Brand tracking is no longer just “did we get more mentions this month?” The best brand tracking tools help marketing teams measure brand awareness, monitor brand mentions across social media platforms and news sites, quantify brand sentiment and brand perception, and tie brand performance back to real marketing campaigns.

In 2026, one more channel matters a lot: AI search engines. If your brand appears (or does not appear) inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Google AI Overviews, that visibility directly shapes consideration and conversions. That’s why a modern brand-tracking solution needs both classic brand-monitoring software and AI-native brand-tracking metrics.

In this article, I'll walk you through the 12 best brand tracking tools, ranking them from best to worst.

Comparison table

TL;DR

• If you need to track brand visibility inside AI search engines, AIclicks is the clear best option because it was built for how brands are mentioned, cited, and framed in AI answers, not just on social media.

• If you need classic social listening at enterprise scale, Brandwatch and Talkwalker lead.

• If your goal is PR and news sites monitoring, Meltwater is a strong pick.

• If you want a social media marketing platform with publishing and customer care workflows, Sprout Social is excellent, but listening often lives behind add-ons.

• If you need brand tracking surveys and long-term brand health measurement, YouGov BrandIndex and Qualtrics are the gold standard.

• If you need a free safety net, Google Alerts is a good brand monitoring starter layer.

The best brand tracking tools

1. AIclicks (Best overall for AI-era brand tracking)

AIclicks is brand tracking software designed for the channel that is quietly reshaping brand strategy: AI answers. Instead of only tracking social media mentions or press coverage, it shows how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses, which prompts trigger mentions, whether your site is cited, and how your brand positioning compares to competitors.

This matters because “brand reputation” now forms inside AI summaries. If Google AI Overviews or ChatGPT frames your product as “expensive” or “hard to use,” that is brand perception at scale. AIclicks makes that measurable with brand tracking metrics built around AI outputs, then turns it into actionable insights for content marketing platform teams, SEO teams, and growth marketers.

Strengths

• Tracks visibility across multiple major LLMs in one dashboard and surfaces the prompts that drive discovery.

• Citation-level sentiment analysis for brand sentiment and narrative shifts, not just a generic score.

• Competitive tracking that shows where competitors win “share of mention” inside AI answers, which is often where the deal starts.

Weaknesses

• Not meant to replace a full social media monitoring suite with publishing, community management, and a customer service team inbox. Pair it with a social tool if you need that.

Pricing

From $79 per month (Starter promo $39 per month).

Check out this video where we share the exact strategy that took AIclicks from zero to #5 in AI visibility rankings in just 90 days:

2. Brandwatch (Best for enterprise social listening depth)

Brandwatch is built for large-scale social listening and consumer intelligence. It’s excellent when you need heavy data collection across public conversations and want workflows for analysis, reporting, and brand management.

For brand monitoring, Brandwatch shines in taxonomy and historical analysis. You can track brand mentions, segment by themes, and monitor brand health trends over time. It’s the kind of tool you buy when brands understand that “brand tracking regularly” needs governance, consistent tagging, and repeatable dashboards.

Strengths

• Mature analytics and alerting for crisis monitoring and brand reputation management.

• Strong for deeper insights from social and web conversations, especially for enterprise teams.

Weaknesses

• It does not solve AI-engine brand visibility. You can have perfect brand tracking metrics on social while your brand appears incorrectly in AI answers.

Pricing

Custom pricing (demo and quote).

3. Talkwalker (Best for global coverage and predictive insights)

Talkwalker is a social listening platform known for broad coverage and AI features like predictive insights, image recognition, and sentiment analysis. It’s strong if your brand presence spans many regions, languages, and channels, and you want a single system to monitor brand mentions across social, reviews, and the open web.

In practice, Talkwalker is ideal for marketing strategies that require early warning signals: a campaign spike, a competitor narrative shift, or an emerging topic your target audience is adopting. Their coverage claims include tracking many social networks, review sites, and websites, which helps when you need high-quality data across diverse sources.

Strengths

• Global listening footprint with strong AI enrichment and forecasting capabilities.

• Great for competitive analysis and trend forecasting when the brand performs differently by region.

Weaknesses

• Quote-based pricing and heavier implementation. Also, it still does not directly answer “how do we rank inside AI answers” the way AIclicks does.

Pricing

Custom pricing (demo).

