Metricool vs Sprout Social
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedMetricool compared with Sprout Social
Sprout is the better product on inbox depth, review management, sentiment, and reporting polish, and its 30-day trial makes that easy to verify. It also costs $79 to $399 per seat with a five-profile cap that survives to $199. Metricool covers five brands with unlimited profiles for roughly $25. For any small business without heavy inbound message volume or multi-location review obligations, Metricool is the rational purchase and Sprout is an aspiration.
Sprout Social compared with Metricool
Metricool covers scheduling, cross-network analytics, unified ads reporting, a link in bio, and client reports for roughly $25 a month across five brands, against Sprout's $79 per seat for five profiles. What Metricool does not have is Sprout's inbox depth, review management, collision detection, sentiment analysis, or listening. For a small business the honest answer is that Metricool does 80 percent of the job for 5 percent of the price; Sprout is what you buy when the remaining 20 percent is your actual problem.
Choose Metricool if
Freelancers, small agencies, and small in-house teams managing several brands across many networks who need dependable scheduling, genuinely good cross-network analytics including paid, and client-ready reports, without paying per seat for a suite they will not use.
Choose Sprout Social if
Mid-market brands and established agencies with a dedicated social team of two or more, high inbound message volume, multi-location review management, and a stakeholder who expects real reporting rather than a screenshot of follower count.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Metricool | Sprout Social |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Social | Social |
| Starting price | €0 free for one brand, then from about €20 or $25 per month for five brands (Starter) (free plan available) | $79 per seat per month billed annually (Essentials), or $99 billed monthly (30 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Tiered subscription priced by the number of connected brands, with unlimited profiles inside each brand, a free plan for one brand, and team features, approvals, API, and Looker Studio gated to the Advanced tier. | Per seat per month across four published self-serve tiers plus a quoted Enterprise tier, with profile limits on the two cheapest tiers, metered AI credits, and listening, analytics, advocacy, and influencer marketing sold as separate add-ons. |
| Free plan | One brand, up to 20 scheduled posts per month, 5 competitor profiles, 30 days of analytics history, and the AI assistant. | No |
| Free trial | Available on paid plans; the free tier also functions as an indefinite evaluation path | 30 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Freelancers, small agencies, and small in-house teams managing several brands across many networks who need dependable scheduling, genuinely good cross-network analytics including paid, and client-ready reports, without paying per seat for a suite they will not use. | Mid-market brands and established agencies with a dedicated social team of two or more, high inbound message volume, multi-location review management, and a stakeholder who expects real reporting rather than a screenshot of follower count. |
| Setup time | Under an hour per brand. Connect the profiles, connect the ad accounts if you have them, and the analytics start populating immediately with whatever historical window each network API will backfill. | A day for a single brand, a week or two for a multi-brand or multi-location rollout. Connecting profiles is quick; configuring inbox rules, tags, approval chains, and report templates is where the real time goes and where the value is. |
| Learning curve | Low. The interface is dense but logically organized, and the brand-based structure is easy to reason about once you understand that profiles inside a brand are free. Reports and autolists reward a couple of hours of deliberate setup. | Moderate. The interface is the friendliest at this price point and most publishers are productive within a day, but the analytics and tagging systems reward deliberate setup and most teams underuse them for months. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Looker Studio connector, Smartlinks hosted pages | Web app, iOS, Android, Browser extension |
| Compliance | GDPR, EU-based operations under a European corporate parent | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, CCPA, Public company financial reporting under SEC rules |
| Founded | 2015 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Madrid, Spain | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Ownership | Acquired by team.blue, a European digital services and hosting group, in July 2024 | Publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker SPT |
Strengths and limitations
Metricool
Strengths
- Pricing by brand rather than by seat or channel is the single best-designed meter in this category for small businesses and agencies.
- Unified organic and paid reporting across Meta, Google, and TikTok Ads in one dashboard is genuinely rare and removes the most tedious recurring task in client reporting.
- Twelve supported surfaces including Bluesky, Threads, Twitch, and Google Business Profile, which is broader coverage than most tools charging five times as much.
- A real free plan for one brand, not a countdown trial, so you can evaluate properly and small operators can start at zero.
Limitations
- The inbox is a comment and message reader without assignment rules, routing, collision detection, or response-time reporting, which rules Metricool out for support-heavy brands.
- There is no query-based social listening at all, so brand monitoring beyond your own mentions and named competitors is not something the product does.
- Team management and approval workflows are Advanced-only, so a two-person team on Starter has no sign-off mechanism.
- Pricing is denominated in euros with a sliding brand count, which makes budgeting slightly fiddlier than a flat published USD tier.
