Keyhole vs Octolens in 2026: Muck Rack's hashtag analytics vs AI-filtered developer community monitoring
Keyhole tracks hashtags, influencers, and campaigns across six social platforms behind a Muck Rack sales gate with no public pricing anywhere. Octolens publishes pricing from $159 a month and adds GitHub, Hacker News, and an MCP server that lets you query mentions from inside Claude or Cursor.
Keyhole
Octolens- Keyhole has published no pricing on either tier since its 2024 Muck Rack acquisition. Octolens publishes pricing starting at $159/month for the Pro plan.
- Octolens ships an MCP server on every paid plan, letting you query mention data directly from Claude or Cursor. Keyhole has no equivalent AI-environment integration.
- Octolens monitors GitHub issues and Hacker News threads alongside 13+ platforms in total. Keyhole's coverage is limited to six platforms: X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
- Keyhole's differentiation is hashtag campaign aggregation and influencer audience-quality scoring, workflows Octolens does not offer at all.
- API access on Keyhole is locked to its Enterprise tier, which is sales-quoted. Octolens includes REST API access starting on its entry Pro plan at $159/month.
- Octolens uses AI disambiguation to filter out mentions of a brand name that is also a common word, a filtering layer Keyhole does not have.
- Keyhole scores 7.2 overall with its strongest area in Features (8.0). Octolens scores 8.1 overall, driven by a 9.0 in API and integrations.
Keyhole and Octolens both call themselves social listening tools, but they were built for almost opposite buyers. Keyhole is a hashtag-and-influencer analytics platform that grew up serving PR and social teams running campaign measurement, and since its 2024 acquisition by Muck Rack, evaluating it means booking a demo since there is no published price on either tier. Octolens was built for a narrower, more technical audience: SaaS founders and developer-tool companies who need to see what people are saying on GitHub, Hacker News, and Reddit, not just Instagram and X. It publishes pricing starting at $159 a month and ships an MCP server on every paid plan, so you can pull mention data directly into Claude or Cursor instead of opening a dashboard. If your monitoring problem is hashtag campaigns and influencer ROI, Keyhole still does that specific job well, assuming you can get past the sales process. If your buyers live on GitHub and Hacker News, Octolens is solving a problem Keyhole was never built to touch.
The tools at a glance
Keyhole
Social media analytics with hashtag tracking, influencer analytics, and campaign measurement, now part of the Muck Rack platform
Keyhole has been tracking hashtags and social campaigns since 2012, and its strongest feature is still campaign aggregation: pull every post, whether owned, influencer, or organic, that shares a campaign hashtag into one report with combined reach, impressions, and sentiment. Layered on top is influencer analytics with an audience-quality score, which lets a marketing team separate genuinely engaged accounts from inflated follower counts before committing partnership budget.
The 2024 acquisition by Muck Rack changed how you buy Keyhole more than what it does. The keyhole.co pricing page now redirects to a Muck Rack demo request form, and there is no self-serve signup or published number on either the Professional or Enterprise tier. Teams with an existing Muck Rack relationship for PR management get the smoothest path in; everyone else needs a sales conversation just to see a price.
Coverage is social-only: X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn. There is no news, blog, podcast, or developer-community monitoring, and no AI-assisted filtering layer to separate signal from noise in high-volume keyword results. For a brand running a coordinated hashtag campaign with influencer partners, that narrow focus is a feature. For anything outside that use case, it is a real gap.
| Feature | Professional Contact for pricing | Enterprise Contact for pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Hashtag and keyword tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Influencer analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign measurement | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | Yes |
| Dedicated account manager | No | Yes |
Octolens
AI-filtered social listening across 13+ platforms with MCP server integration
Octolens was built for product-led companies whose customers talk about them in places most monitoring tools ignore: GitHub issues, Hacker News threads, and Product Hunt launches, alongside Reddit, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. All 13-plus sources feed into a single continuously refreshed inbox rather than requiring separate dashboards per platform.
The filtering layer is what sets it apart from keyword monitoring tools. Every mention is scored for relevance and sentiment before an alert fires, and AI disambiguation handles brand names that double as common words, so a brand called "Arc" or "Notion" doesn't drown in unrelated noise. The MCP server, included on every paid plan, lets you query mention data directly from Claude or Cursor without opening a browser tab, a genuine workflow improvement for teams that live in their editor.
