BriefBench or Modash

We sell one of the two products compared here. The only way to make such a page useful is to make it checkable: every figure in the other column links to the exact page it came from, and the date we read it. If a price changes tomorrow, you will see it before we do.

Three rules we set ourselves. The values in our column are computed from the product’s own constants, not retyped by hand — the pricing page and this article read the same source. Anything a vendor does not publish is written “not published”, never estimated. And two numbers sit side by side only if they measure the same quantity, which rules out the engagement rate and the database size from the start.

We pass no judgement on the quality of the other product, and we could not: we are not its customer. We compare what is published.

Before the prices, a structural difference, because it explains almost everything else. Modash keeps a standing index of public profiles and lets you filter it. At BriefBench what you pay for is a search: it goes out to the platforms the moment you run it, and what it brings back is measured right then. Our public pages then reopen those measurements, each with its date.

Three consequences follow, and a table alone would make them unreadable. An index can be measured — they can announce a size; we do not announce ours, because a total would describe what past searches brought back, not what a search run today can find. An index can be filtered — their location filter exists because there is something to filter, and ours does not exist. And an index is sold as a monthly allowance of lookups, whereas a search is sold one at a time.

Our prices are excluding VAT; on the other side, amounts are shown in dollars and the page states that tax applies according to the billing address. The symbol displayed can vary with the visitor’s country: read the amount, not the symbol.

One row deserves its own explanation: our credits and their “opened profiles” are not the same unit. Comparing a credit balance to an allowance of lookups means nothing until you know what each one buys — that is the next section.

A quota of viewable profiles and a credit balance do not compare head to head: they are two units, not two values. What each action consumes is shown inside the product, next to the action itself.

What does compare is the entry price and the absence of a commitment — and that is the first row of the table above.

This is the most useful point on the page, and the one neither product puts forward. Both display an "engagement rate". Neither computes the same thing from one platform to the next.

Their documentation is explicit: on Instagram the ratio is to followers, on TikTok and YouTube it is to views, and the numerator is limited to likes on all three — no comments, no shares. Ours differs from theirs, and differs from one platform to the next as well; we do not detail it here.

Both products answer the same worry by two different routes. Modash sorts the followers themselves into categories, from a graph analysis over a very large number of accounts, and its documentation states the method’s limit: if the follower list is not readable, no figure is given.

BriefBench reads no follower list. We score the account from public signals — following ratio, consistency between engagement and reach, posting volume — and two of our rules refuse to conclude when the data is missing rather than guess.

So the question to ask of any fake-follower percentage is always the same, whichever tool produced it: is this a count or an estimate, and what does it return when the data is missing?

A comparison that never concludes in the other party’s favour is not a comparison. Here are the cases where we are not the right answer, read straight out of our own gaps.

Choose the other tool if

• You need to filter by country or city. We have no location filter at all, and that is not a roadmap oversight: a search queries the platforms, and nothing in what they let us ask for targets a country.
• You want to tie an online store’s sales to a creator’s posts. We have no store integration.
• You pay creators from inside the tool, or you run affiliates. We do neither.
• Your team needs named seats, a shared inbox, or programmatic access. We have no public API.
• You would rather query an indexed database than run searches — to build long lists in one pass, for instance.

Choose BriefBench if

• Your monthly budget is counted in tens of euros rather than hundreds of dollars.
• You would rather pay for the searches you run than for a monthly allowance of lookups.
• You want to see why a score is what it is — the rule, its threshold, and its reason — rather than a bare number.
• You are fine with a tool telling you “unknown” instead of filling a gap with an estimate.
• You work in one-off campaigns rather than continuous sourcing.

• This table does not compare every axis. Three capabilities we do not have — location filter, store integration, programmatic access — are not in it; they are stated above, among the cases where the other tool is the right choice. Two further axes are not compared because they do not measure the same thing on each side.
• This is a snapshot on one date. Both offers move; the verification date is shown at the foot of the page, and it is what this page is worth.
• We are not a customer of the other product. We compare what is published, not an experience of using it.
• The other offer’s top tier is not compared: its volumes are not published and its price is quoted case by case.
• The size of their database is not comparable to a figure on our side: we announce no total, because a total would describe past searches rather than what a search finds today. And their own site publishes three different totals depending on the page, read the same day: we report them as they are.
• The formulas quoted come from their public documentation. We have not verified them against real data, and we could not.

Every reference in the table points here. The pages cited are the vendor’s own: no comparison sites, no review sites, because those carry stale prices for years.

Our three plans, their credit allowance and what each one includes are on the home page — no sign-up, no demo request.