Listening & monitoring · Critical Mention pricing
Critical Mention pricing and cost with plans and alternatives
The short answer
Critical Mention does not publish a price. Its pricing page says it will "create a package" around your earned media needs and lists package types (large agencies, growing firms, individual brands, nonprofit rates, API partners) with no figures. Onclusive has owned Critical Mention since 2022. You are paying mainly for TV and radio: 2,500+ stations and every Nielsen DMA in the U.S. If you do not need broadcast clips, a self-serve monitoring tool covers the web, news and social for a fraction of the cost.
Search for Critical Mention pricing and the first page is directories and a PR tool's blog guessing at $2,500 to $10,000 a year. None of them says the company now belongs to Onclusive, which itself publishes no pricing page, and none separates the part you cannot get elsewhere (broadcast) from the part every monitoring tool sells (online news and social). That split is what should decide your budget.
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Sentiment
Share of voice
Negative mention spike detected
on Reddit and forums, up 320% vs baseline. Severity: High.
Suggested first move: review the batch threads and prepare a holding response before it spreads to news.
Interactive demo on a representative mention set. Your own workspace scans every source twice an hour.
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Why it works
Three things to know before you budget for Critical Mention
You are buying from Onclusive
Critical Mention launched in 2002 as a U.S. media monitoring service and was acquired by Onclusive in 2022. Every page on its site is now signed "Critical Mention, An Onclusive Company", and its social listening page upsells Onclusive Social. Renewals and upgrades are an Onclusive conversation, and Onclusive keeps no pricing page of its own.
The pricing page has no prices
criticalmention.com/pricing is titled "Customized Packages" and asks you to describe your earned media needs. It lists who packages are built for (large PR agencies, growing firms, individual brands and entities, nonprofits at special rates, API partners) and stops there. No tier names, no seat price, no trial.
Broadcast is what drives the bill
The product that sets Critical Mention apart is TV and radio: more than 2,500 stations worldwide, clips from every Nielsen DMA in the U.S., unlimited cloud storage and the Wordplay clip editor. Online news and social monitoring are also in the suite, but those are the parts you can buy from many vendors on a published price.
What it handles
Watched, read and flagged twice an hour
EyeOut watches Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and podcasts for your brand, scores each mention for sentiment, rolls it up into a daily digest and share of voice, and alerts you when a real spike begins.
- A published price at every tier: $39, $94 and $249 a month billed yearly, with no sales call and no custom package to negotiate
- Monthly billing on every plan ($79, $189 and $499), so there is no annual contract to sign before you know it works
- Collection every 30 minutes on every plan, with a crisis radar from Growth that flags a keyword jumping above its own 7-day average
- Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts in one feed on every plan
- AI sentiment and theme on every mention, share of voice against named competitors from Growth
- Seats included in the plan price: 1 on Starter, 3 on Growth, 10 on Pro
Why EyeOut
One tool for cross-channel brand monitoring
Not a social-only listener and not a sales-gated enterprise platform. Watch news, Reddit, forums and podcasts, read the sentiment, track share of voice and catch the spike, in one place, self-serve.
Watches news, Reddit and forums
Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts in one feed, including the blind spots most affordable tools skip.
Catches the spike
AI baselines your normal volume and sentiment, then alerts on a real anomaly with a severity and a suggested first move, twice an hour.
Reads it for you
Sentiment, emotion, theme clustering and a plain-English daily digest, so you act on the story instead of scrolling a firehose.
The full picture
How Critical Mention is sold, what it covers, and what the purchase data can and cannot tell you
Critical Mention's pricing, About, broadcast, podcast, online news, social, media database, AI brand visibility and API pages were requested directly and read in September 2026, along with Vendr's Critical Mention buyer guide. Where no price is published, this page says so.
Critical Mention is one of the few monitoring vendors whose pricing URL actually loads, and it still gives you no number. The page asks what your earned media needs are and promises a package to meet them. Everything below comes from Critical Mention's own product pages, so you can walk into the sales call knowing which pieces you are paying for and which ones you could buy elsewhere for less. The short version: if your coverage lives on local TV news and radio, Critical Mention is priced for a real capability. If it lives online, you are paying broadcast rates for a feed that self-serve tools sell by the month.