4. Meltwater (Best for PR-led brand monitoring and news intelligence)

Meltwater is a media intelligence suite that’s especially strong for PR and comms teams tracking brand reputation across news sites and broader media coverage. If your brand tracking solution needs to capture press mentions, media reach, and executive visibility, it belongs on your shortlist.

For brand tracking metrics tied to PR outcomes, Meltwater’s reporting and media workflows are often the differentiator. It helps you connect marketing campaigns to coverage, detect spikes, and build reports stakeholders actually read.

Strengths

• Strong at media monitoring, news coverage reporting, and brand monitoring at the comms layer.

• Useful when “brand stacks” include PR measurement and earned media.

Weaknesses

• Not self-serve: you typically go through a guided demo, and pricing is quote-based.

• AI answer visibility is outside its core focus.

Pricing

Custom pricing (request demo).

5. Sprout Social (Best for social operations and response workflows)

Sprout Social is a social media marketing platform designed for publishing, engagement, and customer care workflows. It’s fantastic when “brand monitoring” means “we need to respond quickly, route messages, and prove response time improvements.” Pricing starts at $199 per month.

Where Sprout becomes a brand tracking software option is in its monitoring and add-ons. Listening capabilities can require additional access and purchases depending on the plan structure.

Strengths

• Excellent workflow tooling for social teams, approvals, and inbox management.

• Strong for social media mentions where action speed matters.

Weaknesses

• Listening depth and broader social listening tools can be gated by add-ons.

• Still does not cover how your brand appears in AI answers, which is increasingly where brand awareness is formed.

Pricing

Starts at $199 per month.

6. Brand24 (Best value for mid-market monitoring and reporting)

Brand24 is a popular brand monitoring tool for tracking brand mentions across social media and the broader web. It’s strong for teams who want quick setup, clean dashboards, alerts, and easy reporting. Its pricing page lists tiers starting at $149 per month billed annually, with a free trial available.

This is a solid choice for marketing teams that want to monitor brand mentions, track brand health trends, and report on campaign-driven spikes without paying enterprise listening prices.

Strengths

• Good day-to-day monitoring tools, alerts, and reporting cadence.

• Practical for competitive tracking and tracking mentions around launches.

Weaknesses

• Great for web and social listening, but it won’t tell you whether your brand appears correctly inside AI search engines, or whether your site is cited as the source.

Pricing

From $149 per month billed annually (tiered pricing).

7. Mention (Best for straightforward monitoring, but now expensive)

Mention is a long-running brand monitoring software option for tracking conversations about your own brand, competitors, or industry. In 2026, it’s positioned around a Company Plan, and older self-serve plans are treated as legacy.

If you want a brand tracker that is simple, alert-driven, and focused on “monitor brand mentions,” it can still fit. But pricing has moved upmarket, with some listings showing starting pricing around $599 per user per month.

Strengths

• Straightforward monitoring approach for brand mentions and spikes.

• Good for teams that want alerts, not a complex research environment.

Weaknesses

• Price and packaging can be hard to justify for many marketing teams.

• Not designed for AI visibility tracking or detailed brand measurement inside AI answers.

Pricing

The starting price is around $599 per user per month.

8. Awario (Best budget-friendly share of voice tracking)

Awario is a practical option when you need to track brand mentions, run competitor monitoring, and measure share of voice without enterprise pricing. Awario’s own materials commonly reference three plans: Starter, Pro, and Enterprise, with monthly pricing at $39, $119, and $399, respectively.

It’s useful for brand tracking metrics like volume, reach, sentiment analysis, and competitive analysis. If your goal is consistent brand monitoring, it gets the job done.

Strengths

• Solid core brand tracking features for the price.

• Useful share of voice workflows for competitive tracking.

Weaknesses

• Less polished reporting and narrative tooling than premium platforms.

• Does not cover AI answer engine brand visibility, which is a major blind spot for modern brand strategy.

Pricing

$39 Starter, $119 Pro, $399 Enterprise (monthly).

9. YouGov BrandIndex (Best for always-on brand health metrics)

YouGov BrandIndex is designed for continuous brand tracking surveys and always-on brand health measurement. It focuses on daily consumer opinion across a set of brand health metrics, including an overall index-style score and component metrics.

This is what you buy when you need reliable data for “how our brand performs” at a perception level, not just a count of social media mentions. It helps brands understand shifts in consideration, quality perception, value, and recommendation intent.

