Brandwatch vs Keyhole in 2026: Full consumer intelligence suite vs Muck Rack's hashtag and influencer analytics
Both hide every price behind a sales call, but they are not solving the same problem. Brandwatch is a 100+ million source research and social management platform. Keyhole, now owned by Muck Rack, specializes in hashtag campaigns and influencer measurement, and lost its self-serve tier in the acquisition.
Brandwatch
Keyhole- Both platforms are demo-gated with no published pricing and no self-serve signup, but Keyhole only became that way after Muck Rack acquired it in 2024. It previously had self-serve professional tiers.
- Brandwatch covers 100+ million sources across social, news, blogs, forums, podcasts, and reviews. Keyhole's monitoring is social-platform only, with no news, blog, or podcast coverage.
- Keyhole's influencer analytics include an audience quality score that distinguishes genuine engagement from inflated follower counts, a workflow Brandwatch does not specialize in.
- Brandwatch includes a full social publishing and scheduling layer with a unified inbox, built from its Falcon.io acquisition. Keyhole has no publishing or content calendar functionality at all.
- Keyhole aggregates campaign performance across every post using a shared hashtag, including influencer and partner content, into a single dashboard. Brandwatch does not offer hashtag-anchored campaign aggregation.
- Neither Brandwatch nor Keyhole offers white-label report delivery, which matters for agencies presenting monitoring data under their own brand.
Brandwatch and Keyhole both require a sales conversation before you see a number, which puts them in the same access category on paper. What they actually do once you are past that gate is different enough that comparing them feature-for-feature misses the point. Brandwatch is a broad consumer intelligence and social media management suite: 100+ million sources, AI-assisted research, a publishing calendar, and a unified inbox inherited from its acquisition of Falcon.io. Keyhole is narrower and deeper in one direction, hashtag and keyword tracking, influencer quality scoring, and campaign aggregation across owned and partner content, and since Muck Rack acquired it in 2024, that specialty is only reachable through Muck Rack's enterprise sales process. Neither is a fit for a team that wants to sign up and start monitoring this afternoon.
The tools at a glance
Brandwatch
Enterprise consumer intelligence across 100+ million sources with real-time brand monitoring and social management
Brandwatch runs on two layers built from the same underlying data. The consumer intelligence side is a research tool: brand perception tracking, audience segmentation, competitive analysis, and AI-assisted theme detection across large volumes of text without anyone having to read every post manually. The social media management side, carried over from the Falcon.io acquisition, adds publishing, a shared content calendar with approval workflows, and a unified inbox that consolidates comments and messages across every connected channel.
Source coverage is where Brandwatch separates itself most clearly from a social-only tool like Keyhole: over 100 million sources spanning social networks, news outlets, blogs, forums, podcasts, and review sites, in 108 languages, with enough historical depth to run retrospective research queries rather than only real-time alerts. A search intelligence layer adds a second signal, tracking how consumer demand shows up in search behaviour alongside social conversation.
None of it is accessible without a sales call. There is no published pricing, no self-serve signup, and no free trial, and market reports put typical contracts in the mid-five to six figures annually. That access model, combined with real platform complexity, rules Brandwatch out for small teams by design, but for organisations that already run enterprise software procurement, the research depth and the built-in publishing layer are a genuine combination.
| Feature | Consumer Intelligence Contact for pricing | Social Media Management Contact for pricing | Full Suite Contact for pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source coverage | 100M+ sources | 100M+ sources | 100M+ sources |
| Social publishing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Unified inbox | No | Yes | Yes |
| Consumer research AI | Yes | No | Yes |
| API access | Yes | No | Yes |
| White-label delivery | No | No | No |
Keyhole
Social media analytics with hashtag tracking, influencer analytics, and campaign measurement, now part of the Muck Rack platform
Keyhole has been in the social analytics market since 2012 and built real depth in three connected workflows: hashtag and keyword tracking with multi-year historical data, influencer analytics with an audience quality score, and campaign aggregation that pulls together every post using a shared hashtag, whether it came from an owned account, an influencer, or a partner. The platform holds a top ranking on G2 in social media analytics and counts NBC Universal, Billboard, USTA, and WWF among its customers.
In 2024, Muck Rack, the PR software platform, acquired Keyhole. As of 2026, the pricing page at keyhole.co redirects straight to a Muck Rack demo request form. There is no public pricing and no self-serve evaluation path left; the professional tiers that used to make Keyhole reachable for mid-market teams are gone, replaced by an enterprise sales process run through Muck Rack.
