds | App feed and phone push |
| Talkwalker Alerts | $0 | Free tool, no trial clock | Keywords in news, X, blogs, forums | |
| Brand24 trial | $0 | 14 days | Brand24 keywords and mentions | Brand24 dashboard |
| Syften trial | $0, no card | 14 days | Reddit, Hacker News and other communities | Email, Slack and more |
When paying makes sense
If you only need to know when your name pops up in the news, Talkwalker Alerts may be enough forever. The moment you care about Reddit threads, TikTok posts or changes on a specific web page, free tools run out. At that point the cheapest real plan in this group is AyeWatch Pro at $9 a month, with monthly billing and no contract.
When Brand24 is still worth it
If you need sentiment charts, influencer lists and reports you can hand to a sponsor, Brand24 does those and AyeWatch does not. That is a paid-tool job, and no free option replaces it.
Getting started
Write down the one thing you most want to hear about, whether it is your game, your channel or your club. Then try it on the free preview and see if the summaries are worth keeping.