Metricool vs Hootsuite: which to pick, and when neither is
Metricool vs Hootsuite comes down to one question you can answer before you look at a single feature list: are you paying for brands or for seats? Metricool prices by brand (one set of connected accounts) so a solo operator running several clients pays for the portfolio and not for the person. Hootsuite prices per user seat, so the same portfolio costs one seat, and a team of five costs five. Everything else on this page follows from that difference. And if what actually sent you looking was help deciding which hashtags to post under, neither product is built for that job, which is worth knowing before you pick between them.
Everything below about Metricool and Hootsuite was read from their own pricing and plan pages in September 2026. Plans and prices change; check their pages before you decide anything.
The short verdict
- Pick Metricool if one or two people manage many brands or clients. Its free plan covers one brand at €0/month, and its paid tiers are priced by how many brands you manage, not how many people log in.
- Pick Hootsuite if several people share the work on a smaller set of accounts, and the inbox, listening and approvals matter as much as the calendar. Its plans start at $99 per user per month on annual billing.
- Count your brands and your humans before anything else. One person with ten client brands and five people with ten shared accounts are opposite cases, and each product wins one of them outright.
- Neither answers “which hashtags should I post under?” Both will attach tags to a post and report on tags afterwards. Choosing the tags before you write is a separate job with separate tools.
What each one actually is, as of September 2026
Metricool is an all-in-one planner and analytics tool organised around the idea of a brand: a brand is one set of connected social profiles, and a Google Business Profile brand corresponds to a single location. Its own product menu names a Planner, Analytics, Reporting, an Inbox, SmartLinks, Flows, a Campaign Dashboard, a Looker Studio connector and a Hashtag Tracker, plus an AI assistant available on every plan including the free one.
Hootsuite sells a wider suite and gives its parts names: Perch for content creation, planning and publishing, Nest for the social inbox and customer care, Lumen for insights and listening, Parliament for employee advocacy, and Wisdom, an AI layer the plans page says runs in every tier. It has no free plan: every tier is a free 14-day trial, with no credit card required.
The practical difference: Metricool is a planner-and-reporting tool that scales by portfolio. Hootsuite is a monitoring-and-management platform that scales by headcount. If your week is “publish for nine clients and send nine reports”, the first one is shaped like your week. If your week is “four of us answer mentions, approve each other’s drafts and report upward”, the second one is.
Metricool vs Hootsuite on price, as of September 2026
The billing units are different, so a plan-against-plan table is misleading unless you read the unit column first.
| Feature | Metricool (per brand) | Hootsuite (per user seat) |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes: €0/month, 1 brand | No: 14-day trial, then paid |
| Entry paid | From €16/month (up to 5 brands) | $99/user/month, billed annually (Standard) |
| Middle tier | From €43/month (up to 15 brands) | $199/user/month (Professional) |
| Top published tier | €130/month (up to 50 brands) | $399/user/month (Advanced) |
| Above that | Custom: white label, dedicated account manager | Enterprise: custom pricing |
| Billing unit | Each brand (a set of accounts) | Each user seat |
| Connected accounts | Per brand, all networks on paid plans | 10 on Standard; unlimited from Professional |
Metricool’s own ladder is explicit about the brand counts inside each tier: Starter is €16/month for up to 5 brands and €29/month for up to 10; Advanced is €43/month for up to 15 brands, €69/month for up to 25, and €130/month for up to 50. Its pricing page advertises annual billing as saving up to 24%. Hootsuite’s plans page states its prices are based on annual billing and exclude applicable taxes.
What that means in practice. A freelancer running six client brands sits on Metricool Starter at €29/month: one person, six portfolios, one bill. The same six clients on Hootsuite cost $99/month for one Standard seat, which also caps at 10 connected social accounts; six clients with two networks each is already at that ceiling.
Run it the other way and it flips. A four-person team sharing one brand’s accounts pays Metricool €16/month, but Metricool’s role management, client management and post-approval system are Advanced features, from €43/month. On Hootsuite the same four people are four seats, $396/month at Standard, and approvals do not arrive until the Advanced tier at $399 per seat. Team process is the expensive part on both products, and it is much more expensive on Hootsuite.
