9 Upfluence Alternatives For Cost-Effective Influencer Marketing

So you’re looking for the influencer marketing tool that makes the most sense with your budget. Upfluence is on your radar with its great features, but you’re wondering if there are better options — to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to your influencer marketing needs.

There are so many platforms out there that it’s difficult to know where to start. To help you narrow it down, here are nine Upfluence alternatives, each with its own set of benefits (and potential drawbacks).

Here’s a look at nine alternatives to Upfluence to help you find the best fit.

The 9 best Upfluence alternatives:

1. Modash
2. GameInfluencer
3. Traackr
4. BuzzSumo
5. #paid
6. Awario
7. Hypeauditor
8. Followerwonk
9. GroupHigh

Upfluence disadvantages: reasons to look for an alternative

Upfluence certainly has its pluses (that’s probably why you’re using or considering it in the first place). Their agency/SaaS hybrid model makes managing your influencer marketing really convenient and hands-off. Their advanced features like affiliate program management and influencer payments make managing your campaigns super simple. Yet, here’s why you may be looking for an Upfluence alternative.

Price & flexibility – high cost & long contract length

Upfluence doesn’t publish their subscription price on their website, but what they do tell you is that the minimum contract length is 12 months for each of their plans, which may make it just too large of a commitment for small businesses. 

Limited discovery 

Because influencers need to apply to be approved, Upfluence’s database is smaller than other influencer marketing tools, so their talent pool is limited. The platform also lacks an audience lookalike tool, limiting the growth of your potential audience.

No free trial

If you consider the commitment of an annual subscription to Upfluence, not being able to try it before you buy it is a serious downside.

Agency/platform hybrid model — is it actually a good thing?

Upfluence takes care of finding influencers for you, which may sound convenient, but certainly isn’t the best option for everyone. Using an agency means that you don’t own your influencer relationships, which makes you too dependent on a third party and hurts you in the long term. More to the point of cost-effectiveness, this convenience also comes with a higher price tag.

9 Alternatives to Upfluence for influencer marketing

1. Modash

Best for: B2C e-commerce & SaaS companies who want to find, analyze, and monitor influencers at any scale (without needing agency support)

Free trial: 14 days without restrictions. Try it for free.

Starting price: $99/month

Features & reasons to use Modash

Modash helps you discover, analyze, and monitor influencers. Its influencer database covers everyone on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube — that’s over 200M+ profiles.

Search and filter influencers based on the number of followers, engagement rate, hashtags, bio keywords, languages, and more.

You can get even more in-depth data and search an influencer’s audience, including location, language, interests, demographics, and more.

Modash’s influencer analysis tool can help you determine if an influencer is a good fit for your brand, with insights on follower growth, fake follower check, audience data, recent posts, brand affinity and more.

And that’s not all. Influencer monitoring eliminates the need for you to manually check partner content. Modash’s influencer monitoring platform does all the work for you –helping you keep your content on-brand and finding high performing content so you can use what works and not waste time on what doesn’t. You’ll be able to read all this valuable data in an easily understandable overview and report.

Modash vs. Upfluence at a glance

1. Modash’s entry-level subscription is transparent and includes all features like campaign monitoring and advanced filtering in every plan. Starting from $99 per month. Upfluence does not advertise its price on its website and subscriptions are only sold on an annual basis.

2. Modash lists 200M+ creators vs. Upfluence’s 3M+. Using Modash will offer many more partnership opportunities and untapped potential. 

3. Unlike Upfluence, Modash has a full-access free trial, meaning you can try it out for 14 days without restrictions. 

4. Upfluence has a broader feature set overall, e.g. extra features for building affiliate programs and making influencer payments.

Pricing

Modash’s pricing is based on monthly usage. Plans start from $99/month (paid annually), or $109/month (paid monthly). View pricing here, or sign up for a free trial (no credit card needed).

2. GameInfluencer

Best for: Game publishers

Free trial: N/A

Starting price: On request

Features

GameInfluencer specializes in influencer marketing for the gaming industry. They pride themselves on influencer matchmaking that can help you identify niche segments and connect you to the perfect influencer for your game.

As a full-service agency, each client is unique and influencer marketing strategies are by no means a one-size-fits-all. Their aim is to match you with publishers and developers to create new audiences in places you may not think to look in the gaming sphere, like fashion and beauty influencers, family or DIY, and even cooking influencers.

