Sift vs Brandwatch
The agent-first
Brandwatch alternative.
Sift turns what people say into themes, sentiment and alerts, then its agents act on it: they tag every conversation, route it to the right team and draft the reply, with SLAs, CSAT and QA underneath. Listening and care in one place, with no Boolean queries to maintain.
Set us up for refund and outage conversations on X and Instagram. Pull the order number into a field and give me a weekly view.
Example: setup done by an agent
Built for care
from day one.
Sift is made for responding to customers on social. No long setup, no services for everything, and no paying to store your own data.
Live on day one
Connect a channel and agents start drafting within the hour. They build the labels, queues, fields and dashboards from a description of how you work.
No services for every change
Change routing, labels or fields by asking. No ticket to a Success Manager, no statement of work, no waiting on a services team.
Your data, no storage fees
Your full conversation history stays searchable and exportable. You never pay to keep or reach your own data.
What Brandwatch costs a care team beyond the license
- Listening is priced by queries or mentions, so a new topic can mean a bigger plan.
- History, image analysis, Vizia, print data and extra X channels are add-ons.
- Answering customers usually needs a second tool, or the separate social media management product.
- About $50k a year is the third-party median contract.
Their AI reads.
Sift's agents act.
Most AI in social tools answers questions about your data. In Sift, agents do the work on every conversation, and your own AI tools can too.
Brandwatch AI today
- Iris answers questions about your data with charts and summaries, and writes explanations on dashboards.
- AI Query Writer builds Boolean queries and suggests keywords, hashtags and subreddits.
- Iris suggests on-brand replies and fixes tone in the inbox.
- No official MCP server is documented. Six public APIs cover research and engagement.
Sift agents
- Agents read, tag and score every conversation on arrival.
- Agents fill your custom fields and close-out forms.
- Agents route on what they understood and draft from your knowledge base.
- Your AI tools act over MCP: about 800 operations, each permission-checked.
Agents do the work,
including the setup.
Our own team onboards customers by talking to Sift through MCP. Your team can work the same way: say what you want, review what the agent built, and apply it.
01 · In-app agent
An agent that does anything you can do in Sift.
SiftGPT searches conversations, compares trends, builds dashboards, sets up rules and prepares briefings. It works with your data and inside your permissions.
What drove refund complaints this week?
Payment delays doubled since Monday. 212 conversations · Saved to Refunds dashboard
Still no refund for my order and it has been 9 days. Order 48213.
02 · Fields and forms
Fields and forms fill themselves.
Agents label every conversation and customer, pull out details like order numbers, and complete close-out forms. Your team reviews instead of typing, and your reports stay complete.
03 · MCP server
Run Sift from Claude, ChatGPT or your own agent.
Sift's MCP server gives outside AI tools the same data and actions your team has: search, analytics, settings, dashboards and reply drafts. Admins choose who can connect and who can send.
Add a "Delivery damage" label, route it to Claims, and tell me how many we had last week.
Done. 64 conversations last week, 41 on Instagram. New ones now go to Claims.
https://mcp.getsift.ai/mcp 5 or more posts mention an outage within 10 minutes on X
Label them Outage, send them to the Incidents queue, alert #social-ops in Slack, and draft a holding reply
04 · Automations
Describe the automation. Agents build it.
Say what should happen when a conversation arrives. Agents write the conditions, routing, alerts and follow-up, and you approve the result before it runs.
Everything you run today
The old way still works.
Agents sit on top of a full care platform. Queues, assignment, SLAs, required fields, macros, approvals, CSAT and audit history all work the way your team runs them in Brandwatch, so nothing is lost when you switch.
Empathetic opening and a clear next step. Missed confirming the refund timeline in the first reply.
