If your job, business, or brand depends on creating or promoting content, you are probably familiar with BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo has really created a name for itself in the marketing space; it’s an excellent tool for discovering what people are talking about on websites, blogs, and social media so that you can jump in on popular topics and create your own buzz by producing content surrounding these trending topics.

What makes BuzzSumo so great?

BuzzSumo has a lot to offer, but its core features do two things particularly well:

Core Features

1. The “content insights” feature can give your content strategy a boost by showing you which topics are popular in any niche. This real-world data gives you valuable and timely information, allowing you to craft content that delivers maximum impact.
2. The “find influencers” feature allows you to uncover who the influencers are and what they are sharing, in any niche. This is valuable information when you want to amplify your content using influencer partnerships. (For more tips on successful influencer negotiation, read our recent post here).

Beyond that, BuzzSumo’s other features can help marketers with the following:

• Delivering Content Insights
• Find & Understand Influencers
• Competitor Analysis & Comparisons
• Content Alerts
• Content Curation
• View All Social Networks
• Advanced Filtering & Data Export

Due to these features, BuzzSumo is particularly attractive to social media and content marketers because it helps to uncover the most shared content online. Digital marketers will love that you can keep an eye on your competitors and leverage the data to your advantage. SEO marketers will fall in love with the influencer data that can be used for outreach and link building. It is very flexible and offers great features for everyone.

BuzzSumo Pricing: $99-499/mo.

While it is an excellent tool for content marketing, Buzzsumo pricing may be unaffordable for some businesses. The 30-day trial offers a chance to try it before you commit – but it is also worth taking a look at some other options that may be an even better fit for your business.

10 Best BuzzSumo Alternatives

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is known as one of the top SEO tools in the industry – offering features like a keyword explorer, site explorer, site audit, and rank tracker – that will all help improve your organic search results and website performance. On top of that, it also offers a lot of features that BuzzSumo has as well.

Ahrefs’ content explorer allows you to find thousands of trending topics in your industry. Similar to BuzzSumo, you just enter a keyword and it will deliver lots of data for content discovery, insights, and trending articles. You can also sort these trending articles by total shares, shares by social media network, search engine traffic, referring domains, newest, oldest, and more. However, while BuzzSumo allows you to see the posts that are most linked-to and shared, Ahrefs goes one step further: it also allows you to check the pages that are most visited.

You can also find influencers by seeing who tweeted each article. You can then sort by the number of followers each influencer has and export the data for your outreach campaigns.

Not only do you get a lot of the same capabilities of BuzzSumo, but you also get a lot of very useful SEO tools, such as:

• Keyword research
• Link Building
• Alerts
• Competitor Analysis
• Rank Tracking
• Website Audits
• And more

BuzzSumo vs. Ahrefs

Depending on the subscription level you choose, Ahrefs is the same or more expensive than BuzzSumo. However, Ahrefs can do a lot more. When it comes to BuzzSumo vs Ahrefs: if the SEO tools are useful to you, Ahrefs is definitely the better value and the more powerful tool.

Ahrefs Pricing: $99-999/mo. with a $7 trial for 7 days

2. SEMrush

A subscription to SEMrush includes a lot of similar features to BuzzSumo – and is one of the go-to tools for marketers and professional bloggers for keyword research and competitor research. One especially useful tool is called Link Builders, which runs and automates consistent outreach campaigns to help you acquire more backlinks. Additionally, SEMrush includes 40 other tools across SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing. If you are considering BuzzSumo, it would be worth your time to look into SEMrush as well.

SEMrush Pricing: $119 – $445/mo.

3. Social Animal

Positioned as the ‘Swiss Army knife of content marketing’, Social Animal is a wildly popular tool that actually does a little more than BuzzSumo when it comes to searching for content and how that content performs across multiple platforms. Sign up for a personalized report that is delivered right to you each day and use the other tools to receive carefully-selected information. Social Animal even gets into topics like the length of your content’s title based on the topic or keyword and when is the best time to publish your content. For a deeper dive into its features visit Social Animal vs. Buzzsumo.

Social Animal Pricing: $41-416/mo. with a 14-day free trial

4. Content Studio

Content Studio is a powerful tool that allows marketers to manage all of their social media and blog content with data-driven tools. Before you even hit publish, the platform will predict whether or not your post has the potential to go viral by using social engagement data. It claims to be an “all-in-one tool” replacing the need to cobble together services from other platforms on this list.

Content Studio includes features such as:

• Content discovery and insights
• Multi-channel composer
• Planner & calendar
• Automation workflows
• Approval workflows
• Analytics & reporting
• A single content inbox

Content Studio Pricing: $24-149/mo.

5. DrumUp

DrumUp positions itself as an all-in-one content marketing tool – including tools to help with social media management, content curation, content discovery, and employee advocacy. Content marketers can also track and measure Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook engagement using DrumUp’s analytics. While some of the features are similar to BuzzSumo – its capabilities are rather limited when compared to BuzzSumo’s extensive list of features.

DrumUp Pricing: A limited free forever plan or $15-79/mo. for professional plans.

6. Curata

Curata simplifies the content curation process by helping marketers like you find the most relevant content, update your content production workflow and publish to all your channels on one platform. It also offers support for your owned content – like the ability to publish content on Curata or integrate with your existing CMS platform. Curata excels at content management but does not offer any influencer discovery or outreach features.

