8 Best Sprout Social Alternatives to Consider in 2025

As the number of social media users has steadily continued to grow, Sprout Social has been a go-to platform for social media management for many businesses. Yet, not everyone finds its pricing or feature set the perfect fit. This article covers the Sprout Social alternatives in detail for those looking to explore more cost-effective or feature-rich options. 

We’ll dive into platforms that offer similar functionalities but may better suit specific business needs, whether it’s budget constraints, specific integrations or advanced analytics.

Today, you will learn:

• Top Sprout Social alternatives and their standout features.

• How these platforms compare in pricing and usability.

• The best choice for different types of social media management needs.

Now, let’s explore some top alternatives to Sprout Social.

Looking for Sprout Social alternatives?

Is Sprout Social the best option for every business? For many, the answer is no. While it’s a powerful tool, it comes with challenges that leave users searching for alternatives.

One of the biggest issues? 

The cost. 

At $249 per month for a single user, businesses with smaller teams or tighter budgets start looking elsewhere. The more team members you add, the more that price balloons.

Another pain point: features. 

Many users find crucial features—like in-depth analytics or advanced social listening—locked behind higher-tier plans. For a tool with such a high entry price, that can be frustrating.

Then there’s the complexity. Hootsuite, another popular platform, is known for being an alternative with more affordable pricing. But how user-friendly is it? Many report a steep learning curve. You don’t want to spend hours figuring out how to use the platform, right?

So what can you do? 

There are plenty of tools that offer:

1. Simpler interfaces

2. More affordable plans

3. More tailored features

By exploring alternatives, you can find a solution that meets your needs—whether that’s:

• Cutting costs

• Getting access to better tools

• Simply finding a platform that works the way you need it to

Some things to think about when choosing an alternative:

• Pricing: Does the tool fit within your budget, especially if your team grows?

• Features: Are the tools you need available without needing to upgrade?

• Ease of use: Is the platform intuitive enough for daily use without frustration?

If you’ve been feeling stuck with Sprout Social or Hootsuite, it’s time to explore additional Sprout Social alternative software.

8 best Sprout Social alternatives

YouScan

Image source: G2

YouScan is an AI-powered social media listening platform with advanced image recognition capabilities. It helps brands monitor user-generated content, analyze visual and text data and gain actionable insights in real time.

Key features:

• Visual insights: AI-powered image analysis to track brand logos, objects and demographics in images.

• Insights copilot: A ChatGPT-powered assistant that quickly finds insights from large datasets.

• Audience insights: Demographic and interest data to better understand target audiences.

• Crisis management: Real-time alerts to respond quickly to threats to brand reputation.

Social listening tools like YouScan are designed to monitor conversations across various channels and give immediate notifications when something requires attention. These features are essential for handling potential PR issues before they escalate into major problems. You can explore effective crisis management techniques to protect your brand more.

Pros:

• Industry-leading visual recognition technology.

• AI-driven insights for faster decision-making.

• Detailed audience insights and influencer discovery features.

• User-friendly with customizable dashboards.

Pricing:

Starts at $299/month for three topics and 30,000 monthly mentions. Advanced plans offer unlimited mentions and more in-depth insights.

Best for:

Brands, agencies and businesses looking for deep social listening and image recognition capabilities across multiple channels. You can explore more about influencer discovery to see how brands can uncover key voices in their industry.

Also, you can learn more about practical social listening tools to protect your brand.

Image source: G2 

Want to see how a global brand leverages social media analytics? Check out this interview with Havas Media Ukraine and discover how they use YouScan to stay ahead of customer sentiment and monitor brand mentions in real-time.

Emplifi

Image source: G2

Emplifi is a social media management platform that provides brands with social listening and engagement tools. Designed for businesses seeking deeper audience insights, Emplifi combines social monitoring with AI-driven analytics to help brands stay connected with customers and respond to trends in real time.

Key features:

• Real-time social listening: Track brand mentions and key conversations across social platforms, helping brands respond to emerging issues swiftly.

• AI-driven insights: Leverage AI to uncover trends, sentiment, and brand perception from social data, supporting strategic decision-making.

• Competitive analysis: Monitor competitor performance and industry trends, giving brands the data to stay relevant and ahead of competitors.

• Care integration: Automatically direct specific mentions to customer care teams so that brand-related issues are addressed without delay.

• Unified analytics: Access integrated reporting and analytics across marketing, customer care, and social commerce channels for a holistic view of brand performance.

Pros:

• Offers detailed real-time social listening and AI-enhanced analytics

• Integrates social listening with customer care, creating a seamless process for addressing brand mentions

• Emplifi’s competitive and trend analysis tools allow for full industry benchmarking

Pricing:

Emplifi operates on a custom pricing model. You need to request a demo through their website to receive a quote.

Best for:

Emplifi is ideal for medium to large businesses and agencies looking for a powerful, all-in-one social media solution with deep social listening capabilities and customer care integration.

