Harken vs Octolens
Harken
github.comOctolens
octolens.comSide by side
| Figure | Harken | Octolens |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $159/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Social Media Monitoring | 7.9 (#9) | 8.0 (#7) |
| Spec score · AI Social Listening Tools | 7.9 (#12) | 8.1 (#8) |
| Spec score · Social Monitoring | 7.9 (#10) | 8.1 (#9) |
| Spec score · Social Media Monitoring & Listening Software | 7.9 (#11) | 8.0 (#9) |
| Spec score · Social Media Listening Software | 7.7 (#39) | 8.0 (#26) |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Sentiment analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Support | The project invites issues and pull requests, and says paid tools offer broader hosted operations and vendor support. | The maker lists chat and email support and says email inquiries are typically answered within 24 hours. |
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.