Brandwatch vs Meltwater

Trustpilot

Birdeye

Brand24

A customer review management tool that brings businesses and consumers together through reviews.

Birdeye provides an AI-based chat solution for multi-location businesses that engages website visitors 24/7. The platform features intelligent conversation capabilities, lead capture functionality, and seamless handoff to live agents when needed. Businesses can personalize the chat widget to match their brand identity while managing all communications through a centralized smart inbox.

Brand24 is an easy-to-use social listening solution used by companies of all sizes to analyze real-time online conversations about their brands, products, and competitors.

Brand24 allows businesses to grow sales, get customer insights, find influencers or analyze the results of marketing campaigns.

Marketing Manager

No heads-up, no automated reminder, just a silent renewal & a big invoice. When challenged, they deflected with "standard practice" excuses, despite past renewals being explicitly manual. If a company relies on fine print trickery rather than product value to retain customers, it speaks volumes.

Jr. Manager, Social Media

Normally has good & quick customer service, has all the functionalities you'd expect from this type of platform, nice analytics options

Social Media Coordinator

Overall experience was relatively good, our customer support was amazing and regularly checked in when possible.

Discover influencers, handle relationships, and manage campaigns all in one place with Brandwatch’s Influence tool.

Access Controls/Permissions

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

AI/Machine Learning

Alerts/Escalation

Alerts/Notifications

Analytics

Approval Process Control

Audience Analytics

Audience Engagement

Audience Targeting

Automated Publishing

Automated Responses

Automated Scheduling

Benchmarking

Brand Guidelines

Brand Management

Brand Tracking

Calendar Management

Campaign Analytics

Campaign Management

Campaign Planning

Campaign Scheduling

Campaign Segmentation

Categorization/Grouping

Charting

Click Tracking

Collaboration Tools

Commenting/Notes

Competitive Analysis

Competitor Monitoring

Contact Database

Contact Management

Content Discovery

Content Library

Content Management

Conversion Tracking

CRM Integration

Customer Advocacy

Customer Engagement

Customer Experience Management

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Segmentation

Customizable Branding

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Dashboard

Dashboard Creation

Data Extraction

Data Import/Export

Data Visualization

Demographic Data

Digital Asset Management

Drag & Drop

Email Alerts

Engagement Tracking

Faceted Search/Filter

Filtering

Generative AI

Hashtag Tracking

Image Classification

Image Editing

Image Library

Impact Measurement

Influencer Discovery

Influencer Relationship Management

Influencer Tracking

Keyword Filtering

Keyword Tracking

Machine Learning

Media Monitoring

@mentions

Metadata Management

Monitoring

Multi-Account Management

Multi-Campaign

Multi-Channel Data Collection

Multi-Channel Management

Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-Language

Natural Language Processing

Negative Feedback Management

Part of Speech Tagging

Performance Metrics

Post Scheduling

Real-Time Analytics

Real-Time Data

Real-Time Monitoring

Real-Time Notifications

Real-Time Reporting

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Reputation Management

Response Management

Review Monitoring

Review Sharing

ROI Tracking

Role-Based Permissions

Brandwatch

Web-based

Linux

Windows

Hootsuite

Sprout Social

Talkwalker

Sprinklr

Meltwater

Onclusive Social

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Mention

X Pro

Consumer Intelligence

 Social Media Management

 Influencer Marketing

Social Media Manager

It’s a strong platform for social listening, brand monitoring, and understanding online sentiment. Once I became familiar with the setup and filters, it made tracking conversations and creating reports much easier.

Senior Market Intelligence and Consumer Insights Analyst

It also has a strong cost-benefit for us, and the fact that it’s aligned with data protection standards like LGPD brings a lot of security, it’s even helped us move forward and close deals.

Student

Allowing users to set a default geographic scope for map components, or providing region-specific map options, would resolve this quickly.

Social Media and Marketing Coordinator

I also found the visualisation tools useful for presenting data in a clear and engaging way, especially when sharing insights with stakeholders who may not be as data-savvy.

Across large datasets it frequently cited the same mention to support multiple different insights, which made it feel less like a rigorous analytical tool and more like a pattern-matcher looking for something to say.

