Hootsuite alternatives, compared on price, free plans and AI agents
Buffer, Sprout Social, Agorapulse, Metricool, Publer and nine more, compared with Hootsuite on price per user or channel, free plans, X, Bluesky and AI agents.
By Mellow · UpdatedThe short answer
Hootsuite charges per user: Standard is $99 a user a month billed yearly, with 10 social accounts; Professional is $199, and Advanced, where approval workflows start, $399. It has no free plan and does not publish its monthly price. Most alternatives charge for something other than people: Buffer per channel, from $5 a month billed yearly, with a free plan of three channels; Publer per account, from $4; Metricool per brand; Sendible and Planable per plan, with unlimited users. Sprout Social and Agorapulse charge per seat as Hootsuite does, from $79 a month billed yearly.
Disclosure: Mellow publishes this page and makes Mellow Hub, one of the tools below. Hub’s row comes from its own pricing configuration and code. Every other cell links to the vendor’s own page, read on 1 October 2026; where a vendor’s pages do not say something, the table says so. Rows are in alphabetical order, not ranked.
Why people look for a Hootsuite alternative
The price grows with people, not posts. Every user is a seat: a team of 3 on Advanced, the first plan with approval workflows, pays $1,197 a month billed yearly, and $297 on Standard, which has no approvals.
Source: plans
Less to try before paying. There is no free plan. The 14-day trial needs no card, but trial accounts may publish only 10 to 20 posts a day and cannot bulk schedule, and the monthly-billing price is not on the plans page.
Source: plans
What its users mention. On G2, a review site, Hootsuite scores 4.3 out of 5 from 7,473 reviews; the drawbacks its summary counts most often are limited features (483 mentions) and expense (454).
Source: G2 reviews
Hootsuite has kept moving: on 24 June 2026 it relaunched with an AI agent, Wisdom, and hosted MCP servers that let ChatGPT or Claude draft, schedule and publish through it. An AI assistant alone is no longer a reason to leave.
Sources: press release, MCP
14 alternatives, side by side
Prices are US dollars a month for the cheapest paid plan; “yearly” is the monthly price when billed for a year. Checked on 1 October 2026. Hootsuite for reference: Standard: $99 per user a month billed yearly; 10 social accounts. The monthly-billing price is not published.
| Tool | Priced per | Cheapest paid plan | Free plan or trial | X and Bluesky | AI agents: MCP and API | Approvals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agorapulse | user | Standard: $99 a month, $79 yearly, per user; 10 social profiles. Source: pricing | No free plan since 6 July 2026; a free AI-content plan, Archie, replaced it. 30-day trial, no card. Sources: pricing, Archie plan | Bluesky included; X is an add-on sold through sales. Source: pricing | MCP in beta on current plans: inbox, listening and analytics; publishing only as drafts. A reporting API on Custom. Sources: MCP help, pricing | From Professional: $149 a month, $119 yearly, per user. Source: pricing |
| Buffer | channel | Essentials: $6 a channel a month, $5 yearly, for the first 10 channels; less per channel above that. Sources: pricing, tiers | Free: 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel at a time, 1 user. 14-day trial of paid plans, no card. Source: pricing | Both included. Source: pricing | MCP server and API on every plan, Free included: create, schedule and manage posts. Sources: MCP, API | Team plan: $12 a channel a month, $10 yearly. Source: pricing |
| Later | plan (sets of 8 profiles) | Starter: $25 a month, $18.75 yearly; 8 profiles, 30 posts per profile a month, 1 user. Source: pricing | A free plan with limited scheduling; its post limit is not stated. The 14-day trial takes a card. Sources: plans help, trial help | Neither: X support ended on 28 August 2025, and Bluesky is not supported. Sources: X help, platforms | No MCP server or public API documented. Source: pricing | From Growth: $50 a month, $37.50 yearly. Source: pricing |
| Loomly | plan | Starter: $65 a month, $49 yearly; 12 accounts, 3 users. Source: pricing | Free: 3 accounts, 5 posts a month; Loomly says it may not be available to everyone. 7-day trial, no card. Sources: free plan, home | Bluesky included; no X. Sources: Bluesky, channels | No MCP server or public API documented; a Zapier integration. Source: integrations | From Starter. Source: pricing |
