Harken vs Meltwater Social Listening
Harken
github.com
Meltwater Social Listening
meltwater.comSide by side
| Figure | Harken | Meltwater Social Listening |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Social Media Monitoring | 7.9 (#9) | 8.0 (#6) |
| Spec score · AI Social Listening Tools | 7.9 (#12) | 8.1 (#7) |
| Spec score · Social Media Monitoring & Listening Software | 7.9 (#11) | 8.1 (#8) |
| Spec score · Social Media Listening Software | 7.7 (#39) | 8.4 (#11) |
| Alerts | It supports Slack or generic webhooks and SMTP email alerts for new negative mentions and configured volume or sentiment thresholds. | Users can configure spike detection, sentiment shift notifications and threshold-based alerts, including delivery through Slack or Microsoft Teams. |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Sentiment analysis | Yes | It provides brand-level sentiment enrichment and sentiment shift analysis. |
Plans
Meltwater Social Listening
- StarterPriced on request
- ProPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- AgencyPriced on request
In their own words
Harken
Harken tracks mentions of keywords, brands, or products across online sources and brings sentiment and themes into a local dashboard. It can monitor Hacker News, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, Stack Overflow, RSS, X, and YouTube. Sentiment comes from a built-in local lexicon analyzer; optional LLM analysis can label themes using Anthropic, OpenAI, or locally run Ollama. Harken provides a web dashboard and terminal CLI, stores its database in local SQLite, and says it sends no Harken telemetry. Alerts for new negative mentions or configured volume and sentiment thresholds can go to Slack, generic webhooks, or SMTP email. The open-source MIT software is self-hosted and free: free, with no per-seat pricing and API access. Tracking sends search terms to selected source APIs, and Anthropic or OpenAI theme labeling sends a small sample of mention text to that provider. Hacker News and Bluesky work without credentials; other sources may need credentials, configured feeds, or tokens. The quickstart requires Python 3.10 or later, and Docker Compose instructions are included.
Meltwater Social Listening
Meltwater Social Listening, also known as Explore, brings social, news, forum, and Reddit conversations into a workflow for monitoring brand perception, competitors, and potential risks. Coverage can include X, Meta services Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitch, Discord, Threads, Bluesky, WeChat, Weibo, RED, Douyin, Toutiao, QQ, Bilibili, Youku, Naver, Kakao Talk, and LINE; availability depends on package and region. Teams can examine historical volume, sentiment, and engagement, compare competitor share of voice, and analyze narratives. Alerts can flag spikes, sentiment shifts, or thresholds and reach teams through Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, push alerts, or SMS. The product describes conversation forecasting 48 hours ahead, shareable dashboards, and report exports. Mira Companion works within the listening workflow to turn conversation data into insight. Sentiment is a directional signal, with accuracy depending on source, language, and context. Pricing is on request, and no free plan or trial is listed. Most partnerships have a 12-month minimum annual agreement; complex setups may include a one-time onboarding charge.