Mention vs Sprout Social
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentMention compared with Sprout Social
Sprout Social's listening module sits inside a full social suite with publishing, inbox, and CRM-style contact history, and it is priced per seat, which gets expensive fast for a team that only wants read access. Mention charges by mentions and alerts with unlimited users, so a large audience of passive readers costs nothing extra. Sprout is the better single-vendor answer for social operations; Mention is the better answer for earned coverage beyond social.
Choose Mention if
Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation.
Choose Sprout Social if
Mid-market brands and established agencies with a dedicated social team of two or more, high inbound message volume, multi-location review management, and a stakeholder who expects real reporting rather than a screenshot of follower count.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Mention | Sprout Social |
|---|---|---|
| Category | PR | Social |
| Starting price | From $599 per month on an annual contract, quoted through a demo (free trial) | $79 per seat per month billed annually (Essentials), or $99 billed monthly (30 days trial) |
| Pricing model | A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts. | Per seat per month across four published self-serve tiers plus a quoted Enterprise tier, with profile limits on the two cheapest tiers, metered AI credits, and listening, analytics, advocacy, and influencer marketing sold as separate add-ons. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | A trial exists but is gated behind a demo request rather than a public signup | 30 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation. | Mid-market brands and established agencies with a dedicated social team of two or more, high inbound message volume, multi-location review management, and a stakeholder who expects real reporting rather than a screenshot of follower count. |
| Setup time | A first alert takes minutes, and results begin arriving immediately. Getting a feed that is actually worth reading takes longer: expect a week or two of tuning Boolean exclusions, language and country scoping, and source filters before the noise ratio settles. Onboarding is scheduled with the account manager rather than self-directed. | A day for a single brand, a week or two for a multi-brand or multi-location rollout. Connecting profiles is quick; configuring inbox rules, tags, approval chains, and report templates is where the real time goes and where the value is. |
| Learning curve | Low for reading a feed, moderate for writing good queries. The 2,000 character advanced alert is powerful and unforgiving; a poorly written one either floods the account and burns mention quota or silently misses the coverage that mattered. Plan for someone to own query maintenance rather than treating alerts as set and forget. | Moderate. The interface is the friendliest at this price point and most publishers are productive within a day, but the analytics and tagging systems reward deliberate setup and most teams underuse them for months. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS app, Android app, Desktop notifications, REST API (paid add-on) | Web app, iOS, Android, Browser extension |
| Compliance | GDPR | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, CCPA, Public company financial reporting under SEC rules |
| Founded | 2012 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Ownership | Acquired by Agorapulse (2025), previously owned by Mynewsdesk (2018 to 2025) | Publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker SPT |
Strengths and limitations
Mention
Strengths
- Broad source coverage in one index: social platforms, news, blogs, forums, and more than seventy-five review sites, rather than social alone.
- Advanced Boolean alerts with a 2,000 character query allowance, which is the difference between a signal feed and a noise feed for ambiguous brand names.
- Unlimited users on the Company plan, so read access can be given to support, legal, and executives without a per-seat calculation.
- White-label scheduled reporting that makes listening a saleable agency deliverable rather than an internal cost.
Limitations
- The self-serve tiers are gone. Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus were discontinued for new customers in July 2025, so a small business cannot buy Mention at its historic price point regardless of what third-party pricing pages still say.
- The only published route to purchase is a demo request; there is no public signup and no clearly documented open trial, which makes cheap evaluation impossible.
- Historical data is not included at any tier. A new alert starts collecting from creation, and backfilling up to two years is a separate paid add-on.
- API access is also an add-on rather than a plan feature, which raises the real cost of any integration project above the headline price.
Sprout Social
Strengths
- The best-designed working surface in the category; the calendar, composer, and Smart Inbox are consistently rated above Hootsuite and above every cheaper competitor.
- A 30-day free trial with no credit card required, which is double or triple what anyone else at this price offers and lets you actually test it against real volume.
- Genuinely deep reporting with consistent cross-network metric definitions, competitor benchmarking, and presentation-ready exports that agencies sell as a deliverable.
