figures verified 2026-09-10

Mention vs Google Alerts

Google Alerts is free and covers whatever Google indexes. Mention is a paid monitoring platform with broader source coverage, real-time tracking, sentiment analysis, and a dashboard. Google Alerts has no API, no webhook, no agent surface. Mention has an API but it is a paid add-on gated behind a sales process. Keep Google Alerts as a free backstop. Move to Mention if you need real-time social monitoring, sentiment, and reporting. Move past both if you need an agent to receive the alert.

Feature	Mentionas of 2026-09-10	Google Alertsas of 2026-09-10	discatchthe plan
Built for agents first(partial: an MCP server exists but the product is dashboard-first)	no	no	yes
MCP server	no	no	planned
REST API and webhooks	paid add-on	no	yes
Push that wakes an agent(calls your agent when a catch fires, instead of waiting to be polled)	no	no	yes
Waterfall coverage(several providers per source, cheapest first, merged)	no	no	yes
Pay per unit	no	no	yes
Query-time price quote	no	no	yes
Discourse forums	no	no	yes
Relevance judged by your model(raw candidates plus a prescore by default)	no	no	yes
Never posts for you	yes	yes	yes
Open playbooks(copyable scripts that plug into the API, published under MIT)	no	no	yes
Entry price	~$599/mo	free	free, then units
Entry price	~$599/mo (sales-led)	free	free, then units
API access	paid add-on, unpriced	no API	included
MCP server	no	no	planned
llms.txt	no	no	yes
Self-serve signup	no (demo required)	yes (Google account)	yes
Delivery	dashboard, email, Slack	email or RSS	webhook, command, todo, email, Slack

Price

Google Alerts is free. No paid plans, no premium tier, no limit on alert count. Setup takes one search term and a Google account.

Mention shows a single Company plan (mention.com/en/pricing/, modified 2026-07-02). The price is rendered client-side and does not appear in the page source. Checkthat.ai, pricingsaas.com, and Brand24’s alternatives page all report about $599 a month on an annual contract (2026-09-10). API access and historical data are unpriced add-ons available through the sales process. There is no self-serve signup. Mention discontinued its Solo, Pro, and ProPlus self-serve tiers in July 2025 (communitytracker.ai/blog/mention-review, 2026-09-10).

The price gap is about $599 a month. Google Alerts is free with no premium option. Mention costs more than most mid-market monitoring tools and is sales-led only. Mention removed its publishing and engagement features in January 2026 and directs users to Agorapulse for those workflows.

Sources

Google Alerts covers whatever Google indexes: web pages, news, blogs, videos, and discussions. Reddit post titles get indexed; most comments do not. Hacker News stories appear; comments are sparse. Discourse forum threads, GitHub issues, and Bluesky posts do not appear.

Mention claims one billion sources. Its platform landing pages cover Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and the web. It lists Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and 75 review sites on the pricing page. No pages exist for Hacker News, Discourse, Bluesky, Mastodon, GitHub, Stack Overflow, or Product Hunt.

Mention covers more social platforms than Google Alerts. Google Alerts catches web pages that Mention might miss because it covers whatever Google indexes. Neither covers developer sources like Hacker News comments, Discourse forums, or GitHub issues. Mention lists Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and 75 review sites on its pricing page, but has no dedicated landing pages for any of them (mention.com/en/pricing/, 2026-09-10).

Agent surface

Google Alerts has no agent surface. No API, no webhooks, no MCP, no llms.txt. The only programmatic access is parsing email or polling an RSS feed.

Mention has an API at dev.mention.com with OAuth2, supporting alerts, mentions, statistics, and per-network metadata. The API marketing page was last modified in September 2020 and says "Request Access." API access is a paid add-on. There is no llms.txt, no MCP server, no OpenAPI spec, and no machine-readable pricing.

Mention’s API documentation covers alert CRUD, mention retrieval and streaming, statistics, per-network metadata for X, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn, plus a rate limits appendix. The rate limits page did not render on 2026-09-10. No OpenAPI or Swagger file exists. The documentation has not been visibly updated since 2020.

Neither product pushes to an agent when a mention lands. Google Alerts sends email or RSS. Mention delivers through its dashboard, email, and Slack.

