Metricool vs Hootsuite: which should you choose?

Metricool versus Hootsuite is a value-versus-incumbent matchup, and the two price in opposite currencies. As of August 2026, Metricool prices by brand: a free single-brand plan (without LinkedIn or X), Starter from $20 per month on annual billing covering five brands, Advanced from $53 adding team management and approvals, and a custom tier above, with X connections as a paid add-on per account. Hootsuite prices per user with no free plan: Standard at $99 per user monthly with 10 social accounts, Professional at $199 per user removing the account cap, and Advanced at $399 per user adding approval workflows, with Enterprise custom.

Where Metricool wins

Cost, plainly: a two-person team managing eight brands can run on Metricool for well under what a single Hootsuite seat costs. Its analytics are genuinely strong for the price, including competitor tracking, and the brand-based model maps naturally onto small multi-client work. The trade-offs: team features and approvals require Advanced, and X support costs extra per account.

Where Hootsuite wins

Organizational depth: mature listening add-ons, enterprise governance, SSO, and the ecosystem large teams expect. For a big in-house team already committed to per-seat procurement, Hootsuite remains the default. The sticker shock is structural: approvals gated to a $399 per-user tier is the single line agencies bounce off hardest.

The agency answer neither leads with

An agency needs approvals, white-labeling, and unlimited collaborators without per-seat math. Cloud Campaign includes approval workflows and unlimited users on every plan, white-labeling on Team and Agency, and workspace pricing where ten clients runs about $344 monthly, a different pricing architecture from both contenders. All competitor pricing above was verified from each vendor's own published pages in August 2026.