| Mellow Hub | publication: one post to one account | Solo: $19 a month, or $190 a year; 1 brand profile and 900 publications a month. Source: pricing | No free publishing; connecting accounts, drafts and checks cost nothing. 7-day trial with a card on file. Source: pricing | Both included. Source: networks | Hosted MCP server and REST API. Each key or OAuth grant carries its channels, review or autopilot, a daily ceiling and an expiry, and every action goes in a journal. Source: MCP guide | Review mode: an agent’s posts wait for a signed-in person to approve them. No team seats. Source: MCP guide |
| Metricool | brand | Starter: $25 a month, $20 yearly; up to 5 brands. Source: pricing | Free: 1 brand, 20 scheduled posts a month, without LinkedIn or X. Source: pricing | Bluesky included; X costs $10 a month per account, on paid plans. Source: pricing | MCP on every plan, Free included, within plan limits; the API from Advanced. Sources: MCP plans, pricing | From Advanced: $67 a month, $53 yearly. Source: pricing |
| Planable | workspace, unlimited users | Basic: $39 a month, $33 yearly; 4 pages and 60 posts a month per workspace. Source: pricing | A trial of 50 posts with no time limit, no card. Source: pricing | X, limited to one post a day on Basic; no Bluesky. Sources: pricing, platforms | MCP on every plan, the trial included; public API from Pro. Sources: MCP, API | Required approvals from Pro: $59 a month, $49 yearly. Source: pricing |
| Postiz | plan, by channels | Standard: $29 a month, $23 yearly; 5 channels, no team members. Source: pricing | No hosted free plan; open source, free to host yourself. 7-day trial. Sources: home, pricing | Both included. Source: pricing | MCP, API, CLI and webhooks on every plan. Sources: MCP, pricing | Not listed on the pricing page. Source: pricing |
| Publer | social account | Professional: $5 an account a month, $4 yearly. Source: plans | Free: 3 accounts, not X, 10 scheduled posts per account. Source: plans | Bluesky included; X on paid plans only. Source: plans | MCP, since 28 September 2026, and API on Business ($10 an account a month) and above. Sources: MCP, API | The plans page does not say in words which tier includes them. Source: plans |
| Sendible | plan, unlimited users | Core: $35 a month, $30 yearly; 6 profiles, unlimited users, 100 sends a day. Source: pricing | No free plan. 14-day trial, no card. Source: pricing | Both included. Source: pricing | No MCP server; the only documented API is for single sign-on. Source: white-label help | From Plus: $99 a month, $84 yearly. Source: pricing |
| SocialBee | plan, by profiles | Bootstrap: $29 a month, $24.17 yearly; 5 profiles, 1 user. Source: pricing | No free plan. 14-day trial, no card. Source: pricing | Both included. Source: accounts help | No MCP server and no public API. Source: API help | From Accelerate: $49 a month. Source: pricing |
| Sprout Social | seat | Essentials: $99 per seat a month, $79 yearly; 5 profiles. Source: pricing | No free plan. 30-day trial, no card. Source: pricing | Both included. Source: profiles help | MCP for ChatGPT only, reading TikTok data; the API, from Advanced, creates drafts only. Sources: ChatGPT help, API docs | From Professional: $299 per seat a month, yearly. Source: pricing |
| Vista Social | plan, by profiles and users | Professional: $99 a month, $79.17 yearly; 15 profiles, 2 users. Source: pricing | No free plan listed. 14-day trial, no card. Source: pricing | Bluesky included; X is a $29 a month add-on. Source: pricing | MCP on every paid plan; the API on Enterprise or as a paid add-on. Sources: MCP help, API help | The pricing page marks them only with icons. Source: pricing |
| Zernio (formerly Late) | connected account | The first 2 accounts free, then $6 an account a month for accounts 3 to 10, less above. Source: pricing | The first 2 connected accounts, with no card. Source: pricing | Both; X’s own API charges are passed on. Source: pricing | The product is an API; a hosted MCP server on every account. Source: MCP docs | Not stated. Source: pricing |
Which one fits which need
- One person, a few channels, a small budget. Buffer’s free plan covers three channels with ten scheduled posts each; Publer’s covers three accounts, without X; Metricool’s covers one brand, 20 posts a month, without LinkedIn or X; Zernio’s first two accounts are free.
