Brand24

What Is Brand24?

Brand24 is a real-time social listening and brand monitoring platform built in Wrocław, Poland, founded in 2011 by Michał Sadowski. It tracks brand mentions, competitor names, and keywords across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, news websites, online forums, review sites, blogs, and podcasts — aggregated into a single monitoring feed with AI-powered sentiment analysis, reach scoring, and anomaly detection.

The company went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2017 (ticker: B24.WA), remaining a publicly listed Polish entity. In April 2024, US-based Semrush Inc acquired a 57.6% majority stake via its Polish PR software subsidiary Prowly, in a transaction valued at PLN 55 million. Michał Sadowski and the Polish product team remain in place. This acquisition is material context for European buyers evaluating the platform on GDPR grounds — the operating entity is Polish and EU-regulated, but the majority shareholder is a US-listed company.

Brand24 positions itself against enterprise-level alternatives (Brandwatch, Meltwater, Talkwalker) at a price point accessible to SMBs and agencies. Its Individual plan at $149 per month annually is one of the most affordable entry points in professional social listening.

Key Features

Real-Time Mention Tracking

Brand24's core product is a continuously updated feed of every public mention of tracked keywords across 25+ source types. For social media, coverage includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Beyond social, it monitors news websites, review platforms, forums, and blogs. Podcast monitoring — which transcribes audio content and searches for keyword mentions — is available on the Business plan.

Updates on the Team plan and above are hourly; the Individual plan updates every 12 hours. For brands managing PR crises or tracking time-sensitive campaign performance, real-time or hourly monitoring is effectively required — the 12-hour delay on the lowest plan limits its usefulness for active reputation management.

The monitoring feed can be filtered by source type, sentiment, language, reach, and date range. Mentions can be marked as positive, negative, or neutral (with AI pre-classification), allowing teams to track sentiment shifts over time rather than just raw mention volume.

AI Sentiment Analysis and Anomaly Detection

Brand24's AI analyses the sentiment of each incoming mention and classifies it positive, negative, or neutral. This runs continuously across all tracked sources, enabling sentiment dashboards that show trending opinion shifts without manual review.

Storm Alerts are one of Brand24's most practically useful features: when mention volume spikes abnormally — relative to the account's typical baseline — an email or in-app alert fires immediately. This is the first signal that a PR situation is developing, a campaign is going viral, or a product issue has surfaced publicly. For teams that do not monitor their listening dashboard in real time, the automated alert substantially reduces response time.

The AI also groups mentions into topic clusters, identifying which themes (product quality, customer service, specific features) are driving the most discussion in any time window.

Share of Voice and Presence Score

Brand24 produces two aggregate metrics that go beyond raw mention counts. Share of Voice measures what percentage of mentions in a keyword category belong to the tracked brand versus competitors tracking the same terms — useful for benchmarking brand visibility against direct competitors without requiring access to their analytics.

Presence Score is Brand24's proprietary metric measuring overall brand visibility: it aggregates mention volume, reach, engagement, and sentiment into a single 0-100 index. It simplifies executive reporting by converting monitoring data into a consistent index that can be tracked month-over-month.

Influencer Identification

Within the mention feed, Brand24 tags each source with a reach score based on the author's audience size and engagement rate. This surfaces the highest-reach mentions first, making it straightforward to identify which influencers, journalists, or accounts are driving the most exposure for a tracked keyword — without needing a separate influencer discovery tool.

White-Label Reporting

On Pro and Business plans, Brand24 supports white-label PDF reports with custom branding, suitable for agencies delivering monthly monitoring reports to clients. Reports can be scheduled and sent automatically to client email addresses, reducing the manual overhead of regular client reporting.

Ownership and Data Governance

Brand24's status as a partially European tool requires honest documentation. The operating entity is Brand24 S.A., a Polish company publicly listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange under GDPR jurisdiction. A Data Processing Addendum is available.

However, as of April 2024, Semrush Inc — a US-listed company (NYSE: SEMR) incorporated in Delaware — holds 57.6% of Brand24's shares through its Prowly subsidiary. Semrush has a significant influence over Brand24's strategic direction. For European companies with legal or procurement requirements around GDPR data processing, the US majority shareholder is a disclosure that must be surfaced in any honest vendor evaluation.

