Sprout Social vs Planable (2026): pricing, features, which to pick
Sprout Social from ~$79/seat/mo (annual), $99 monthly, Planable first 50 posts free; from $33/workspace/mo, checked by hand in 2026. Where each one wins, what a team of five really pays, and the cases where neither is the right buy.
- Sprout Social: 5 seats on Essentials, their cheapest plan
- Planable: unlimited users; the caps are posts and pages per workspace, Pro ($49) lifts them to 150 and 10
- ViralHunt: Agency: up to 10 users and 10 brands
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | What that price covers | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sprout Social | teams managing and publishing across owned social accounts | from ~$79/seat/mo (annual), $99 monthly | 1 seat, billed annually ($99 monthly) | Free trial |
| Planable | teams and agencies whose bottleneck is getting posts approved by clients or managers | first 50 posts free; from $33/workspace/mo | 4 social pages, 60 posts a month, unlimited users (Basic) | Free trial |
| ViralHunt | discovering viral content and turning it into posts, as a team | from $29/mo | 1 user (Creator). Studio: $99/mo for up to 4 users and 4 projects, no per-seat charge | Yes, and it never expires |
Every price was read off the vendor's own pricing page. We show no G2 or Capterra ratings because we are not listed there, and an invented rating would destroy the only thing these pages have, which is that all of it can be checked.
Choosing between Sprout Social and Planable? Below we break them down feature by feature, on pricing and on use case, and show where ViralHunt fits as the all-in-one alternative that tracks viral content across 12 networks.
| Feature | Sprout Social | Planable | ViralHunt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social platforms covered | Owned social accounts | 9, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business, Threads | 12, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Douyin, RSS, Quora, Tumblr |
| Real-time viral content discovery | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Per-post engagement tracking | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Cross-platform trending radar | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Editorial board (Kanban workflow) | Partial | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI content studio | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Built-in team chat | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Browser-extension scrapers | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Niche / keyword tracking | Partial | ✗ | ✓ |
| Mention / sentiment listening | ✓ | Partial | Partial |
| Post scheduling & publishing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-DM (comment → DM) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Public API + AI-agent access | ✓ | Partial | ✓ |
| Free trial | ✓ | ✓ | Free plan, no expiry |
| Starting price | from ~$79/seat/mo | first 50 posts free; from $33/workspace/mo | from $29/mo |
📡 12 networks, one screen
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Douyin, RSS, Quora & Tumblr, viral posts and engagement in a single radar.
🗂️ Built-in workflow
Assign any post to an editorial board, draft with the AI studio, and coordinate in team chat, no extra tools.
💸 Better value
One affordable plan instead of stacking a discovery tool + a workflow tool + a listening tool.
What is Sprout Social?
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management suite: scheduling, a unified inbox, analytics and, on higher tiers, social listening. It is built around managing and publishing to your own social accounts. It is powerful and polished, but expensive (priced per seat, with listening as a paid add-on) and is not designed to discover what is going viral across networks.
- Full publishing + smart inbox + analytics suite
- Strong reporting and approval workflows
- Social listening on higher tiers
- Expensive, priced per seat
- Social listening costs extra
- Not a cross-network viral-discovery tool
Pricing: from ~$79/seat/mo (annual), $99 monthly
What is Planable?
Planable is built for the review step: posts are drafted in a workspace where unlimited users comment, suggest and approve (none, optional or required approval), then publish to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business and Threads. Basic is $33 per workspace a month for 60 posts and 4 social pages; Pro is $49 for 150 posts, 10 pages and API access; analytics ($12), a social inbox ($7.50) and listening ($82.50) are add-ons per workspace. The first 50 posts are free with no time limit and no card. It is the approval layer for content you already have; it does not find what is going viral.
- The clearest approval workflow in the category, with unlimited users
- First 50 posts free, no card, no time limit
- Per-workspace pricing suits agencies with distinct clients
- No viral or trending discovery across networks
- 60 posts a month on Basic; analytics, inbox and listening are paid add-ons
- X publishing is unavailable during the free trial
Pricing: first 50 posts free; from $33/workspace/mo
When to buy one of these two
You came here comparing two tools, not looking for a third. So first, plainly, what each one is the better buy for:
- Sprout Social if your job is teams managing and publishing across owned social accounts. Full publishing + smart inbox + analytics suite.
- Planable if your job is teams and agencies whose bottleneck is getting posts approved by clients or managers. The clearest approval workflow in the category, with unlimited users.
If either of those sentences describes your job, you have your answer and the rest of this page is not for you. What follows is for the case where neither one does.
The third option: ViralHunt
ViralHunt is a viral-content discovery platform that tracks the top-performing posts across 12 networks, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Douyin, RSS, Quora and Tumblr, in real time. Beyond discovery, it turns trends into a team workflow with an editorial Kanban board, an AI content studio and built-in team chat, and now schedules and auto-publishes finished posts to 11 social networks, with separate brand/client projects. So a whole team can find, create and publish content in one place instead of stacking a discovery tool, a workflow tool and a scheduler.
- Tracks viral posts across 12 networks in one dashboard
- Editorial board, AI studio and team chat built in, no extra tools
- Schedules & auto-publishes to 11 networks, with multi-brand projects
- Affordable, a free plan that never expires, plus a REST API for AI agents
- Not a dedicated enterprise listening/analytics suite
- Younger brand than the incumbents
Pricing: from $29/mo
Comparing Sprout Social and Planable because neither one quite does what you need? ViralHunt has a free plan that does not expire, so checking is free and there is no countdown.
Try for freeWhich should you choose?
- Sprout Social, best for teams managing and publishing across owned social accounts.
- Planable, best for teams and agencies whose bottleneck is getting posts approved by clients or managers.
- ViralHunt, best if you want to discover viral content across 12 networks and turn it into content as a team.