Harken vs MentionWatch
Harken
github.comMentionWatch
mentionwatch.comSide by side
| Figure | Harken | MentionWatch |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $29/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · AI Social Listening Tools | 7.9 (#12) | 7.8 (#15) |
| Spec score · Social Media Listening Software | 7.7 (#39) | 7.5 (#57) |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Intended users | The README describes Harken as suited to indie founders, open-source maintainers, and privacy-conscious teams. | MentionWatch describes its audience as solo founders and small businesses, and its analytics page also names founders, creators, marketers, and small teams. |
| Purpose | Harken tracks mentions of keywords, brands, or products across online sources and presents sentiment and themes in a local dashboard. | MentionWatch monitors social media mentions to help businesses track sentiment and protect their brand reputation. |
| Sentiment analysis | Yes | Its AI tags posts as positive, negative, or neutral, and users can manually adjust a post’s sentiment in the dashboard. |
| Support | The project invites issues and pull requests, and says paid tools offer broader hosted operations and vendor support. | The FAQ directs users to its support team and lists [email protected] for privacy questions. |
Plans
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.
MentionWatch
MentionWatch is a web service for monitoring social media mentions and analyzing sentiment to help businesses track brand reputation. Its listed networks are YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, and Facebook. It can also track competitor mentions. Users can filter results by platform, sentiment, or keyword and download CSV data. Notifications include instant email alerts and webhooks for Slack, Discord, or custom integrations; alert rules can use sentiment and reach thresholds such as account impact, views, or followers. The 14-day trial includes 80 mentions, one keyword or hashtag, and three months of history. Starter costs $29 a month, billed monthly, with up to 3,000 mentions a month, three keywords or hashtags, a 24-hour scan cycle, and three months of history. It covers YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Growth costs $79 a month, billed monthly, and includes up to 16,500 mentions a month, eight keywords or hashtags, and a 12-hour scan cycle, adding Facebook. Each cycle captures up to 20 latest TikTok videos and 35 latest posts on other supported platforms.