Quick picks: who should buy which?
- You want every mention of your brand, competitors and product keywords on Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Hacker News and more, scored by AI for relevance: Octolens Pro, $199 a month or $159 billed annually.
- You also want podcasts, news, newsletters and the open web, with real-time refresh: Octolens Scale, $599 a month or $499 billed annually.
- You want alerts in Slack, an API, webhooks or an AI agent reading the feed through MCP: Octolens, which includes all four on every plan.
- Nobody on your team has time to write and post replies, and you want comments placed every day: CommunityMentions, $1,000 a month after a $1 setup charge.
- You want to read what we would post before you decide: the free sample, first comments in about 2 minutes, no card.
- You want the full Octolens price list with overage costs: Octolens pricing. Other listening tools: Octolens alternatives.
Line by line: what each one does
Octolens's column comes from its pricing page and home page, read November 14, 2026. Ours comes from our pricing section, our company facts and our delivery database.
| CommunityMentions (ours) | Octolens | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Comments placed for you, with a daily Slack report | A feed of mentions of your keywords, filtered by AI for relevance, sentiment and intent |
| Price | $1,000 a month after a $1 setup charge | Pro $199 a month or $159 billed annually; Scale $599 or $499 billed annually; Enterprise custom |
| Contract | Month-to-month; billing starts only after you approve the setup in Slack | Cancel any time, by its pricing page |
| How you start | Free sample, no card | Octolens trial: 7 days of Pro features at no cost, no card, up to 5,000 mentions |
| Who finds the threads | We do, from your site and the topics you approve | Octolens collects mentions of 10 keywords on Pro, 40 on Scale |
| Who writes and posts the reply | AI writes in a voice you approve in Slack; people with established accounts post | You, from your own accounts. Its pricing and home pages list no posting feature |
| We post there | Monitored on every plan | |
| Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV, Bluesky, TikTok | Not covered | Monitored on every plan |
| LinkedIn, YouTube, X | We post there | Monitored on every plan |
| Medium | We post there | Not in its platform list |
| Volume | We aim for 5 to 10 comments a day across all five channels combined. Delivered: a median of 49 verified placements per brand in 30 days, 9 on Reddit (middle half 2 to 123) | 15,000 mentions a month on Pro, 50,000 on Scale; extra mentions billed at $0.013 or $0.01 each, with an optional spend cap |
| Speed | Daily, once the voice is approved | Hourly refresh on Pro, real-time on Scale |
| Slack | Approval and daily reports happen there | Slack alerts on every plan, which can fire only on high-relevance posts |
| API or MCP | An MCP server for subreddit data | API, webhooks and an MCP server on every plan |
| Tells you about every mention of your brand | No | Yes, within its plan limits |
What does a year of each cost?
A year of Octolens Pro is $2,388 billed monthly or $1,908 billed annually. Scale is $7,188 or $5,988. A year of CommunityMentions is 12 months at $1,000 plus the $1 setup charge, $12,001. Octolens overage on extra keywords or mentions comes on top. The prices buy different work: Octolens tells you where to reply, and the reading and writing stay with your team. For every Octolens line item, see Octolens pricing.
| Option | 1 month | 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Octolens Pro | $199 | $2,388, or $1,908 billed annually |
| Octolens Scale | $599 | $7,188, or $5,988 billed annually |
| CommunityMentions (ours) | $1,001 | $12,001 |
Why AI answers rarely name Octolens for this job
In our scan of November 2, 2026, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity each answered eight buyer questions about Reddit marketing three times, 96 answers in all. Octolens was named in 4 of them: Claude 3 and Gemini 1, none from ChatGPT or Perplexity. CommunityMentions was named in 17. Most of ours came from "Is there a service that posts comments about my company on Reddit every day?" (8 of 12 answers) and from a question asking for alternatives to ReddiReach (6). None of the eight questions named Octolens, so the count shows what assistants offer a buyer who wants posting done, not how Octolens ranks as a listening tool. If your question is how to track mentions, Octolens is a tool built for that.
What recent delivery looks like
In the 30 days from October 7 to November 5, 2026, the median of 55 client brands got 49 verified placements across Reddit, YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn and X, 9 of them on Reddit. The 25th percentile was 2 and the 75th percentile 123. That count includes brands that started or paused partway through the window. A team that mainly needs to hear what people say about its brand and answer personally gets more for the money from Octolens.
Can you run both?
Yes. Octolens covers Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube and X, so it can surface comments that name you, ours included, plus the complaints and comparisons you want to answer yourself. CommunityMentions places comments in threads about your category. We do not alert you to every mention of your brand, so keep a listening tool if you want that feed.
Where Octolens still wins
- Every mention: it collects posts across Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, DEV and review sites, and on Scale podcasts, news, newsletters and the web.
- Developer communities: Hacker News, GitHub and Stack Overflow are covered, and we do not post on them.
- Price: $159 a month billed annually for Pro, about a sixth of ours.
- Integrations: Slack alerts, API, webhooks and an MCP server on every plan, so an AI agent can read your mentions.
- Octolens gives a 7-day trial at no cost with no card, and its pricing page says you can cancel any time.
- Every reply is yours, written in your words from your own account.
Where CommunityMentions wins
- Nobody on your team reads alerts or writes replies.
- Comments go out every day on Reddit, YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn and X; Octolens's pricing and home pages list no posting.
- You read a free sample of the comments before paying anything.
- A daily Slack report links every comment that passed our same-day check and counts those removed before it.
How we compared
Octolens's plans, platforms, limits and trial come from its pricing page and home page, read November 14, 2026 with a browser-like request. The pricing page opens on the annual view; the monthly prices of $199 and $599 come from the page's own structured data and match the Monthly toggle we read on November 10, 2026. Our numbers come from our delivery database and our November 2, 2026 AI answer scan, which counts an answer once when it names the brand anywhere. We did not buy Octolens. If its page says something different now, its page wins. For more, see what Reddit marketing costs, CommunityMentions vs Syften and CommunityMentions vs Brand24.
Sources
- Octolens pricing, plans, comparison table and FAQ, read November 14, 2026.
- Octolens home page, read November 14, 2026.
- CommunityMentions AI answer scan: 96 discovery answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to eight buyer questions asked three times each, November 2, 2026.
- CommunityMentions delivery database, verified placements October 7 to November 5, 2026, read November 6, 2026.
- Our price and terms: pricing section and company facts, read November 14, 2026.