Postiva

Sprout Social pricing, per seat, in full.

Sprout Social costs $79 per seat per month on Essentials, $199 on Standard, $299 on Professional, and $399 on Advanced, billed annually. Monthly billing costs more, with Essentials at $99 a seat. There is no free plan, and because every tier is priced per seat, a three-person team on Standard pays $597 a month.

Those figures come from Sprout Social's own pricing and plan-comparison pages, read on 5 September 2026. What follows is what they mean once you add people.

By PostivaPublished Prices checked 5 September 2026

The short version

  • Four tiers: Essentials $79, Standard $199, Professional $299, Advanced $399 per seat per month, billed annually.
  • Monthly billing is more. Essentials is $99 a seat if you do not commit to a year.
  • Seats multiply everything. The tier price is one person.
  • Essentials is deliberately thin. Most of what Sprout Social is known for starts at Standard.

What a Sprout Social seat buys that the others do not

Sprout Social competes at the top of this table rather than on price, so the useful comparison is against the other tools built for teams instead of against the cheap ones.

The rows where Sprout Social separates itself are analytics and the inbox, and neither shows up as a tick or a cross. Depth is the difference, and the tiers section above is where that gets priced.

  • Sprout Social

    Starts at
    $79 / seat
    Billed by
    Seat
    • Free planNo
    • Publishes to the platformsYes
    • Scheduling calendarYes
    • Analytics and reportingYes
    • Comment and message inboxYes
    • Approval or client reviewYes
    • Writes the posts from a source you give itNo
    • Exports finished carousel slidesNo

  • Hootsuite

    Starts at
    $99 / user
    Billed by
    User
    • Free planNo
    • Publishes to the platformsYes
    • Scheduling calendarYes
    • Analytics and reportingYes
    • Comment and message inboxYes
    • Approval or client reviewYes
    • Writes the posts from a source you give itNo
    • Exports finished carousel slidesNo

  • Agorapulse

    Starts at
    $99 / user
    Billed by
    User
    • Free planNo
    • Publishes to the platformsYes
    • Scheduling calendarYes
    • Analytics and reportingYes
    • Comment and message inboxYes
    • Approval or client reviewYes
    • Writes the posts from a source you give itNo
    • Exports finished carousel slidesNo

  • Metricool

    Starts at
    Free, then $20
    Billed by
    Brand count
    • Free planYes
    • Publishes to the platformsYes
    • Scheduling calendarYes
    • Analytics and reportingYes
    • Comment and message inboxPartly
    • Approval or client reviewPartly
    • Writes the posts from a source you give itNo
    • Exports finished carousel slidesNo

  • Postiva

    Ours
    Starts at
    $15 / month
    Billed by
    Team
    • Free planNo
    • Publishes to the platformsNo
    • Scheduling calendarYes
    • Analytics and reportingNo
    • Comment and message inboxNo
    • Approval or client reviewYes
    • Writes the posts from a source you give itYes
    • Exports finished carousel slidesYes
IncludedLimited, or on a higher tierNot offered

Marked from each company's own feature and pricing pages on 5 September 2026. A tick means the vendor presents it as included at or above the plan in the Starts at row, a half tick means it ships but is limited next to the specialists here or sits behind a higher tier, and a cross means it is not offered. Feature sets move; confirm anything you are about to buy on the vendor's own page.

01

How much does Sprout Social cost?

Sprout Social runs four published tiers and prices every one of them per seat. The annual figures are the ones on the pricing page; committing to a month at a time costs more.

Essentials was added below the old entry point and it is a genuinely reduced product. If you are comparing Sprout Social against a $99 competitor on the strength of the $79 headline, compare against Standard instead, because that is the tier most people mean when they talk about what Sprout Social does.

