Social media tools are the hardest category on this site to compare on price, because no two of them charge the same way. Buffer bills per connected channel. Hootsuite bills per user. Metricool bills per brand. Later bills per bundle of profiles. Predis.ai bills by AI credit consumed.
The result is that a sticker price tells you almost nothing. Two platforms advertising similar monthly figures can differ several times over once you connect ten accounts. This guide compares six tools grouped by how they bill, then runs the actual cost at 5, 10 and 25 channels. Figures come from vendor pricing pages and current pricing analysis, and where a vendor does not publish something, that is stated rather than estimated.
Five billing models, and why the sticker price misleads
Per channel. Buffer charges for each connected social account. Predictable and cheap at three channels, linear and expensive at twenty.
Per user. Hootsuite charges per seat, with account limits attached to each tier. Cheap per channel if you run many accounts alone, punishing if you have a team.
Per brand. Metricool charges by brand rather than by channel, so connecting more networks to the same brand does not raise the bill.
Per profile bundle. Later sells Social Sets, each holding up to one profile from each supported platform. Costs step up in blocks rather than smoothly.
Per credit. Predis.ai meters AI generation. Cost scales with how much content you produce, not how many accounts you own.
Work out which axis your usage sits on before comparing anything. A solo operator with twelve channels and a five-person team with three channels should reach opposite conclusions.
What free actually means here
The word covers three very different things in this category.
Genuinely free forever. Buffer offers 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts each and no time limit. Metricool offers a free tier covering up to 11 channels with no card required. Publer is free forever for 3 accounts, though it excludes X on that tier and caps pending scheduled posts at 10 per account.
Trial only. Hootsuite discontinued its free plan on 31 March 2023. Any comparison still showing Hootsuite with a free tier is out of date by three years.
Unadvertised. Later’s public pricing page shows only paid plans plus a 14-day trial, while its own help centre still describes a limited free plan for creators scheduling a small number of posts. If you want it, you may have to look for it.
Free tiers in this category are for testing whether the output is good enough to pay for. Five posts a month or five AI credits will not run a business account.
Per-channel: Buffer
Buffer is the easiest tool here to start with and the clearest to price, up to a point. The free plan covers 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts each. Essentials is $5 per channel per month billed annually, or $6 monthly. Team is $10 per channel annually, or $12 monthly, and includes unlimited team members, which is unusual.
One detail that changes the maths at scale: Buffer applies a reduced per-channel rate past the tenth channel, and it does not publish that reduced rate. Reported figures suggest it drops substantially, so the total for a large account is lower than straight multiplication implies. Confirm at checkout rather than calculating.
What Buffer lacks is depth: no social listening, no unified inbox, and analytics that stay basic. For captions and consistent scheduling it is excellent value; for reporting it is not the tool.
Per brand: Metricool
Metricool is the strongest answer to per-channel pricing, because connecting more networks to one brand does not increase the bill. Its free tier covers up to 11 channels with no credit card and no trial period, which makes it the most generous free plan in this guide by some distance.
It combines scheduling with analytics, competitor tracking and paid-ads reporting across Google, Meta and TikTok in one dashboard, which is the main reason teams running both organic and paid work choose it over Buffer. Paid plans are reported from roughly $20 to $25 per month depending on source and billing cadence; this guide could not confirm a single current figure, so check the vendor page.
The economics at team scale are stark. One analysis puts a 3-user, 10-brand setup at around $153 a month on Metricool against roughly $1,197 on Hootsuite Advanced.
Per account, budget: Publer
Publer occupies the low-cost end, with per-account pricing reported at roughly half Buffer’s rate: Professional from about $4 per account per month billed annually, Business from about $8 with AI prompts, analytics and competitor tracking.
It also includes things Buffer charges separately for or omits: bulk CSV scheduling, post recycling, watermarks and a link-in-bio page. Its free plan keeps scheduling available but caps pending posts at 10 per account across 3 accounts, and excludes X entirely.
For solo operators and small teams who want more tooling than Buffer at a lower per-account cost, this is the value pick.
Per user, enterprise: Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the enterprise option and prices accordingly. Standard is $99 per user per month billed annually, or $149 monthly, and caps you at 10 social accounts. Professional is $199 and Advanced $399 per user annually, with unlimited accounts above Standard and Twitter/X included at no extra charge on Advanced. Enterprise is quoted on request.
What the money buys is social listening, a unified inbox, approval workflows, competitor benchmarking and enterprise controls that none of the cheaper tools match. What it costs is a floor of $99 per person before anyone has posted anything.
A common mistake worth avoiding: comparison pages frequently label the $99 tier “Pro”. It is Standard, and it is the one with the 10-account cap.
Per profile bundle: Later
Later is built around visual planning and remains the common choice for Instagram-led accounts. Its pricing works differently again: plans are sold around Social Sets, each holding up to one profile from each supported platform.
Starter is $25 per month, or $18.75 billed annually, and includes 1 Social Set of up to 8 profiles, capped at 30 posts per profile per month, with 5 AI credits, 3 months of analytics retention and a single user seat. Growth includes 2 Social Sets and 50 AI credits; Scale includes 6 sets and 100 credits. Annual billing carries a 25% discount across all three.
The AI allowance is the thing to watch. Five credits a month on Starter will not survive a week of daily captioning, and extra credits are a paid add-on. One documented quirk: subscribers who signed up through Apple’s in-app purchase cannot buy AI credit add-ons and would need to switch to web billing.
Per credit: Predis.ai
Predis.ai is the only tool here where content generation, not account count, drives the bill. It turns a prompt, product link or image into finished carousels, short videos and ad creatives, with native ecommerce hooks, which is a genuinely different proposition from a scheduler with a caption writer attached.
Everything runs on credits. Single posts are reported at roughly 10 to 20 credits and videos at 50 to 200, so heavy video use exhausts an allowance quickly. Predis documents that add-ons are recurring and continue billing until cancelled, and that extra channels, credits and premium assets are all sold separately.
Pricing here could not be pinned down. Current sources disagree substantially, listing the entry tier variously at $19, $29 and $32 per month and the top tier at $212 or $249, with tier names differing between Core/Rise/Enterprise+ and Lite/Premium/Agency. Check Predis’s own pricing page rather than trusting any figure, including these.
One documented limitation regardless of tier: auto-posting is restricted on lower plans, so an AI-first tool may still require you to schedule manually.
What it actually costs at 5, 10 and 25 channels
Annual-billing rates where published. This is where the billing model shows itself.
| Tool | Billing basis | 5 channels | 10 channels | 25 channels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer Essentials | Per channel | ~$25/mo | ~$50/mo | Reduced rate past 10, not published |
| Publer Professional | Per account | ~$20/mo | ~$40/mo | ~$100/mo |
| Metricool | Per brand | Free up to 11 channels | Free up to 11 channels | Paid tier, reported ~$20–25/mo |
| Hootsuite Standard | Per user | $99/user/mo | $99/user/mo (10-account cap) | Professional $199/user/mo |
| Later | Per Social Set | Starter, 1 set | Growth, 2 sets | Scale or add-on sets |
| Predis.ai | Per credit | Scales with content volume, not channels | ||
Two readings stand out. At 10 channels, Metricool is free where Buffer is around $50 a month. And Hootsuite Standard costs the same at 5 channels as at 10, then forces a jump to $199 at the eleventh, because that tier caps accounts rather than charging for them.
There is no quality column in this table. No vendor publishes a reproducible measure of AI caption quality or scheduling reliability, so any ranking of those would be an opinion dressed as data.
How to choose
Three channels or fewer: Buffer or Publer free. Both are permanent, not trials. Note that Publer free excludes X.
Many channels, one brand: Metricool, where the free tier alone covers up to 11 channels.
Instagram-led visual planning: Later, budgeting for AI credits separately if captions matter.
A team that needs listening and approvals: Hootsuite, accepting the per-seat floor.
Content production is the bottleneck, not scheduling: Predis.ai, watching credit consumption on video.
Agencies with many brands: compare per-brand against per-seat directly. The gap at ten brands is large enough to decide the question on its own.
For the captions themselves, our guide to AI writing tools covers dedicated options, and AI image generators covers the visuals.
Related guides
- Best AI Writing Tools in 2026
- Best AI Image Generators in 2026
- Best AI Video Generators in 2026
- Best AI Marketing Automation Tools in 2026
- Best AI Chatbots in 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which of these are free forever?
Buffer (3 channels, 10 posts each), Metricool (up to 11 channels, no card) and Publer (3 accounts, excluding X, 10 pending posts each). Hootsuite has had no free plan since March 2023, and Later no longer advertises its free tier on its pricing page.
Why is Hootsuite so much more expensive?
It charges per user rather than per channel, starting at $99 per seat per month annually with a 10-account cap on Standard. The higher cost buys social listening, a unified inbox and approval workflows that the cheaper tools do not offer.
Which is cheapest for many social accounts?
Metricool, because it bills per brand rather than per channel and its free tier already covers up to 11 channels. Per-channel tools scale linearly, so the gap widens as you add accounts.
Do AI features have separate limits?
Often yes. Later includes 5 AI credits monthly on Starter, 50 on Growth and 100 on Scale, with more sold as add-ons. Predis.ai meters everything by credit, with videos consuming far more than posts.
Is an AI-first tool better than a scheduler with a caption writer?
They solve different problems. AI-first tools generate finished creatives from a prompt; schedulers with caption assistants help you publish content you already have. Choose based on whether your bottleneck is producing content or distributing it.
Conclusion
Start by identifying which axis your usage sits on. If you have few channels, per-channel pricing is the cheapest entry. If you have many channels under one brand, per-brand pricing wins outright, and Metricool’s free tier alone may end the search. If you need listening and approvals, per-seat pricing is what that costs. If your bottleneck is producing content rather than scheduling it, a credit-metered tool is a different purchase entirely.
Whatever you shortlist, count your channels first and check whether the free tier is permanent or a trial. Those two facts decide this category far more than any feature list does.
