Meltwater has been an established player in the social listening and media intelligence space. Since its founding in 2001, it has been a go-to platform for PR professionals, and it’s not uncommon for comms teams to be current or former Meltwater users. However, as PR teams – and the profession at large – evolve, many users are reassessing the longstanding platform and assessing Meltwater alternatives.
The rapidly evolving media landscape requires PR teams to reassess their tools and workflows to ensure they continue to meet the needs of their brand or agency. For PR professionals seeking a more agile, responsive, and innovative alternative to Meltwater, here are some top platforms worth considering in 2025.
Why Consider Meltwater Alternatives?
Users cite several issues with the platform that impact their user experience, often prompting them to explore proven Meltwater alternatives. Common frustrations users share include:
- Missed or Irrelevant Coverage: Users frequently report that Meltwater has missed key mentions, particularly across podcasts, local news, niche publications, and fast-moving social platforms.
- Unintuitive Interface: The dashboard is complex and not user-friendly. Even basic tasks, such as setting up a search or pulling a report, often require multiple steps to complete.
- Unresponsive Support: Long wait times, limited onboarding help, and a lack of actionable resources are commonly flagged in reviews.
- Restricted Customization: Personalized dashboards, automated workflows, and key integrations are only available on higher-tier plans.
- Limited Data for Media Contacts: Meltwater’s journalist database includes around 700,000 contacts, which is significantly fewer than some alternatives. This limits outreach, especially for global or niche campaigns.
What Meltwater users want in their next PR platform
From AI-powered workflows and automation capabilities to advanced reporting features, modern PR platforms allow users to streamline workflows and increase ROI. As the media landscape evolves, users seek Meltwater alternatives that directly address the limitations they’ve encountered.
PR pros must adopt a more data-driven and technical approach, particularly for those seeking to move closer to the C-suite.
Meltwater users typically require the following from their next PR solution:
- An AI-forward approach: Tools that automate routine tasks, such as drafting press releases, distilling coverage takeaways, identifying journalist matches, and surfacing real-time insights, can free up valuable time for more strategic, creative work.
- A truly intuitive experience: PR teams seek clean, easy-to-navigate dashboards, and streamlined reporting without lengthy processes or complex training modules.
- A reliable partner: To maximize platform ROI, PR teams require access to dedicated account managers, responsive customer service, ongoing training, and strategic guidance – complete with transparent contract terms to eliminate any surprises.
- High-quality, robust data: A successful media strategy is built on accurate, high-quality data. Regularly updated contacts, global media coverage, and custom media intelligence services are hallmarks of top PR solutions.
10 Best Meltwater Alternatives for 2025
1. Agility PR Solutions
Best for: PR teams and agencies seeking an innovative, all-in-one PR platform with superior UX and support.
Agility PR Solutions combines media relations, monitoring, media intelligence, and social listening capabilities into a comprehensive platform, offering cutting-edge AI features that support the entire communication lifecycle.
Agility’s ability to save time for PR teams to focus on strategic initiatives, while delivering enhanced ROI, is reflected in high user satisfaction ratings and a diverse clientele that includes PR agencies, nonprofits, higher education institutions, government organizations, and enterprise companies.
With intuitive workflows, precise monitoring capabilities, and a strong support team, Agility ranks among the top preferred Meltwater alternatives for many PR and communications professionals. For a comprehensive Agility PR Solutions vs. Meltwater comparison, check out our detailed comparison report here.
Why it outperforms Meltwater:
- Rates higher for ease of use, customer support, and overall user satisfaction scores on third-party review sites like G2.com
- Comprehensive, regularly updated media database of over 1.1 million contacts
- Advanced AI capabilities, including PR writing assistant, pitch personalization, media outreach lists, and deep monitoring insights
- No siloed modules or cumbersome interfaces
- Dedicated, live customer support instead of bots or tickets
What users are saying
See what previous Meltwater users who made the switch to Agility PR Solutions have to say.
2. Brand24
Best for: Small PR teams looking for an affordable monitoring solution
Brand24 helps PR teams track mentions across multiple platforms, including news, blogs, podcasts, social media, and other online channels. Its platform offers sentiment analysis, anomaly detection, share-of-voice reporting, and influencer identification, making it ideal for PR teams that require budget-friendly coverage analysis.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Real-time alerts and customizable reports
- Sentiment analysis and influencer detection
- Share of voice and reach analytics
3. Exploding Topics
Best for: Research-driven PR teams looking for trend insights
Exploding Topics helps PR pros identify emerging trends and viral topics early, enabling them to act proactively and craft timely pitches and content. By analyzing search trends and conversations across the web, the SEMrush-backed company helps streamline trend-driven storytelling and offer insights on what people are searching for.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Comprehensive data collection over search, social, and e-commerce platforms
- Periodical alerts to detect spikes and activity surges
- Host of free tools to augment strategy, such as keywords, SEO, and backlinks checker
Pricing: The basic plan starts at $39 per month, with a free one-week trial option available.
