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Metricool alternative: which part are you actually replacing?

September 17, 2026

If you are shopping for a Metricool alternative, the useful question is not “what else is like Metricool”. It is which part of Metricool you actually open. Metricool is a social media management suite: a content calendar, analytics across a dozen networks, a unified inbox, ads reporting and a hashtag tracker, all in one subscription. People leave it for three different reasons, and the three reasons have three different answers. If you want the whole suite for less, one set of tools applies. If you only ever use the calendar, another does. And if the only screen you visit is the hashtag tracker, you are paying for a suite to get a research tool, and that is the easiest of the three to replace.

This guide covers what Metricool is as of September 2026, who should stay with it, and what each alternative is genuinely better at. Details about other products are taken from their own websites as of September 2026; plans and features change, so check their pages before you decide.

The short verdict

• Stay with Metricool if you publish to several networks, need analytics and reports in one place, and manage more than one brand or client. Nothing cheaper on this page does all of that at once.
• Check Metricool’s own free plan first. As of September 2026 it is €0/month, and for one brand with modest posting volume it may already be the alternative you were about to pay somebody else for.
• Move to a publishing-only tool like Buffer if the calendar is the only thing you use and the analytics go unread.
• Move to a hashtag research tool if the Hashtag Tracker is what you opened Metricool for. That is a job you can do without a social media suite at all.

What Metricool actually is

Metricool describes itself on its home page, as of September 2026, with the line:

Everything flows better when your content, data, and team are all in the same tab.

That is a fair description of the product. Its named features, as of September 2026, cover far more ground than hashtags:

• a content calendar with drag-and-drop scheduling, and an approval system for teams;
• analytics for 12+ platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Google Business Profile and Twitch;
• competitor analysis, automated reports, campaign dashboards and a Looker Studio connector;
• a unified inbox, DM automation (“Flows”), link-in-bio pages (“SmartLinks”) and unified ads management across Google, Facebook and TikTok;
• a Hashtag Tracker, which its page says is “Available for” Twitter and Instagram only.

The breadth is the point of the product, and it is also why replacing it is confusing: most tools people compare it to replace one column of that list.

Metricool pricing, as of September 2026

Metricool prices by number of brands (a brand being one set of connected accounts) rather than per channel or per user.

The free plan is the part most “Metricool alternative” searches miss. If you run one brand and post a few times a week, €0/month with 30 days of analytics may be the whole answer, and switching tools would cost you history for nothing.

Who should stay with Metricool

Stay if any of these is true:

• You manage more than one brand or client. Per-brand pricing is genuinely cheap at volume, and per-channel tools get expensive fast in exactly that situation.
• You need one report covering several networks. Rebuilding a cross-network report out of two or three single-purpose tools is a job, not a saving.
• Your team needs approvals or a shared inbox. Those are suite features and the cheaper options on this page do not have them.
• You use the ads dashboards. Very little else puts organic and paid in the same view.

Leaving a suite to save a few euros, then paying for three tools that together cost more and share no data, is the common mistake. Count what you open, not what you own.

Who needs a Metricool alternative

• You only post to one or two accounts and the analytics tab is unread. You are buying a suite to use a calendar.
• You want Instagram hashtag research specifically (which tags a niche really posts under, who is creating under a campaign tag) and the Hashtag Tracker is the only reason the subscription renews.
• You need the posts behind the numbers. A tracker gives you a chart of a hashtag’s activity; it does not hand you the posts as a file you can sort, filter and keep.

That last one is worth separating out, because it is where “alternative” usually means “different kind of tool” rather than “cheaper version of the same tool”.

Metricool alternatives compared

Metricool’s own free plan: for one brand, posting modestly

The cheapest Metricool alternative is frequently Metricool. As of September 2026 the free plan covers one brand, 20 scheduled posts a month, 30 days of analytics history and 5 competitor profiles, and excludes LinkedIn and X. If that description fits your account, downgrade rather than migrate: you keep the tool you know and the history you have already accumulated.

Buffer: for publishing, and nothing else

Buffer is the straightforward answer when the calendar is the only screen you use. As of September 2026 its pricing page lists a Free plan with up to 3 channels and 10 scheduled posts per channel, Essentials at “$5 /month” per channel, and Team at “$10 /month” per channel. It includes a hashtag manager, described on that page as the ability to “Save and reuse hashtags”: 3 tags on the free plan, 250 on paid.

Note what that is and is not. Saving hashtag sets you already chose is storage. It does not tell you which sets are worth choosing. Buffer replaces Metricool’s calendar; it does not replace the Hashtag Tracker.

Also watch the pricing model change: per-channel billing is cheaper than per-brand billing for one account and more expensive for many. Multiply before you switch.

Flick: for tracking hashtags on your own posts

Flick’s Instagram hashtag tool page, as of September 2026, is headed “Find, manage and analyze hashtags for Instagram”, and names Hashtag Search, Hashtag Collections, Hashtag Performance and Instagram Analytics. It both suggests hashtags and tracks how your own posts performed under them: its page describes seeing “where you post ranks on the hashtag feed”.

If the Metricool feature you would miss is per-post hashtag performance on your own account, Flick is the closer replacement than anything else here, because that measurement requires a connection to your account and most free tools have none. Our longer write-up is in Flick alternative: free and cheaper ways to pick Instagram hashtags.

Hashtag Ninja: for deciding which tags to research in the first place

Hashtag Ninja starts one step earlier than a tracker. A tracker answers “how is this hashtag doing”; it assumes you already know which hashtag to type. The harder question is which tags a niche actually posts under, and which of those are worth your attention before you commit a month of posts to them.

You describe what you want to know in a sentence (which tags a niche really posts under, who is creating under a campaign tag, when those posts go up) and the free planner returns a collection plan: the tags to pull, how many posts, over what window, and what to look for. It states its assumptions out loud, which is the part you can disagree with and change.

Be clear about what is and is not open today. The planner is free and needs no account. Turning a plan into the posts themselves, the numbers computed from them and the CSV is open, on the 500 free rows a signed-in account gets every 30 days, and nothing can be bought yet, so if what you need right now is more than 500 rows a month, this is not yet the tool for it, and you should not cancel a subscription over it. The pricing page says the same thing.

If you want the reasoning behind picking a set rather than copying one, Best hashtags for Instagram: build a set, don’t copy one covers the method, and Inflact alternative: free ways to do Instagram hashtag research compares the free research tools directly.

Instagram’s own search: for checking anything before you trust it

Free, and the only source that is authoritative about Instagram. Any tag a tool suggests can be typed into Instagram’s search in a few seconds, where you see the real recent posts and can judge whether that is the company your brand wants to keep. Slow for building a list, unbeatable for verifying one.

How to switch from Metricool without losing anything

1. Write down which screens you opened this month. Calendar, analytics, inbox, ads, hashtag tracker. The list is usually shorter than expected and decides everything below.
2. Export your reports first. Metricool’s free plan keeps 30 days of analytics history as of September 2026, and downgrading or leaving does not hand you back what falls outside the window.
3. Try the downgrade before the migration. If one brand is all you run, moving from a paid Metricool plan to the free one is reversible in a click. Switching vendors is not.
4. Replace one column at a time. Publishing first, then research. Cutting over everything in one week means you cannot tell which replacement is the one that is not working.
5. Keep one measurement running. Whatever you move to, keep collecting the same numbers for a month either side of the switch, or you will have no way to tell whether the new setup is better or just newer.

Picking your Metricool alternative

Most people searching for a Metricool alternative are not unhappy with Metricool. They are paying suite prices for one column of a suite. Work out which column it is, and the alternative names itself.

Try Hashtag Ninja free →