Every tool in this category schedules posts. What separates them is the unit on the invoice — one charges per brand, one per channel, one per bundle of profiles, one per person — and that single choice moves the bill by a factor of ten before anyone compares a feature.
The four below cover the realistic range for a small business, from a free plan you can run indefinitely to a platform that assumes social is somebody's full-time job. They are ordered by how well the pricing unit matches how small teams actually work, not by capability.
Choose Metricool if you post for several clients and owe them a report. Choose Buffer if you publish to a handful of channels and want the bill to shrink when one goes away. Choose Later if the work is visual and someone has to approve it first. Choose Hootsuite only when social is a full-time role and you need listening as well as publishing — its entry price is roughly four times the rest.
The picks that stand out
Metricool
Metricool prices by brand rather than by network, which is the same unit a freelancer bills in: one client, all their accounts, one line. Client-ready PDF and PPT reports are included from the entry paid plan instead of being held back for an agency tier, and the free plan schedules 20 posts a month for one brand with no card. The catch sits at the free end — LinkedIn and X cannot be connected there, and X stays a paid add-on afterwards.
Buffer
Buffer charges per channel, so three accounts cost three channels and a departing client removes a line rather than triggering a tier change. Its free plan covers three channels with ten scheduled posts each — a real product, not a countdown. It is also the least ambitious tool here, deliberately: the analytics stop well short of what reporting-heavy client work needs, and the entry paid plan is single-user.
Later
Later's planner shows the grid as followers will see it before anything publishes, with approvals and commenting built into that flow rather than added beside it. It groups accounts into social sets — one profile per network — which fits a brand rather than a channel count. It is the only tool here with no free plan at all, and its entry tier allows one user, so the review loop that justifies the product starts at the second tier.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite puts listening, a unified inbox, publishing and approval routing in one product, and gives unlimited social accounts from its second tier — something per-channel pricing never reaches. It is priced per user, and the advertised figure assumes annual billing, which puts it several times above everything else here. For a one-person business it is more product than the work requires; for a team of four running social as a function, the consolidation argument starts to hold.
The pricing unit decides the bill, not the sticker price
Compare the headline numbers and the four look close together at the bottom of the range. Compare the units and they separate immediately. Metricool counts brands, Buffer counts channels, Later counts social sets and seats, Hootsuite counts people. A freelancer with three clients on four networks each pays one Metricool tier, twelve Buffer channels, or three Later social sets — the same work, three very different invoices. Before comparing features, write down how many clients, how many networks and how many people need to log in. That short table decides more than any feature list will.
Where the free plans actually stop
Two of the four publish something free forever. Metricool's runs one brand and 20 scheduled posts a month but cannot connect LinkedIn or X, which for a B2B consultant removes the only network that mattered. Buffer's takes three channels with ten scheduled posts each, refillable, which is enough to run a small business indefinitely if you post a few times a week. Later and Hootsuite offer 14-day trials and nothing permanent. If free is a hard constraint, the category is down to two before anything else is considered.
Annual billing is doing more work here than usual
Every vendor in this category leads with the annual figure, and the gap is wider than in most software: Metricool advertises up to 24% off, Later 25%, Buffer two months free, and Hootsuite's plans page shows the annual number only. That is fine when the account is stable and expensive when it is not — a client leaving in month three of a twelve-month commitment is a paid-for brand slot you cannot hand back. Pay monthly until the client list stops moving, then switch and take the discount.
What none of them fix
Scheduling is not the hard part of social media, and no tool here pretends otherwise. Every one of them will publish an empty calendar's worth of filler exactly on time. What they remove is the switching cost of five apps and the risk of forgetting a client entirely; what they do not remove is deciding what to say. Analytics help less than they appear to at small volumes, where one post outperforming another is usually noise rather than a signal about the format.
Pricing side by side
| Tool | Verified price | Billing condition | Free | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metricool | €20.00/mo · Starter | 20 EUR/mo billed monthly for up to 5 brands; 16 EUR/mo billed annually | Yes | 20.08.2026 |
| Buffer | $6.00/mo · Essentials | 6 USD per channel/month billed monthly; 5 USD per channel/month billed yearly | Yes | 05.09.2026 |
| Later | $25.00/mo · Starter | 25 USD/month billed monthly; 18.75 USD/month billed yearly, taxes extra | No | 20.08.2026 |
| Hootsuite | €99.00/mo equivalent · Standard | €99 per user/month shown on annual billing, excluding taxes. No monthly-billing price is published | No | 13.09.2026 |
Frequently asked questions
Which of these is actually free?
Metricool and Buffer both publish a permanent free plan; Later and Hootsuite offer only a 14-day trial. Metricool's free tier covers one brand and 20 posts a month but excludes LinkedIn and X. Buffer's covers three channels with ten scheduled posts each. The cards above show every entry price with its billing condition attached.
I manage social for five clients. Which pricing model wins?
Metricool's, in most cases — it counts brands, so five clients on four networks each sit inside one tier where Buffer would bill twenty separate channels. Later charges per social set with extra seats on top, and Hootsuite per person. Do that count before the trial rather than during it.
Do I need analytics, or just scheduling?
If nobody outside your business reads a report, you need scheduling, and the cheapest plan that reaches your networks is the right answer. Analytics start earning their price the moment someone else asks what the posting achieved — which in practice means client work.
Is Hootsuite worth roughly four times the price?
Only if you use the half of it the others do not have: social listening, a unified inbox across accounts, and approval routing for a team. Bought for scheduling alone, it is a platform doing a job a six-dollar plan already does.
Can these post to every network?
Coverage differs and keeps changing, and X in particular is now a paid add-on or an outright exclusion on several plans. Check the specific network you depend on against the vendor's own current list before subscribing — this is the detail that most often invalidates a comparison written six months ago.