A Brand24 API alternative with webhooks and MCP included

Developers searching for a Brand24 API alternative usually want one thing: matches arriving as events in their own code, not in a dashboard they have to remember to open. Brand24, the tool many teams start with, sells its API as an extra $149 on top of a plan that already starts at $199 a month. This comparison looks at how three tools expose their data to code, what it costs, and which one fits a developer workflow best.

What "API access" should mean here

For monitoring, a useful API covers three jobs:

1. Manage monitors in code. Create, update and delete what you watch, so it can live in a script or a config repo.
2. Push, not poll. Send a webhook when something matches, ideally signed so you can trust it.
3. Hand data to agents. An MCP server lets an AI assistant work with the monitors directly.

AyeWatch

AyeWatch covers all three on every paid plan, and paid plans start at $9 a month.

• The REST API lets you create, list, update and delete topics.
• Matches arrive as topic.update webhook events with an AI-written summary, signed with HMAC-SHA256.
• An MCP server at https://ayewatch.ai/api/mcp lets a connected agent create a monitor, change what it tracks or pause it, using an AyeWatch API key.

The monitors themselves are plain-English descriptions rather than keyword queries. A topic can be the internet at large, a list of web pages, or a social source such as an X profile, a subreddit or a YouTube channel. Because AyeWatch decides whether each new item matches by meaning, the payload you receive is already filtered and summarized. Your handler does not need its own relevance step.

Each topic picks its own channels, so the same account can send one monitor to a webhook, another to Slack and a third to a teammate's phone through the iOS or Android app.

Brand24

Brand24's API is listed on its pricing page as available for an additional fee of $149. Plans start at $249 a month, or $199 a month on annual billing, for 3 keywords. Brand24 also lists MCP access, which gives AI assistants access to your live mention data.

What you get back is mentions: raw items that matched your keywords, with Brand24's sentiment and reach data attached. That is useful if you want to build your own analytics, and it is the reason to choose Brand24 for a data pipeline that needs sentiment scores. It is a lot to pay if you only want a filtered alert stream.

Syften

Syften focuses on communities: Reddit, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Exchange, Indie Hackers and others. API access is on its $29.95 plan, which lets you query matches and edit filters. Webhooks and MCP arrive on the $119.95 plan. Alerts can also go out by RSS, email or Slack. It aims to deliver Reddit matches within a minute.

Side by side

A small example

Say you maintain an open-source library and want a Discord message whenever someone reports a breaking change in a release. In AyeWatch you create one monitor through the API with a description like "posts or issues saying the latest release of mylib broke something", sources set to the internet plus the project's subreddit, and Discord as the channel. Changing the wording later is a single update call.

With a keyword tool you would match "mylib", then write code to discard every star, fork announcement and tutorial link before deciding what to forward.

Which to choose

For most developer use, AyeWatch is the better fit: the API, signed webhooks and MCP are included from $9, and the filtering happens before the event reaches you. Pick Syften if your audience is almost entirely on Hacker News and Reddit and you want minute-level Reddit delivery. Pick Brand24 if you need sentiment and reach data in your own warehouse and the budget covers the API fee.

The AyeWatch vs Brand24 page lists the remaining differences.