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Metricool vs Sprout Social: a bill per brand, or a bill per person

September 23, 2026

Metricool vs Sprout Social is usually decided by one question: are you paying for brands or for people? Metricool bills per brand, a set of connected social profiles, and one login can run all of them. Sprout Social bills per seat, one person, and every teammate who needs the platform is another seat. For a solo marketer or a small agency, Metricool is cheaper by a wide margin. For a team that answers customer messages together, routes work through approvals and reports upward, Sprout’s per-seat bill buys a shared inbox and listening that Metricool does not try to be.

Everything below about both products was read from their own pricing pages in September 2026. Prices and limits change, so check their pages before you commit to anything.

The short verdict

• Pick Metricool if you are one person, or a small agency running several client brands, and your week is planning posts and sending reports. As of September 2026 it has a free plan for 1 brand, and Starter is from €16/month on annual billing.
• Pick Sprout Social if several people work the same social inbox, reply to customers, and need approvals, sentiment and listening in one place. As of September 2026 it starts at $79 per seat per month on annual billing.
• Do the arithmetic with your headcount, not your account count. Sprout multiplies by people. Metricool multiplies by brands. The same agency can be cheap on one and expensive on the other.
• Neither tool tells you which hashtags to post under. Metricool tracks hashtags after you use them; Sprout tags messages and listens to conversations. Choosing tags before you post is a separate job.

Who should stay with Sprout Social

If you are here because a Sprout Social renewal arrived and Metricool looked cheaper, check this list first. Two or more of these apply and staying is the cheaper decision, whatever the per-seat figure says:

• A team answers messages and reviews from one consolidated inbox, and you would miss message tagging.
• You run keyword and location monitoring, or you pay for the Listening add-on and use what it finds.
• Approvals and customer care reports are how your team proves its work to the rest of the company.
• You plug social data into a helpdesk or a CRM through the Sprout API.

Metricool has an inbox and an approval system of its own, but it is built around planning and analytics per brand. It is not a customer care desk.

What each product is, as of September 2026

Metricool is a planner and analytics tool organised around a brand. Its pricing page lists a Planner, Analytics, competitor analysis, PDF and PPT reports, a Looker Studio connector, Flows, an AI assistant, an Inbox and a Hashtag Tracker. Its free plan lets you “Manage all your brands’ social networks (except LinkedIn and Twitter)” for one brand.

Sprout Social is a social media management suite for teams. Its pricing page describes Standard as having a “Consolidated inbox and collaboration tools” and “Keyword and location monitoring”, and adds message tagging, competitor, tag and paid insights, sentiment and the Sprout API as you move up. Premium Analytics, Listening and Employee Advocacy are sold as add-ons on Standard and above.

In one line each: Metricool is where one person plans and reports for many brands. Sprout Social is where many people work one brand’s social presence together.

Metricool vs Sprout Social pricing, as of September 2026

Read the unit row before the price rows. The two products do not bill for the same thing.

Metricool publishes each tier in both euros and dollars. On annual billing, Starter is €16/month for up to 5 brands and €29/month for up to 10, or $20 and $36. Advanced runs €43, €69 and €130 a month for 15, 25 and 50 brands, or $53, $85 and $159. Its toggle reads “Annual (save up to 24%)”, and the monthly prices are higher: Starter from €20, Advanced from €54. Its page also notes that prices exclude VAT.

Sprout Social publishes four tiers per seat per month on annual billing:

Where the two bills land

Take three common shapes and price them on annual billing, using the figures above:

The last row is where the comparison stops being about price. Four people on Sprout Standard get a consolidated inbox, collaboration tools and monitoring built for exactly that team. Metricool Advanced adds team and client management and a post approval system, which may be enough, and may not be if replying to customers is the real work.

Features where they genuinely differ

Two details change the bill rather than the experience. On Metricool, team features sit on Advanced: role management, team and client management and approvals start at €43/month. On Sprout, the plan price is a floor: Listening and Premium Analytics are add-ons on top of the seat price, and the Influencer Marketing product is sold separately.

When to pick Metricool

• You manage brands, not a team. Its pricing is written for one person or a few running many profiles.
• Reports are a deliverable. PDF and PPT reports arrive on Starter, and Looker Studio on Advanced.
• You want to watch competitors cheaply. Up to 100 competitor profiles on Starter.
• You want to start free. A permanent free plan for one brand, rather than a trial.

When to pick Sprout Social

• Several people work one inbox. That is the product’s centre, and it shows in how every tier is described.
• Listening and sentiment are part of the job. Metricool’s pricing page lists neither.
• Your company needs care and productivity reporting. Team productivity and customer care reports are on Advanced.
• You want a long trial before committing. 30 days, no credit card, on its own page.

When neither is the tool you need

Both products report on hashtags after you have used them. Metricool’s Hashtag Tracker follows a tag you give it; Sprout’s tag insights describe tags your team applied. Neither one tells you which hashtags a niche actually posts under before you pick yours.

That is the job Hashtag Ninja is built for. You describe what you want to know in a sentence, for example which tags small bakeries in your city really use, and the planner returns a collection plan: the tags to pull, how many posts, over what window, and what to look for, with its assumptions written down so you can correct them. It is free and needs no account.

To be straight about its state as of October 2026: the planner is free and needs no account. Turning a plan into the posts, the numbers computed from them and the CSV is open, on the 500 free rows a signed-in account gets every 30 days, nothing takes payment yet, and the pricing page publishes what the paid plan will cost ($9/month for 10,000 rows) before it goes on sale. It sits beside Metricool or Sprout. It does not replace either.

How to switch, in either direction

1. Export your reports first. Metricool’s free plan keeps 30 days of analytics, and leaving any tool rarely hands you back history. Download what you need before you downgrade or cancel.
2. Count seats and brands on paper. Write down how many people log in and how many brands you run, then price both with today’s pages.
3. Run both for one period. Sprout’s 30-day trial and Metricool’s free plan make that close to free.
4. Rebuild the queue, not the archive. Scheduled posts do not move between tools. Re-enter the next two weeks by hand.
5. Check networks before you commit. Metricool’s free plan excludes LinkedIn and Twitter/X; LinkedIn arrives on Starter.

What to do next

If you want the wider field, the Sprout Social alternative guide covers what you give up when you leave Sprout, the Metricool alternative guide covers the other side, and Hootsuite vs Sprout Social compares Sprout with the other per-seat suite.

Try Hashtag Ninja free →