  • Essentials

    Per seat, annually
    $79
    Per seat, monthly
    $99
    A 3-seat team, annually
    $237 a month

  • Standard

    Per seat, annually
    $199
    Per seat, monthly
    Higher
    A 3-seat team, annually
    $597 a month

  • Professional

    Per seat, annually
    $299
    Per seat, monthly
    Higher
    A 3-seat team, annually
    $897 a month

  • Advanced

    Per seat, annually
    $399
    Per seat, monthly
    Higher
    A 3-seat team, annually
    $1,197 a month

Read from sproutsocial.com/pricing on 5 September 2026. Sprout Social publishes the annual per-seat rate as its headline; the monthly rate is higher on every tier and is confirmed at checkout.

02

Is Sprout Social worth $199 a seat?

For a team whose job is managing an established social presence, often yes. The reporting is the strongest part of the product, the inbox handles real message volume, and the approval workflows are built for people who need them rather than bolted on. Agencies bill against those reports, which is what makes the seat cost defensible.

For a small team publishing a few times a week, it is hard to justify. At that volume you are paying enterprise reporting prices to read numbers you could get from the platforms themselves, and the seat model means every extra person who needs to see a draft costs another $199.

03

What a team of 1, 3, 5, and 10 pays

Arithmetic on the published annual per-seat rates, not a quote. This is the number the pricing page does not show you, and it is the one that decides whether Sprout Social is affordable.

Read the Standard column first. It is the tier most people mean when they say Sprout Social, and it is where the seat model starts to hurt.

  • 1 seat

    Essentials
    $79 / month
    Standard
    $199 / month
    Professional
    $299 / month

  • 3 seats

    Essentials
    $237 / month
    Standard
    $597 / month
    Professional
    $897 / month

  • 5 seats

    Essentials
    $395 / month
    Standard
    $995 / month
    Professional
    $1,495 / month

  • 10 seats

    Essentials
    $790 / month
    Standard
    $1,990 / month
    Professional
    $2,990 / month

Straight multiplication of the published annual per-seat rates. Monthly billing is higher on every tier, and Sprout Social negotiates at larger seat counts.

04

Essentials or Standard: what the $120 buys

The gap between Essentials at $79 and Standard at $199 is the most consequential decision on the pricing page, and it is where most of the disappointment with Essentials comes from. Essentials was added underneath the old entry point, so it is a reduced product rather than a cheaper version of the same one.

The practical test is whether you need more than a small number of connected profiles, whether anyone needs to approve a post before it goes out, and whether reports leave the building. If any of those is a yes, Essentials will not hold, and paying $79 a seat for a tool you then upgrade is worse than starting at the right tier.

  • Profile count is the first limit people hit on Essentials.
  • Approval workflow is the second, and it is the one agencies discover late.
  • If the reports go to a client, budget for Standard and compare against that number, not $79.
05

What the seat model does to an agency

Seat pricing and agency work pull in opposite directions. An agency adds people as it wins clients, and every one of them who touches the tool is another full-price seat, whether they are running twelve accounts or looking at one draft a week.

The usual workaround is sharing a login, which breaks the approval trail the tier was bought for in the first place. The alternative is picking tools priced by output or by brand count rather than by headcount, which is how Metricool and the per-channel tools work.

  • Price the seat count you will have in a year, not the one you have now.
  • Count people who only need to review. They are often the majority, and they cost full price.
  • Check which tier your approval workflow actually needs. It is usually not the cheapest one.
06

The free trial, and what happens after it

Sprout Social offers a free trial rather than a free tier. When it ends the account needs a paid seat, and there is no reduced free mode to fall back to, which is the same position Hootsuite is in.

If a permanent no-cost option is the requirement, the tools with real free tiers are Buffer, Metricool, and Publer. All three limit either connected accounts, brands, or post volume, and all three are on the alternatives page below with what those limits are.

Seven Sprout Social alternatives, comparedWhat the cheaper tools give you at each price, and when staying put is the right call.

Before the pitch, the honest part.