Where the feature lists actually differ
| Feature | Metricool | Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes: 1 brand, 20 scheduled posts/month | No |
| LinkedIn and X | Not on the free plan; LinkedIn from Starter, X as an add-on | Included in the connected-account allowance |
| Analytics history | 30 days free; unlimited from Starter | Included, depth rises with the tier |
| Competitor tracking | 5 profiles free, up to 100 from Starter | Brand and competitor monitoring from Standard |
| Approvals | Post approval system on Advanced | Review and approve on Advanced |
| Listening | Not sold as a separate listening product | Lumen; advanced listening at Enterprise |
| Reporting | PDF and PPT reports, Looker Studio connector on Advanced | Custom performance reports from Professional |
| API and automation | Metricool API (Zapier, Make and MCP) on Advanced | Integrations across plans |
| Hashtags | A Hashtag Tracker in the product | Tag suggestions alongside a post |
Two limits are worth knowing before you trial either. Metricool’s unlimited publishing is subject to its fair use policy, and its free plan caps scheduling at 20 posts a month. Hootsuite’s trial accounts carry daily posting limits (its plans page states 10–20 posts per organisation depending on plan) and bulk scheduling is switched off during the trial, so a trial week does not show you what a busy week feels like.
Who should stay with Hootsuite
- Several people work the same accounts every day. Per-seat pricing is bad value for a portfolio and fair value for a team, and Hootsuite is the one built for the second case.
- The inbox is the job. Nest with automated replies and message routing is a real product inside the price; bolting a separate care tool onto a cheaper planner usually costs more.
- You need listening, not just analytics. Metricool reports on what you and your competitors published. Lumen is sold to watch conversation you are not part of.
- Unlimited connected accounts on one seat. From Professional, one seat covers unlimited accounts, the single configuration where the seat price genuinely wins.
Who should stay with Metricool, or pick it now
- You are an agency or a freelancer with clients. Fifty brands for €130/month has no Hootsuite equivalent at any tier.
- Budget is the constraint and you are one person. The free plan is a real free plan, not a trial, and Starter at €16/month is below Hootsuite’s cheapest seat by an order of magnitude.
- You report in decks. PDF and PPT reports plus the Looker Studio connector are why agencies stay.
- You want to try before paying. €0/month forever for one brand means the evaluation costs nothing and has no end date.
How to switch either way
- Count brands, then seats, then accounts, in that order. Those three numbers decide the bill, and a feature comparison made before you have them is wasted effort.
- Let the queue drain before you move. Scheduled posts live inside whichever platform holds them; a mid-queue migration is where posts go missing.
- Connect the new tool before disconnecting the old one. Analytics history rebuilds from the connection date on both products, so an overlap week costs nothing and a gap cannot be recovered.
- Move one brand, and give it a fortnight. Instagram first comments, Reels scheduling and Google Business Profile behave slightly differently in each tool, and one brand shows you that before your whole roster is committed.
- Check LinkedIn and X explicitly if you are going to Metricool’s free plan: they are not included there, and that is the detail most likely to bite after you have already moved.
The job neither of them does: deciding which hashtags to post under
Both products touch hashtags. Metricool has a Hashtag Tracker that reports on tags you are already using; Hootsuite suggests tags beside the caption you are writing. Both answer how did my tags do or what could I paste here. Neither answers the question that comes first: which tags does this niche actually post under right now, how busy is each one, and is it full of the kind of post you make?
That is the question Hashtag Ninja’s planner takes. You describe it in a sentence (“which UK ceramics tags still carry makers rather than resellers?”) and it returns a collection plan: which tags to pull, how many posts for each, over what window, and what to check when you have them. It shows the assumptions it made from your brief, so an underspecified sentence comes back visibly underspecified rather than looking like an answer. The planner is free today, and turning a plan into the report and the CSV is open, on the 500 free rows a signed-in account gets every 30 days; Pricing says what more rows will cost.
If you are weighing these two against a third tool, the per-unit math is the same argument in each case: Metricool’s alternatives, and which half of it you are actually replacing, Hootsuite’s cheaper alternatives and the job they skip, and Buffer vs Hootsuite, where the unit is a connected channel rather than a brand. For the hashtag job specifically, building a hashtag set rather than copying one is the method.
Metricool vs Hootsuite: the one-line answer
Many brands, few people: Metricool, from €16/month and free for one brand. Few brands, many people, an inbox full of mentions: Hootsuite, from $99 per seat per month. Deciding the tags themselves: neither (both are built to publish tags you already chose).