How to Monitor Brand Mentions on X (Twitter) Without a Social Listening Tool

Short answer: write an X advanced search query that captures your brand, such as "acme analytics" OR @acmeanalytics -from:acmeanalytics lang:en, test it on x.com/search, then run it once a day with Tweet Scraper V2, using a since: date so each run only collects new posts. It costs $0.40 per 1,000 posts. Then tag each post's sentiment and topic with AI, and send the negative ones to Slack.

Social listening platforms charge hundreds of dollars a month, and for most small and mid-sized brands the core job is simple: find out who mentioned us, what they said, and whether anything needs a reply. X's own search can already find those posts. The missing parts are collecting them every day, keeping a history, and sorting the important ones from the noise. This guide sets that up.

Tweet Scraper V2 is built by apidojo, not by me. It has over 100,000 users on Apify and is on my list of the best Apify actors for social data.

How do you find every mention of your brand on X?

Use X's advanced search operators. The scraper accepts the exact same syntax, so a query that works in X search works in the scraper. The operators that matter for brand monitoring:

• "brand name" in quotes for the exact phrase, plus common misspellings as separate terms joined with OR
• @handle for direct mentions and replies
• -from:handle to exclude your own posts
• lang:en to keep one language
• -filter:retweets to drop retweets, which duplicate the original
• since:2026-09-01 and until: for date windows
• min_faves:10 to keep only posts with some reach

Build one query for your brand, one for each competitor, and one or two for the problem you solve ("looking for a" plus your category). Test each on x.com/search first: the scraper returns what the search shows.

What data do you get for each post?

The post text, URL, creation date, language, and engagement counts (likes, reposts, replies, quotes, views where available), plus the author's handle, name, follower count and verified status, and any media or links in the post. Follower count is the useful filter: a complaint from an account with 200,000 followers needs a faster reply than one from an account with 40.

How do you set up daily monitoring?

1. Write and test your queries on x.com/search.
2. Add them to Search Terms in Tweet Scraper V2, with sort set to Latest and a since: date of yesterday.
3. Set Maximum number of items as a spending cap.
4. Schedule it once a day. The actor's rules ask that you do not re-run the same query at short intervals, and daily is the right rhythm for brand monitoring anyway.
5. Tag the results with AI. Send the dataset to the Bulk LLM Runner with a prompt such as "Post: {{text}}. Return sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), topic (bug, pricing, support, praise, question, other) and needs_reply (yes or no)."
6. Route what matters. Filter to needs_reply = yes and send those rows to Slack or email through Apify's integrations.

How much does it cost?

$0.40 per 1,000 posts. A brand with 300 mentions a day collects about 9,000 posts a month, which costs about $3.60. Add the AI tagging at $0.002 per row plus model usage if you use it.

Two limits to know before you start. Each query must return at least 50 posts per run, and free Apify users are limited to 5 runs a month capped at 10 posts each. If your brand gets fewer than 50 mentions a day, the same developer's Twitter Scraper Unlimited has event-based pricing with no minimum, and also handles single posts and reply threads.

What should you watch for besides complaints?

• Buying intent. Posts like "anyone know a good alternative to [competitor]" are sales opportunities, and replying quickly and helpfully works.
• Competitor problems. A spike in negative posts about a competitor, such as an outage or a price rise, is a moment to be visible.
• Influential fans. Positive mentions from large accounts are people worth thanking and building a relationship with.
• Spikes. A sudden jump in volume usually means something happened. Count posts per day and alert on anything well above the normal level.

X is one channel. Reddit is often where buying questions are asked in more detail; the Reddit Lead Finder covers that, as explained in how to find buying-intent leads on Reddit. And to know whether AI assistants mention your brand when people ask for recommendations, use the AI Brand Visibility Tracker.

Is it legal to scrape X?

The scraper collects public posts, the same ones anyone can see in X search. Reading and analysing public posts about your brand is common practice. Posts and profiles are still personal data under GDPR and similar laws, so keep what you need for monitoring, do not build profiles of individuals, and do not republish posts outside X's own embed tools. X's terms restrict automated access, so keep volumes reasonable. This article is independent of X Corp.

Frequently asked questions

More monitoring and outreach tools are in the lead generation hub and on the best Apify actors page.