Sprout Social
Strengths
- The best-designed working surface in the category; the calendar, composer, and Smart Inbox are consistently rated above Hootsuite and above every cheaper competitor.
- A 30-day free trial with no credit card required, which is double or triple what anyone else at this price offers and lets you actually test it against real volume.
- Genuinely deep reporting with consistent cross-network metric definitions, competitor benchmarking, and presentation-ready exports that agencies sell as a deliverable.
- Review management across Google, Facebook, and third-party sites in the same queue as social messages, which is the standout feature for multi-location businesses.
Limitations
- Per-seat pricing starting at $79 with no free plan puts Sprout out of reach for the majority of small businesses in this category.
- The five-profile cap persists all the way through the $199 Standard tier, which is a confusing and expensive ladder for anyone managing more than one brand.
- Unlimited profiles cost $299 a seat, a full $100 more than Hootsuite charges for the same removal of the cap.
- Listening, premium analytics, employee advocacy, and influencer marketing are all separate quoted products, so the demo and the invoice can look very different.
Pricing compared
Metricool
Tiered subscription priced by the number of connected brands, with unlimited profiles inside each brand, a free plan for one brand, and team features, approvals, API, and Looker Studio gated to the Advanced tier.
- Free€0
- StarterFrom €20 (about $25)
- AdvancedFrom €54 (about $67)
- CustomQuoted
Metricool is the best capability-per-dollar in this category and it is not close. Twelve networks with no per-channel meter, unlimited publishing, competitor tracking, unified organic and paid reporting, branded client exports, a link in bio, and an inbox for roughly $25 a month across five brands is a price structure the American competitors have simply not matched. Advanced at around $67 adds team roles, approvals, API access, and Looker Studio, features that cost $399 per seat at Hootsuite and $299 per seat at Sprout. What you give up is inbox depth, listening, and enterprise support, and those are real gaps rather than marketing distinctions. But for the overwhelming majority of small businesses and small agencies, Metricool covers the work and leaves several thousand dollars a year to spend on content instead of software.
Sprout Social
Per seat per month across four published self-serve tiers plus a quoted Enterprise tier, with profile limits on the two cheapest tiers, metered AI credits, and listening, analytics, advocacy, and influencer marketing sold as separate add-ons.
- Essentials$79
- Standard$199
- Professional$299
- Advanced$399
- EnterpriseCustom
Sprout is not overpriced for what it does, it is overpriced for what most small businesses do. Judged on the quality of the inbox, the consistency of the reporting, and the review-management coverage, it is the best-built product in this category and the daily experience is measurably better than Hootsuite's at a similar price. The problem is the shape of the meter: per seat, with a five-profile cap that persists through the $199 tier, and with the differentiators you are shown in a demo sold as unpublished add-ons. A three-person team on Standard is $7,164 a year for scheduling, inbox, and reporting that Metricool Advanced covers for under $1,300. Sprout earns its price only when inbound engagement volume, review management, or reporting credibility is the actual constraint on your business, and it is honest enough to let you find out over thirty days without a credit card.
Editorial verdict on each
Metricool
Best ValueMetricool is the default recommendation in this category for anyone whose business is smaller than a staffed social team. Pricing by brand rather than by seat or channel means a single business posting to ten networks pays the same as one posting to two, an agency with ten clients pays $45 a month, and the analytics you get for that money, including Meta, Google, and TikTok ad spend reported next to organic performance, are better than what most competitors sell at ten times the price. Approvals, team roles, API access, and Looker Studio arrive at around $67. The gaps are real and worth naming: no listening, an inbox that is a reader rather than a helpdesk, and a thin enterprise posture. If social is a customer support channel or a compliance surface, buy Sprout. For everyone else, start free, move to Starter, and spend the four thousand dollars a year you did not give to an incumbent on content.
Read the full Metricool profileSprout Social
Sprout Social is the best-built product in this category and the wrong purchase for most of the businesses reading about it. The Smart Inbox, review management, and reporting are genuinely superior to everything cheaper, and the 30-day no-credit-card trial means you can prove that to yourself rather than take anyone's word. But the meter is per seat, the five-profile cap survives all the way to $199, unlimited profiles cost $100 more per seat than Hootsuite charges for the same thing, and the listening you get shown in a demo is a quoted add-on. Buy Sprout when social is a staffed function with real inbound volume, multi-location reviews, or a stakeholder who scrutinizes your numbers. If social is one person posting four times a week, take Metricool or SocialBee and put the eight thousand dollars a year into content instead.
Read the full Sprout Social profileMetricool profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Sprout Social last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.