Two ways to run a social publishing workflow. Compare the free starting point, account and team capacity, reporting, and the steps that still belong in your native apps.
Publishing, social listening and coordinated customer care.
Planning, performance analysis and reporting across brands.
These recommendations interpret the documented workflows below. Neither app is the universal winner.
If your immediate job is to plan a small content calendar and review performance for one brand, the ongoing Free tier is a practical place to evaluate the workflow. Check your required networks and monthly output first. This is our recommendation from its documented access model, not a measured ease-of-use verdict.
If publishing is one part of a larger operation involving listening, customer conversations and several teammates, evaluate Hootsuite with the people who will run those jobs. The case for it is the connected workflow; a solo creator should first decide whether those extra responsibilities exist. This is an editorial inference from its documented product scope.
Features are documented capabilities, subject to the relevant plan and platform requirements.
On a small screen, scroll across to compare both apps.
| Your decision | Hootsuite | Metricool |
|---|---|---|
| Starting without a subscription [1] [7] | Time-limited trial. Current self-serve plans are Standard, Professional and Advanced; Enterprise is custom. | Ongoing Free tier: one brand, up to 20 published posts per month and 30 days of analytics. LinkedIn and X are excluded. |
| What capacity means [1] [6] | Standard connects 10 social accounts; Professional and above list unlimited accounts. Seats are purchased per user. | Capacity is grouped by brand. Each brand can hold one profile per network; paid tiers add brand slots. |
| Planning and publishing [2] [1] [12] | Calendar planning, publishing, bulk scheduling and timing recommendations. Trial accounts have separate publishing limits. | Planner and automatic publishing where supported. Some Instagram and TikTok formats need a notification and a final step in the native app. |
| Analytics and reporting [3] [9] [10] | Post, account, paid-social and competitive reporting. Customization and export access depend on the plan. | Connected-profile and advertising analytics, downloadable reports, campaign dashboards and reporting integrations. Free viewing and paid reporting have different limits. |
| Client and team approvals [1] [8] | Advanced adds content approvals, message assignment and team workflows. | Advanced and Custom include team/client access, roles and post approval. Starter does not include the same team controls. |
| Community management [4] [11] | Unified inbox with automation and routing available at higher tiers. Enterprise has additional customer-care options. | Inbox for supported messages/comments, filters and saved replies. Confirm coverage for each required network and message type. |
| Competitors and listening [5] [14] | Social listening can track topics and brand conversations beyond your own accounts. Depth varies by product and plan. | Competitor analytics compares supported public profiles and their available metrics. That is a different job from broad conversation listening. |
An entry price is only useful after you match the features, capacity and access in your actual routine. Amounts vary by billing term, currency and taxes; check the linked official plans for current totals.
Compare the tier needed for your work, the number of seats and the billing term. The pricing page currently offers a 14-day trial without a credit card; continuing requires a paid plan. Trial posting is capped daily and bulk scheduling is unavailable during trial, so it is not a complete simulation of paid publishing capacity.
Calculate your required brand slots, reporting/team tier and optional add-ons together. X access is a separate paid add-on per connected account. Advanced Analytics is another account-level add-on. API access requires Advanced or Custom; MCP availability has a different plan boundary. Compare the total configured subscription rather than the entry price alone.
For a creator using interactive Stories, native effects or specific audio, a connected network does not establish that the exact post can publish unattended. Metricool documents manual completion for several such Instagram and TikTok cases. During evaluation, run your real format through the intended workflow and check who receives the publishing reminder.
Metricool documents different historical retrieval windows by network and metric. Competitor follower/like observations begin when connected, and Instagram collaboration history has its own cutoff. Before switching tools, identify the dates and measures needed for your next report; compare actual available data rather than assuming every old post can be reconstructed.
Check required conversation types, assignments, integrations and reporting with the team handling replies. Hootsuite documents additional Enterprise inbox functions such as service-level agreements and audit trails. A creator answering occasional comments has a different requirement from a staffed customer-care queue.
This is a suggested evaluation process. We have not run a hands-on test or measured reliability, output quality or support for this guide.
It can be for a small planning-and-analytics job that fits Free limits. It is not a free equivalent of every Hootsuite workflow: reporting exports, additional brands, LinkedIn, X and team access bring different paid requirements. Compare your actual job rather than matching the full feature catalog.
Evaluate the report your client needs. Hootsuite documents templates, exports and competitive benchmarks; Metricool separates standard reports, campaign dashboards, AI reporting and Looker Studio. Check the plan that enables your output, then review one real report for the right dates, networks and metric definitions.
First-party product and help pages checked 3 October 2026. Plan names and feature boundaries can change. Source-based recommendations are our interpretation; no vendor performance ratings are assigned.