Image source: G2

BuzzSumo

Image source: G2

BuzzSumo is a content discovery and social listening tool designed to help brands monitor mentions, analyze trends, and track industry updates. With a suite of tools for monitoring keywords, competitors, and influencers, BuzzSumo enables users to stay informed about their brand’s online presence and content performance.

Key features:

• Brand mentions and keyword alerts: Set up alerts to track mentions of specific keywords, brands, and topics relevant to your business.

• Competitor monitoring: Stay updated on competitor activities and mentions, helping you identify new opportunities.

• Influencer and journalist tracking: Track content from key influencers, bloggers, and journalists, enabling timely engagement.

• Backlink tracking: Receive notifications for new backlinks to monitor SEO performance and build valuable relationships.

• Industry trends and product mentions: Follow updates on emerging products and industry topics to maintain strategic awareness.

Pros:

• Offers a broad range of tracking capabilities across keywords, competitors, and influencers, making it more versatile.

• Unique in providing backlink tracking, which is valuable for SEO and PR strategies.

• Simplifies navigation for setting up and managing alerts, even for larger teams.

Pricing:

• Content creation: $199/month, includes 1 user, unlimited searches, and 2 alerts.

• PR & comms: $299/month, includes 5 users, unlimited searches, and 5 alerts.

• Suite: $499/month, includes 10 users, unlimited searches, and 10 alerts.

• Enterprise: $999/month, includes 30 users, unlimited searches, and 50 alerts.

Best for:

BuzzSumo is ideal for marketing teams, PR agencies, and brands that need a robust tool for content tracking, social listening, and competitive analysis to support SEO, influencer engagement, and trend monitoring.

Image source: G2

Synthesio

Image source: G2

Synthesio is an advanced social listening and consumer insights platform powered by Ipsos, designed to combine the speed of social data with the depth of market research. It captures global conversations, helping brands track real-time consumer sentiment and emerging trends across digital channels.

Key features:

• Social listening dashboards: Provides real-time insights into global consumer conversations, tracking brand mentions and sentiment across social and digital platforms.

• AI-powered trend detection: Uses market research frameworks to identify significant shifts in consumer behaviour, alerting brands to emerging topics and opportunities.

• Noise reduction: Synthesio’s Noise Reducer automatically filters out irrelevant mentions, ensuring cleaner, more reliable data for decision-making.

• Comprehensive data coverage: Gathers various data types, including social, digital, and survey-based insights, for a fuller view of the consumer voice.

• BI-style reporting: Offers customizable visualizations and KPI frameworks to help brands track the impact of social activities and create data-driven strategies.

Pros:

• Filters out irrelevant data, allowing for a clearer and more actionable view of consumer conversations compared to Sprout Social’s broader data capture.

• Identifies relevant trends using statistical models, making it a more detailed solution for market research than basic listening tools.

• Combines social and business intelligence for a comprehensive, customizable reporting experience, facilitating strategic decision-making.

Pricing:

Synthesio operates on a custom pricing model, and interested users can request a demo through their website.

Best for:

Synthesio is best suited for large enterprises, market researchers, and brands that require detailed consumer insights and trend analysis to drive informed decisions and market strategies.

Image source: G2

Oktopost

Image source: G2

Oktopost is a broad social media management platform tailored for B2B businesses. It offers tools for social publishing, analytics, employee advocacy and customer engagement, designed to drive social media impact and link social media campaigns to revenue growth.

Key features:

• B2B-focused: Oktopost is designed for B2B marketing with features like campaign management, employee advocacy and integrations with CRM systems.

• AI-assisted publishing: Automates content creation and scheduling for social posts, saving time for marketers.

• Advanced analytics: Offers revenue attribution, competitor tracking and social listening to provide deep insights into social media performance.

• Employee advocacy: Empowers employees to share content and expand a brand's social reach.

• Social CRM integration: Unifies customer interactions and integrates seamlessly with CRM systems to enhance customer care.

Pros:

• Strong B2B focus with tailored features.

• Excellent employee advocacy tools to amplify content.

• Seamless integration with major CRM and marketing automation platforms.

• Advanced analytics for deep performance insights.

Pricing:

Pricing details are not publicly available; you must request a demo for a personalized quote.

Best for:

B2B companies, marketing teams and organizations focused on employee advocacy and detailed social media analytics.

Image source: G2

ContentStudio

Image source: G2

ContentStudio is an all-in-one social media management platform designed to streamline content creation, scheduling and collaboration for agencies, brands and marketers. With AI-powered tools, ContentStudio enhances productivity by automating processes like content curation, social media publishing and reporting.

Key features:

• AI-powered caption and content creation: Generate engaging captions, images and hashtags automatically with AI.

• Multi-channel publishing and scheduling: Manage and schedule content across multiple social platforms from a single interface.

• Social inbox management: Consolidate all social interactions, messages and comments into one unified inbox.

• Content discovery and curation: Discover trending content from the web and social platforms for sharing and inspiration.

• Team collaboration tools: Workflow management with approval features, task assignments and shared media libraries.

• Advanced analytics and reporting: Track performance metrics, benchmark against competitors and automate reporting.

Competitor benchmarking helps optimize social media strategy. You can explore some of the best social media analytics tools to see how they improve decision-making.

