10 Best OSINT Tools for Social Media in 2026 (Free and Paid, Compared)

Maltego turns one starting point — a name, email address, domain or social handle — into a visual graph of everything linked to it, using transforms that query public records, social platforms and commercial data. The free Basic plan includes the Community Edition of Maltego Graph with 200 credits a month, enough for small investigations. Entry starts at €3,000 a year and adds 10,000 credits and Hunchly.

The catch is the credit meter: every transform spends credits, so a wide investigation burns the monthly allowance fast, and Professional at €7,500 a year per seat unlocks unlimited Maltego Search and commercial data. Maltego is also a desktop-first tool with a real learning curve. Buy it when link analysis is the job itself; start with the free Basic plan when you only need the occasional graph.

Brand24 watches for your keywords across social media, news, blogs, forums, podcasts and review sites, then sorts the mentions by sentiment and reach in one dashboard. The Individual plan costs $249 a month, or $199 a month billed annually, and covers 3 keywords with 2,000 mentions a month and updates every 12 hours. AI sentiment analysis is included from the entry plan.

The limits to watch are the keyword and mention caps: one brand plus two competitors is the most an Individual plan can track, and going over the mention limit costs extra. The entry price also rose sharply in 2026, from $149 to $249 a month, so it is no longer the budget pick it once was. Choose Brand24 when always-on listening matters more than the lowest price; choose Awario when the budget is the deciding factor.

Awario is the cheapest paid listener in this list: Starter costs $49 a month, or $29 a month billed annually, and covers 3 topics with 30,000 new mentions a month. Every plan includes Boolean search and unlimited keywords per topic, and it watches X, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, news, blogs and forums. A 7-day free trial needs no credit card.

The trade-offs sit in the storage and export limits: Starter keeps only 5,000 mentions per topic and leaves out data export, which starts on Pro at $149 a month. Starter also covers a single team member, so a team pays for Pro anyway. Reviewers praise the low price and simple interface but flag noisy results. Pick Awario when you want cheap keyword listening and can live without exports; pick Brand24 when reporting matters.

Hunchly does one job and does it well: it automatically captures every web page you visit, with screenshots and a cryptographic hash, so the record holds up as evidence. Classic costs $169 a year per user, or €149, stores everything locally on your own computer, and includes case management plus content import and export. A free plan covers lighter use.

The important limit is that Hunchly only records pages you visit yourself — it does not search the web or research for you, so it pairs with a search tool rather than replacing one. Hunchly Cloud and multi-licence pricing are only available through sales, and downloads now require a Maltego ID after the May 2025 acquisition. Buy Hunchly when the evidence trail matters as much as the findings; skip it when you only need to look things up.

OSINT Industries takes one selector — an email, phone number, username, name or crypto wallet — and returns a live digital footprint across a claimed 1,500-plus sources, with PDF, Word and JSON export. Pricing is public and self-serve: Basic is £19 a month for 30 credits, Intermediate is £49 with API access, and Advanced is £99 for 300 credits. No sales call is needed to start.

The catch is the credit budget: 30 credits a month covers about one search a day, so heavy users move through the allowance fast and pay for more. There is no free tier, and results are gathered at the moment of each search, with no ongoing monitoring on Basic. Choose OSINT Industries when you want fast, self-serve enrichment per identifier; choose Epieos when email and phone lookups are the whole job.

Epieos checks an email address or phone number against more than 140 online services and returns the social profiles linked to it, without notifying the person you search, according to the vendor. The free Member plan covers Google, Skype and an email checker, while the OSINTer plan at €29.99 a month unlocks all standard modules, including LinkedIn, with 30 full-access requests a month.

The limits are the request cap and the eligibility rule: 30 full-access requests a month is enough for occasional checks but not for bulk work, and unused credits do not carry over. Epieos is also intended for business customers acting professionally, not for consumers or minors, and the vendor says it does not save your requests or results. Pick Epieos for professional reverse lookups; pick OSINT Industries when usernames and crypto wallets matter too.

YouScan is the visual listener in this list: its AI finds your logo, products and scenes inside images and video, not just in text, and its Insights Copilot answers plain-language questions about the data. The Starter 3 plan costs $499 a month billed annually and covers 3 topics, 15,000 mentions a month and unlimited users across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, Reddit and Threads.

The price comes with hard edges: Starter is annual-billing only, so there is no month-to-month option, and Copilot is capped at 10 questions a month. Visual Insights, Audience Insights and API access are separate add-ons or quote-only plans, so the real cost of a fully equipped setup climbs past $499. Buy YouScan when images carry your brand; buy Brand24 or Awario when text mentions are enough.

SpiderFoot is the free automation option: an open-source tool with more than 200 modules that queries over 100 public data sources for domains, IPs, emails, usernames and social accounts, then correlates the results. It runs on your own machine, so your targets and results stay with you, and the community keeps the modules updated. The cloud version, SpiderFoot HX, adds hosting, collaboration and monitoring.

The price of free is technical work: command-line setup and module configuration take real skill, and there is no vendor support — help comes from the community. HX pricing is also not published, so the paid cloud version is priced on request. Choose SpiderFoot when you can run it yourself and want automation at $0; choose Maltego when you want a polished graph interface and are willing to pay for it.

Social Searcher is the simplest tool here: a free real-time search engine for social media that needs no sign-up. The free tier allows 100 searches a day and one email alert, enough to check what people are saying about a keyword or brand right now. Paid plans raise the search limit and add saved monitorings, more alerts and larger stores of saved posts.

The free tier is thin by design: one alert, no saved history and no sentiment analysis, so it is a search box rather than a listening suite. The paid entry price is also unclear — the vendor publishes no standalone pricing page, and third-party listings put Standard anywhere from €3.49 to €8 a month. Use it for quick free checks; move to Awario or Brand24 when you need alerts, history and reporting.

Skopenow builds a comprehensive, court-ready report on a person or business in minutes, pulling from social media, the dark web, court records, associated vehicles and contact data. It serves insurers, government agencies, security teams, journalists and licensed private investigators, and it prices by concurrent users rather than per seat, so a team shares logins by how many people are online at once.

There is no published price: Skopenow says pricing varies by search volume, team size, data sources and capabilities, so you contact sales for a quote. Only qualified, vetted organizations can buy, and a pilot is the way in for new customers. Choose Skopenow when the report itself is the deliverable and it may end up in court; choose anything else here when you only need to monitor or look things up.