Postiva is our product, and it does not compete with Sprout Social. Postiva does not publish to any platform. It writes and renders the content, and you post it. It has no inbox, no listening, and no reporting on what a post did after it went out, which is most of what a Sprout Social seat buys.

  • No connected accounts, no publishing, no auto-posting. You export and post.
  • No social inbox, no comment or message management, no social listening.
  • No engagement analytics or client-facing performance reports.
  • No free tier. A 14-day trial without a card, then a paid plan.
07What Postiva costs

Per team, not per seat.

Every plan includes every feature. The plan sets how much you generate each month, not which tools you can open, and adding a colleague who only reviews drafts costs nothing.

Starter

$15/month

30 projects a month, for the whole team.

Pro

$29/month

100 projects a month, for the whole team.

Agency

$79/month

400 projects a month, for the whole team.

Every team starts on a 14-day trial without a credit card. There is no free tier. See the full pricing breakdown, including yearly billing with two months free.

Priced per team, not per seat.

Postiva bills per team rather than per person, so adding a colleague who reviews drafts costs nothing extra. It turns one blog post or URL into the week of content that comes out of it, across Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and email, with client approval links for agency work.

See the LinkedIn outputStart a 14-day trial

No credit card for the trial.

08Questions, answered

What people ask about this.

How much is Sprout Social per month?

Sprout Social costs $79 per seat per month on Essentials, $199 on Standard, $299 on Professional, and $399 on Advanced, billed annually. Monthly billing is higher on every tier, with Essentials at $99 a seat.

Does Sprout Social have a free plan?

No. Sprout Social offers a free trial, not a free tier. When the trial ends the account needs a paid seat. Buffer, Metricool, and Publer are the tools in this category that still run permanent free plans.

Why is Sprout Social more expensive than Hootsuite?

At the entry point it is not: Essentials at $79 a seat is below Hootsuite Standard at $99. The comparison flips higher up, because the Sprout Social tier most people mean is Standard at $199, and its reporting and inbox are positioned for larger teams.

Is Sprout Social cheaper if I pay annually?

Yes. The published per-seat prices are the annual rates, and paying monthly costs more on every tier. Essentials is $79 a seat annually and $99 billed monthly.

Is Sprout Social worth it?

For teams whose reporting is part of what a client pays for, and for accounts with enough message volume that the inbox is a real job, generally yes. For a small team publishing a few times a week, the seat cost buys capability nobody opens. Auditing a month of actual usage before renewal answers it faster than any comparison page.

What is the difference between Sprout Social Essentials and Standard?

Essentials at $79 a seat is a reduced entry tier added below the old starting point. Standard at $199 is the tier most people mean by Sprout Social, and it is where connected profile limits open up and approval workflow becomes available. Compare competitors against $199 rather than $79 unless Essentials genuinely covers you.

What is the cheapest Sprout Social alternative?

By published starting price, Publer and Buffer both begin around $5 a month for a single account or channel, and Metricool has a free tier for one brand. All three trade away the reporting depth and approval workflows that the higher Sprout Social tiers are bought for.

How this page was put together

  • Every price on this page was read from the company's own pricing page on 5 September 2026, not from a third-party roundup. Each table links to its source.
  • Sprout Social publishes annual per-seat rates as the headline and charges more monthly. Both are shown here, and both are confirmed at their checkout rather than here.
  • Postiva is our own product. Where it appears, it is labelled, and its limits are stated on the same screen as its price.

Sources: sproutsocial.com/pricing, hootsuite.com/plans, agorapulse.com/pricing, metricool.com/pricing, and Postiva pricing.

Last reviewed . Spotted a price that has moved? Tell us and we will correct it.

09Keep reading

The rest of the picture.

Sprout Social alternativesSeven cheaper tools, and the case for staying where you are.Read itHootsuite pricingThe other per-seat option, at $99, $199, and $399 a user.Read itHootsuite alternativesThe same seven tools, ranked for someone leaving Hootsuite.Read it

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