Metricool alternatives: what to use when brands stop being the constraint

Worth opening with something most alternatives pages will not tell you: on cost per client, Metricool is very hard to beat.

It is "An analytics-led social media tool priced by how many brands you manage, with a free tier for one brand.". Free covers one brand, From $20 / month billed yearly covers up to five, and From $53 / month billed yearly covers up to fifteen. Fifteen clients for about $636 a year is roughly $3.50 per client per month. Against a retainer of any size that is invisible.

So if you are here to save money, you are probably in the wrong place, and the rest of this page will keep saying so. People who genuinely should leave are leaving for one of three reasons that have nothing to do with price.

The three real reasons to move

One: you need per-person permissions. Your agency grew. You now have an account manager, a designer and a junior, and it matters that the junior can draft but not publish, and that a contractor sees one client rather than all of them. Cheap per client is irrelevant if everyone shares one login, because that is not a saving, it is a deferred incident.

Two: clients require formal sign-off. Most retainers include approval before publishing. That needs to be a recorded step with a trail, or it lives in email and eventually something goes out that a client did not agree to and cannot be shown to have agreed to.

Three: your clients ask about your vendors. Larger clients increasingly extend procurement and security review to their agencies. "What software touches our accounts, and under what terms" is a question with an easier answer if the answer is a platform with published commitments.

None of those are price problems. All three are reasons the cheapest option can genuinely be the wrong one.

And one reason that is not a reason

"I have outgrown fifteen brands." Their published tiers go up to fifteen with a Custom tier above it, listed as Contact them. If you have sixteen clients, the next step is a conversation with them, not a migration to a tool that costs ten times more per client. Get the Custom quote before you shortlist anything else.

The alternatives, ranked for a Metricool leaver

1. Hootsuite, if it was permissions or approvals. From $99 / month, described as "A long-established social media management platform aimed at teams and larger organisations.". This is the most common genuinely-correct move off a per-brand tool, and it is an increase in cost you are choosing on purpose. You are buying the governance layer, and the cost per client at fifteen clients is still under about $7 a month at the entry tier.

2. Sprout Social, if the constraint is people rather than clients. $199 per seat / month, with the page stating five social profiles on that plan, described as "An enterprise-oriented social media management suite priced per seat.". Per-seat pricing prices exactly the thing that has become your bottleneck. Watch the profile cap as well as the seat count, because for an agency it often binds first.

3. Vantr, if you are a creator rather than an agency. Free tier, then $12 a month, publishing to 12 platforms. Different shape entirely: built around one creator's business rather than many clients' accounts, so it carries deals, deliverables, contracts, invoices and earnings. If you are managing fifteen brands for other people, say plainly that this is not the tool for that job. If you were using a per-brand tool to run your own two or three projects, it is worth a look.

4. Buffer, if you shrank rather than grew. Free tier, then $5 per channel / month, described as "A publishing and scheduling tool priced per channel, with a free tier for up to three channels.". Sometimes the change is fewer clients, not more, and a per-channel meter with no minimum and a free tier at three channels is the cheapest place to land when your footprint contracts.

5. Later, if you want a mid-market tier. $18.75 / month billed yearly, described as "A scheduling and social media management tool sold in tiers, with users and social sets as paid add-ons.". Price the user and social set add-ons before comparing, because for an agency those are the line items that move.

Who should stay on Metricool

Stay if cost per client is what matters and nobody is fighting over logins. Nothing here beats it on that number, and paying ten times more for governance you do not need is a worse mistake than the one you are trying to fix.

Stay if you are one person managing several projects. The brand meter is precisely designed for that, and the free tier covers one brand indefinitely.

Stay if you are near a tier boundary rather than past it. Moving from five to six brands is a tier change, not a migration.

Stay if the analytics are why you chose it. Its own positioning leads with analytics. If the reporting is what your clients see and value, that is the part of the job you should be least willing to gamble on a switch.

If you do move

Agency migrations have one extra failure mode: you are moving other people's data.

1. Export every client's reporting first, per client, before disconnecting anything. You owe them that record and you will not get it back cleanly.
2. Tell clients before, not after. Reconnecting their accounts requires their cooperation, and a surprise permission request from an unfamiliar tool is how you get ignored for a week.
3. Move one client first. Prove the whole loop, publishing through to reporting, on your most forgiving client before moving the rest.
4. Remove churned clients as you go. Most agencies are paying for at least one workspace belonging to a client who left.
5. Overlap one billing cycle, and let the old queues drain rather than trying to migrate scheduled posts.

Common questions

Is there a better free alternative to Metricool?

Its free plan covers one brand, which is generous if your work is one business. Buffer's free tier covers up to three channels with a stated ten scheduled posts per channel, and Vantr's covers 3 channels and 30 posts a month. They cap on different axes, so the better one is whichever axis you are not near.

What do agencies use instead of Metricool?

Usually a governance-first platform, and usually because of permissions or client approvals rather than price. Expect cost per client to rise and be clear about what that buys before you commit.

Is Metricool good for one creator?

The free tier covers one brand, and one creator across many channels is one brand, so the meter does not move as you add platforms. That is the single strongest case for it.

How many clients can I manage on Metricool?

Its published tiers state up to five brands and up to fifteen, with a Custom tier above that. Ask for the Custom quote before assuming you have outgrown it.

A note on method: this page compares pricing, pricing models and each company's own description of itself, read off their public pages on the dates shown. It does not rank their features against one another. All of these tools ship far more than a pricing page lists, and inventing a capability gap for any of them would make this page less useful, not more. Where a question comes down to features, the answer is a trial with your own accounts.

Every price on one screen

Hootsuite

Plan	Price	Notes
Standard	From $99 / month
Professional	From $199 / month
Advanced	Up to $399 / month

Hootsuite's pricing and features checked on 9 September 2026, from their own site.

Sprout Social

Plan	Price	Notes
Standard	$199 per seat / month	Page states 5 social profiles

Sprout Social's pricing and features checked on 9 September 2026, from their own site.

Buffer

Plan	Price	Notes
Free	Free forever	Up to 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel
Essentials	$5 per channel / month	$60 per channel billed yearly
Team	$10 per channel / month	$120 per channel billed yearly

Buffer's pricing and features checked on 9 September 2026, from their own site.

Later

Plan	Price	Notes
Starter	$18.75 / month billed yearly	Page showed a 25% off promotion; limited to 1 user
Growth	$37.50 / month billed yearly	Page showed a 25% off promotion
Scale	$82.50 / month billed yearly	Page showed a 25% off promotion

Later's pricing and features checked on 9 September 2026, from their own site.

Metricool

Plan	Price	Notes
Free	$0 / month	Manage 1 brand
Starter	From $20 / month billed yearly	Up to 5 brands; $25 / month billed monthly
Advanced	From $53 / month billed yearly	Up to 15 brands; $67 / month billed monthly
Custom	Contact them

Metricool's pricing and features checked on 9 September 2026, from their own site.

Vantr

Plan	Price	Notes
Free	$0	3 channels, 30 posts a month, no card
Starter	$12 / month
Pro	$29 / month
Business	$49 / month

Vantr publishes to 12 platforms and prices by plan rather than by channel, brand or seat.

Sources

• Metricool pricing
• Hootsuite plans
• Sprout Social pricing
• Buffer pricing
• Later pricing