The best Hootsuite alternatives in 2026

The right Hootsuite alternative depends on which part of Hootsuite you actually use. For scheduling, Buffer, Metricool and SocialBee do the job for a fraction of the price. For a shared inbox and approvals, Agorapulse and Sprout Social are the real rivals. For listening, you are shopping in a different market.

Prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 4 October 2026.

Why people look for Hootsuite alternatives

Usually it is the bill, and the way it grows with the team.

Hootsuite prices per user and shows only annual-billing prices: Standard is $99, Professional $199 and Advanced $399 per user a month, billed annually, with Enterprise quoted. Its FAQ says monthly billing costs more per user, without saying how much.

That makes the arithmetic blunt. Three people on Professional is $597 a month on an annual contract. A freelancer who mostly schedules posts for a few clients pays $99 a month for Standard, where several rivals charge under $30.

There is no free plan. The 14 day trial needs no card, but trial accounts are capped at 10 to 20 posts a day per organisation and bulk scheduling is switched off, so you cannot fully test a high-volume workflow before paying.

To be fair, the price buys a lot. Standard covers up to 10 social accounts and includes a unified inbox, competitive benchmarking and social listening. Professional adds unlimited accounts and benchmarks against up to 20 competitors, compared with five on Standard. And Hootsuite owns Talkwalker, one of the bigger listening platforms, which it bought in April 2024.

The Hootsuite alternatives worth a look

Buffer, if you mostly schedule

Buffer's free plan covers three channels with 10 scheduled posts each, for one user. Paid plans are priced per connected channel: Essentials at $5 and Team at $10 per channel a month on annual billing, which Buffer says saves 20%. Team includes unlimited team members, so five channels for the whole team is $50 a month.

Buffer has no competitor tracking. Its analytics cover your own accounts only.

Pick Buffer if your Hootsuite use is mostly a calendar and a queue, and you want the price to grow with channels rather than people.

Metricool, the cheapest way to keep competitor numbers

Metricool's free plan covers one brand, 20 scheduled posts a month and analysis of five competitor profiles. Starter is $20 a month billed annually ($25 monthly) for up to five brands, with up to 100 competitors and unlimited analytics history. Advanced starts at $53 a month billed annually ($67 monthly) for 15 brands and adds team and client management and approvals.

It charges by brand, not by person, which suits freelancers and small agencies. X is extra at $10 a month per connected account.

Pick Metricool if you look after a handful of brands and want scheduling plus basic competitor benchmarking for less than one Hootsuite seat.

Later, if Instagram is the main channel

Later sells social sets, one profile per network. Starter is $18.75 a month and Growth $37.50, both billed annually, with Scale at $82.50. Competitive benchmarking for up to 20 competitors is on Scale only, and Later describes it as benchmarking your Instagram strategy.

Pick Later if your work is visual, Instagram comes first, and you plan posts as a grid rather than a queue.

SocialBee, if you run on evergreen content

SocialBee sorts posts into content categories and can recycle evergreen posts on a schedule. Bootstrap is $29 a month or $24.20 billed annually for five profiles and one user. Pro is $99 a month or $82.50 annually for 25 profiles and three users. The trial is 14 days with no card. Its pricing page lists no competitor tracking.

Pick SocialBee if you publish a lot of reusable content and want the queue to refill itself.

Agorapulse, the closest like for like

Agorapulse competes with Hootsuite on the inbox, team workflow and reporting. Standard is $79 per user a month billed annually ($99 monthly), Professional $119 ($149 monthly) and Advanced $149 ($199 monthly). Each plan includes 10 social profiles, extra profiles are $10 a month each on annual billing, and competitor benchmarking comes with Advanced. The trial is 30 days with no card.

It is still priced per user, so it shrinks the seat problem rather than removing it.

Pick Agorapulse if your team lives in the social inbox and you want Hootsuite's shape at a lower price per seat.

Sprout Social, if you need more rather than less

Sprout is not cheaper once you need its useful tiers. Essentials is $79 per seat a month billed annually ($99 monthly) but allows five profiles and no brand keywords. Standard is $199 per seat billed annually ($249 monthly), and Facebook, X and Instagram competitor reports start on Professional at $299 per seat ($399 monthly). Listening is an add-on with no published price. The two are compared line by line in Sprout Social vs Hootsuite, and the other options are in our Sprout Social alternatives.

Pick Sprout Social if reporting quality matters more than price and the budget is per seat anyway.

Figo, if the real job was watching competitors

Ours, so judge accordingly. Figo is not a scheduler. It does not publish posts, run an inbox, or report on your own accounts, so it does not replace Hootsuite.

It replaces one thing some teams upgrade Hootsuite for: keeping an eye on rivals. Every week it checks each competitor's Instagram and Facebook posts, their Google, Meta and TikTok ads, new pages, pricing, reviews and the Reddit threads that mention them, then emails a plain-English briefing on Monday. It is $49 a month for three competitors, $99 for eight and $249 for twenty across five client workspaces.

Pick Figo if competitor benchmarking was the reason you moved to Professional, and a cheaper scheduler can handle the posting.

Do not pick Figo if you need to publish, reply to comments or report on your own accounts. Keep a scheduler for that. If you would rather watch competitors by hand, the manual method takes about twenty minutes a month per competitor.

When Hootsuite is still the right answer

• You use the whole suite. Publishing, inbox, approvals, listening and benchmarking for one team. Replacing it means two or three tools and the work of joining them up.
• You want listening from the same vendor. Talkwalker now sits under the same roof.
• You need enterprise controls. The Enterprise plan includes single sign-on and advanced listening with 13 months of history.
• Your approval chain is built in it. Rebuilding routing and permissions elsewhere takes real staff time, so count it before you count the savings.

For the full breakdown of tiers and seat maths, see Hootsuite pricing.

The short answer

If you mostly schedule, Buffer or Metricool will do it for a fraction of the price, and both have free plans to prove it. If your team lives in the inbox, Agorapulse is the closest swap at a lower price per seat. If you want more than Hootsuite gives you, Sprout Social is the step up and it costs more. And if you were paying for Hootsuite mainly to watch competitors, that is a separate, cheaper job.