Strengths

• Strong longitudinal survey data for brand health and brand positioning.

• Great for executive reporting and market-level benchmarking.

Weaknesses

• It’s not a real-time social listening tool, and it does not address AI search visibility. You still need monitoring tools for web chatter and AI answers.

Pricing

Custom pricing.

10. Qualtrics Brand Tracker (Best for research-grade brand tracking surveys)

Qualtrics is a best-in-class choice for brand tracking surveys when you need detailed brand measurement tied to business outcomes. Their brand tracker positioning centers on building a tracker aligned to objectives and connecting metrics to marketplace outcomes.

If you need to measure brand awareness properly, you typically want both aided and unaided awareness questions, then brand perception and preference questions layered in as your program matures. Qualtrics is built for that kind of survey design, governance, and analysis.

Strengths

• Excellent for survey-based brand health and deeper insights from structured research.

• Flexible program design for serious market research teams.

Weaknesses

• Not a brand monitoring tool for daily web chatter, and not designed for tracking brand visibility inside AI engines. You’ll still need those channels covered elsewhere.

Pricing

Custom enterprise pricing (quote-based).

11. Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit (Best bridge between SEO and AI brand visibility)

Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit is designed to track brand visibility in AI-driven search and analyze brand perception and sentiment versus competitors. It includes prompt tracking, brand performance reports, and recommendations.

This is most compelling if your team already lives in Semrush for branded search performance, site audits, and SEO workflows, and you want AI visibility layered into the same stack. Its pricing is clearly stated at $99 per month for the toolkit.

Strengths

• Useful competitor research and prompt workflows for AI visibility.

• Great for teams building a unified SEO and AI tracking routine.

Weaknesses

• It’s an add-on with per-domain considerations, and refresh cadence varies by report type.

• For AI-first brand tracking, it’s less specialized than AIclicks, especially for day-to-day “what did the model say about us today” monitoring.

Pricing

$99 per month for the AI Visibility Toolkit.

12. Google Alerts (Best free brand radar)

Google Alerts is the simplest way to track brand mentions on the web for free. You enter terms and get email notifications when new results match your query, with controls for frequency and sources.

It’s not “best brand tracking” in a professional sense, but it is an excellent baseline layer in your brand monitoring software stack. Use it for executive names, product names, competitor names, and campaign taglines. For many teams, it’s just what they need to catch unexpected news mentions before they spread.

Strengths

• Free, easy, and quick for basic monitoring across Google-indexed content.

• Helpful for “brand radar” coverage of news pages and blogs.

Weaknesses

• No sentiment analysis, weak filtering, and plenty of noise.

• No real analytics, no competitive benchmarking, and no AI answer visibility.

Pricing

Free.

How to pick the right brand tracking tool

Choosing from the best brand tracking tools comes down to matching the tool to your goals, channels, and data quality needs.

1. Define outcomes and key metrics first
   Decide what you need to improve: measure brand awareness, protect brand reputation, or prove brand performance. Then pick 5 to 8 brand tracking metrics you will track regularly.

2. Verify coverage where mentions actually happen
   Make sure the tool can track brand mentions across the social media platforms, news sites, forums, and review sources that matter to your target audience. If AI discovery is important, you also need tracking for when your brand appears in AI answers.

3. Prioritize data quality over dashboard count
   Look for strong filtering, deduplication, language and location controls, and reliable sentiment analysis. Otherwise, social media mentions and brand monitoring alerts get noisy fast.

4. Choose the right measurement method
   Use brand monitoring software and social listening tools for real-time brand perception and brand sentiment. Use brand tracking surveys and survey data for brand health metrics and consistent long-term trendlines. Many teams use both.

5. Check pricing based on total cost
   Consider seats, data limits, exports, and add-ons. The cheapest plan is rarely the best brand tracking solution if it misses key channels.

Conclusion

Brand tracking is about protecting and improving brand health, not collecting charts. The best tools help you monitor brand mentions across social media and news sites, measure brand awareness with reliable data, and turn brand tracking metrics into decisions that improve marketing campaigns.

AIclicks stands out because it tracks what most platforms still miss: brand visibility inside AI search engines and AI answers. It shows when your brand appears, how you are framed, and where competitors are winning the narrative, giving marketing teams actionable insights to improve brand positioning and brand performance in the channel that is shaping modern discovery.