4. Sprinklr
Best for: Enterprise PR teams that want a comprehensive monitoring and media management platform
As a customer experience management platform, Sprinklr’s comprehensive suite of offerings includes social media management, consumer intelligence insights, campaign monitoring, and more. With an integrated platform, it suits large organizations that want to monitor and manage everything centrally.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Comprehensive data collection over search, social, and e-commerce platforms
- Periodical alerts to detect spikes and activity surges
- Built-in free tools to augment strategy, such as keywords, SEO, and backlinks checker
Pricing: Users have to book a demo to find out
5. Mentionlytics
Best for: PR teams in SMEs that require coverage analysis and monitoring on a budget
Mentionlytics offers an online and social listening service that tracks brand mentions, sentiment, and influencer activity. It provides fast alerts and easy-to-use reporting features, making it ideal for small agencies and mid-sized teams that need straightforward monitoring without steep learning curves.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Real-time media monitoring across online platforms
- AI-enhanced sentiment insights and smart notifications
- Custom dashboards and exportable reports
Pricing: Basic plan starts at $58 per month
6. Mention
Best for: PR teams requiring easy monitoring and social media management
Mention is a comprehensive monitoring and social media management platform that provides mention tracking, engagement metrics, and social media post scheduling features. With multilingual support and collaboration features, it is a worthwhile Meltwater alternative.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Detailed analytics such as volume, sentiment, reach, and more
- Easy to build and share reporting templates and visualization features
- Social media content scheduling and posting across different platforms
Pricing: Basic plan starts at $41 per month
7. Talkwalker – by Hootsuite
Best for: Reputation management and brand benchmarking
Talkwalker provides in-depth PR and social insights, offering real-time listening across social media, news, blogs, forums, and broadcast channels. With sentiment analysis, trend detection, and benchmark reporting, it is a good fit for PR and communications teams focused on reputation management and cross-channel reporting.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Real-time sentiment analysis, brand benchmarking, and share of voice analysis
- Real-time trend and mention tracking across text, graphic, and audio mentions
- Customizable dashboards with interactive maps and topic clusters
Pricing: Users have to book a demo to find out.
8. Sprout Social
Best for: PR teams managing both social and earned media
Sprout Social combines social media publishing, engagement, listening, and premium analytics all in one platform. With AI-powered insights, customizable reporting, and a unified inbox, it enables PR pros to visualize campaign performance, extract key insights, and share reports easily.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Streamlined publishing and scheduling tools across platforms
- Social listening and sentiment analysis across multiple platforms in real time
- Customizable reports with detailed visualizations
Pricing: Packages start from $199 per user per month.
9. Agorapulse
Best for: PR teams focused on customer relationships and online reputation
Agorapulse offers a straightforward alternative to Meltwater, focusing on social media with a single inbox that consolidates all interactions, social listening and publishing features, along with campaign reporting capabilities. With a clean inbox UI, tagging, and automated reports, it is ideal for social-first brands seeking to nurture customer relationships and enhance their reputation.
Advantages over Meltwater:
- Centralized dashboard to extract key social metrics
- Team collaboration inbox and role-based access
- Google Analytics integration to gauge social media ROI
Pricing: Packages start from $79 per user per month.
10. CoverageBook
Best for: PR teams with a strong focus on client-facing or executive reporting
CoverageBook automates the process of turning earned media coverage into polished, visual reports with reach and engagement metrics. While not a direct monitoring solution, it excels where Meltwater lacks – saving PR teams hours spent on manual clip retrieval, formatting and presentation.
Key Features:
- Auto-generated media coverage visuals and metrics
- Exportable PDFs with engagement summaries
- Bulk upload of URLs and integrations with monitoring tools
Pricing: Packages start from $99 per user per month.
When is the best time to look for Meltwater alternatives?
The ideal time to explore possible Meltwater alternatives to your current PR software starts 5-7 months before your contract renewal. Particularly since many PR platforms, including Meltwater, have a 90-day auto-renewal clause.
Unless you opt to end your current contract or wait too long to decide on an alternative, you will be locked into another full-term contract. This makes finalizing the best alternative before your auto-renewal date even more important.
This is crucial to ensure sufficient time for researching, evaluating, and finalizing a new solution that meets your team’s requirements and to ensure no gaps in service.
But several reasons may create a pressing need to consider other options before the renewal is due. For instance:
- Your team is struggling to get timely or helpful support
- You’re consistently missing key media mentions or alerts
- Your media outreach efforts are falling flat due to incorrect information or too many email bounces
- Features like AI capabilities or automated insights are lagging or only available at a high upgrade cost
- Your team has grown, but your platform can’t keep up
- You’re constantly routed to different support reps, with no one owning your account
Final Thoughts
Meltwater may still be a well-known name in the PR software world, but PR teams need to re-evaluate their offerings to meet the growing demands of a rapidly evolving media landscape.
Here’s a table that highlights key features PR pros are looking for, and the platforms that deliver the strongest capabilities:
These Meltwater alternatives provide valuable insights for your business, enabling you to track mentions across various online platforms. If your team requires a comprehensive, all-in-one PR solution, Agility PR Solutions offers advanced AI-powered workflows with dedicated support and a clean UI to accelerate your media strategy success.
Whether you need smarter outreach, cleaner workflows, more accurate monitoring, or simply a support team that responds promptly, the tools on this list offer proven Meltwater alternatives with specialized features that meet your PR team’s objectives.