The trade-offs are real: there is no white-label or client-sharing view, which rules out agency use for branded client reporting, and the $159-a-month entry price is steep for a solo founder tracking a single brand. Coverage also skews toward English-language sources, so teams with a meaningful non-English audience should verify depth during the trial before committing.
| Feature | Free Trial Limited | Pro $159/mo | Scale $499/mo | Enterprise Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monitored platforms | 13+ | 13+ | 13+ | 13+ |
| Keywords / topics | Limited | 10 | 50 | Custom |
| REST API access | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Slack and webhook alerts | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI disambiguation | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Keyhole | Octolens |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms / sources monitored | X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn (social-only) | 13+ platforms: Reddit, X, LinkedIn, GitHub, Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, and more |
| Hashtag and campaign tracking | Yes, with multi-year historical data | No |
| Influencer analytics | Yes, with audience quality scoring | No |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Not dedicated; competitor names can be tracked as keywords |
| AI relevance and sentiment filtering | No | Yes, on every mention |
| AI brand-name disambiguation | No | Yes |
| Developer community coverage (GitHub, Hacker News) | No | Yes |
| MCP server / AI-agent integration | No | Yes, on all paid plans |
| REST API access | Enterprise tier only | Yes, from Pro ($159/mo) |
| Slack / webhook alerts | Email alerts only | Yes |
| White-label delivery | No | No |
| Self-serve signup | No, Muck Rack sales process required | Yes |
| Free trial or free tier | No | Free trial (limited), no permanent free tier |
| Starting price | Contact for pricing (Muck Rack sales process) | $159/mo (Pro plan) |
Which should you choose?
OctolensKeyholeOctolensKeyholeOctolensKeyholeOctolensThe overlap between these two tools is smaller than the "social listening" label suggests. Keyhole is built around a specific workflow: aggregate a hashtag campaign across owned, influencer, and organic posts, then score the influencers who drove it. Octolens is built around a different one: catch developer and technical conversations across GitHub, Hacker News, and Reddit, filter out noise with AI scoring, and get that data into an AI coding environment without leaving it. Neither tool does the other's job, and picking between them mostly comes down to whether your audience talks in hashtags or in issue threads.
Bottom line
Go through the Muck Rack sales process for Keyhole if hashtag campaign aggregation and influencer scoring are the actual job and you can live with an opaque, enterprise-only price. Sign up for Octolens at $159 a month if your brand shows up in GitHub issues and Hacker News threads as much as it does on social media, and you want AI-filtered mentions plus an MCP server that plugs straight into your existing AI workflow. For a brand that needs both hashtag campaign reporting and developer-community coverage, you will end up running two tools rather than one, since neither vendor is trying to cover the other's ground.
Frequently asked questions
Can I try Keyhole or Octolens without talking to sales first?
Octolens offers a limited, time-limited free trial with self-serve signup, so you can test coverage before paying $159 a month for the Pro plan. Keyhole has no self-serve option at all since its 2024 acquisition by Muck Rack; the keyhole.co pricing page redirects straight to a demo request form, and there is no way to trial the product without a sales conversation.
Does Octolens replace Keyhole for hashtag campaign reporting?
No, Octolens does not offer hashtag campaign aggregation or influencer audience-quality scoring, the two features Keyhole is built around. If your monitoring need is specifically campaign-hashtag measurement across owned and influencer posts, Keyhole's feature set is purpose-built for that job in a way Octolens is not.
Is Octolens worth $159 a month just for GitHub and Hacker News monitoring?
For a developer-tool company or SaaS founder whose customers actually discuss the product on GitHub and Hacker News, the AI-filtered relevance scoring and MCP server access justify the price, since those two channels are typically invisible to generic monitoring tools. For a brand with no developer audience, the price is harder to justify and a cheaper, more general listening tool is the better fit.
Which tool is better for tracking influencer partnerships?
Keyhole is the stronger choice for influencer tracking, since it includes audience-quality scoring and campaign-level aggregation across owned, partner, and influencer posts sharing a hashtag. Octolens does not have influencer-specific analytics; its keyword tracking can surface individual mentions but does not score or aggregate influencer performance.
Does either tool offer white-label reporting for agencies?
Neither tool offers white-label delivery. Octolens's own product materials list this explicitly as a limitation for agency use, and Keyhole's pricing tables do not include a white-label feature on either the Professional or Enterprise tier.
What does the Octolens MCP server actually let you do that Keyhole cannot?
The MCP server exposes your Octolens mention data as a tool that Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI client can query directly, so you can ask something like "what did people say about us on Hacker News this week" and get structured results without opening a dashboard. Keyhole has no MCP integration or comparable AI-environment access; its reporting is accessed through its own dashboard and scheduled report exports.