Queues and assignment
- Any saved search can be a queue
- Push, pull or AI assignment, set per queue
- Skills, capacity caps and tiebreaks
- Custom agent statuses with auto-away
SLAs and statuses
- First response and resolution targets
- Business hours, holidays and escalation
- Up to 5 custom statuses
- Required fields and forms before close
Quality and CSAT
- Native CSAT surveys
- Estimated CSAT on every conversation
- AI QA against your rubric on 100% of closed conversations
- Reply approvals per queue and per person
Agent tools
- Multi-step macros
- Saved replies with variables
- Translation in both directions
- Link and merge, one profile across channels
Admin and integrations
- Audit log of every settings change
- PII masking
- Signed webhooks
- Slack app for questions, alerts and briefings
What changes
day to day.
In rules-based tools, admins and support staff do this work by hand. In Sift, you ask for it.
Edit the taxonomy, update keyword rules, retrain the team.
Tell an agent. It adds the label and starts applying it.
Build a rule per channel and queue, then test it.
Ask for the routing. The agent writes the rule for you to approve.
Bulk-tag by hand or export to a spreadsheet.
Agents label every past conversation in the background.
Staff type the same answers on every ticket.
Agents fill the form from the conversation. People check it.
Pull exports, build charts, write the summary.
Schedule an agent to send the report every Monday.
File a request with whoever owns the dashboards.
Ask SiftGPT, or ask Claude or ChatGPT connected to Sift.
Sift and Brandwatch,
side by side.
Built for care, not bolted on. Every Brandwatch detail links to its source below the table.
| Sift | Brandwatch | |
|---|---|---|
| Themes and sentiment | ✓Themes named from your conversations and updated nightly, with sentiment on every message. | ✓Machine-learning segmentation, categories and sentiment, with image and logo detection. |
| How you set up listening | ✓Add brands, products and topics as keywords. AI checks every post is really about them, so there are no Boolean queries to tune. | ◐Boolean queries, with AI Query Writer to draft them. |
| Alerts | ✓Agents flag a topic when it starts to grow, with the posts behind it. | ✓AI-powered email alerts, live reports and Vizia screens. |
| AI reads every message on arrival | ✓Summary, intent, priority, and 1 to 10 scores with reasons. | ◐Research classification. Not documented for the care inbox. |
| AI fills custom fields | ✓Any field type, with confidence, reason and source. Close-out forms arrive prefilled. | ✕Custom fields on cases are not documented. |
| Routing | ✓Queues route on any AI field, with skills, capacity caps and a recorded reason. | ◐Assign cases to people or teams. Automated rules in the inbox. |
| Reply drafts | ✓Every channel, grounded in your synced help center, citing the articles used. | ◐Iris suggests on-brand replies and fixes tone. |
| Your AI over MCP | ✓Reads and acts: conversations, analytics, dashboards, automations, AI goals and settings, with user permissions. | ✕No official MCP server documented. |
| SLAs, CSAT and QA | ✓SLA policies with escalation, native CSAT surveys plus estimated CSAT, and AI QA on every closed conversation. | ✕Not documented for customer conversations. |
| Translation | ✓On by default. Agents read in their language, customers get replies in theirs. | ◐AI translation on the publishing side. Not stated for incoming messages. |
| Channels you can answer on | ✓Social, messaging, Discord, Telegram, communities, app stores and reviews. | ◐Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and YouTube. |
| Pricing | ✓Listening and care AI included, no per-feature AI add-ons. Quoted on channels, volume and agents. | ◐Quote only. UK public-sector list prices start at £10,800 a year for 5 queries; about $50k a year is the third-party median. |
✓ Documented and available◐ Partial, rules-based, gated or add-on✕ Not available or not documented
Sources: Brandwatch consumer intelligence · Brandwatch customer care · Brandwatch case management launch · Iris AI announcement · G-Cloud 14 pricing (UK public sector) · Pricing (Vendr, third party) · Sift MCP documentation
Moving from Brandwatch,
at your pace.
A focused team can move in a few weeks. A global enterprise usually runs a phased migration over a few months, with our team alongside. Either way, agents do most of the setup and your team reviews it.
