Hootsuite vs Brand24 (2026): $99/user vs $199, publish or listen
Hootsuite from about $99 per user (Standard, 10 accounts) vs Brand24 from about $199/mo by mentions. Publishing vs listening in 2026, and which to buy.
The short answer
These two are in the same conversation and not in the same category. Hootsuite publishes: it schedules and manages accounts you own, with a unified inbox and analytics on top. Brand24 listens: it tracks mentions of your brand across the web and social, with sentiment, AI summaries and anomaly detection.
Almost nobody genuinely chooses between them. Most teams comparing these two are working out which problem to solve first with the budget they have, and that depends entirely on whether what keeps you up is what you post or what is being said.
Pick quickly
- Hootsuite if the job is getting content out reliably across many accounts and replying to what comes back.
- Brand24 if the job is knowing when your name is being said, where, and whether the tone just changed.
- Neither, if the job is finding content worth posting. Both are strong at their own thing and neither does that one.
Prices and features read off each vendor page on 2026-10-24.
Networks it publishes to, and networks it watches to find what is rising before you post.
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | What that price covers | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | brands tracking mentions, sentiment and reputation | from ~$199/mo | Individual: 1 user, 3 keywords, billed annually ($249 monthly) | Free trial |
| Hootsuite | scheduling and managing your own social accounts | from ~$99/mo per user | 1 user, Standard, billed annually | Free trial |
| ViralHunt | discovering viral content across 13 networks and publishing to 11 networks per brand | from $29/mo | 1 brand, 11 connected accounts (Creator). Studio: $99/mo for 4 brands and 44 connected accounts | Yes, and it never expires |
Every price was read off the vendor's own pricing page. We show no G2 or Capterra ratings because we are not listed there, and an invented rating would destroy the only thing these pages have, which is that all of it can be checked.
Choosing between Brand24 and Hootsuite? Below we break them down feature by feature, on pricing and on use case, and show where ViralHunt fits as the all-in-one alternative that tracks viral content across 13 networks.
| Feature | Brand24 | Hootsuite | ViralHunt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social platforms covered | Web + social mentions | 9, Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, WhatsApp, Pinterest | 13, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Douyin, RSS, Quora, Tumblr, Hacker News |
| Real-time viral content discovery | Partial | ✗ | ✓ |
| Per-post engagement tracking | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Cross-platform trending radar | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Editorial board (Kanban workflow) | ✗ | Partial | ✓ |
| AI content studio | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Built-in team chat | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Browser-extension scrapers | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Niche / keyword tracking | ✓ | Partial | ✓ |
| Mention / sentiment listening | ✓ | Partial | Partial |
| Post scheduling & publishing | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-DM (comment → DM) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Public API + AI-agent access | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free trial | ✓ | ✓ | Free plan, no expiry |
| Starting price | from ~$199/mo | from ~$99/mo per user | from $29/mo |
What each one costs, read off each vendor page
| Brand24 | Hootsuite | ViralHunt | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $199/moIndividual: 1 user, 3 keywords, billed annually ($249 monthly) | $99/mo1 user, Standard, billed annually | $29/moCreator: 1 brand, 11 connected accounts. Free plan that never expires. |
| 4 brands, 44 accounts | Not read for 44 accounts | $199/moone Professional user (annual), unlimited accounts; each extra person is another $199 | $99/moStudio: 4 brands, 44 connected accounts, all 11 networks. |
Read off each vendor pricing page on 2026-10-24. Check them yourself: two of the three corrections we have made were in our own favour.
📡 13 networks, one screen
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Douyin, RSS, Quora, Tumblr & Hacker News, viral posts and engagement in a single radar.
🗂️ Built-in workflow
Assign any post to an editorial board, draft with the AI studio, and coordinate in team chat, no extra tools.
💸 Better value
One affordable plan instead of stacking a discovery tool + a workflow tool + a listening tool.
What is Brand24?
Brand24 is a social listening tool that monitors mentions of your brand or keywords across social media, news, blogs and forums in real time, with sentiment analysis, AI summaries and anomaly detection. It is built for reputation tracking and share-of-voice, great for knowing what people say about you, but not designed to discover viral content you can repurpose, and it has no content workflow.
- Real-time mention tracking with sentiment
- AI summaries + anomaly detection
- Slack and CRM integrations
- Listening-first, not a viral-discovery engine
- No editorial workflow or board
- Priced by mention volume
Pricing: from ~$199/mo
What is Hootsuite?
Hootsuite is one of the best-known social media management tools: schedule and publish posts to your own accounts, manage a unified inbox, run analytics and basic social listening from a single dashboard. At its core it is a scheduler built around the accounts you own, not a tool for discovering viral content across networks or surfacing trends you do not already follow.
