GatherUp vs Birdeye: which one fits which job
The short answer to GatherUp vs Birdeye is that these two are not really competing for the same buyer, and the clearest evidence is that one of them prints its prices and the other does not. GatherUp publishes a figure you can read this afternoon: $99 a month for a single location, $60 a month per location from two locations upward. Birdeye asks you to choose a location band and leave a mobile number. That difference is not a pricing quirk; it is each company telling you who it built the product for. And if the thing you are actually paid to deliver is the client’s bad Google review gets answered before the week is out, both of these are a platform purchase for one alert, which is the only job Review Radar does, for a business and its three closest competitors.
This page sets out what each sells as of September 2026, read off their own pages this week, where they genuinely diverge, and who should stay with each.
The verdict in five lines
- Stay with GatherUp if you want a review and reputation platform with a price you can read, a 14-day trial you can start without a call, and a per-location rate that scales predictably across a client book.
- Stay with Birdeye if you run a multi-location brand and are consolidating several tools (reviews, listings, social, front desk, surveys) into one contract, and a procurement conversation is normal for you anyway.
- Neither, if the review watch is all you open. Both are suites. Paying suite money to be told about one unanswered review is the case a narrow tool exists for.
- Only one of the two can be evaluated today. GatherUp has a self-serve trial and a published rate. Birdeye’s first number arrives from a salesperson.
- Check the unit before you compare the numbers. GatherUp’s $60 is per location, per month, for its own feature set. Birdeye’s number does not exist publicly to compare it against.
GatherUp vs Birdeye at a glance
GatherUp rows are from its own pricing page as of September 2026. Birdeye rows are from its own pricing page and product navigation as of September 2026. Review Radar rows are from its pricing page and product today.
| GatherUp | Birdeye | Review Radar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you see a price first? | Yes, published per location | No, location band plus a form | Yes, on the pricing page |
| Entry price | $99/month, one location | Not published | $39/month (Starter) |
| Multi-location rate | $60/month per location, 2+ | Not published | One credit balance, 100 credits per watched business |
| Try it without talking to anyone | 14-day free trial | Demo, booked | Free account, no card |
| Annual term | Save 20% on annual | Not published | Month to month |
| Review sources monitored | 100+ sites | Across the platform | |
| Competitor reviews | Add-on (Review Defense) | Part of the CX coworker | Included, three per watched business |
| Breadth | Reviews, NPS, listings add-on, white label | Reviews, listings, social, front desk, surveys, ticketing | The review watch, and nothing else |
Read that table the unflattering way first. GatherUp does considerably more than Review Radar, and Birdeye does more again. The case for a narrow tool is never that it beats a platform. It is only ever that the review watch is the single part of the platform you open, and you would rather buy that one thing and see the price before signing up.
What GatherUp sells, and what it costs
GatherUp’s pricing page is unusually direct for this market. As of September 2026 it shows a monthly/annual toggle marked Save 20% on Annual, and two published tiers with a quoted third:
| GatherUp plan | Price, as of September 2026 | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business | $99/month | One location, with a free 14-day trial |
| Multi Location | $60/month per location | Bands from 2-10 locations up to 101+ |
| Agency | Request a quote | White-label reputation management resold to clients |
Every plan, per the same page, includes “Up to 300 SMS + 3,000 email credits per location per month”, online review monitoring across “100+ sites”, Net Promoter Score and surveys, QR codes and custom feedback links, API, Zapier and webhooks, custom notifications, “Unique AI-crafted replies”, in-app review responding, review widgets, AI-driven topic and keyword tagging, and automated social sharing.
Two things are sold beside the plans rather than inside them, and they matter to the comparison:
- Listings Hub, $40/month per location: syncing business information across “125 online directories (Google, Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook, and more)”.
- Review Defense, “3 plans available”: the page describes it as AI-powered monitoring that flags suspicious reviews and says it will “Automate competitor monitoring and dispute fake 5-star reviews”.
That second one is the line to read carefully if competitors are why you are shopping. Competitor monitoring at GatherUp sits in a paid add-on whose prices are not published, not in the plan you compared on price.