Co-founder

I feel like they've overcomplicated the process (queries, dashboards, add widgets etc) but the 'quick' version lacks depth to the extent that it is never worth the time saved, to choose this option.

Head of Insights

The variety of graphs I can build, it's flexibility and ability to customize, its comprehensive data.

Social Media and Design Producer

Some downsides to Brandwatch is the social media channels can occasionally disconnect, which can interrupt posting or data collection.

Performance can also be inconsistent at times, with slower load speeds when working with large datasets. While it is a powerful tool, it often requires significant time investment to use it effectively.

The learning curve was steep but rewarding, and features like Categories and dashboard templates gave us infrastructure that would have taken much longer to build from scratch.

The insights would benefit from more deduplication logic and a clearer signal about how many unique mentions are actually informing each summary.

It’s a tool we use daily across different clients, and it helps turn data into insights quickly.

On the UI side, one issue that consistently caused friction was interacting with smaller or non-peak data points on line charts.

Digital marketing and Conversion specalist

AI capabilities feel underdeveloped compared to where the market is heading - Brandwatch still relies heavily on manual setup and analysis.

Brandwatch's AI summarization tool, Iris, was also useful when working through large volumes of mentions.

Additionally, the platform can sometimes surface a lot of noise, requiring manual refinement to ensure the results are actually useful.

The learning curve is fairly steep, particularly when it comes to building accurate queries and filtering out irrelevant data.

It has very good coverage of text-based channels and I like that it has contracts in place with them

Digital Strategy Consultant

It works well for certain things but I find I often have to supplement some things/metrics with different platforms.

Positive overall, but tough for a team not trained in both analyzing sentiment themselves and solid tool use to revise sentiment assessment.

It’s a pretty solid tool, especially when it comes to analysis and the volume of data it can handle.

Principal Corporate Affairs and Communications

Helps us a lot to monitor (specially crisis) and reporting.

Manager, Strategic Insights

I prefer other platforms for in-depth topic analysis and monitoring.

What I liked most about Brandwatch was the depth and flexibility of its social listening capabilities.

Less flexibility around the reporting period parameters.

There’s a learning curve when it comes to setting up queries and getting the most accurate results.

However, it does require a level of commitment to learn and optimise its features properly.

What I liked least was that it can feel overwhelming at first, especially if you’re new to social listening tools.

Digital Marketing Specialist

The fact that a few other services I needed were bundled with my plan, made it a bargain in comparison to the other services I would have had to get separately.

Associate software engineer

It helped us identify trending topics in our industry, allowing us to engage more effectively with our audience.

Social Media and Reputation Manager

Even simple issues like user interface errors and connection problems were not addressed adequately, leaving us feeling trapped and dissatisfied with Brandwatch as a whole.

Client Executive

This is not a tool I feel could be effectively leveraged by a non-technical persona.

Data and Insights Manager

It's never gone down, very little issues and good support team who are very quick to look into any concerns of questions we have.

Some reports also need manual adjustments

My overall experience was actually positive, the social media posting tools came in handy for sticking to our content calendar.

The UX is still very clunky and non-intuitive.

Might be a bit confusing given all the modules available.

Growth Manager

Overall Brandwatch has been great for its robust features, including real-time monitoring, customizable dashboards, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, and competitive benchmarking.

The dashboard templates were a genuine highlight.

Graphiste 

The ability to collect the corresponding information on the social web, allows us to track products on the market, the trends we face, competitors and the online management of our customers.

Annoyance with the labour involved in grooming the sentiment.

GED 

What really stands out from my experience with Brandwatch is the ability to receive real-time alerts on any unusual activity or emerging crisis that may affect my brand.

Broken “Send” button in the message writing interface, hidden by the support chat button.

The dashboard was well-structured, reporting was comprehensive, & sentiment analysis was useful.

We didn’t receive the features we were promised, and instead, we dealt with unresolved bugs and incomplete functionalities.

Co-Founder

It's a handy tool with very strong social media monitoring and analytics capabilities

Ability to setup various different queries which can you help monitor not just your brand, but also competitors and industry trends.

Marketing Strategist

Brandwatch is a piece of cake to set up reports and keep an eye on social media conversations.

Brandwatch vs Meltwater Comparison (2026)

Brandwatch

Meltwater

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives