Metricool Alternatives in 2026: Pick One Based on Why You're Leaving

If you’re looking for Metricool alternatives, you’re probably missing something specific: an AI that answers comments for you, the free plan you used to have, room for your team without jumping to Advanced, or an automatic DM for everyone who comments. Metricool doesn’t publish an alternatives page. It has its own comparison against 12 rivals, and when we searched “Metricool alternative” on September 25, 2026, three of the top five results came from API vendors writing for developers, not for the person running the accounts.

This page is written by a tool too, HeyMark, and yes, we list ourselves first. That’s why every third-party fact below has a source and a date, and every section tells you when another option is the better call, including staying on Metricool.

Three changes Metricool made in 2026 keep coming up in reviews from people shopping for apps like Metricool. Between December 2025 and February 2026, the free plan dropped from 50 to 20 posts a month and from 3 months to 30 days of history. In March, paid plans went up 10% to 24%. And in July, the X add-on doubled from $5 to $10 USD a month per account. Dates and sources are on our Metricool pricing page.

Metricool alternatives at a glance

The table covers what matters most when you switch: starting price, free plan, team, AI in the inbox, and MCP. ManyChat and Sprout Social come up further down, in the cases where each one makes sense.

Fact	HeyMark	Metricool	Hootsuite	Buffer	Later
Starting price	$12 USD a month (Creator: 1 brand, 1 person). Company: $30 USD with 3 brands and 5 people	Free plan. Starter from $20 USD a month billed yearly ($25 monthly) for 5 brands	From $99 USD a month per user (Standard). Professional $199 and Advanced $399	Free plan. Paid plans charge per channel, from about $6 USD a month per channel	Starter from $18.75 USD a month billed yearly (1 social set of 8 profiles, 1 user)
Free plan or trial	No free plan. 14-day free trial on every plan	1 brand, 20 posts a month and 30 days of analytics. No LinkedIn or X	No free plan	Yes, with channel and post limits	No free plan. 14-day trial
Team and approvals	Company includes 5 people. Client approval link on every plan	Team members and approvals only from Advanced ($53 USD a month billed yearly, 15 brands)	Priced per user: every person adds a license	No verified public data	1 user on Starter, 2 on Growth and 4 on Scale
AI on comments and DMs	Replies to comments and DMs with AI in your brand's voice, with approval and handoff to a person. On every plan	No documented AI replies in the inbox. Its assistant drafts copy with 5 to 35 credits per brand a month	AI-assisted replies in its inbox (Nest); automates replies from Professional	Suggests AI replies that learn your voice (Community). 5 a week on the free plan	Its AI writes captions and ideas. No AI replies to comments or DMs in its documentation
MCP server	Yes, free on every plan. Publishes, replies to comments and DMs, moderates, automates and shares reports and calendars	Yes, on every plan: 27 documented tools, 2 that write (schedule and edit scheduled posts)	Yes, since June 2026: 4 servers (publishing and analytics, inbox, listening and advocacy)	Yes, on every plan (since May 2026): posts, ideas and metrics. No comment or DM tools	We found no first-party MCP server

If you want AI that replies to comments and DMs: HeyMark

This is the reason HeyMark exists. In Metricool, AI is a writing assistant with 5, 20 or 35 credits per brand a month depending on the plan, and the inbox doesn’t document AI replies. In HeyMark, Mark works inside the inbox: it replies to comments and DMs across your accounts in your brand’s voice, which it learns from what you’ve already posted. You can pause the AI on a conversation and pick it back up later, and conversations that need a person get handed off to your team.

Here’s what that looks like. A clothing store posts a reel and gets 80 comments in a day, half of them asking about sizes. A keyword rule sends everyone who writes “size” a public reply and a DM with the size guide, and it doesn’t spend credits. Mark handles the rest of the comments and DMs in the store’s voice, with your approval, and hands complaints to a person. Each AI reply uses 1 credit, and the Creator plan includes 500 a month.

Beyond the inbox, HeyMark plans and publishes to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, and moderates comments: it holds them for review, hides them, or deletes them with your approval. When you connect your accounts, it pulls in what you’ve already posted and lays it out on the calendar. The full rundown is on AI agent for social media.

HeyMark in numbers

9,000+

posts scheduled and published from HeyMark

96,058

comments and direct messages handled in the inbox in its first 58 days

8,599

leads generated by comment and message automations in those same 58 days

What it doesn’t do, so there are no surprises:

• No free plan. You get a 14-day trial, then it starts at $12 USD a month (Creator: 1 brand, 1 person).
• It doesn’t post to X, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky or Google Business Profile.
• It doesn’t manage paid ads, and Metricool’s analytics go deeper: competitors, ads, Looker Studio and AI reports.
• No public REST API yet. Programmatic access is through MCP.

If you miss what the free plan used to include

Today, Metricool’s free plan gives you 1 brand, 20 posts a month and 30 days of analytics, with no LinkedIn or X. Until late 2025 it was 50 posts and 3 months of history. Your options depend on what you lost:

• If 20 posts are enough and you don’t use LinkedIn, staying on Metricool’s free plan is still the cheapest move. It includes its MCP server.
• If you want to keep paying nothing, Buffer has a free plan with channel and post limits. Its API and MCP have been on every plan since May 2026, and the free plan suggests 5 AI replies a week. Paid plans are priced per channel, from about $6 USD a month per channel.
• If what you’re missing is LinkedIn for a single brand, Metricool puts you on Starter: $20 USD a month billed yearly or $25 monthly. HeyMark Creator is $12 USD a month ($10 billed yearly) and includes LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, but there’s no free plan. Starter does give you 5 brands.

