Hootsuite vs Sprout Social Comparison 2026
Both cover analytics and social media management. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
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 | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
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.
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.