Choose Later if the work is visual, runs on a calendar, and needs approving before it publishes. Choose Hootsuite if you need social listening and a unified inbox alongside publishing, and have the headcount to justify a per-seat price roughly four times Later's. If neither description fits, the honest answer is that you are looking at the wrong two tools.
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Neither of these gives you a free plan, so both are a deliberate purchase rather than something you drift into. That alone puts them in a different conversation from Metricool and Buffer.
What you are choosing between is a planning tool built around what a brand's feed looks like, and a platform built around social being somebody's job description.
At a glance
| Criterion |  Later |  Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Used mainly for | Visual content planning, scheduling posts | Scheduling across many accounts, social listening |
| Entry price | $25.00/mo · Starter | €99.00/mo equivalent · Standard |
| Free plan | ✕No | ✕No |
| Free trial | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Works on | Web, iOS, Android | Web, iOS, Android |
| Documented integrations | Canva, Shopify, Google Analytics, API | Canva, Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, API |
| Setup | Easy: 30-60 min | Moderate: 1-2 hr |
| Main limitation | No free plan at all, only a 14-day trial | No free plan, and the entry price is several times that of every alternative here |
| Our evidence level | Vendor documented | Vendor documented |
| Try it | Try Later ↗Partner link | Try Hootsuite ↗ |
Every cell comes from the tool's record, built from its official documentation and pricing page. The integrations listed are the ones the vendor documents, not tested by us.
What Later is actually for
Later's centre of gravity is the visual planner: the grid as followers will see it, before anything publishes. Around that sit approvals, commenting, user-content collection and a link-in-bio page. Its unit is the social set (one profile per network, bundled) which fits a brand rather than a channel count. It is the cheaper option here by a wide margin, with one catch worth naming: the entry tier is single-user, so the approval workflow that justifies the tool only begins at the second tier.
What Hootsuite is actually for
Hootsuite has not been competing on scheduling for years. What it sells is everything around it: social listening, a unified inbox across accounts, approval routing, team performance reporting, and unlimited social accounts from its second tier. Its entry plan is priced per user, shown for annual billing and excluding taxes. That number is the whole argument: defensible when social is a function with staff attached, indefensible when it is a task on somebody's Friday list.
The price gap, stated plainly
One seat of Hootsuite's entry plan costs roughly what four months of Later's does. Nothing on the publishing side justifies that difference; the listening, the inbox and the routing might. The question is not whether Hootsuite is better, it does more, but whether you will use the half of it that Later does not have. Teams that answer honestly usually find they were about to buy a scheduler at platform prices.
Trials, and what they hide
Both offer 14 days and nothing permanent, so evaluation is time-boxed by design. Hootsuite's trial applies daily posting limits and disables bulk scheduling, which means the trial cannot demonstrate the exact behaviour a busy account most wants to test. Plan the trial around what is actually available inside it, and treat volume behaviour as an unknown you will confirm in the first paid month.
Pricing side by side
| Tool | Verified price | Billing condition | Free | Checked | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Later | $25.00/mo · Starter | 25 USD/month billed monthly; 18.75 USD/month billed yearly, taxes extra | No | 25.10.2026 | Visit ↗Partner link |
| Hootsuite | €99.00/mo equivalent · Standard | €99 per user/month shown on annual billing, excluding taxes. No monthly-billing price is published | No | 25.10.2026 | Visit ↗ |
Frequently asked questions
Does either have a free plan?
No. Both offer a 14-day trial and nothing permanent. If a free plan is a requirement, this is the wrong comparison: Metricool and Buffer both publish one, and both are covered in the roundup linked below.
Is Hootsuite worth about four times Later?
Only for the capabilities Later does not have: social listening, a unified inbox and approval routing across a team. Bought for publishing alone it is an expensive scheduler, and the gap is large enough that the question deserves an honest answer before the trial rather than after it.
Which handles client approvals better?
Later builds approval and commenting into the planning flow, which suits an agency showing a client next month's grid. Hootsuite routes approvals through team roles and permissions, which suits an organisation with internal sign-off. Two different shapes of the same word.
Why is Hootsuite's advertised price lower than what I would pay monthly?
Because the plans page shows annual billing and excludes tax, so the figure is a yearly commitment rather than a monthly one. Later shows both, and its monthly rate is a quarter above its annual rate. The cards above carry each billing condition alongside the price.
Can I run either on a single network?
You can, and you should not pay for either to do it. A single-network business sits squarely inside what Buffer's free plan already covers.
Recently at these tools
Later: Meta paid ad performance can be viewed in Custom Analytics by connecting a Meta ad account; available on the Scale plan only. Source ↗
Hootsuite: Hootsuite's Wisdom AI assistant becomes a floating launcher across its products, and Lumen Agent adds a 7-day social listening quick search inside Wisdom without a separate Talkwalker account. Source ↗
Read on each vendor's official changelog, not tested by us.