Rival IQ is the best social benchmarking tool in this comparison, and nobody should pretend otherwise — 24 months of history, boosted-post detection, listening, agency reporting. But it is social-only by choice: in September 2020 it sunset its website and SEO monitoring and told customers to go buy Moz or Semrush. And it starts at $239/mo for one seat. ScoutRival Pro is $89 — and it watches the website and the social, then writes the work.
No card required · Live in ~5 minutes · 14-day money-back on paid plans
…and the work still arrives as a recommendation.
This isn’t an accusation — it’s their own announcement. In 2020 Rival IQ told customers it was sunsetting SEO Keywords, Metrics and Web History, effective 15 September, and pointed them at Moz and Semrush instead. It made a deliberate choice to be the best social analytics product rather than a broad one, and it succeeded at that.
But look at what it leaves you holding. Your competitor rewrites their pricing page, publishes six blog posts about emergency callouts, and starts outranking you for the search that actually brings customers. Rival IQ will not tell you. It is watching their Instagram.
ScoutRival watches both — website and blog and Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube — and at 7am tells you what moved, what it means, and the three things to do before lunch.
A recommendation is a to-do. A draft is done work.
Rival IQ will show you, beautifully, that your engagement rate is 0.8% against an industry median of 1.4%. The charts are excellent. The benchmark research they publish is genuinely respected, and we’ll happily say so.
And then you have to go and be better. Which means writing things — and Rival IQ generates nothing. Not a post, not an article, not a caption.
ScoutRival writes the 1,000–5,000-word article in your brand voice, drafts the social posts for every platform, and publishes the article to your WordPress in one click. $89 for three brands and three seats, against $239 for one seat and a chart.
Your customers now ask an AI engine who the best option is, and it answers with three names. Rival IQ tracks no AI-search visibility at all — nothing that measures whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini name your business.
And because it walked away from web monitoring in 2020, it also runs no SEO audit of your own site. ScoutRival does both: four engines you can re-check any day, and a 27-check audit graded A–F with fix cards, on every plan from $29.
Fair note: Rival IQ has a “Social Media Audit” — that’s an audit of your social presence, which is a real and different thing from an SEO audit of your website. Checked July 2026.
Their month-to-month rates, July 2026 — annual is actually cheaper, at $199. Compared against ScoutRival Pro at $89: 3 brands, 3 seats, everything included.
And nothing has been written yet. Rival IQ measures; it doesn’t make.
Every price read from Rival IQ's own pricing pages in July 2026, and linked so you can check us.
| ScoutRival | Rival IQ | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | ||
| Entry price, month-to-month | $29 Everything included | $239 Drive · 1 user, 10 companies |
| Three seats | $89 Pro · 3 brands too | $259 Drive + 2 users |
| Free trial | We do 14-day money-back instead | 14 days, no credit card — genuinely good |
| Money-back guarantee | 14 days, all paid plans | Their terms: “All sales are final” |
| It watches | ||
| A competitor’s website & blog | Daily | They announced the sunset of Web History & SEO, effective Sept 2020 |
| A competitor’s LinkedIn | Plus the founder’s LinkedIn | Their help centre: LinkedIn’s API blocks competitive data |
| A competitor’s social posts | Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube | Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok — and far deeper than us |
| SEO audit of your own site | 27 checks, graded A–F | They audit your social presence, not your site |
| AI-search visibility | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini | |
| A daily brief telling you what to do | 7am, every morning | Alerts as they happen, or a weekly summary |
| It creates | ||
| Writes the article | 1k–5k words, brand voice | |
| Writes the social posts | Every platform, same brief | |
| Publishes to WordPress | One click | |
| Bring your own AI key | Pro & Agency · 0 credits | |
| Where Rival IQ wins — and it isn’t close | ||
| Social analytics depth | We read posts; we don’t analyse them like this | Post-level, cross-channel, hashtag, influencer |
| Historical data | We start the day you sign up | Up to 24 months |
| Boosted-post detection | Machine learning — spots which posts are paid | |
| Social listening | We have none | Saved searches across Reddit, blogs, news, X |
| TikTok | ||
| Agency & white-label reporting | Branded exports, read-only client users, Data Studio |
Prices read from Rival IQ's own public pricing pages in July 2026 (source). They change — check theirs. Rival IQ is a trademark of its owner. ScoutRival is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them. Spot something stale or unfair? Tell us and we'll correct it — including if you work there.
You have someone whose job this is.
Their data is the best there is. If that's your situation, it's the better buy — and we'd rather you knew now than after the refund.
Nobody there does marketing full-time.
Not on its current plans. Rival IQ announced it was sunsetting SEO Keywords, Metrics and Web History effective 15 September 2020, and pointed customers at Moz and Semrush instead. One thing you should know, because you may find it yourself: an older page on their site still describes website and meta-tag alerts. We’re flagging that rather than scoring a point off it — check with them directly if it matters to your decision. ScoutRival watches the website and the blog daily.
Because it’s built for a different buyer — a social team or an agency, not an owner-operator. Its entry plan is $239/mo month-to-month for one user (annual works out cheaper, at $199). That buys real depth: 24 months of history, boosted-post detection, listening, white-label reports. ScoutRival Pro is $89 for 3 brands and 3 seats — and it also writes the posts and the articles, which Rival IQ doesn’t do at all.
No — and it isn’t their fault. Their own help centre explains that LinkedIn’s API doesn’t permit competitive LinkedIn data, so you can only connect your own page. ScoutRival monitors a competitor’s LinkedIn and the founder’s personal LinkedIn, which for service businesses is often where the real signal is.
Neither of us. We won’t claim a win here — ScoutRival writes the social posts but publishes to WordPress only, and Rival IQ is an analytics tool, not a scheduler. If you need scheduling, pair either of us with Buffer or Metricool.
Then run both, and plenty of agencies should — they overlap surprisingly little. Rival IQ gives you the social benchmark and the client report; ScoutRival gives you the website side, the SEO grade, the AI-visibility check, and the writing. Just go in knowing that Rival IQ’s terms say “all sales are final,” and cancellation is by email — whereas ours is 14 days, money back, no argument.
Most people shortlist two or three. Here's what else lands on the list next to Rival IQ — what each one costs, and where each one stops.
Deep enterprise CI for product-marketing teams. Its pricing page is a form that wants your phone number and your employee count before it quotes you.
Battlecards and win-loss for B2B sales orgs. Its demo form has a required box for which CRM your go-to-market team runs. There isn’t one for “I’m a dentist.”
Semrush-owned CI with AI daily summaries — the closest thing here to our Daily Brief. But its entry tier assumes 25 user licences, and it stops at the summary.
Our nearest analogue on buyer — and it watches more than we do, newsletters included. But it bills per competitor, so five rivals is $74.75/mo.
The best page-differ there is, and cheaper than us — genuinely. But it watches URLs you configured, and its AI and integrations start at $1,200/yr.
The best on-page optimizer there is — and its entry plan tracks zero AI prompts, in their own words. The advertised $49 is the annual rate; month to month it’s $59.
We've researched all 35 — prices, limits and where each one stops. See every comparison →
Add your website, name a competitor, and go to bed. Your first brief lands tomorrow morning — with the article already written.