figures verified 2026-09-10

Octolens vs Brand24

Brand24 has broader source coverage, more content, stronger E-E-A-T signals, and thirteen years of operating history. Octolens has a more complete agent surface with 23 MCP tools, a free 50-search tier, and API included on every plan. Brand24 gates its API behind a $99 to $149 add-on on the $599 Business tier. Pick Brand24 if you want a marketing dashboard with 25 authors, 63 case studies, and weekly blog updates. Pick Octolens if you want an API and MCP on every plan and are building for an agent workflow.

Feature	Octolensas of 2026-09-10	Brand24as of 2026-09-10	discatchthe plan
Built for agents first(partial: an MCP server exists but the product is dashboard-first)	partial	partial	yes
MCP server	yes	yes	planned
REST API and webhooks	yes	paid add-on	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	Scale only	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	$159/mo	$199/mo	free, then units
Entry price, annual	$159/mo	$199/mo	free, then units
Entry price, monthly	$199/mo	$249/mo	free, then units
API access	included on all plans	$99–$149/mo add-on, Business only	included
MCP	yes (OAuth, 23 tools, every plan)	yes (help center only)	planned
Operating since	2023	2011	pre-launch
Cheapest API path	$159/mo (Pro annual)	~$698/mo (Business + add-on)	free tier

Price

Octolens Pro is $199 a month monthly or $159 a month annual. It includes 15,000 mentions, 10 keywords, API, webhooks, and MCP. Scale is $599 monthly or $499 annual and adds 50,000 mentions, 40 keywords, and four source types that Pro excludes. A free agent tier offers 50 searches with no credit card.

Brand24 Individual is $199 a month annual or $249 monthly with 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions, and refresh every 12 hours. Team is $299 annual. Pro is $399. Business is $599. Enterprise starts at $1,499. API access is a paid add-on on the Business tier. The cheapest path to a Brand24 API is about $698 a month.

Octolens is cheaper per mention and includes API on every plan. Brand24 gives more keywords at the entry tier (3 versus 10) but Brand24 Individual has only 2,000 mentions and refreshes every 12 hours. The API gap is the largest difference: $159 a month at Octolens versus about $698 at Brand24.

Need	Octolens	Brand24
Cheapest plan	Pro $159/mo annual	Individual $199/mo annual
API access	Pro $159/mo annual	~$698/mo (Business + add-on)
MCP access	Pro $159/mo annual	all plans (help center docs)
Real-time refresh	Scale $499/mo annual	Pro $399/mo annual
50+ keywords	custom	Enterprise $1,499+/mo

Cheapest plan per feature on 2026-09-10.

Sources

Octolens has 15 source pages covering Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, podcasts, newsletters, news, and web. Podcasts, news, web, and newsletters are Scale-only.

Brand24 claims over 25 million sources. Its 12 platform pages cover Reddit, X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and review sites. Sources are gated by plan. No pages exist for LinkedIn, Bluesky, Hacker News, Discourse, Mastodon, GitHub, or Stack Overflow, despite the llms.txt naming several.

Octolens has more developer sources: Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV, and Mastodon. Brand24 has more mainstream sources: Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are tracked on all plans. Both cover Reddit, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, but Brand24 gates LinkedIn to the Team tier.

Agent surface

Octolens ships llms.txt, llms-full.txt (629 KB), a 52-path OpenAPI spec, .well-known/mcp.json with 23 tools, agent-permissions.json, an npm CLI, and 11 agent skills. Its MCP uses OAuth and is available on every plan. It is listed on the MCP registry.

Brand24 ships an llms.txt (33 KB), a pricing.md for agents, and an MCP server at mcp.brand24.com with OAuth. The MCP is documented only in a help-center article, not on the main domain. No .well-known/mcp.json, no agent-permissions.json, no CLI.

Octolens has a more complete agent discovery kit. An agent searching for tools would find Octolens through the MCP registry, OpenAPI spec, or mcp.json. It would find Brand24 only through llms.txt or a direct URL. Neither pushes to an agent when a mention lands.

Brand24’s API is aggregate-first. The OpenAPI spec is "Brand24 API Data" with endpoints for project-level stats, sentiment, reach, and AI summaries. Individual mention retrieval exists but requires a dashboard-created project and a 31-day query window. Octolens’s API is mention-first with 52 paths covering mention listing, analytics, keyword CRUD, and usage. Both use API-key auth.

Freshness and trust

Octolens published 26 blog posts in 2026 at roughly 3.5 a month. Nearly all content is by the CEO. It has 28 customer logos and no /about page. G2 lists it at 4.69 from 36 reviews. It has been operating since 2023.

Brand24 published about 97 English blog posts in 2026 at roughly 8 a month, slowing from 20 in spring to 5 in summer. It has 25 authors with expertise tags, 63 case studies, and logos from Capterra and GetApp. G2 lists it at 4.6 out of 5. It has been operating since 2011.

Brand24 has stronger E-E-A-T signals by every measure: more authors, more case studies, more content, and thirteen years of operation. Octolens has bigger developer logos (Vercel, PostHog, Sentry) and a higher G2 rating.

Who should pick which

Pick Octolens if you are building an agent workflow, need API and MCP on a self-serve plan, and value developer sources like Hacker News, GitHub, and Stack Overflow. The free 50-search tier lets an agent evaluate it without a credit card.

Pick Brand24 if you want a marketing dashboard with broad source coverage, weekly blog updates, 25 authors, and 63 case studies. Expect to pay at least $199 a month and about $698 a month if you need API access.

The third option

discatch is a social listening API and alert system built for agents. It sells by the unit, not the seat. API and MCP are planned on every plan including the free tier. Catches push to an agent when they fire.

Questions

Which is cheaper, Octolens or Brand24?

Octolens Pro is $159 a month annual. Brand24 Individual is $199. But Brand24 Individual has only 2,000 mentions and refreshes every 12 hours. Octolens Pro has 15,000 mentions and hourly refresh.

Can I get Brand24’s API without the Business plan?

No. API access is a paid add-on available only on the Business tier ($599/mo annual) or higher. The cheapest API path is about $698 a month.

Does Octolens cover Instagram and Facebook?

No. Octolens has no pages for Instagram, Facebook, or app-store reviews. Brand24 covers all three on every plan.

Does either push to an agent when a mention appears?

No. Both are dashboard-first products. Octolens delivers by email, Slack, and webhooks. Brand24 delivers by email, Slack, and Teams. Neither sends a webhook to an agent that fires on its own.

Who ranks for "octolens vs brand24" today?

Octolens owns five of nine results with Brand24-targeted pages, but none is titled "Octolens vs Brand24." Brand24 has no head-to-head page. No independent comparison exists for this exact pair.

Should I pick Octolens or Brand24?

Pick Octolens if you need API and MCP on a self-serve plan and value developer sources like Hacker News and GitHub. Pick Brand24 if you want a marketing dashboard with 25 authors, 63 case studies, and broader mainstream source coverage. Octolens is cheaper for API access ($159/mo annual vs ~$698).

Which has better E-E-A-T signals?

Brand24. It has 25 authors with expertise tags, 63 case studies, 486 English blog posts (brand24.com/blog, 2026-09-10), and has operated since 2011. Octolens has 28 customer logos and has operated since 2023.

What is discatch and how is it different?

discatch is a pre-launch social listening API built for agents. It plans to sell by the unit with no keyword limit, include API and MCP on every tier, and push to an agent when a catch fires. The prices are placeholders. Octolens and Brand24 are both shipping today.

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. Octolens and Brand24 facts read on 2026-09-10. Research: docs/seo/competitor-map.md.