Meltwater vs. SproutSocial: Which Is the Right Choice? (2025 review)

Choosing between Meltwater and Sprout Social for social media monitoring requires carefully weighing each platform’s distinct capabilities, pricing structure, and overall user experience.

These industry-leading tools take different approaches to social listening – with Meltwater offering enterprise-level media monitoring across traditional and social channels, while Sprout Social focuses on comprehensive social media management with robust listening features.

This analysis draws from extensive platform documentation, pricing details, and verified customer reviews to provide an objective comparison of how each solution handles critical functions like data collection, reporting, and engagement tracking.

Through hands-on evaluation of both platforms’ core features, we’ll explore the key differences in their approaches to helping brands monitor and analyze social conversations.

Pricing & Plans

Meltwater and Sprout Social offer distinctly different pricing structures and flexibility. While Sprout Social provides transparent pricing starting at $199 per seat monthly for their Standard plan, Meltwater requires direct contact for custom quotes on their Essential, Suite, and Enterprise tiers.

Free Trial and Demo Access

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial that includes core social media management features but excludes social listening capabilities. Meltwater doesn’t provide a free trial but offers comprehensive product demonstrations. Both platforms provide guided demos with sales representatives to explore their full feature sets.

Plan Structure and Billing

Sprout Social maintains a straightforward per-seat pricing model with monthly or annual billing options. Their Professional plan at $299/seat/month and Advanced plan at $399/seat/month cater to growing teams. Meltwater’s tiered structure focuses on customized solutions, with annual contracts required and no monthly billing flexibility.

Add-ons and Extras

Sprout Social’s social listening feature comes as a significant add-on starting at $999/month, with additional social profiles costing $25 each. Meltwater integrates social listening within their core plans but may charge for custom features or expanded access. Both platforms offer enterprise-level customization for larger organizations.

Payment Options and Refunds

Sprout Social accepts multiple payment methods including credit cards, PayPal, ACH transfers, and wire transfers. Meltwater’s payment options aren’t publicly disclosed. Neither platform offers refunds for prepaid services, with Meltwater maintaining particularly strict terms that explicitly prohibit refunds under any circumstances.

For organizations prioritizing pricing transparency and billing flexibility, Sprout Social presents a more straightforward choice, while Meltwater’s customized approach may better suit enterprises needing comprehensive, tailored solutions with unified global pricing.

Features

Dashboard & Interface

Meltwater’s dashboard emphasizes comprehensive data visualization with multiple widgets and real-time monitoring capabilities. The interface presents a more complex layout focused on delivering in-depth analytics. In contrast, SproutSocial offers a streamlined, user-friendly dashboard that prioritizes social media management and engagement metrics.

Alert Creation & Monitoring

Meltwater provides advanced boolean search capabilities with multiple operator types, including proximity and entity operators. While the learning curve can be steep, it offers exceptional flexibility in alert creation. SproutSocial takes a more templated approach with AI-assisted query building and pre-built templates for different monitoring scenarios. The platform includes helpful features like volume preview and noise filtering, though it takes 3-5 minutes to display mentions.

Metrics & Analytics

Meltwater delivers comprehensive measurement capabilities tracking everything from basic engagement metrics to advanced indicators like EMV and sales conversions. SproutSocial focuses primarily on social media metrics, providing detailed analysis of platform-specific engagement rates and conversation patterns. Both tools offer sentiment analysis, though they use different approaches – Meltwater leverages Google’s BERT model, while SproutSocial employs a Deep Neural Network.

Data Coverage

Meltwater excels with extensive source coverage across 270,000 global news sources, 15 social platforms, and multimedia content including TV, radio, and podcasts. Historical data reaches back to 2009 for editorial content. SproutSocial maintains a narrower focus on major social networks and web content, with varying historical data limits across platforms – from 30 days for Reddit to full historical access for Twitter.

Reporting Capabilities

Meltwater offers six comprehensive report templates with extensive customization options and multiple export formats including PDF, PPTX, and Google Slides. SproutSocial provides custom reporting tools with cross-network analysis capabilities and competitive benchmarking, though export options are limited to PDF and CSV formats.

Collaboration & AI Features

Both platforms incorporate AI functionality, with Meltwater offering advanced features like AI contextual analysis cards and automated influencer discovery. SproutSocial includes practical AI tools such as ViralPost timing optimization and smart categorization. For collaboration, Meltwater provides influencer feedback tools, while SproutSocial focuses on workflow management with message approval systems and case management.