- Plan
Map what you run today
Channels, tag taxonomy, queues, SLAs, saved replies, reports, roles and integrations. We agree what moves, what changes and the order.
- Build
Agents build the matching setup
Agents create the labels, fields, routing, SLA policies and dashboards from your current setup. Your admins review and approve each change.
- Run
Run side by side
Live conversations flow into Sift while the old platform stays on. Your team checks tagging, routing and drafts against what they expect.
- Cut over
Move team by team
Switch channels, regions or teams over when they are ready, then turn on automatic sending where you trust it.
Bring your channels.
Social, messaging, community and app reviews in one inbox, so agents work from the whole conversation.
Explore integrationsYou decide what agents can do.
Admins choose who can use agents and who can send through them, per role and per person. Auto-send runs only where you turn it on.
Visit the Trust CenterPeople approve what matters.
Setup changes can wait for approval, and replies prepared from an outside AI tool always need a person to confirm.
Everything is recorded.
Every tool call is logged. Sift is ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 compliant and GDPR compliant.
Where Brandwatch is strong
Questions to ask Brandwatch
- When a complaint starts trending, who on our team answers it, and in which tool?
- Where do SLA timers, custom fields and CSAT surveys live for our care team?
- How many queries and mentions do we need, and what do history, image analysis and extra X channels add?
Sift fits if
Brandwatch may fit better if
Is Sift a replacement for Brandwatch?
For teams that listen so they can act, yes: themes, sentiment and alerts on what people say, plus the inbox, routing, SLAs, CSAT and replies. If your work is long-range research with print, broadcast and podcast data going back years, Brandwatch is built for that.
Do I need Boolean queries in Sift?
No. You add your brands, products and topics as keywords, and AI checks that every post it keeps is really about them, so you are not writing exclusions for every brand with a similar name.
Doesn't Brandwatch have AI too?
Yes. Iris answers questions about your data, writes dashboard explanations and suggests replies. Sift's agents act on every conversation: they tag, fill fields, route and draft on arrival, and its MCP server can set up the platform itself.
Do we keep SLAs, CSAT and QA if we switch?
Yes. Queues, push and pull assignment, skills and capacity, SLA policies with escalation, required fields before close, macros, approvals, CSAT surveys and audit history all work the way your team runs them in Brandwatch today. Agents add to that work. They do not replace the controls.
Are there services or data storage fees?
No. Agents do the setup and handle changes, so there is no services contract for routine work, and your full conversation history stays yours with no fee to store or reach it.
How long does a migration take?
It depends on your size. A single channel can be drafting replies within an hour. Focused teams usually move in a few weeks, and global enterprises run a phased migration over a few months, moving channels, regions or teams one at a time. Agents do most of the setup, so the time goes into reviewing and sign-off, not building.
Who configures Sift?
Mostly agents. You describe what you want, and Sift's agents build the routing rules, labels, fields, automations and dashboards for you to approve. Our own team onboards customers this way, through Sift's MCP server.
What moves over from Brandwatch?
Your channels, saved replies, knowledge sources, and the way you tag, route and report. Describe your current setup, and agents build the matching labels, queues, rules, fields and dashboards in Sift.
Can agents send replies without a person?
Only where you allow it. Review is the default, and auto-send is set per goal for high-confidence replies. Replies prepared from an outside AI tool always need a person to confirm them in Sift.
Which channels does Sift cover?
X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, community forums, and App Store and Google Play reviews. Available actions vary by channel.
Is our data secure?
Sift is ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 compliant and GDPR compliant. Your data is used for your agents only and is never shared across customers. Every agent and MCP tool call is logged.
How is Sift priced compared to Brandwatch?
Brandwatch quotes on request, priced by queries or mentions with add-ons for history and extra data. Sift quotes on the channels you connect, your conversation volume and the agents you use, with listening and care AI included.
Put your social agents to work.
See how Sift’s agents can handle conversations, find what matters, and bring your team in when needed.