Metricool vs Sprout Social Comparison 2026
Both cover social media management and analytics. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Metricool starts cheaper, at $20.
- Only Metricool has a free tier.
Side by side
Metricool | Sprout Social | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $20 | From $99 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier (they differ) | Yes | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | 30 days |
| API | Yes |
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.
Metricool
Scheduling and analytics across brands
Metricool schedules to most of the networks a creator uses and then reports on what happened, including competitor tracking and paid campaign numbers in the same view. Pricing counts brands rather than seats, which suits somebody running several accounts. The free plan schedules 20 posts a month, enough to decide whether the reports are worth paying for.
Our note
Twenty scheduled posts a month on the free plan lasts a single creator a long time. Against Later the pricing is per brand rather than per social set, which is why it scales better across clients and gives less to somebody managing one account closely.
Only on this side
- Works with Twitch
- Works with X
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.