Critical Mention pricing: what listings say against what is true today
| What listings say | What is true today | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Critical Mention, usually shown as independent | Onclusive, which acquired Critical Mention in 2022 |
| Published price | Estimates of about $2,500 to $10,000 a year | None. The pricing page describes custom packages only |
| Package types | Not covered | Large agencies, growing firms, individual brands and entities, nonprofit rates, API partners |
| Free trial | Sometimes listed as available | No trial offered on the site; every route is a demo or contact form |
| Purchase benchmark | Not covered | Vendr shows 7 purchases from 2 buyers, too thin to use as a benchmark |
What a Critical Mention package can include, from Critical Mention's own product pages
| Product | What Critical Mention says it covers | Can you buy it elsewhere on a published price? |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast monitoring | 2,500+ TV and radio stations, every Nielsen DMA in the U.S., Europe and Middle East coverage, unlimited clip storage, Wordplay editor, white-label reports | Rarely. Broadcast is a specialist market |
| Podcast monitoring | Thousands of top podcasts, speech-to-text search, alerts within minutes of publication | Partly. Some listening tools include podcasts on higher tiers |
| Online news tracking | Online newspapers, magazines, blogs and forums in 90+ languages, scheduled reports, RSS to Slack | Yes. Most monitoring tools sell this |
| Social media monitoring | Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter keyword search; deeper listening sold as Onclusive Social | Yes. Most monitoring tools sell this |
| Media contact database | Millions of journalist, producer, blogger and influencer records, changes vetted within 24 hours, CSV export | Yes, from PR database vendors |
| AI brand visibility | How ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Perplexity describe your brand, with GEO Analytics | Yes, from AI visibility trackers |
| API | TV, radio and podcast content with metadata and archives, over two million segments a day | Rarely for broadcast |
What a monitoring requirement costs across media monitoring vendors
| Platform | Owner | Published entry price | Broadcast TV and radio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Mention | Onclusive | None, custom packages | Yes, the core product |
| Meltwater | Marlin Equity and Altor | None, Contact Sales on every plan | Available, quote only |
| Cision | Platinum Equity | None, nine-question pricing form | Available, quote only |
| Muck Rack | Independent | None, Contact us on every plan | Print and Broadcast Monitoring is an add-on |
| Brand24 | Independent | $199/mo billed annually | No |
| EyeOut | Independent | $39/mo billed yearly | No, Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts on every plan |
How much does Critical Mention cost?
Critical Mention does not publish a cost. Its pricing page builds a custom package from your needs, so the figure depends on how many broadcast markets you monitor, whether you add podcasts, the media database or the API, and how many users and client accounts you need.
The only purchase data in public view is Vendr's, and it is thin: 7 purchases from 2 buyers. That is not enough to call a typical price, so treat any single figure you read online, including Vendr's, as a data point rather than a benchmark.
Who owns Critical Mention?
Onclusive owns Critical Mention. Critical Mention's own About page says it launched in 2002 as a U.S. media monitoring SaaS provider and was acquired by Onclusive in 2022.
Onclusive sells media monitoring, social listening, analytics and a media contacts database of its own, and it keeps no public pricing page. Expect a Critical Mention renewal to be offered alongside Onclusive products.
Does Critical Mention have a free trial?
Critical Mention's website does not offer a free trial. The routes are Demo, Contact and the custom package form on the pricing page.
If you want to see the product before you sign, ask for a demo built on your own brand terms and a recent broadcast segment you already know aired, so you can judge search speed and clip quality on real coverage.
Does Critical Mention offer nonprofit pricing?
Yes. "Special rates for nonprofits" is one of the five package types named on Critical Mention's pricing page. It does not publish the discount, so ask for it in writing and ask whether it survives renewal.
Is Critical Mention worth it if I do not need TV and radio?
Usually not. Broadcast monitoring is the part of Critical Mention that few vendors match: 2,500+ stations and clips from every Nielsen DMA in the U.S. Online news and social monitoring are available from many tools with published monthly prices.
If local TV news, national broadcasts or radio are where your brand gets covered, pay for it. If your coverage is online, a self-serve monitoring tool will do the job without a custom package.
What is a good Critical Mention alternative?
It depends which job you are replacing. For broadcast TV and radio with a media database, the realistic alternatives are TVEyes, Meltwater and Cision, all quote only. TVEyes is the one of those that offers a free trial.
If the job is brand monitoring across the web, news and social, with sentiment and alerts, a self-serve tool on a published monthly price is a closer fit. EyeOut starts at $39 a month billed yearly and bills monthly if you prefer.
What should I ask before signing a Critical Mention contract?
Ask for the quote itemized by product: broadcast markets, podcasts, online news, social, the media database, AI brand visibility and API access. A single bundled figure hides which part you actually use.
Then ask about the term, the renewal notice period, whether the price is fixed at renewal, and whether Onclusive will move you to a different platform during the contract.
Good questions
Questions about critical mention pricing
Before you decide
Pricing and head-to-head comparisons worth reading next
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Add your brand and EyeOut watches news, Reddit, forums and podcasts twice an hour, reads the sentiment, tracks share of voice, and warns you when a spike begins. Self-serve, cancel anytime.
Twice-an-hour across Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts · AI sentiment · spike and crisis alerts