Social Listening data availability and limitations
Table of Contents
This feature is only available for Social Listening customers.
When you create a Listening Topic, Sprout Social automatically retrieves historical data for that Topic Query. The length of historical backfill and the time it takes to pull data into Sprout depends on the data sources you're listening to.
The following table provides a high-level view of what data is generally available.
- Network - The social network you're listening to.
- Message types - The types of messages Sprout can listen to.
- Backfill - The amount of time or the amount of data from which Sprout can pull historical data.
- Update Schedule - The frequency of updates and the amount of data pulled into Sprout during each update.
Public Sources -
Publicly accessible social content that matches your query.
| Network | Message types | Backfill | Update Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| X | Posts, Replies, Mentions, Quoted Reposts and Reposts (shares) |
Automatic: 30 days or the last 200k messages. Manual: March 2006 (Can go back to the start of Twitter). |
Realtime |
| Facebook(public) | Posts, Visitor Posts (sometimes referred to as Community Posts) and Comments on Public Pages. |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: 2 years or 600 messages/year (If more than 600 messages in a year, Facebook only returns the most important messages). |
Every 4 hours |
| Instagram Business(public) | Posts that include specific hashtags in the caption (comments not included). |
Automatic: None. Manual: None. |
Every 4 hours |
| YouTube | Video descriptions. Comments are not included |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: 2006 (Fewer videos returned further back in time). |
Every 24 hours |
| Tumblr | Articles. Reblogs are not included. |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: 2007 (Fewer messages returned further back in time). |
Every 24 hours |
| Web | Blog posts, Forum posts and news articles. Reviews, general web pages and content behind paywalls are not included. |
Automatic: 30 days or last 10k messages. Manual: Up to 25 months. |
Once a day |
| Post, comments, potential impressions and engagements (comments only) |
Automatic: 30 days or last 100k messages. Manual: Up to 30 days. |
Realtime | |
| TikTok Brand Hashtags | Public posts from a business page using your brand hashtag |
Automatic: Popular posts over the last 30 days. Manual: Up to 90 days (limited to approved hashtags and top 1000 posts). |
Every 24 hours based on TikTok’s Top Post criteria |
| Bluesky | Posts, replies, mentions, quotes |
Automatic: 30 days or last 100k messages. Manual: Up to 30 days. |
Realtime |
Connected Sources -
Accounts that your organization has authenticated and linked to Sprout. The data collected comes from profiles you manage and are connected to your group.
| Network | Message types | Backfill | Update Schedule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook (connected) | Posts and comments on your Page, @mentioned posts |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: 1 year, max 500 posts (If more than 500 messages in a year, Facebook only returns the most important messages). |
Every 4 hours |
|
Instagram Business (connected) |
Comments on owned posts, @mentioned in captions, @mentioned in comments, media tag post. |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: Up to 5 years (dependent on message type and how long profile has been connected to Sprout). Specific limits: * Comment Mention & Media Caption Mention: Up to 1 year after Jan 2026. * Graph Comment: Up to 5 years. * Photo Tag: Up to 2000 messages. |
Every 24 hours |
|
(connected) |
Mentions associated with pages that are connected to Sprout, comments on those messages. You can only listen to LinkedIn pages you own. |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: Up to 60 days. |
Every 24 hours |
|
TikTok (connected) |
Comments on owned videos, @mentions in captions, @mentions in comments |
Automatic: 30 days. Manual: Video Comments up to 365 days (limited to comments on top 500 TikTok videos). Video Mentions/Comment Mentions up to 90 days (limited to top 1000 videos/comments). |
Every 24 hours |
Manual (Historical) Backfill Limits
If you want more historical data than what is provided in the automatic backfill (default is 30 days), contact your Sprout Social Customer Success representative to purchase a 12 month backfill. Note that some limits do exist when completing a historical backfill for Listening. Those limits are outlined in the following table:
Social Listening Limitations
Some important limitations of Social Listening include:
- Listening queries have a 2,037 character limit across all plan levels.
- You can't build a query to listen within a specific geographic area or location. (Try drilling into keyword and operators to do this.)
- Facebook listening is limited to Facebook Pages only.
- Twitter provides sampled data.
- Due to rate limits and API limitations, YouTube and Tumblr limit incoming posts.
- Articles, blog and forum posts are capped at 10kb. Any messages larger than this won't be collected.
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