Last Updated: May 20th, 2025
What Is Brandwatch?
Owned by the Cision group, Brandwatch was founded in 2007 by Giles Palmer. The product was created for tracking social media mentions and social advertising impact, but today, we can see much more on this platform; that’s what we will check on this Brandwatch review.
Before we get to that part, let’s quickly review the company’s history in a timeline:
- 2007- Brandwatch was founded in 2007 in Brighton, England.
- 2010- It officially launched its flagship platform, offering real-time social media monitoring and analytics.
- 2017- Brandwatch acquired Buzzsumo, which is an influencer discovery tool.
- 2017-2019- Following the BuzzSumo acquisition, Brandwatch expanded its services from social media monitoring to include influencer identification, analytics, and broader social listening capabilities.
- 2020- They released specialized influencer marketing software that supports platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Currently, Brandwatch has over 1,000 employees in more than 15 locations and is one of the known influencer marketing platforms.
They offer various services to help brands run effective collaborations, manage their online presence, and boost brand awareness. The platform claims to provide a database of more than 30M influencers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter.
Brandwatch Review: Pricing & Features + Best Alternative
Are you thinking about using Brandwatch to find influencers in your niche? In this guide, we will check the platform’s features, read Brandwatch reviews, and at the end, introduce you to some alternatives to this platform.
Brandwatch Features
Since 2017, Brandwatch has been focused on helping brands manage their social media channels. Here are the features it offers.
1. Consumer Intelligence
If you want to know what online users share about your brand, the Brandwatch social listening tool can help you understand your consumers, brand, and market. This tool will collect posts, comments, reviews, and conversations related to you. Then you can categorize these data, know your target market, and use the Brandwatch AI tool to analyze these data.
2. Social Media Management
Brandwatch provides social media management services to help you manage your Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter inboxes in one place.
Create a custom calendar for the days you want to upload content and automate it. You can set who needs to approve each piece of content before sharing it on each channel as well. The tool tracks your audience insights and measures your performance by comparing it with your top competitors.
3. Influencer Marketing
On Brandwatch influencer marketing software, you have access to a database of more than 50M creators across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch.
Note: There are two database sizes on Brandwatch’s website. On its pricing page, it is mentioned 30M and on Influencer Marketing page it is 50M. So, we are not sure about the correct size of database.
- You can find influencers’ contact details on Brandwatch, store contracts, make payments, and monitor the results.
- With filters such as interests, brand affinities, prior brand work, credibility, etc, you can find the most related creators to work with.
- After running campaigns, you will automatically receive reports on campaign impressions, viewership, engagement, and more.
How to Find Influencers on Brandwatch?
To find influencers in Brandwatch, go to the Brandwatch Influence module. Use the Discover tool to search a global database of creators on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Once you find a match, you can view detailed analytics on their profile, including audience quality, engagement, and content style.
Then, you can save preferred influencers to your CRM, contact them directly from the platform, and manage campaigns from outreach to performance tracking and payments.
However, it’s not a free feature, so you won’t be able to use it before requesting a demo and purchasing one of Brandwatch’s plans.
Now, how much does Brandwatch cost?
Brandwatch Pricing
Unfortunately, Brandwatch doesn’t provide visible pricing on its package. You need to schedule a free demo with their team and ask for the package that suits your needs.
However, on TrustRadius, customers have reported that the subscription packages start from $800. Meanwhile, we are not sure which features are accessible with this price.
Is Brandwatch Worth It?
It depends. If you’re a large company or agency with a solid budget and ongoing needs across social media monitoring and influencer management, Brandwatch can be worth the investment.
However, it’s too expensive for most small and mid-sized businesses. The platform requires a custom-priced annual contract, which can be cost-prohibitive unless you’re managing large campaigns or multiple brands.
If you want to save your time and money, we have a better alternative to Brandwatch: Ainfluencer.
You can easily join Ainfluencer for free and search for influencers, create unlimited campaigns, and send as many invitations as you like.
As you can see, there is no need to contact anyone or pay for a subscription. Everything is in your hand.
Brandwatch Review: What Do Customers Say?
Now it’s time to read their customer reviews to find out about the efficiency of Brandwatch services.
- On Trustradius, there are more than 150 reviews of Brandwatch with an 8.3 rating score.
- Most of the customers are happy with the campaign management and social listening tools.
- According to customer reviews on TrustRadius, the pricing is high for many users, and you can find better alternatives with reasonable pricing. Also, the analytics dashboard is basic and doesn’t provide helpful information.
- On G2, Brandwatch has more than 600 reviews and a 4.4 rating score out of 5.
- While TikTok is one of the major social media platforms, it’s not easy to find TiikTok influencers to work with on Brandwatch. It also doesn’t allow you to search by keywords to find creators in your industry.
- According to customer reviews, it’s easy to set influencer campaigns and monitor them on this platform. However, the automation services don’t work perfectly.
What Are Brandwatch Pros and Cons?
Pros
- Supporting multiple social media channels.
- Supporting 13 different languages.
- Customizable dashboard.
- Powerful reporting and visualization of data
Cons
- No clear pricing plans.
- No free version or trial.
- Limited filtering options.
- Steep learning curve because of a lot of functionality.
- Overwhelming data volume.
Well, you may need an alternative!
The Best Brandwatch Alternative: Ainfluencer
As we saw, Brandwatch has a great database of influencers across major platforms. However, unclear pricing and its steep learning curve have made brands search for Brandwatch alternatives, especially an alternative with a simpler dashboard and a more affordable price.
