Brand24 charges 76× Awario per mention; 4 of 6 listening tools hide the price
How brand perception is measured by survey, listening and reviews, and what six social-listening tools print for the listening part, as of September 2026.
Brand perception is measured by asking people, and only a survey asks the people who never post. Social listening measures something narrower, the public conversation, and its price per mention varies 76-fold between two tools that print one: Brand24’s entry plan works out at US$124.50 per 1,000 mentions, Awario’s at US$1.63, both billed monthly.2 3 Four of the six listening tools we checked print no price at all. The 2023 version of this piece listed five ways to measure perception; the useful answer is which instrument measures what, and what each costs.
01Survey, listening, reviews: three instruments, three different populations
A survey measures awareness, consideration and the Net Promoter Score among people you chose to ask. Bain defines the score as the percentage of promoters, who answer 9 or 10 on a zero-to-ten scale, minus the percentage of detractors, who answer 0 to 6.1 Listening counts mentions, share of voice and sentiment among people who chose to speak. Reviews are a smaller, self-selected group again, and the one most exposed to manipulation.
02What listening costs per mention
At entry level Brand24 charges about 76 times what Awario charges per 1,000 mentions
Monthly-billed plan price divided by the plan's monthly mention cap, US$ per 1,000 mentions, 2026 price lists
Source: Brand24 and Awario pricing pages; TechBag arithmetic · as of 30 September 2026 · A mention cap is a limit, not a measure of coverage or quality
Annual billing lowers both: Brand24’s Individual plan falls to US$199 a month and Awario’s Starter to US$29.2 3 The gap is not all margin. The two tools differ in which sources they crawl, and a cheap mention from a source your buyers do not read is worth nothing. Test both on the same three keywords for the same fortnight before you sign.
03Buying in India
Both printed price lists are in US dollars; through a reseller the invoice is in rupees with 18% GST added. Two Indian instruments apply. Survey answers tied to a name or email are personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; the DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025 and the substantive duties apply from 13 May 2027.8 9 And reviews: on 21 November 2022 the Department of Consumer Affairs launched IS 19000:2022, the Bureau of Indian Standards’ standard for collecting, moderating and publishing online consumer reviews, voluntary at launch.10 Do not buy or filter reviews to move a perception score. TechBag’s HubSpot Service Hub page covers the survey side.
Sources
- Bain & Company, Measuring your Net Promoter Score — page undated; method from Reichheld, Harvard Business Review, December 2003
- Brand24, prices — vendor pricing page, undated
- Awario, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Brandwatch, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Meltwater, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Talkwalker, pricing — vendor pricing page, undated
- Sprout Social, pricing (Listening add-on) — vendor pricing page, undated
- DPDP Rules 2025, commencement timeline — notified 13 November 2025
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — 11 August 2023
- ThePrint, Centre launches framework for protecting consumer interest from deceptive reviews on e-commerce sites — 21 November 2022
Disclosure. TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.
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