In practical terms, Brand24's product infrastructure and data processing operations continue to run from the Polish entity. But European buyers with strict requirements for EU-controlled data governance should review Brand24's DPA carefully and may prefer alternatives where the ownership chain is fully EU-based.

Pricing

Brand24 uses a mention-volume-based pricing model rather than per-seat pricing, which benefits larger teams. The Individual plan at $199 per month (or $149 annually) includes 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions per month — restrictive for any brand with meaningful online presence but useful for individual practitioners monitoring a single brand.

The Team plan at $299 per month (or $249 annually) unlocks 7 keywords, 10,000 mentions per month, unlimited users, and hourly updates. For most SMBs, this is the operative starting point.

The Pro plan at $399 per month expands to 12 keywords, 40,000 mentions, and white-label reporting. The Business plan at $599 per month is designed for large brands and agencies: 25 keywords, 100,000 mentions, podcast monitoring, topic analysis, and a dedicated account manager.

All plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Annual billing saves 14–25% compared to monthly.

Who It's Best For

If you are a marketing manager at an SMB or startup who needs to monitor brand mentions across social and news without the enterprise pricing of Brandwatch or Meltwater, Brand24's Team plan at $249 per month delivers reliable coverage at an accessible price.

If you run an agency and need to provide regular social listening reports to clients with white-label branding, the Pro plan's automated reporting and custom-branded exports cover that workflow.

If EU data sovereignty is a hard procurement requirement and your legal team requires the majority owner to be an EU entity, Brand24's 2024 acquisition by Semrush creates a complication — consider Mention (French, part of Mynewsdesk, Swedish group) or other EU-majority-owned alternatives.

If you are monitoring a brand with significant podcast presence or appearing regularly in audio content, Brand24's Business plan podcast monitoring is one of very few tools in this price range that covers that channel.

If you are a large enterprise needing deep historical data, advanced consumer research, and custom dashboards, Brandwatch, Meltwater, or Talkwalker provide more sophisticated capabilities — Brand24 is positioned below full enterprise social intelligence.

The Verdict

Brand24 delivers reliable, accessible social listening across a broad range of sources at a price point that most SMBs and agencies can justify. The AI sentiment analysis, Storm Alerts, and Share of Voice metrics are well-implemented and genuinely useful for proactive reputation management. The Polish engineering team's continued ownership of the product shows in its consistency and regular feature updates. The significant caveat is the 2024 Semrush acquisition: European buyers must now evaluate Brand24 with a US majority shareholder in the data processing chain. For teams where EU data governance is flexible and cost-effective brand monitoring is the priority, Brand24 remains a strong option in the $149–$599 per month range.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Brand24 GDPR compliant?

Brand24 S.A. is a Polish company operating under GDPR and provides a Data Processing Addendum. However, since April 2024, Semrush Inc — a US-listed company — holds 57.6% of Brand24's shares through its Prowly subsidiary. European businesses with strict data governance requirements should review the DPA carefully to understand data processing responsibilities in the context of the US majority shareholder.

Who owns Brand24?

Brand24 was founded in 2011 by Michał Sadowski and listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2017. In April 2024, Semrush Inc acquired a 57.6% majority stake via its Polish subsidiary Prowly, in a deal valued at PLN 55 million. The Polish operating entity (Brand24 S.A.) and product team remain in place, and Michał Sadowski continues in an active role.

What sources does Brand24 monitor?

Brand24 monitors Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, news websites, online forums, blogs, review sites, and podcasts (Business plan only) — more than 25 source types in total. Coverage spans multiple languages. Updates are hourly on Team plan and above, every 12 hours on the Individual plan.

How does Brand24 compare to Brandwatch?

Brandwatch is a full enterprise social intelligence platform with deeper historical data, custom dashboards, consumer research capabilities, and significantly higher pricing. Brand24 is more accessible and suited to SMBs, agencies, and growth-stage companies that need reliable monitoring without enterprise complexity. Brand24's AI sentiment analysis and podcast monitoring are strong at its price tier. Brandwatch typically requires annual enterprise contracts well above Brand24's Business plan.

Does Brand24 have a free plan?

No. Brand24 does not offer a free plan. A 14-day free trial with no credit card required is available on all plans. The lowest paid plan starts at $149 per month on annual billing (Individual plan). The Team plan at $249 per month annually is the recommended starting point for most business use cases.