The trade-off inside the product itself is coverage breadth: Keyhole tracks social platforms only, with no news, blog, or podcast monitoring, so it is not a substitute for a tool like Brandwatch or Brand24 if your monitoring needs extend beyond social conversation. What it does well, hashtag-anchored campaign measurement and influencer quality scoring, it does well specifically, which is why enterprise marketing teams running structured hashtag campaigns keep choosing it despite the access friction.
| Feature | Professional Contact for pricing | Enterprise Contact for pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Hashtag and keyword tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Historical data | Limited | Extended |
| Influencer analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign measurement | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | Yes |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Brandwatch | Keyhole |
|---|---|---|
| Source coverage | 100M+ sources across social, news, blogs, forums, podcasts, reviews | Social platforms only: X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn |
| Hashtag-anchored campaign analytics | No | Yes, aggregates every post using a shared hashtag including influencer and partner content |
| Influencer analytics with quality scoring | No | Yes, audience quality score per influencer |
| Social publishing / content calendar | Yes (Social Media Management, Full Suite tiers) | No |
| Unified social inbox | Yes (Social Media Management, Full Suite tiers) | No |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes, via consumer intelligence competitive analysis | Yes, competitor social account benchmarking |
| Historical data depth | Yes, real-time plus historical research queries | Yes, multi-year on higher tiers |
| API access | Consumer Intelligence tier and above | Enterprise tier only |
| White-label delivery | No | No |
| Self-serve signup | No | No, routes to a Muck Rack demo request |
| Free trial | No | No |
| Starting price | Contact for pricing (sales-led) | Contact for pricing (via Muck Rack sales) |
Which should you choose?
BrandwatchKeyholeBrandwatchKeyholeKeyholeBrandwatchThe access model looks identical from the outside, sales call first, no number on the page, but the products underneath are not competing for the same buyer. Brandwatch is a research-plus-operations platform: it wants to be the place your insights team runs competitive analysis and your social team publishes and replies. Keyhole is a specialist: it wants to be the place your campaigns team measures a hashtag push across owned posts, influencer content, and partner content in one aggregated view. A brand deciding between them should ask which workflow is actually the bottleneck, broad research and publishing, or hashtag campaign and influencer measurement, because that answer matters more than which platform has more total features.
Bottom line
Book the Brandwatch demo if your monitoring programme spans news, forums, and blogs in addition to social, and you want publishing and a unified inbox in the same tool. Go through Keyhole and Muck Rack's sales process if your work centers on hashtag campaigns with influencer or partner components and you need audience quality scoring to back up partnership reporting. If your team cannot clear either sales process, or needs white-label delivery that neither offers, Mention or Brand24 are the self-serve alternatives worth evaluating first.
Frequently asked questions
Is Brandwatch or Keyhole better for tracking a hashtag campaign with influencers?
Keyhole is the stronger choice for hashtag-anchored campaigns with influencer components, since it aggregates every post using a shared hashtag, owned, influencer, and partner content alike, into one dashboard with audience quality scoring built in. Brandwatch does not offer this kind of campaign aggregation; its strength is broader research and social operations rather than campaign-specific measurement.
Can I sign up for Keyhole without talking to sales?
No, as of 2026 there is no self-serve signup for Keyhole. Muck Rack acquired Keyhole in 2024, and the pricing page at keyhole.co now redirects to a Muck Rack demo request form. Brandwatch has the same restriction, requiring a sales demo before any pricing is disclosed.
Does Keyhole monitor news and blogs the way Brandwatch does?
No, Keyhole's monitoring is limited to social platforms including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with no news, blog, or podcast coverage. Brandwatch indexes over 100 million sources spanning social, news, blogs, forums, podcasts, and reviews, which makes it the better fit if your monitoring needs extend past social conversation.
Why did Keyhole stop offering self-serve pricing?
Keyhole stopped offering self-serve pricing after Muck Rack, the PR software platform, acquired it in 2024. The professional tiers that previously made Keyhole accessible to mid-market teams were replaced by Muck Rack's enterprise sales process, and the keyhole.co pricing page now routes directly to a demo request form rather than showing plan details.
Do either Brandwatch or Keyhole offer white-label reporting for agencies?
Neither Brandwatch nor Keyhole offers white-label report delivery on any tier. Agencies using either platform for client work will need to export data via API, where available, and build their own branded reporting layer rather than relying on native white-label output.
What is Keyhole's audience quality score and does Brandwatch have an equivalent?
Keyhole's audience quality score evaluates an influencer's follower base to distinguish genuine engagement from inflated or purchased followings, and it is built into the influencer analytics workflow. Brandwatch does not offer an equivalent influencer-specific scoring feature; its research tools are built around audience segmentation and brand perception rather than individual influencer vetting.