Best Twitter Monitoring Tools for PR Specialists in 2025 (Paid + Free Options)

One mention is all it takes for your brand’s reputation to take a hit. In PR, Twitter is key—not just for connecting with journalists, but for monitoring trends, managing reputation, and staying ahead of the competition.

The right tool offers more than metrics—it brings real-time alerts, sentiment analysis, and competitor tracking to make Twitter monitoring smarter. When planning a campaign, think of it as your shortcut to faster, sharper insights.

Below, you'll find some of the best Twitter monitoring tools—both paid and free—to help you get started.

What is X (Twitter) monitoring and why is it essential for PR?

Twitter monitoring is all about keeping an eye on what’s being said about your brand—from mentions and hashtags to key voices and even competitors.

Knowing how to track Twitter mentions isn’t just helpful–it allows you to catch issues early, spot trends as they unfold, and stay in control of your brand reputation.

It also gives valuable insight into tone and sentiment—so you understand not just the message, but the mood behind it. To do it right, you’ll need the right tools—let’s take a look at some of the best Twitter monitoring tools available today.

Best X (Twitter) monitoring tools for PR pros

Wondering which social media monitoring tools you should consider? Here's a quick comparison of some of the best options available on the market today:

P.S. If you're interested in more than just Twitter, check out this exhaustive list of the best social media management tools for PR professionals.

#1. Prowly

Price: Starting at $258 per month

Free trial? Yes, 7 days

Key features:

• All-in-one PR tool, so all features are tailored to specific needs
• Media monitoring and social media listening with PR metrics
• Audience insights, sentiment analysis, robust media database

Best for: small teams, PR agencies, in-house brands

#2. TweetDeck (X Pro)

Price: Included in X Premium

Free trial? No

Key features:

• One social media platform for posting content and monitoring activity
• Scheduling posts, managing multiple accounts, customizable timelines
• Affordable option for those who don't need deep insights

Best for: Freelancers, social media teams, small brands

#3. Brand24

Price: Starting at $199/month

Free trial? Yes, 14 days

Key features:

• In the cheapest plan, you can track 3 keywords for up to 2k mentions per month
• Includes a detailed AI sentiment analysis
• Allows you to measure social media reach, SoV, engagement, AVE, and presence score

Best for: small brands, agencies, small to mid-sized teams.

#4: Sprout Social

Price: Starting at $199 per month

Free trial? Yes, 30 days

Key features:

• You can manage completely different profiles (great if you have multiple Twitter accounts)
• Allows you to schedule posts in advance, engage with followers and do a performance analysis
• Full scale Twitter monitoring with brand mentions, industry keywords, and hashtags

Best for: large enterprises, established agencies with bigger budgets

#5. Brandwatch

Price: Available upon request

Free trial? No

Key features:

• Allows you to track brand mentions with detailed sentiment analysis
• You can segment data into countries, regions, and demographics
• Historical data access going back to 2010

Best for: large companies, dedicated social media teams with bigger budgets

#6. Mention

Price: Starting at $41 per month

Free trial? Yes

Key features:

• Offers social media monitoring for different platforms
• Allows you to set up alerts with tags within those alerts for detailed monitoring
• Really cool one - you can integrate Mention with Slack

Best for: Freelancers, startups, smaller marketing and communications teams

P.S. Here’s an article that might come in handy if you’re looking for a tool to measure the impact of your communication efforts.

Free X (Twitter) monitoring tools

While the best Twitter monitoring tools are not free, there are other options you can use if you're just starting out or you're on a budget. Here are the three most popular ones:

• Google Alerts - probably the most famous free option out there. It's easy to set up so you don't need any additional skills. You can also get updates through your email, so you don't have to refresh it constantly to see if something new has popped up. However, it misses real-time mentions because many aren't indexed by Google at all.
• X (Twitter) Analytics - the social media platform has a built-in system to track mentions by providing you with information such as top tweets, top mentions, whether you've gained or lost followers, conversions, link clicks, and more. The down side? You won't be able to track sentiment or share of voice.
• Talkwalker - they offer a free search for Twitter mentions that will give you 7 days of historical data. As opposed to Google Alerts, they also give you a Boolean search option so you can customize the results you're getting.

