Hootsuite vs Sprout Social Comparison 2026
Hootsuite and Sprout Social are both priced per seat and both built for a team rather than a solo creator. Hootsuite's $99 a month covers ten accounts and is already billed annually; Sprout Social's $99 is the pay-monthly rate for five profiles, dropping to $79 if billed annually instead, half the account cap for a comparable price. The axis is what the team actually does: Sprout leans into inbox triage, review management and reporting for people outside the team, while Hootsuite leans into monitoring across more accounts at each tier.
Scheduling and monitoring for ten accounts up
The heavyweight, priced per seat
At a glance
- Neither has a free tier.
Side by side
Hootsuite | Sprout Social | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $99 | From $99 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial (they differ) | 14 days | 30 days |
| API | Yes |
Hootsuite
Scheduling and monitoring for ten accounts up
Hootsuite schedules posts, answers messages from one inbox and monitors what is being said about a brand and its competitors, which is the combination that keeps it in agencies and marketing teams. The entry plan covers ten social accounts for one person; the tier above lifts that to unlimited and adds inbox automation. Analytics and approval workflows are what the upper plans are actually sold on. It is priced per user per month, so a second person on the account roughly doubles it.
Our note
The per-user pricing is what to model, because a second person roughly doubles the bill and that is where this stops competing with the cheaper schedulers. Choose it when monitoring and approvals are requirements rather than nice to have, and choose almost anything else when they are not.
Sprout Social
The heavyweight, priced per seat
Sprout Social is what a social team buys when the job has stopped being scheduling and become inbox triage, approvals, listening and reporting somebody outside the team will read. The consolidated inbox and the review management are the parts creators with a manager tend to notice first. Everything is priced per seat, which is the fact that decides whether it belongs in a one-person setup: a second person doubles the bill.
Why people weigh these two
- Sprout Social instead of Hootsuite
- Sprout Social matches Hootsuite's $99 starting price and per-seat billing, the other heavyweight worth weighing when a team needs the full bundle, not a lighter queue.
- Hootsuite instead of Sprout Social
- Hootsuite is also built for ten accounts and up with monitoring included, starting at $99, the other name a team sizing up Sprout Social usually checks.
Which one should you pick
Choose Hootsuite if the priority is covering more accounts per seat, ten on the entry plan against Sprout's five, with brand and competitor monitoring included from the start. It is the incumbent many staff already know, which is worth something on a team that has used it before.
Choose Sprout Social if the job has become customer service: a consolidated inbox, review management and reports somebody outside the team will read, worth doing the seat math for. At $79 a seat billed annually it undercuts Hootsuite's annual rate, but multiply either one by the number of logins needed, since a solo creator is not the buyer for either tool.
Common questions
- Which one is cheaper per seat?
- Billed annually, Sprout Social's entry tier is $79 a seat against Hootsuite's $99, though it covers only five social profiles against Hootsuite's ten. Paid monthly, Sprout Social's rate rises to $99, matching Hootsuite's annual figure exactly.
- Which one includes review management?
- Sprout Social does, from its $199 Standard plan, replying to listings and review sites alongside social messages. Hootsuite's listing does not describe an equivalent review management feature at any tier.
- Is either one a good fit for a solo creator?
- No, both are priced and built for a team. Per-seat pricing means a single person pays enterprise rates for what a cheaper scheduler does for a fraction of the cost, and both are singled out as the wrong fit for a solo creator on their own pricing pages.
- How long is the free trial on each?
- Sprout Social offers 30 days with no card required, long enough to test the inbox properly. Hootsuite offers 14 days, also with no card and no commitment.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.