Results are easy to track and measure to help optimize campaigns. And campaigns can be produced in multiple languages, depending on your target audience.

GameInfluencer vs. Upfluence at a glance

• Content creator databases are comparable in size: 3.1M+ for GameInfluencer vs. Upfluence’s 4M+.
• GameInfluencer caters to a niche market, being one of the top Twitch influencer marketing platforms. 
• Both Upfluence and GameInfluencer offer a hybrid agency/platform.
• Upfluence has more features overall.

Pricing

Pricing is available on request and depends on the type of campaign, platform and influencer reach.

3. Traackr

Best for: Medium to large-sized beauty brands and agencies

Free trial: N/A

Starting price: On request

Features

Traackr has been offering influencer marketing tools since before influencer marketing was even a thing.

They offer search and discovery, relationship management and campaign management. Traackr’s influencer discovery and campaign management are very thorough. Searches can be narrowed down by keyword, location, language, age, etc, but the Audience Attribute tool lets you do a deep dive into the followers of influencers.

Traackr’s platform is easy to use and lets you organize and categorize influencers in your network in a useful way, by relationship stage: aware, engaged, advocate. This makes it easy for anyone on your team to jump in at any stage and know where you’re at with your influencers.

Traackr vs. Upfluence at a glance

• Both platforms are not transparent in their pricing.
• Traackr has a specific focus around beauty brands
• Traackr’s platforms encourage collaboration with your marketing team and make it very easy to keep everyone in the loop.
• Both platforms have a limited influencer discovery database.

Pricing 

Traackr’s platform is available through an annual or multi-annual subscription. Specific pricing is available by request.

4. BuzzSumo

Best for: All-in-one content marketing with light influencer marketing needs

Free trial: Yes, 30 days. 

Starting price: Starting from $99/month.

Features

BuzzSumo helps to take the guesswork out of content marketing by guiding you through the tools you need for research and analytics. With this platform, there is certainly more of an emphasis on content marketing versus influencer marketing, meaning you won’t find some of the bells and whistles of the other platforms, like fake follower checks. Influencer discovery and analysis are also limited.

Think of BuzzSumo as a digital editor for content marketing. It will help inspire you, guide your research, and give you the analytics you need to help you decide what your content will be and what is worth sharing.

BuzzSumo vs. Upfluence at a glance

• BuzzSumo isn't built specifically for influencer marketing, so lacks several monitoring & analysis features
• Advanced search is not very intuitive.
• What BuzzSumo offers in the content inspiration it lacks in actual audience data.
• No platform integration (save for the BuzzSumo API), but they do have a Chrome extension that lets you analyze whichever page you’re on.

Pricing

BuzzSumo plans range from $99/month ($79/month, if you pay annually), to $299/month ($239/month, if you pay annually). BuzzSumo offers a free plan, but features and searches are limited.

5. #paid

Best for: B2C companies of all sizes, agencies, and DTC brands

Free trial: Yes

Starting price: $499/month

Features

#paid distinguishes itself from other influencer marketplaces in two ways. First, Whitelist Ads, which let you “whitelist” certain influencers and content to be used for paid Instagram and Facebook ads. It connects with Facebook Ads Manager and lets you publish the ads under the influencer’s handle. In other words, you can reach your target audience more authentically, instead of being limited to only those in your audience who follow your influencer.

Second, Handraise. This lets influencers “raise” their hand to let you know they’re interested in working with you by telling you why they think they’d be a good fit for your brand and what their strategy might be. #paid has a team who looks at each submission for background, audience, past content and so on, before it ever reaches you. In other words, handpicked influencers just for your brand. But it comes with some limitations, mainly that you’ll be missing out on a huge database of untapped talent.

#paid vs Upfluence at a glance

• #paid has a very small database of around 20,000, meaning you’re potentially missing out on untapped talent. Upfluence’s precise search function looks through a database of over 3M influencers.
• Pricing is high, which may not fit into some smaller brands’ budgets.
• #paid’s influencer proposals are vetted by real humans, Upfluence’s are not.

Pricing

Pricing ranges from $499/month to $999/month for #paid. Unlimited team seats are available on all plans, but advanced audience demographics are only available from $999+.

6. Awario

Best for: A social listening tool for brands of all sizes

Free trial: Yes, 7 days.

Starting price: from €29/month.