- A team that needs approvals without paying per person. Planable charges per workspace with unlimited users, required approvals from $49 a month billed yearly; Sendible has unlimited users and approvals from $84; Loomly includes approvals and three users from $49.
- An agency with many brands. Metricool charges per brand, five brands from $20 a month billed yearly; Vista Social includes 15 profiles and two users from $79.17; Sendible’s plans add workspaces as they grow.
- An AI agent that publishes. Buffer, Metricool, Planable and Postiz include an MCP server on every plan, and Zernio on every account; Publer from its Business plan. Mellow Hub limits each agent’s channels, mode, daily ceiling and expiry on the server. Agorapulse’s MCP creates drafts only.
- Both X and Bluesky. Included at Buffer, Postiz, Sendible, SocialBee, Sprout Social, Zernio and Mellow Hub. X costs extra at Metricool, Vista Social and Agorapulse; Later and Loomly have no X, and Planable no Bluesky.
What you give up by leaving Hootsuite
Hootsuite is more than a scheduler. It sells a social inbox (Nest), listening built on Talkwalker (Lumen) and employee advocacy (Parliament) beside publishing (Perch). Several tools above have an inbox; few have listening; none of them is the same bundle.
Sources: press release, plans
If your team already works in Hootsuite’s inbox every day, compare that first: a cheaper scheduler with no inbox moves the work somewhere else rather than removing it.
Where Mellow Hub fits, and where it does not
Mellow Hub publishes one post to 9 networks at once, by hand in its composer or through an AI agent, and checks every network’s rules before anything is sent. It is built for agents that publish: each key or OAuth grant is limited to the channels, the mode, the daily ceiling and the expiry its owner chose, and every action is recorded where the owner can revoke it. It is weaker in these ways:
- No free publishing. Connecting accounts, drafts and checks are free; publishing needs a plan, and the 7-day trial takes a card.
- 9 networks. No Google Business Profile, Mastodon, Reddit, Snapchat or Telegram.
- A monthly allowance. Plans include a set number of publications a month, where several tools above advertise unlimited posts.
- No inbox and no listening. No comments, direct messages or monitoring; analytics are per post.
- No team seats. One owner’s brand profiles, without roles or client logins.
- Newer. Mellow has published live, with public links, to Instagram, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest and Facebook. On TikTok, uploads are accepted but, on our test accounts, visible only to their owner.
See the plans, each network’s rules, or the comparison of publishing APIs if an agent or your own code will do the posting.
Questions
Is there a free alternative to Hootsuite?
Yes, with limits, checked on 1 October 2026: Buffer’s free plan covers 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts each; Publer’s 3 accounts, without X; Metricool’s 1 brand and 20 posts a month, without LinkedIn or X; Zernio’s first 2 accounts; and Postiz is free to host yourself. Hootsuite has no free plan, only a 14-day trial.
What is cheaper than Hootsuite?
For one person with 10 accounts, Hootsuite Standard is $99 a month billed yearly. Buffer’s Essentials for 10 channels is $50 a month billed yearly, Publer’s Professional $4 an account, and Sendible’s Core $30 for 6 profiles with unlimited users.
How much does Hootsuite cost for a team?
Hootsuite prices every user: $99, $199 or $399 a user a month billed yearly. A team of 3 pays $297 a month on Standard or $1,197 on Advanced, the first plan with approval workflows.
Which Hootsuite alternatives work with ChatGPT or Claude?
Buffer, Metricool, Planable and Postiz include an MCP server on every plan, Zernio on every account, Vista Social on paid plans and Publer from its Business plan; Mellow Hub runs one with per-agent limits. Agorapulse’s MCP creates drafts only, and Sprout Social’s reads TikTok data in ChatGPT. Hootsuite itself has offered MCP servers since June 2026.
Does Hootsuite have a free plan?
No. Hootsuite offers a 14-day trial without a card, during which an organisation may publish 10 to 20 posts a day, and then paid plans from $99 a user a month billed yearly.
Sources
Each vendor’s cells link to the pages above, all read on 1 October 2026. Prices change; check the vendor’s page before you buy. Figures marked as reviews come from G2’s summaries of its users’ reviews, not from the vendor.