When asked for the best social listening tool, 6 AI assistants named 9 brands between them this month. Mention was named most often, followed by Brand24 and Sprout Social. One brand was named by every assistant that answered: Mention.
Who named whom
| Brand | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Claude | Grok | DeepSeek | Cohere | Named by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mention | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 6 of 6 |
| Brand24 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | 5 of 6 |
| Sprout Social | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 5 of 6 |
| Awario | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | 4 of 6 |
| Hootsuite | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | 4 of 6 |
| Brandwatch | · | · | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 3 of 6 |
| Buffer | ✓ | · | · | · | ✓ | · | 2 of 6 |
| Google Alerts | · | · | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | 2 of 6 |
| Keyhole | ✓ | · | · | · | ✓ | · | 2 of 6 |
Share of voice
What each assistant said
ChatGPT
Named 7 brands, in this order: Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Mention, Awario, Brand24, Keyhole.
Choosing the best social listening tool for a small business depends on your specific needs, budget, and the size of your online presence.
Perplexity
Named 4 brands, in this order: Brand24, Awario, Mention, Sprout Social.
For most small businesses, Brand24 is the best all-around social listening tool because it is repeatedly recommended for SMBs and is positioned as affordable, easy to use, and strong on core features like brand mentions, sentiment tracking, and competitor monitoring.
Claude
Named 4 brands, in this order: Mention, Google Alerts, Hootsuite, Brand24.
Here are some top options depending on your needs and budget:
Grok
Named 5 brands, in this order: Awario, Mention, Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Brand24.
DeepSeek
Named 9 brands, in this order: Brand24, Mention, Google Alerts, Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Awario, Keyhole.
The "best" social listening tool depends heavily on your budget, how many platforms you need to track, and what you want to do with the data.
Cohere
Named 4 brands, in this order: Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Mention.
Choosing the best social listening tool for a small business depends on your specific needs, budget, and goals.
The questions asked
- What is the best social listening tool for a small business?
Asked between 2026-09-26 and 2026-09-26. Not answering this month: Gemini, Mistral.
Track what AI assistants say about every client, with white-label reports your clients can read.
See the GEO suiteHow this was measured
Each month we ask every assistant the same plain buyer questions, worded the way a person shopping for this kind of product would ask them, with no brand suggested in the question except where the question itself names the market leader to find alternatives to. Each assistant answers in a fresh session with no earlier conversation, so an answer reflects what the assistant says to anyone who asks, not what it was steered towards.
From each answer we keep the product and company names it recommends. A name counts only when it appears in the answer as a proper name, is not a heading such as "Best for" or "Pricing", and is confirmed by a second assistant naming it too, by a website the answer cites, or by being the market leader named in the question. Share of voice is each brand's share of all brand mentions in the category this month. Assistants that could not answer this month are listed as not answering, never counted as naming nobody.
Cite this page
https://mentionfox.com/ai-recommends/social-listening-tools