Curata Pricing: Custom pricing available with demo

7. NinjaOutreach

If your focus is on finding influencers to share your content on social media, NinjaOutreach makes it easier than ever. Not only does it help you find trending content, but it helps you find influencers who fit a specific profile, as well as their email addresses and other contact information. Essentially, it takes all the guesswork out of reaching out to people who can help sell your products and services. It also provides customizable CRM software.

NinjaOutreach Pricing: $119-199/mo. with a 7-day free trial

8. Feedly (Free)

Powered by Google Alerts, Feedly is ‘the cure for information overload’ for readers, professionals, and businesses. It acts as an RSS feed but with hundreds of extra application integrations, making it an essential tool for finding, reading, and sharing content that is relevant to your business. Feedly takes a piece of content and removes ads, pop-ups, and other distractions and hurdles until you only have the words and images associated with the content. You can also use it to monitor social media for mentions of your business and other relative keywords.

The basic version of Feedly is a free alternative to BuzzSumo, but it’s missing many of the bells and whistles associated with similar platforms. Feedly’s upgraded service offers more features – including Leo, Feedly’s AI assistant who learns the type of content you interact with to serve you better – but still does not offer all the features of BuzzSumo. For example, Feedly doesn’t offer much influencer discovery, but it does show trending articles based on your feeds, so it can be used as a free content discovery tool.

Feedly Pricing: Feedly offers a free plan on the web and on mobile that allows you to follow up to 100 sources and organize them into 3 feeds.

Feedly Pro Upgrade Pricing: $6-18/mo.

9. Google Trends (Free)

If you want another free alternative to BuzzSumo’s content discovery, you may be able to utilize Google trends. Google trends is great for visualizing the popularity of a topic or keyword. Simply enter a keyword and you will see a graph titled interest over time. This maps out the that amount of times a keyword has been searched on Google over time.

You may already be familiar with Google trends, but there is a hidden gem in Google trends you may not be aware of – the related queries section. If you click the download icon, you can export this data to get a lot of new rising trends related to your keyword. This can be an absolute goldmine for finding new topics to cover.

Google Trends Pricing: Free

10. Sprout Social

Sprout social is more of a Social Media Management solution versus a content discovery solution like BuzzSumo. Though Sprout Social doesn’t have as many features centered around content and influencer discovery, Sprout social is a worthwhile tool, especially if social media is your business’s focal point.

Sprout Social is perfect for anyone who likes to stay engaged on sites like Twitter and Instagram. All mentions and direct messages can be routed to a single platform so that your marketer or marketing team can stay on top things without having to sign in and out of various accounts. It can be set up for single or multiple users, so it works for small, medium, and even larger businesses. On top of all this, you or your team can monitor any mentions across multiple social media platforms, keep track of analytics, and use it to help with sharing your content.

Sprout Social Pricing: $99-249/mo.

11. Oktopost

Like Sprout Social, Oktopost is a social media management platform. If you work in B2B sales, you definitely want to have Oktopost on your side. Once you’ve discovered your top sources for content, you can set up RSS feeds to keep an eye on them. Use the tool’s browser extension to streamline your own content so that it’s shared across all of your platforms at the scheduled time of your choosing. If you use HubSpot, Salesforce, or a few other marketing and CRM platforms, you can integrate Oktopost. The tool isn’t free, but you can choose a customized plan based on the needs of your individual business.

Oktopost Pricing: Book a demo for pricing information

12. Scoop.It

One of the major appeals of Scoop.It is that it’s easy to use. Another major appeal is that it’s far cheaper than BuzzSumo. Every day, it checks out millions of sites to look for content relative to your searches. You can then filter, share, or distribute it to fit your needs. Many content marketers use it in collaboration with other tools on the list.

Scoop.it Pricing: $0-67/mo.

13. Mention

Mention doesn’t do everything BuzzSumo can do, but it is great at monitoring social media for mentions of your brand, business, or products. It’s also an effective tool for keeping up with your competition. Easy to use, Mention offers real-time monitoring and provides you with live updates from across millions of websites, social media sites, blogs, forums, and beyond. Connect your own social media sites to the Mention platform so that you’re receiving everything in one place. You can also use it to schedule posts for later.

Mention Pricing: $29-99/mo.

14. ShareIt by Social Pilot (Free)

ShareIt is a free tool created by social marketing tool Social Pilot. ShareIt offers an alternative to BuzzSumo for content curation and influencer discovery. It allows you to search for, share and schedule curated content, while also helping you to find related content and see which influencers have engaged specific pieces of content.

ShareIt Pricing: Free (Social Pilot services not included)

15. AllTop (Free)

AllTop doesn’t have all of the features of many of the other tools listed here, but it is great for helping with the content ideation process. Essentially, AllTop keeps all of the headlines from the internet in one place and checks all blog posts before adding them, reducing time spent chasing after broken links. It’s a simple, straightforward tool but can be helpful to have in your wheelhouse.

AllTop Pricing: Free

Which one should you choose?

Keep in mind that while all of these tools each have their own specialties, no two are the same. Some do more while others do less than BuzzSumo. Some focus on one particular aspect of what you need to produce and distribute trending content, while some take a more comprehensive approach or dig a little deeper. You may decide to use one of the tools or several of them in collaboration with each other to maximize your marketing exposure.

Here is the roundup of the best BuzzSumo alternatives, depending on your needs:

Best all around tool: Ahrefs or SEMrush

Least expensive tools: Social Animal & Share.It

Free tools: Feedly & Google Trends