Language Support

Meltwater demonstrates superior language capabilities with support for 480 languages and sentiment analysis in 218 languages and dialects. SproutSocial’s language support isn’t explicitly specified, indicating potentially limited multilingual capabilities.

Customer Service

Meltwater’s Customer Support Structure

Meltwater’s help center stands out with its comprehensive 371-article knowledge base, organized across 16 detailed categories covering everything from basic FAQs to advanced features like Boolean searches and media monitoring. The platform offers impressive language accessibility with support in seven languages (English, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese), making it particularly valuable for global teams.

Support availability is robust with 24/7 email and live chat access, complemented by extensive training resources through Meltwater Academy. The dedicated account manager system ensures personalized guidance, while the variety of learning formats (webinars, ebooks, mobile apps) caters to different learning preferences. Meltwater’s approach clearly prioritizes comprehensive, multilingual support for enterprise-level needs.

Sprout Social’s Support Infrastructure

Sprout Social takes a focused approach with its help center, organizing content into 19 specialized categories that emphasize social media platform-specific guidance and practical solutions. While the platform’s native content is only in English, it compensates by offering Google Translate integration for international users, though this may result in less precise translations compared to Meltwater’s native language support.

The support team operates on a 24-hour basis Monday through Friday, providing multiple contact options including live chat, phone support, and ticket system. Training resources are more streamlined, focusing on pre-recorded webinars and product guides, with dedicated account managers available to provide personalized assistance. Sprout Social’s support structure is particularly well-suited for businesses primarily operating in English-speaking markets who value direct, platform-specific assistance.

Customer testimonials

Meltwater User Reviews

Meltwater has received a total of 2,283 reviews across G2 and Capterra platforms, maintaining a solid average rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars. The platform earned a 4.0 score on G2 (2,187 reviews) and a 4.0 on Capterra (96 reviews).

“Meltwater provides us with invaluable data and insights. With the Explore function, we can monitor online conversations about our organization and related areas, while also comparing those discussions to competitor activity and analyzing trends over different time periods,” shares Megan D., a Marketing and Communications Manager. However, users also note limitations: “Although the interface is user-friendly, there is still a learning curve to fully utilize all the advanced features. It can take some time to get accustomed to the various tools and functionalities available,” explains Troy W., a Senior Product Manager.

Sprout Social User Reviews

Sprout Social demonstrates strong user satisfaction with 4,411 total reviews and a higher average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. The platform maintains consistent scores of 4.4 on both G2 (3,818 reviews) and Capterra (593 reviews).

Brand Manager Alyssa L. offers both praise and criticism: “Sprout has everything you could possibly need from a social scheduling and reporting tool. It’s fully fleshed out with so much opportunity… social listening has helped beef up our brand reports and better track how we are comparing to competitors.” However, she also notes: “Our onboarding was horrendous. It took over 2 months to schedule the meetings, and our rep changed in the middle without notice or much communication.”

Based on user testimonials, Meltwater shines in data analysis and insights but requires significant time investment to master, while Sprout Social offers comprehensive social media management features but struggles with consistent onboarding support.

SproutSocial vs Meltwater: Final verdict

Both Meltwater and Sprout Social offer distinct advantages for social listening, with Meltwater excelling in comprehensive global coverage and advanced analytics, while Sprout Social stands out for its intuitive interface and streamlined reporting capabilities. Teams seeking enterprise-grade monitoring across multiple regions will find Meltwater’s extensive data sources valuable, whereas organizations prioritizing ease of use and straightforward social engagement metrics may prefer Sprout Social’s approachable platform.

However, both tools have notable limitations. Meltwater’s complex interface can require significant onboarding time, and its premium pricing may stretch smaller budgets. Sprout Social’s historical data restrictions and limited coverage of certain platforms like TikTok could pose challenges for brands needing deeper historical insights or comprehensive cross-platform monitoring.

For teams seeking additional options that balance comprehensive coverage with user-friendly analytics, Mention’s free trial offers an opportunity to explore features like real-time monitoring across billions of sources, industry-leading sentiment accuracy, and up to 2 years of historical data. You can also schedule a demo to see how Mention’s extensive reporting capabilities and competitive pricing could complement their existing social listening strategy.