Keyhole vs Syften in 2026: Enterprise hashtag analytics behind a Muck Rack sales call vs sub-minute community alerts from $29.95
Keyhole has no public pricing since its Muck Rack acquisition and requires a demo to even see a quote. Syften is a self-serve, near real-time monitoring tool for Reddit, Hacker News, and 10+ other communities starting at $29.95 a month.
Keyhole
Syften- Keyhole has no public pricing at all. Since the 2024 Muck Rack acquisition, keyhole.co redirects its pricing page to a Muck Rack demo request form. Syften publishes three tiers from $29.95/month to $119.95/month.
- Syften detects new mentions on Reddit and Hacker News in about one minute. Keyhole has no comparable real-time community alerting; its strength is retrospective and campaign-level analytics, not speed.
- Keyhole tracks hashtags and keywords with multi-year historical data and audience quality scoring for influencer analytics, capabilities Syften does not attempt to replicate.
- Syften covers Reddit, X, Hacker News, blogs, GitHub, YouTube, Slack communities, Bluesky, Mastodon, and forums. Keyhole is social-only across X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with no community-forum coverage.
- Syften offers white-label delivery on its PRO plan at $119.95/month, a rare feature at that price point. Keyhole does not publicly document white-label availability at any tier.
- Keyhole has no self-serve signup and no free trial; every evaluation goes through Muck Rack sales. Syften has no permanent free tier either but offers a trial period and a working self-serve signup today.
Keyhole and Syften are built for almost opposite jobs. Keyhole is a hashtag and campaign analytics platform for enterprise social teams, with multi-year historical data and influencer quality scoring, but since Muck Rack acquired it in 2024 there is no public pricing and no way to start using it without a sales call. Syften is a lean, self-serve alert tool that watches Reddit, Hacker News, Bluesky, Mastodon, GitHub, Slack communities, and more, and typically surfaces a new mention within about a minute for around $30 to $120 a month. If you need to measure a hashtag campaign across owned, partner, and influencer posts, Keyhole still does that better than almost anything on the market. If you need to know the moment someone mentions your product on Reddit, Syften is built for exactly that and you can be running in minutes.
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 building hashtag and keyword analytics since 2012, and the product depth shows: historical data spanning multiple years, influencer profiles with an audience quality score to separate real engagement from inflated follower counts, and a campaign view that rolls up every post using a shared hashtag, owned, partner, and influencer content alike, into one report. Customers on its list include NBC Universal, Billboard, USTA, and WWF, and it has ranked at the top of G2's social media analytics category.
The catch is access. Muck Rack, the PR software platform, acquired Keyhole in 2024, and as of 2026 the keyhole.co pricing page redirects to a Muck Rack demo request form. There is no published price list and no self-serve trial. Every prospective buyer starts with a sales conversation before they can see a number, which is a meaningful change for a product that used to have accessible self-serve tiers.
Coverage is also social-only, spanning X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with no news, blog, or community-forum monitoring. For a brand whose conversation lives on Reddit or Hacker News rather than Instagram hashtags, Keyhole was never really built to watch that ground, and the enterprise sales process makes it a heavier commitment even for teams it does fit.
| Feature | Professional Contact for pricing | Enterprise Contact for pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Hashtag and keyword tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Historical data | Limited | Extended |
| Influencer analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign measurement | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | Yes |
Syften
Sub-minute brand mention alerts across Reddit, Hacker News, and 10+ communities
Syften is a keyword monitoring tool built for founders, indie developers, and small marketing teams who want to know the moment someone mentions their brand. It watches Reddit, X, Hacker News, blogs, GitHub, YouTube, Slack communities, Bluesky, Mastodon, and various forums at once, and alerts typically arrive within about a minute on its fastest sources, Reddit and Hacker News.
Setup is deliberately minimal: enter keywords, pick alert channels (email, Slack, RSS, API, or webhooks), and matches start arriving. AI filtering strips out mentions that contain the keyword but are clearly off-topic, so you are not manually triaging a noisy feed. On the PRO plan, white-label delivery lets agencies present the monitoring under their own brand, which is unusual below the $100/month range.