If you need team seats without paying for Advanced

Metricool’s Starter plan doesn’t allow team members or approvals. Adding a single person means moving to Advanced, from $53 USD a month billed yearly ($67 monthly), which comes with 15 brands and unlimited team members. With one or two brands and a team of three, you’re paying for at least 13 brands you won’t use.

• HeyMark Company is $30 USD a month ($25 billed yearly) with 3 brands and 5 people included. Each extra brand or person is $10 USD a month. The client approval link is on every plan, Creator included, and Company lets you grant access by area: content, inbox or analytics.
• Later includes 1 user on Starter, 2 on Growth ($37.50 USD a month billed yearly) and 4 on Scale ($82.50).
• Hootsuite and Sprout Social charge per user, so every person adds a license: from $99 USD a month on Hootsuite and from $79 USD a month billed yearly on Sprout Social.

If your team is large, the math flips: Advanced includes unlimited team members, while Company charges $10 USD a month for each person beyond the 5 included. For large teams, HeyMark quotes its Platform plan, with unlimited brands and seats.

If you want to DM everyone who comments

Metricool launched Flows on September 1, 2026, so this comparison changed recently. Here are the three options as of September 2026:

	HeyMark	ManyChat	Metricool Flows
How it replies	Keyword rules (up to 20 keywords per rule), plus generative AI DMs you configure per brand	Keyword flows; AI conversations on the Pro plan	Up to 3 fixed texts that rotate, no AI
Networks	Public reply and DM on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok; public reply on LinkedIn and YouTube	Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and TikTok	Instagram and TikTok
Price	Included on every plan, no credits spent	Free up to 25 active contacts a month; Essential from $14 USD a month billed yearly (250 contacts); Pro from $29 (2,500 contacts); then per contact	No extra cost for a limited time on paid plans; a paid add-on after that. Not on the free plan
Scope and limits	Per post or brand-wide; can work through existing comments once you approve	Doesn’t schedule posts	One automation per post; on Instagram it requires a linked Facebook Page

When to pick each one: ManyChat if you need WhatsApp or complex chatbot flows, where it goes further than HeyMark and Flows. Flows if you already pay for Metricool and a fixed text on Instagram or TikTok is enough. HeyMark if you want keyword rules on five networks at no extra cost, plus AI replies to comments and DMs in the same inbox. The walkthrough is on Instagram DM automation.

If you need enterprise social listening: Hootsuite or Sprout Social

If your job is tracking what people say about your brand across the web, for a large team that reports to leadership, Hootsuite and Sprout Social are better choices than HeyMark. Hootsuite is an enterprise suite with social listening, and one of its 4 MCP servers, live since June 2026, is for listening. Sprout Social bundles publishing, inbox, listening and reports for large teams, and it comes with a 30-day trial.

Both charge per user. Hootsuite starts at $99 USD a month (Standard), with Professional at $199 and Advanced at $399. Sprout Social starts at $79 USD a month billed yearly (Essentials, $99 monthly), then goes to $199, $299 and $399 per seat for Standard, Professional and Advanced. If you’re torn between Metricool and Hootsuite, see Metricool vs Hootsuite.

What about MCP? What your assistant can do in each tool

Connecting Claude or ChatGPT to your social media tool isn’t a differentiator on its own anymore: as of September 2026, Metricool, Buffer and Hootsuite all have MCP servers. What matters is what your assistant can actually do once it’s connected.

• Metricool: free on every plan, including Free, with official connectors in Claude and ChatGPT since September 10, 2026. It documents 27 tools: 25 read data (metrics, posts, best times to post, ads and competitors) and 2 write (scheduling a post and editing a scheduled one). None of the documented tools reply to comments or messages.
• Buffer: on every plan since May 2026, covering posts, ideas and metrics. No comment or DM tools.
• Hootsuite: 4 servers since June 2026: publishing and analytics, inbox, listening, and advocacy.
• Later: we found no first-party MCP server.
• HeyMark: free on every plan. Beyond scheduling and publishing, it replies to comments and DMs, hides or deletes comments, creates and turns on automations, and shares reports and calendars. Before it publishes right away, replies on the platform, hides or deletes a comment, or changes an automation, it shows you a preview to approve.

Side-by-side prompts for both tools are on HeyMark vs Metricool.

When to stay on Metricool

Switching isn’t always the right call. Metricool is still the better pick if:

• Analytics is your main job. Reports, competitor analysis, a Looker Studio connection (on Advanced) and AI reports in Metricool Studio.
• You run ads. It brings Meta Ads, Google Ads and TikTok Ads campaigns next to your organic content. HeyMark doesn’t manage ads.
• You post to networks HeyMark doesn’t cover. Metricool supports 11: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Twitch, Google Business Profile and X, the last one through a $10 USD a month add-on per account.
• You have one brand and the free plan is enough. Posting 20 times a month for free, with no credit card, is hard to match.
• You schedule up to 10 brands and don’t need a team or AI in the inbox. Starter covers 10 brands for $36 USD a month billed yearly.
• You lean on its community. Metricool is a Spanish company with a large community, courses, studies and a help center in seven languages.

How to test an alternative without losing anything

1. Check your Metricool renewal date

   Metricool renews automatically, and its 15-day refund window only covers your first purchase, not renewals. If you pay yearly, write down the date before you decide.

2. Try it on your real accounts

   HeyMark gives you 14 days free. When you connect your accounts, it pulls in what you’ve already posted, including what went out through Metricool, and lays it out on the calendar with its video, caption and numbers.

3. Run both for a while

   You can keep using Metricool’s analytics while you test. Just don’t schedule the same post in both tools, or it will go out twice.

4. Decide with your own numbers

   Compare the cost with your brands, your people and your X accounts, not with the starting price. On Metricool, for example, adding a single person moves you from Starter to Advanced.