Which tool should I choose to track mentions (if I work in PR)?

Prowly has been built specifically for PR pros and agencies, not just for monitoring Twitter mentions or doing social media management. It's an all-in-one platform for public relations specialists who need an accurate media database, PR CRM, pitching features, monitoring, and reporting.

Prowly has:

• PR-focused options, so you won't need to sort through features you don't need
• Comprehensive reporting and stakeholder-ready visualizations
• Tracking across multiple sources with alerts and sentiment analysis

Is it the best Twitter listening tool for PR specialists? Absolutely.

4 Key features to look for in X (Twitter) monitoring tools

When exploring Twitter monitoring tools, it's important to focus on all of the features it has to offer. What's even more important, if the tool itself has capabilities that are relevant to your work. No one needs a tool with fancy features if you're only going to take advantage of a fraction of the product.

#1 Real-time alerts

Overnight success, or overnight crisis?

Whatever it is, you'll know it before your morning cup of coffee if the tool you choose can provide you with real-time alerts. This is especially useful if you want to track brand mentions right after you launch a new product or campaign.

#2 Sentiment analysis

Set them up before you run any social media campaigns.

A flicker of negativity is much easier to manage than a full-blown crisis. With Prowly, you can also track sentiment analysis across different channels like social media vs. online outlets to see how your reputation performs in all spaces.

#3 Keyword tracking

Great Twitter monitoring tools should also have the option to track keywords.

Not brands or people - keywords. That's because sometimes a keyword that's so attached to your brand can be said elsewhere, and you might miss it otherwise.

#4 Competitor monitoring

You can monitor Twitter activity for any mentions of your competitors. How about analyzing them?

A good twitter monitoring tool should be able to collect all mentions of your competitors, and analyze them with metrics such as SOV, estimated reach across different countries, and so on.

#5 Comprehensive reporting

"So Henry, how much am I spending on these Twitter listening tools again?."

You've probably heard your boss ask you what's the cost, and while you can get Twitter monitoring tools free, usually those paid options have cool features that can elevate your game. For example, coverage reports.

How to monitor Twitter mentions with Prowly?

Prowly's media monitoring transforms into a Twitter monitoring tool with the right settings. If you're in public relations, a good PR platform should have this option available for you. Why? Because important conversations can happen everywhere, and you can't risk a reputation oopsie if you're not monitoring all channels holistically.

This is what the process looks like:

Set up a monitoring query

First, set up the name of your query so you can have everything organized. We'd usually recommend doing a name of your campaign plus quarter or year so you can easily find it later on.

Choose where you'd like the monitoring to happen

If you're using Prowly as a Twitter monitoring tool only, you can select "X" from the Social media and Sources options.

Just in case you'd like to monitor mentions elsewhere, there are all kinds of sources available for you, including print and broadcast monitoring.

Analyze and evaluate results

With an abundance of metrics available, you can gauge your campaign's success or underperformances by looking at visual data. It's easier to spot trends this way, and explain your reasoning to people who might not understand all nuances of PR or marketing (but will understand red or green on charts).

Report back to stakeholders with concrete data

It's rare that a Twitter social listening tool has this option, but coverage reports are a great way to present your work to clients and stakeholders. It helps show the impact you made, what the campaign achieved and well... shows that you need a Twitter listening tool in your budget.

What all of this means for your PR strategy

Monitoring X (Twitter) is an essential component of any PR strategy. Whether you're doing it to stay ahead of competitors, want to simply monitor brand conversations or manage your reputation, you need this kind of monitoring in your arsenal.

Choosing the best suited tool will work to your advantage in all shape and form. Pick the one that matches your needs best. If that's for PR, then Prowly is your answer.

Ready to see how Prowly can support you?

Dig deep into Prowly's social media monitoring features and start tracking all kinds of mentions more effectively, starting today.