- Review management across Google, Facebook, and third-party sites in the same queue as social messages, which is the standout feature for multi-location businesses.
Limitations
- Per-seat pricing starting at $79 with no free plan puts Sprout out of reach for the majority of small businesses in this category.
- The five-profile cap persists all the way through the $199 Standard tier, which is a confusing and expensive ladder for anyone managing more than one brand.
- Unlimited profiles cost $299 a seat, a full $100 more than Hootsuite charges for the same removal of the cap.
- Listening, premium analytics, employee advocacy, and influencer marketing are all separate quoted products, so the demo and the invoice can look very different.
Pricing compared
Mention
A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts.
- CompanyFrom $599
- Historical data add-onQuoted
- API access add-onQuoted
- Legacy self-serve tiersNo longer sold
As a listening engine at the $600 to $1,500 a month level, Mention is competitive: broad source coverage, real Boolean control, unlimited seats, and reporting an agency can put a client logo on. The problem is the shape of the offer rather than the number. A tool that built its reputation on a $49 entry point now requires a demo, an annual commitment, and two paid add-ons before it does what a buyer assumes it already does. For a small business that reads about Mention in a listicle and expects a card-and-go signup, the value question does not really arise, because that route no longer exists. For a mid-market comms team already budgeting five figures a year for monitoring, it is a reasonable buy that undercuts the traditional media intelligence vendors by a wide margin.
Sprout Social
Per seat per month across four published self-serve tiers plus a quoted Enterprise tier, with profile limits on the two cheapest tiers, metered AI credits, and listening, analytics, advocacy, and influencer marketing sold as separate add-ons.
- Essentials$79
- Standard$199
- Professional$299
- Advanced$399
- EnterpriseCustom
Sprout is not overpriced for what it does, it is overpriced for what most small businesses do. Judged on the quality of the inbox, the consistency of the reporting, and the review-management coverage, it is the best-built product in this category and the daily experience is measurably better than Hootsuite's at a similar price. The problem is the shape of the meter: per seat, with a five-profile cap that persists through the $199 tier, and with the differentiators you are shown in a demo sold as unpublished add-ons. A three-person team on Standard is $7,164 a year for scheduling, inbox, and reporting that Metricool Advanced covers for under $1,300. Sprout earns its price only when inbound engagement volume, review management, or reporting credibility is the actual constraint on your business, and it is honest enough to let you find out over thirty days without a credit card.
Editorial verdict on each
Mention
Mention still does the thing it became known for, and does it well: a broad, fast index across social, news, forums, and review sites, with Boolean control good enough to make an ambiguous brand name workable and reporting polished enough to bill a client for. What changed is who is allowed to buy it. The self-serve tiers that made Mention a default recommendation for small businesses were retired in July 2025, publishing and replying were removed in January 2026, and the only published route now is a demo leading to an annual Company contract from $599 a month with historical data and API access priced on top. For a mid-market comms team that would otherwise be quoted five figures by a traditional media intelligence vendor, that is a fair deal and worth a bake-off against Agility PR. For the small business this directory is written for, Mention is now a tool to know about rather than one to buy, and Brand24 or a monitoring module inside a platform you already pay for will get you further for the money.
Read the full Mention profileSprout Social
Sprout Social is the best-built product in this category and the wrong purchase for most of the businesses reading about it. The Smart Inbox, review management, and reporting are genuinely superior to everything cheaper, and the 30-day no-credit-card trial means you can prove that to yourself rather than take anyone's word. But the meter is per seat, the five-profile cap survives all the way to $199, unlimited profiles cost $100 more per seat than Hootsuite charges for the same thing, and the listening you get shown in a demo is a quoted add-on. Buy Sprout when social is a staffed function with real inbound volume, multi-location reviews, or a stakeholder who scrutinizes your numbers. If social is one person posting four times a week, take Metricool or SocialBee and put the eight thousand dollars a year into content instead.
Read the full Sprout Social profileMention profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; Sprout Social last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.