What Syften does not do is deep analytics. There are no AI-generated summaries beyond mention counts and basic filtering, reporting is minimal, and you will likely need to export data if you want polished dashboards. It also has no permanent free tier, only a trial period. For a team that wants fast alerts over deep reporting, that trade-off is the whole point of the product.
| Feature | Entry $29.95/month | Standard $49.95/month | Syften PRO $119.95/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keywords monitored | 5 | 15 | 50 |
| Real-time detection speed | ~1 min | ~1 min | ~1 min |
| Platforms covered | 10+ | 10+ | 10+ |
| AI noise filtering | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | Yes | Yes |
| White-label | No | No | Yes |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Keyhole | Syften |
|---|---|---|
| Sources monitored | Social only: X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn | Reddit, X, Hacker News, blogs, GitHub, YouTube, Slack, Bluesky, Mastodon, forums (10+) |
| Detection speed | Not built for real-time community alerting | ~1 minute on Reddit and Hacker News |
| Hashtag & campaign tracking | Yes, multi-year historical hashtag and keyword tracking | No dedicated hashtag or campaign-aggregation view |
| Influencer analytics & quality scoring | Yes, audience quality scoring | No |
| AI noise filtering | No | Yes |
| Competitor benchmarking | Yes, competitor social account benchmarking | No dedicated competitor benchmarking view |
| API access | Enterprise tier only | Standard tier and above |
| White-label delivery | Not publicly documented | PRO tier ($119.95/mo) |
| Self-serve signup | No, Muck Rack demo required | Yes, no demo required |
| Free trial or demo required | No self-serve trial; demo required | Trial period, no permanent free tier |
| Pricing transparency | No public pricing at any tier | Full public pricing across 3 tiers |
| Starting price | Contact for pricing | $29.95/month |
Which should you choose?
SyftenKeyholeSyftenSyftenKeyholeKeyholeSyftenThese two rarely compete for the same buyer in practice. Keyhole is a genuinely strong hashtag and influencer campaign tool, but it now only makes sense for teams that are already prepared for an enterprise sales process and a social-only monitoring scope. Syften is a narrower product; it does not do campaign rollups or influencer scoring at all, but it covers ground Keyhole never touches, Reddit threads, Hacker News posts, GitHub issues, Slack communities, and it does it within about a minute for a fraction of what an enterprise Keyhole contract would cost. The decision mostly comes down to whether your monitoring problem is "measure this hashtag campaign" or "tell me the second someone mentions us online."
Bottom line
Sign up for Syften if you want working alerts across Reddit, Hacker News, and community platforms this afternoon for under $50 a month. Pursue Keyhole only if hashtag campaign measurement and influencer quality scoring are core to your work and your organization already runs enterprise procurement, since a Muck Rack sales conversation is now mandatory before you see a price. For most SMB and indie use cases, Syften's speed and self-serve access make it the lower-friction starting point by a wide margin.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sign up for Keyhole without talking to sales, the way I can with Syften?
No, as of 2026 there is no self-serve signup for Keyhole. Since its acquisition by Muck Rack, the keyhole.co pricing page redirects to a Muck Rack demo request form, and every account starts with an enterprise sales conversation. Syften, by contrast, has a working self-serve signup with plans starting at $29.95/month, plus a trial period to test the service first.
Which tool detects new mentions faster, Keyhole or Syften?
Syften is built specifically for speed and typically surfaces new mentions on Reddit and Hacker News within about a minute, with other platforms following shortly after. Keyhole does not publish comparable real-time detection metrics; its product is oriented around hashtag and campaign analytics rather than instant alerting, so it is not the right comparison point for teams that need to catch a mention the moment it posts.
Does Syften offer hashtag campaign tracking like Keyhole does?
No, Syften has no hashtag-specific campaign aggregation feature. Keyhole rolls up every post using a shared hashtag, owned content, partner posts, and influencer content, into a single campaign performance view with multi-year historical data. Syften's monitoring is keyword-based across individual platforms rather than organized around hashtag campaigns.
Is Keyhole worth pursuing for a small agency or solo founder in 2026?
Probably not. With no self-serve access and no public pricing, Keyhole's current Muck Rack-driven positioning targets enterprise marketing teams and PR agencies, not solo founders or small agencies. That audience is better served by Syften, which has transparent pricing from $29.95/month and a self-serve signup that works today.
Which tool covers Reddit and Hacker News, Keyhole or Syften?
Syften covers both, along with X, blogs, GitHub, YouTube, Slack communities, Bluesky, Mastodon, and other forums, and it is one of the faster tools available for detecting new posts on Reddit and Hacker News specifically. Keyhole's coverage is social-only across X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, with no Reddit, Hacker News, or forum monitoring at all.
Can I get white-label reporting from either Keyhole or Syften?
Syften offers white-label delivery on its PRO plan at $119.95/month, letting agencies present monitoring results under their own brand rather than Syften's. Keyhole does not publicly document white-label availability at any tier, and given its enterprise-only sales process, agencies would need to raise it directly during a Muck Rack sales conversation.