- Mature scheduling + publishing across many accounts
- Unified inbox and analytics
- Basic social listening included
- Scheduler-first, not viral discovery
- Per-seat pricing adds up fast
- No cross-network viral radar
Pricing: from ~$99/mo per user
When to buy one of these two
You came here comparing two tools, not looking for a third. So first, plainly, what each one is the better buy for:
- Brand24 if your job is brands tracking mentions, sentiment and reputation. Real-time mention tracking with sentiment.
- Hootsuite if your job is scheduling and managing your own social accounts. Mature scheduling + publishing across many accounts.
If either of those sentences describes your job, you have your answer and the rest of this page is not for you. What follows is for the case where neither one does.
The third option: ViralHunt
ViralHunt is a viral-content discovery platform that tracks the top-performing posts across 13 networks, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Douyin, RSS, Quora, Tumblr and Hacker News, in real time. Beyond discovery, it turns trends into a team workflow with an editorial Kanban board, an AI content studio and built-in team chat, and now schedules and auto-publishes finished posts to 11 social networks, with separate brand/client projects. So a whole team can find, create and publish content in one place instead of stacking a discovery tool, a workflow tool and a scheduler.
- Tracks viral posts across 13 networks in one dashboard
- Editorial board, AI studio and team chat built in, no extra tools
- Schedules & auto-publishes to 11 networks, with multi-brand projects
- Affordable, a free plan that never expires, plus a REST API for AI agents
- Not a dedicated enterprise listening/analytics suite
- Younger brand than the incumbents
Pricing: from $29/mo
Comparing Brand24 and Hootsuite because neither one quite does what you need? ViralHunt has a free plan that does not expire, so checking is free and there is no countdown.
Try for freeTwo expensive tools, expensive for opposite reasons
Hootsuite lists from about $99 per user per month on Standard (10 accounts) and $199 per user on Professional (unlimited accounts), read 2026-10-24. The per-seat and per-account model is what to price carefully: the bill grows with added accounts and users.
Brand24 lists from about $199/mo and is priced by mention volume instead. That is a different kind of surprise. A quiet brand pays predictably; a brand that goes viral, or shares a name with something else, finds that success itself moves the bill.
Neither model is unreasonable for what it does, but they fail in opposite directions, and knowing which failure you can tolerate is most of the decision.
Listening and discovery are not the same thing
This is the distinction that sends people round in circles. Social listening answers "who is talking about me". Content discovery answers "what is working right now, whoever posted it". Brand24 is built for the first and is genuinely good at it: real-time mention tracking with sentiment, anomaly detection when volume spikes, and Slack and CRM integrations so the alert reaches a person.
What it is not built for is handing you the Reddit thread with forty thousand upvotes that never mentioned your brand, or the TikTok that just defined how your category is being talked about. Those are invisible to a mention tracker by design, because your name is not in them.
That second question is the one ViralHunt answers, across 13 networks tracked and 11 to publish, at the level of the individual post rather than the mention. It is a different tool from both of these rather than a cheaper one, priced by brand: $29/mo for 1 brand across all networks (Creator), or $99/mo for 4 brands and 44 connected accounts (Studio).
What each one leaves undone
Hootsuite includes basic social listening, so it overlaps Brand24 at the shallow end, but it is a scheduler at heart and nobody buys it for listening depth. Brand24 has no editorial workflow and no board: it tells you something happened and leaves the doing to whatever you already use.
Between them sits a gap neither closes, which is the step from noticing something to publishing a response while it still matters. That step is why both tools usually end up beside a third one.
What is actually pulling engagement right now
Neither tool on this page tracks native posts, so here is the thing they cannot show you: one post per network, ranked by the engagement it is pulling, read straight off the corpus we measure.
- RedditMarvel for Halloween but your wife is 8 months pregnant g117.2K upvotes
- TikTok🤌 @Yandiomande 🤌 #RealMadrid #ElClásico #LaLigaHighlights9M likes
- XWe got your back, New York!2.1M likes
- Instagram😱… UPD: You guys officially broke the internet - Ghost setup is temporary SOLD OUT! 😭🌪️ UPD2: 🔥 BACK IN STOCK! Get the same Ghost Kit before6.3M likes
- PinterestInstagram growth strategy with emotional, small business, and again for creators and brands936 saves
- FacebookMeses después, en una entrevista con Billboard, Eminem lanzó una de sus declaraciones más contundentes contra Trump: afirmó que cualquier al50.6K reactions
Built 2026-11-08 05:00 from posts we track continuously. Refreshed by cron rather than written by hand, which is why it will say something different tomorrow.
Watch them in use before you decide
Independent reviews and official walkthroughs on YouTube. We did not make these, do not endorse them, and they show the products in use.
Prices and features on this page were read off each vendor pricing page on 2026-10-24. Check them yourself: two of the three corrections we have had to make came from a vendor changing pricing with no announcement.
Which should you choose?
- Brand24, best for brands tracking mentions, sentiment and reputation.
- Hootsuite, best for scheduling and managing your own social accounts.
- ViralHunt, best if you want to discover viral content across 13 networks and turn it into content as a team.