You can try similar platforms such as Ainfluencer.
You may wonder why Ainfluencer is the best alternative to Brandwatch. Let’s see why:
- Ainfluencer is a free influencer marketing platform that connects brands and influencers in a safe interface.
- On this platform, you can search among more than +5M active influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
- You can also use more than 20 filtering options to find influencers, such as engagement metrics, language, location, budget, etc.
- With the help of an AI-powered search tool, Ainfluencer will suggest a list of the most relevant influencers in a couple of seconds.
- You can tap on their profiles to view their engagement metrics, latest account insights, and previous collaborations with similar brands.
- As a brand, you don’t have to pay any additional fee to the platform, and you only need to set the collaboration cost with the influencer.
- Ainfluencer ensures you receive the results you want, and you will be fully refunded in case of any problems.
- Additionally, Ainfluencer offers a free Shopify app to let you integrate your Shopify store into your influencer marketing campaign.
So if you are ready to run safe and effective influencer marketing campaigns on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, sign up on Ainfluencer for free now!
| Features | Brandwatch | Ainfluencer |
|---|---|---|
| Database of Influencers | 30M | +5M |
| Filtering | Keyword Search | AI-powered search engine/
More than 20 filters |
| Pricing Options | N/A | Free |
| Influencer Search | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter |
Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube |
| Number of Invitations | N/A | Unlimited |
| Number of Campaigns | N/A | Unlimited |
| Campaign Management | Yes | Yes |
| Detailed Insights | Yes | Yes |
Other Brandwatch Alternatives
If you’d like to try other Brandwatch alternatives, here are some of the influencer marketing tools to try. However, none of them is free and they don’t provide free trials!
1. Grin
This platform provides tools for creator search, influencer analysis, content management, reporting, and relationship management.
Although Grin doesn’t provide any free plans and tools like Brandwatch, it is still considered one of its top competitors as it has features like advanced CRM and campaign automation.
Read Grin Review.
2. Captiv8
If you like to manage partnerships and payments on the same platform you use to find influencers, Captiv8 is another Brandwatch competitor.
This platform offers tools to collect influencer insights, discover the ones that match your targeting criteria, run campaigns, and measure performance.
Captiv8 also provides some tools for affiliate marketing to create your storefront, measure creator ROI and sales, run TikTok shop partnerships, etc.
The packages on Captiv8 are customizable, and you can add features you want to your plan. However, the platform doesn’t provide any information about the cost of each feature.
Captiv8 also provides some tools for affiliate marketing to create your storefront, measure creator ROI and sales, run TikTok shop partnerships, etc. The packages on Captiv8 are customizable and you can add features you want to your plan. However, the platform doesn’t provide any information about the cost of each feature.
Read Captiv8 Review.
3. Inbeat
Inbeat is another alternative to Brandwatch. This influencer marketing platform provides tools to search for influencers across Instagram and TikTok using different filters, find creators similar to the ones you have already worked with, and check their engagement rate and the number of fake followers.
So basically, Inbeat only allows you to discover influencers, and the cost of the service is from $200 to $1000.
Read Inbeat Review
4. Upfluence
Here is another competitor to Brandwatch. Upfluence is a well-established influencer marketing platform that helps brands identify and collaborate with influencers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Pinterest, and blogs.
Upfluence is well-known for integrating with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. This makes it perfect for identifying influencers within your own customer base — something Brandwatch doesn’t offer.
Read Upfluence Review.
5. Heepsy
Heepsy is a budget-friendly influencer discovery platform that provides access to an extensive database of influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
It is a strong Brandwatch alternative for brands that want a focused, affordable, and easy-to-use influencer marketing platform with powerful discovery, campaign management, and analytics features.
Read Heepsy Review.
Conclusion
Brandwatch offers effective tools for social media management, influencer marketing, and consumer intelligence. However, in this Brandwatch review, we saw that the platform lacks transparent pricing, e-commerce integration, and also easy-to-use dashboard, which makes it not the best option for all businesses.
While it has received positive reviews for its campaign management and social listening features, some users have found the subscription cost high and the analytics dashboard basic.
For businesses looking for a better Brandwatch competitor with a user-friendly interface and reasonable pricing, Ainfluencer is a great option. Ainfluencer helps brands connect with relevant influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for free and run safe collaborations.
FAQs
While this platform doesn’t provide visible pricing on its website, we can check the reviews on Trustradius to find out how much it costs. Based on the customers’ reviews, the packages start from $800.
Unfortunately, Brandwatch doesn’t provide free service or a trial. You must schedule a demo with their team members and ask for a custom plan. But if you are looking for a free alternative to Brandwatch, Ainfluencer is a great choice. On Ainfluencer you can search through more than 5M influencers and run safe collaborations all for free.
Yes. Brandwatch provides detailed insights into each influencer’s audience, including age, gender, location, interests, and even brand affinity. This helps ensure you’re reaching the right people, not just followers, but your target customers.
Yes, but it’s for medium to large brands. It offers an end-to-end solution: influencer discovery, vetting, campaign planning, content approvals, real-time tracking, and integrated payments. It’s powerful, but best suited for structured, ongoing influencer programs.
They were two separate companies until 2017, when Brandwatch acquired Buzzsumo. However, despite the acquisition, BuzzSumo retained its own branding and continued to operate as a distinct tool within the Brandwatch family. Both platforms are now part of the Cision group.