Features

Awario is not an influencer marketing tool, but it can be used in influencer marketing. What this means is that influencer discovery can only be done by tracking mentions and keywords, not via audience filters like other influencer marketing tools.

You’re probably wondering why we decided to include it on the list? Because it’s relevant. Social listening for influencer marketing helps measure the impact of your campaigns by seeing when and how your content is interacted with. It’s an excellent tool to be used together with one of the other influencer marketing tools.

Awario is a social media listening tool that looks for any mention of the brand, company name, product, and more on social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, and the internet.

The goal here is to find mentions so you can respond to them to generate leads, optimize content strategy, and overall improve your customer experience. Next, Awario analyzes all of these mentions to give you the full picture of your brand’s online reputation.

Awario lets you find brand advocates that already exist, but you can also find brand advocates of your competitors, which will save you a lot of time when looking for people relevant to your brand’s niche.

Awario vs. Upfluence at a glance

• Awario and Upfluence have quite different feature sets. Awario is a social listening tool for tracking, so its search feature is completely different from Upfluence’s.
• No influencer monitoring or analysis. Again, because it’s a different tool.
• Upfluence offers a social listening module as part of its campaign tools.

Pricing

Awario pricing ranges from $29/month to $399/month.

7. Hypeauditor

Best for: Larger brands and agencies that need market insights in addition to influencer data

Free trial: A free plan lets you use basic features, but data is limited.

Starting price: $399/month

Features

Hypeauditor analyzes influencer profiles and audiences and looks for signs of fraud, like fake followers, fake comments, and more. Essentially it analyzes audience quality and gives influencers and audience quality scores.

This score gives you data you can use when trying to negotiate influencer fees because why would you want to pay to reach an audience of fake followers?

In addition to the influencer discovery tool, you can also track the progress of your campaigns, compare up to five influencers at a time and gain insight into an influencer’s growth with account tracking. Hypeauditor is also helpful for monitoring your own Instagram account and gaining insight into your brand’s social media presence.

Upfluence is one of several Hypeauditor alternatives, offering a higher price (and different model), but with extra features e.g. affiliate programs, product seeding, and influencer payments.

Hypeauditor vs. Upfluence at a glance

• Larger database of 22M+ influencers, compared to Upfluence’s 3M+.
• Pricing is high, starting at $399/month.
• Some metrics are confusing and not very helpful. Lacks a full report.

Pricing

Hypeauditor’s pricing starts are $399/month, but then you need to contact them for pricing for Pro add-ons.

8. Followerwonk

Best for: Influencer analysis and discovery for Twitter on a budget.

Free trial: Free version available

Starting price: $29/month

Features

This entry-level tool helps you find and analyze profiles on Twitter. If you’re looking for a more well-rounded influencer marketing tool, Followerwonk is probably not the one for you.

You can search keywords from bios, search by follower count or the number of tweets to find Twitter influencers relevant to your brand, but that’s where it ends.

With the low cost comes a limited set of features, but if all you want to do is grow your own Twitter audience, then this is a good place to start.

Followerwonk vs. Upfluence at a glance

• One of the least expensive options out there, but it’s limited to only one social platform, Twitter.
• Upfluence’s agency/SaaS hybrid model does the work for you, Followerwonk is definitely more hands-on.
• Upfluence is built on a much larger database, covering more social platforms, (Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Twitch) paired with a super precise search engine, plus all the tools you need to streamline your campaigns, which will give you more information than you know what to do with, but that’s a good thing.

Pricing

Followerwonk’s pricing ranges from $29/month ($23/month billed annually) to $79/month ($63/month billed annually).

9. GroupHigh

Best for: Brands and agencies looking to connect with bloggers

Free trial: Yes, 7 days.

Starting price: On request

Features

GroupHigh focuses more on bloggers than the other platforms mentioned above. With its large database, you can create lists of influencers and organize them by topic, social presence, and reach.

This tool looks at all of your existing contacts and compiles a list of influencers that you are already connected with, but may not know, making it easier to widen your network of contacts and build targeting outreach lists.

GroupHigh vs. Upfluence at a glance

• Large database of over 400M social and blogger profiles.
• Upfluence has more features for working with social influencers, while GroupHigh focuses on bloggers
• Includes an Influencer CRM, making it easy for you to save potential influencer contacts, as well as import all of your existing contacts.

Pricing

On request