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Social Media · head to head

Awario vs Khoros

Awario logo

Awario

Social Media

Social listening with published prices and no per-seat charge on the top tier

From
$29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Khoros logo

Khoros

Social Media

Enterprise social media management and branded community platform, now owned by IgniteTech

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Awario mention quotas are hard monthly caps, so a brand that experiences an unexpected coverage spike can exhaust its allowance mid-month and stop collecting data during the exact event it needed to monitor.; Khoros igniteTech, part of ESW Capital, acquired Khoros in May 2025 and around 116 staff were made redundant within weeks, and ESW has a documented pattern of running acquired software on minimal cost bases, so support responsiveness and roadmap delivery are legitimate contract-negotiation issues rather than theoretical risks.
  • They diverge on capability: Awario covers Boolean query builder, Khoros covers Branded communities.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Awario and Khoros actually diverge.

Attributes where Awario and Khoros differ
AttributeAwarioKhoros
Starting price$29/monthOn request
Pricing modelPer month by mention volumequote
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, iOS, Android, API

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Social Media).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Awario

  • Boolean query builder
  • Multi-source monitoring
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Topic cloud
  • Awario Leads
  • Influencer identification
  • Location filtering
  • White-label reporting

Only in Khoros

  • Branded communities
  • Community gamification
  • Social publishing
  • Social customer care
  • Moderation tooling
  • Listening and analytics
  • Aurora and Iris AI
  • Knowledge deflection

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Awario

  • A five-person agency that needs client-branded listening reports without paying enterprise suite seat prices, using the unlimited-member Enterprise tiernot Khoros
  • A software company tracking competitor complaints on forums and Reddit to feed a sales objection librarynot Khoros
  • A consumer brand watching for early signs of a product complaint spreading before it reaches mainstream pressnot Khoros
  • A consultant who needs a defensible share-of-voice number for a pitch deck and can build the Boolean queries themselvesnot Khoros

Khoros

  • A telecommunications operator that wants a public support community whose accepted answers measurably deflect contact centre volumenot Awario
  • A consumer brand consolidating a dozen regional social accounts under one publishing approval workflow with regional role permissionsnot Awario
  • A games publisher running player forums where moderation load and volunteer moderator tooling matter more than publishing featuresnot Awario
  • A bank that needs social service messages tracked against the same SLA framework as its email and chat queuesnot Awario

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Awario

  • Mention quotas are hard monthly caps, so a brand that experiences an unexpected coverage spike can exhaust its allowance mid-month and stop collecting data during the exact event it needed to monitor.
  • Stored-mention limits per topic mean older mentions are purged, so building a genuine multi-year historical baseline is not possible on any published tier and back-filling history before signup is not offered.
  • There is no language filter, and results skew heavily to English, which makes it unreliable for brands whose primary conversation happens in a non-English market.
  • The Leads module identifies accounts showing intent but does not enrich them with an email address or phone number, so every lead still requires manual contact research before outreach.
  • The company operates with a very small team, reportedly down from around thirty staff in 2020, so support depth and the pace of platform coverage updates when a social network changes its API are real risks on a multi-year commitment.

Khoros

  • IgniteTech, part of ESW Capital, acquired Khoros in May 2025 and around 116 staff were made redundant within weeks, and ESW has a documented pattern of running acquired software on minimal cost bases, so support responsiveness and roadmap delivery are legitimate contract-negotiation issues rather than theoretical risks.
  • Community migration is genuinely hard: moving years of threads, accepted solutions, member reputation and SEO-bearing URLs off Khoros later is a project measured in quarters, which makes the switching cost far higher than the annual licence suggests.
  • Pricing is not published and the platform is sold on annual enterprise contracts with substantial implementation and design services, so the first-year cost is materially higher than the recurring licence and hard to benchmark.
  • The publishing and listening side inherited from Spredfast has been outpaced by dedicated social suites, so social-first teams frequently find themselves keeping a second tool for scheduling and analytics and paying for overlapping capability.
  • The product is the result of merging two large codebases and has now changed private-equity owner twice, and reviewers consistently report that community administration and social management still feel like separate systems sharing a login rather than one product.
  • Khoros Community Classic is being sunset in favour of the new Aurora AI community platform, so existing customers face a forced migration of an already hard-to-move asset, on the acquirer timetable rather than their own.

Pricing, plan by plan

Awario

$29/month
  • Starter$49/month
    • 3 topics
    • 30,000 new mentions per month
    • 5,000 stored mentions per topic
  • Pro$149/month
    • 15 topics
    • 300,000 new mentions per month
    • 15,000 stored mentions per topic
  • Enterprise$399/month
    • 100 topics
    • 1,000,000 new mentions per month
    • 50,000 stored mentions per topic

Khoros

On request
  • Khoros$undefined/year
    • Branded communities
    • Social publishing and governance
    • Social customer care queue

Which should you pick?

Choose Awario if

  • You need boolean query builder.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want multi-source monitoring.
Awario review

Choose Khoros if

  • You need branded communities.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, API.
  • You also want community gamification.
Khoros review

Questions people ask

Is Awario or Khoros better?
Neither clearly leads. Awario starts at $29/month and Khoros at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Awario or Khoros?
Awario starts at $29/month and Khoros at On request.
Does Awario or Khoros run on more platforms?
Awario runs on Web, API. Khoros runs on Web, iOS, Android, API.
What is Awario best used for?
Awario is most often used for a five-person agency that needs client-branded listening reports without paying enterprise suite seat prices, using the unlimited-member enterprise tier, a software company tracking competitor complaints on forums and reddit to feed a sales objection library, a consumer brand watching for early signs of a product complaint spreading before it reaches mainstream press, a consultant who needs a defensible share-of-voice number for a pitch deck and can build the boolean queries themselves. Of those, a five-person agency that needs client-branded listening reports without paying enterprise suite seat prices, using the unlimited-member enterprise tier and a software company tracking competitor complaints on forums and reddit to feed a sales objection library are not what Khoros is typically brought in for.
What can Awario do that Khoros cannot?
Awario covers Boolean query builder, Multi-source monitoring, Sentiment analysis, Topic cloud. Khoros covers Branded communities, Community gamification, Social publishing, Social customer care.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Awario: How much does Awario cost?

Starter is 49 USD per month billed monthly or 29 USD per month billed annually, Pro is 149 or 89, and Enterprise is 399 or 249 with unlimited team members.

Khoros: Who owns Khoros now?

IgniteTech, an ESW Capital company, acquired Khoros on 27 May 2025. Vista Equity Partners, which created Khoros by merging Lithium and Spredfast, is no longer the owner.

Awario: Can I get historical mentions from before I signed up?

No. Monitoring begins when you create a topic, and stored-mention caps mean older data is purged over time, so it cannot serve as a historical archive.

Khoros: Why does the website say khoros.ai?

The company moved its corporate domain from khoros.com to khoros.ai as part of an AI-first relaunch under IgniteTech, centred on its Aurora and Iris AI capabilities.

Awario: Is the Enterprise tier suitable for a large enterprise?

Despite the name, reviewers consistently report it does not meet complex enterprise requirements. It is best understood as an unlimited-seat tier for small teams and agencies.

Khoros: Is pricing published?

No. Khoros quotes privately on annual enterprise contracts, and implementation services are a significant separate cost.

Awario: Does it filter by language?

No. There is no language filter and coverage skews to English, which is a significant limitation for non-English markets.

Khoros: Should the ownership change affect my decision?

It should affect your contract. Ask for written roadmap commitments, named support staffing and exit or data-export terms before signing a multi-year community deal.

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