Freshness and trust

Google Alerts is a Google product. It has no marketing site, no blog, no pricing page, and no E-E-A-T signals to evaluate beyond Google’s own brand. It works or it does not. It was launched in 2003 and has been running for over 23 years.

Mention published zero posts in 2026. Its most recent post is dated 2025-04-24 (mention.com/en/wp-json/wp/v2/posts, 2026-09-10). Its 58 head-to-head blog pages and 14 alternatives pages all carry 2025 in the title. It has 252 author archive pages, 46 customer stories including Ogilvy, Edelman, and McCann, and a G2 badge on the homepage. It removed its publishing and engagement features in January 2026 and directs users to Agorapulse for those workflows. The homepage still advertises them.

What each one exports

Google Alerts exports to email or RSS. There is no CSV, no API, and no webhook. The only programmatic path is parsing the email body or polling the RSS feed. Alerts carry a title, a URL, and a snippet. There is no sentiment, no metadata, and no retention beyond what your email client keeps.

Mention’s API at dev.mention.com supports alert CRUD, mention retrieval, streaming mentions, statistics, and per-network metadata for X, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn (dev.mention.com, 2020). The API uses OAuth2. The rate limits page did not render on 2026-09-10. API access is a paid add-on at an undisclosed price. CSV export is available from the dashboard.

Who should pick which

Keep Google Alerts if free email alerts for web pages are enough. It is the right tool for a founder who wants to know when someone writes about their product on a public website.

Move to Mention if you need real-time social monitoring across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and the web, with sentiment analysis, reporting, and a dashboard. Expect to pay about $599 a month through a sales process (checkthat.ai, 2026-09-10).

Use both together. Google Alerts is free and catches what Google indexes. Mention catches social platforms that Google does not index. The backstop and the sensor cover more than either alone.

The third option

discatch is a social listening API and alert system built for agents. Its free tier includes Hacker News alerts at one-hour intervals with no credit card. API and MCP are planned on every tier. Catches push to a webhook, a Claude Code command, or a Doozy todo when a mention appears.

Questions

Is Mention worth $599 a month over free Google Alerts?

It depends on what you need. Google Alerts covers web pages. Mention adds real-time social monitoring, sentiment, and a dashboard. If you only need web page alerts by email, Google Alerts is sufficient and free.

Does Google Alerts have an API?

No. Google has never shipped a public API for Alerts. The only programmatic access is parsing email or polling an RSS feed.

Does Mention have an MCP server?

No. Mention has no MCP server, no llms.txt, no OpenAPI spec, and no machine-readable pricing as of 2026-09-10.

Can Google Alerts cover Reddit?

Only what Google indexes. Post titles get indexed; most comments do not. Delivery lags by hours or days. Mention covers Reddit through its real-time monitoring.

Is Mention’s blog still active?

No. The most recent post is from April 2025. Zero posts have been published in 2026 as of September 10.

Can either push to an agent when a mention appears?

No. Google Alerts sends email or RSS only. Mention delivers through its dashboard, email, and Slack. Neither sends a webhook to an agent.

Who ranks for "mention vs google alerts" today?

Syften has a blog post for this pair. Other results include comparison pages from small vendors. Mention has a Google Alerts alternative page from 2017. No neutral head-to-head exists.

What does discatch change?

discatch offers free Hacker News alerts like Google Alerts. API and MCP are planned on every tier. Catches push to an agent when they fire. Prices are placeholders until launch.

Try it yourself

The third option, priced for your own terms. A quote is free and needs no key.

curl

curl -X POST https://api.discatch.com/v1/quote -d '{ "query": "\"your product\"", "sources": ["hackernews", "discourse", "web"], "since": "7d" }'

MCP · coming in phase 3

{
  "tool": "quote",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "\"your product\"",
    "sources": [
      "hackernews",
      "discourse",
      "web"
    ],
    "since": "7d"
  }
}

Last reviewed 2026-09-10 by Parsa Khazaeepoul, founder, dcouple. Mention and Google Alerts facts read on 2026-09-10. Research: docs/seo/competitor-map.md.