What Birdeye sells, and why there is no number to put beside it
Birdeye is a much wider platform, organised in its own navigation as named AI “coworkers”: a marketing one covering AI Search, Reviews, Listings, Social, Marketing Automation, Chatbot and Pages; an operations one covering Frontdesk, Appointments, Reminders, Waitlist and Insurance Verification; and a customer-experience one covering Surveys, Insights, Competitors, Ticketing and Reporting.
Its pricing page publishes no figure at all. As of September 2026 it reads:
“Pricing built around outcomes, not seat counts. One platform, one contract - replace point products and pay only for what you deploy at your locations”
and then asks you to pick a band (1-3, 4-9, 10-39, 40-249, 250-999 or 1000+ locations) plus your “Best mobile number to reach you”, under a GET PRICING button.
There is nothing improper about that. Quote-based pricing is normal for software sold to multi-location brands, and “one platform, one contract” is genuinely what a 200-location operator is buying. But it has consequences for the small buyer that GatherUp’s page does not:
- You cannot size it before you talk to somebody. Comparing GatherUp’s $60 per location against Birdeye means booking a call to get the other half of the comparison.
- The smallest band starts at one location and the ladder runs to 1000+. The product is being priced across a range where your three profiles are the very bottom.
- The trial is a demo. GatherUp lets you into the software for fourteen days on your own; Birdeye’s equivalent step is a scheduled conversation.
So which one, honestly
Pick GatherUp if you want a real reputation platform, you want to see the invoice before you commit, and your client book grows one location at a time. $60 per location per month is a number you can put in a proposal today, and the trial means you can test it against a live profile this week.
Pick Birdeye if you are a multi-location brand replacing several subscriptions at once. If one contract genuinely retires your review tool, your listings tool, your social scheduler and your front-desk messaging, the contract is doing exactly what it is priced to do, and the absence of a public number stops being the deciding factor.
Pick neither if you can describe the job in one sentence: tell me the day a client’s negative Google review is sitting unanswered, and draft the reply. That is one row of either platform, and you would be buying the rest of the platform to reach it.
What the narrow version of the job looks like
Review Radar watches a business’s Google reviews and up to three of its closest competitors’, and emails you the day a one- or two-star review is sitting unanswered, and one press drafts a reply for one credit, for you to edit and post.
Competitors cost nothing extra. One business plus three rivals is a single watch at 100 credits a month, so a client’s review problem arrives next to the businesses benefiting from it. Alerts are only ever raised for your own client’s listing; a competitor’s bad review is data for the report, never a reason to wake anybody at seven in the morning.
Pricing is one credit balance rather than a subscription per feature. Watching a business costs 100 credits a month, competitors included. A new account is granted 100 credits once: one business for one month, no card, and they do not refill. After that, as of September 2026:
| Plan | Price per month | Credits per month | Businesses watched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100, granted once at sign-up | 1, for a month |
| Starter | $39 | 200 | 2 |
| Pro | $99 | 550 | 5 |
| Agency | $499 | 3,000 | 30 |
Billing is month to month through PayPal, and a watch can be paused and resumed. The full ladder is on the pricing page.
How to switch, if that is where you landed
- Count what you actually opened last month. If the answer is the review inbox and nothing else, you have your decision. If you sent review-request campaigns, ran NPS surveys or synced listings, you are using a platform and you should keep one.
- Move one client first, not the book. Start a free Review Radar account, add the client whose reviews cause the most work, and add their three closest competitors.
- Run both for a month. The question is not which tool has more features. It is whether the alert arrives and the drafted reply saves you the writing.
- Resize rather than cancel outright. GatherUp is priced per location, so moving three clients means a smaller per-location count at renewal rather than an all-or-nothing exit. Birdeye is a contract, so time any change to its renewal date and raise it with your account contact.
If you are weighing one of these against a different platform, the neighbouring comparisons are NiceJob vs Birdeye, Birdeye vs BrightLocal, and what GatherUp’s plans cost in detail.