Skip to content
Roundup

Best Sprout Social alternatives

Sprout Social is the most capable product in this category and priced accordingly, at $199 per seat per month on Standard. People leave over the bill, not the software — which makes the honest question what you can afford to lose.

Who wrote this

Optimate publishes this page, so treat it as a vendor's list rather than an independent review. We've tried to earn the read by ranking on fit rather than on who's paying for the page — Optimate isn't first on every list here, and where a competitor is the better answer we say so and link you to them.

How this list is ordered

Ordered by how much of Sprout's value each retains per pound. Sprout's unified inbox and listening are the hard parts to replace, so any tool that can't is marked as such rather than glossed over.

Pricing checked 25 August 2026. Tools without a figure are ones we haven’t verified directly — check their site rather than trust a number we didn’t read ourselves.

  1. Number 1: Metricool

    Free plan · from €20/mo

    Best for: Keeping the reporting, dropping the price hardest

    From €20/month with competitor benchmarking, report templates and a Looker Studio connector. Nothing here matches Sprout's inbox, but for teams whose Sprout usage was mostly reporting it is a dramatic saving.

    Optimate vs MetricoolVisit Metricool

  2. Number 2: Optimate

    Free plan · Pro £29/mo · Studio £59/mo · Agency £135/mo

    Best for: Teams whose Sprout spend went mostly on scheduling and content

    £29/month for the workspace with seats unmetered, against $199 per seat — a four-person team saves roughly £9,000 a year — plus AI content generation Sprout rations to 100 credits per seat. You lose listening, sentiment analysis and the unified inbox; ours is still in development. If inbound conversation is the job, stay on Sprout.

    Visit Optimate

  3. Number 3: Agorapulse

    Best for: Inbox-heavy teams handling lots of inbound comments

    Best known for its social inbox and moderation tooling, with solid team workflow and reporting. Check their site for current pricing.

    Visit Agorapulse

  4. Number 4: Hootsuite

    From $99/user/mo billed annually

    Best for: A cheaper enterprise suite rather than a smaller one

    Still has listening and governance, from $99/user/month billed annually. The obvious move if you need enterprise features but not Sprout's price.

    Optimate vs HootsuiteVisit Hootsuite

  5. Number 5: SocialPilot

    From $20/mo (5 accounts)

    Best for: Agencies leaving Sprout over per-seat maths

    Unlimited users on the $200/month Ultimate tier, versus per-seat pricing that punishes team growth. White-label reporting included.

    Optimate vs SocialPilotVisit SocialPilot

  6. Number 6: Planable

    Best for: Approval-heavy workflows between agency and client

    Built around collaboration and sign-off — content is previewed exactly as it will appear and commented on in place. Strong if approvals are the bottleneck rather than production.

    Visit Planable

Common questions

Is there a cheaper tool that does everything Sprout Social does?

No, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Sprout's combination of unified inbox, listening, sentiment analysis and reporting is genuinely at the top of this market. The realistic move is deciding which parts you actually use and buying only those.

What's the best Sprout Social alternative for agencies?

SocialPilot if per-seat cost is the problem — unlimited users on Ultimate and white-label reports. Metricool if client reporting is the deliverable. Both give up the inbox and listening.

Does Optimate have a unified inbox like Sprout's?

Not yet — it's in development and not released. Sprout's is mature and is one of the main reasons people pay for it. We'd rather say that here than have you find out after switching.

Try Optimate against your own accounts

Free plan, 3 social profiles, no card required — enough to judge the content quality for yourself rather than take our word for it.

Start free