Pros:

• AI-assisted content creation saves time and increases efficiency.

• Multi-channel publishing simplifies content management across various platforms.

• Excellent for content discovery and influencer marketing.

• Competitor benchmarking helps optimize social media strategy.

• Affordable pricing for solo users and small businesses.

Pricing:

• Starter: $20/month for one workspace, five social accounts and 10K AI-generated words.

• Pro: $40/month for one workspace, ten social accounts and additional automation features.

• Agency: $80/month for five workspaces, 25 social accounts and advanced team collaboration tools.

Best for:

Freelancers, small businesses and marketing agencies looking for a cost-effective solution to automate social media management, content creation and analytics.

Image source: G2

Zoho Social

Image source: G2

Zoho Social is a social media management tool designed for businesses and agencies, offering seamless integration with Zoho’s CRM. It features real-time monitoring, SmartQ for optimal post timing and collaborative tools for managing multiple accounts. Ideal for those looking to streamline content scheduling and track social media performance efficiently.

Key features:

• Smart scheduling: Schedule posts with optimal time predictions using SmartQ.

• Collaboration tools: Collaborate with team members to create, review and approve content.

• In-depth analytics: Customizable reports that give insights into post-performance, audience demographics and engagement.

• Integration with Zoho CRM and Desk: Seamless data transfer for lead generation and customer service.

Pros:

• Comprehensive scheduling tools with bulk options.

• Innovative collaboration features, ideal for teams.

• Integrated analytics with customizable reports.

Pricing:

• Free plan: 1 brand, 1 team member, limited features.

• Standard: €10/month (billed annually) for one brand and one team member.

• Professional: €30/month (billed annually) with more advanced features like repeat posting, CustomQ and monitoring dashboards.

• Premium: €40/month (billed annually), includes SmartQ, CRM integration, content approvals and custom reports.

Best for:

Small to medium-sized businesses and agencies looking for an affordable, feature-rich tool for social media management with a strong emphasis on collaboration and reporting.

Image source: G2

Awario

Image source: G2

Awario is a social listening and brand monitoring tool designed to help businesses track conversations across social media, news, blogs, forums, and more. It provides real-time insights into brand mentions, sentiment, and competitor activity, making it a valuable tool for reputation management and audience engagement.

Key features

• Real-time social monitoring: Tracks mentions across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, and various news and blog sites.

• Sentiment analysis: Sorts mentions by positive, negative, or neutral sentiment, allowing brands to understand public perception at a glance.

• Boolean search: Customizable search options help refine tracking and exclude irrelevant mentions, improving the quality of results.

• Location-based monitoring: Filters mentions by location for region-specific insights, ideal for localized campaigns.

• Influencer identification: Identifies key influencers who are talking about relevant topics, helping brands amplify their reach.

• White-label reporting: Provides data-rich, customizable reports that are brandable and ready for sharing.

Pros:

• Boolean search and location filters allow users to tailor searches for highly relevant mentions, offering more targeted insights than Sprout Social.

• Provides instant sentiment breakdown, which is useful for tracking brand reputation in real-time.

• Finds influential voices and potential customers through social listening, enabling direct engagement.

• Offers white-label reports and data export, which are ideal for agencies and teams needing to share findings with clients or stakeholders.

Pricing:

• Starter: $29/month, includes 3 topics, 30,000 new mentions per month, and 1 team member.

• Pro: $89/month, includes 15 topics, 300,000 new mentions per month, and up to 10 team members.

• Enterprise: $249/month, includes 100 topics, 1,000,000 new mentions per month, and unlimited team members.

Best for:

Awario is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, agencies, and marketers focused on brand reputation, customer engagement, and influencer identification through social listening.

Image source: G2

Ready to find the best Sprout Social alternative?

Social listening tools can make all the difference in managing your brand’s online presence. Whether you’re struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of mentions or unsure what your audience thinks, these tools offer a solution. They help you track conversations, identify trends and understand brand sentiment in real-time.

For example, Sprout Social offers powerful analytics for brands juggling multiple platforms, while Tailwind helps small businesses save time by automating content creation for Instagram and Pinterest.

But here’s the key: not every tool fits every need. 

Maybe you're looking for deeper sentiment analysis or need something simpler for a smaller team. It’s important to choose the tool that aligns with your specific challenges.

Feeling overwhelmed by the options? 

YouScan could be the perfect fit. If you want to understand your audience and enhance your brand, request a demo and see how it can help.

FAQs

Who is a competitor to Sprout Social?

YouScan, Hootsuite, Zoho Social, Buffer and Tailwind are popular competitors to Sprout Social.

What are the disadvantages of Sprout Social?

Sprout Social can be expensive, especially for small businesses and its analytics features may be less robust in lower-tier plans.

Is Sprout better than Hootsuite?

It depends on your needs. Sprout offers more advanced analytics and collaboration tools, but Hootsuite is more budget-friendly and easier for beginners.

Can I use Sprout Social for free?

Sprout Social does not offer a free plan but provides a 30-day free trial for new users.