What Sprout Social costs in 2026

Read off Sprout Social's own pricing page on Sep 2, 2026, not from a third-party roundup. Prices change without announcement; the date is here so you know how fresh this is.

Starting price$79/seat/moWhat that price covers: 1 seat, billed annually ($99 monthly)

A team of five$395/mo5 seats on Essentials, their cheapest plan

Free trialYes, time-limited

The number the pricing page does not put in large type

$395/mo: 5 seats on Essentials, their cheapest plan. The starting price ($79/seat/mo) covers 1 seat, billed annually ($99 monthly).

What you buy with 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.

Best for

teams managing and publishing across owned social accounts.

Where it falls short

Expensive, priced per seat
Social listening costs extra
Not a cross-network viral-discovery tool

The same job, with the team price in plain sight

ViralHunt charges per plan, not per seat. Creator is $29 a month for one person and one brand. Studio is $99 a month for up to 7 people and 5 brands, and that price does not move when you add people. The free plan never expires, so you can compare before you pay.

$99/moA team of five on ViralHunt: Studio, up to 7 users, no per-seat charge

$395/moSprout Social: 5 seats on Essentials, their cheapest plan

See ViralHunt's plans → ViralHunt vs Sprout Social, feature by feature → The best Sprout Social alternatives →

How we checked this

Most comparison pages are written from marketing copy. This one is not.

Sprout Social's pricing was read off their own pricing page on 2026-09-02. The date is here because prices change without announcement.
Every capability we call partial says partial. We do not turn an almost into a tick.
Where Sprout Social does something we do not, the table says so.

What we did not check, and why

We have not run Sprout Social daily for weeks. We verify pricing, seat terms and documented capability; we do not publish an opinion on their interface that we have not earned.
Enterprise tiers behind a custom quote are out of scope, because there is no public figure to verify.

And one that cost us: for months this table said Ahrefs starts at $129/mo. It starts at $29, and they also run a free tier. We were overstating a competitor's price by 4.4x, in the direction that flattered us. We found it while verifying and corrected it. If you spot another one, it is a mistake rather than a tactic.

Frequently asked

Does Sprout Social have a free plan?

Sprout Social offers a time-limited free trial, not a permanent free plan. ViralHunt has a free plan that never expires.

How much does Sprout Social cost for a team of five?

$395/mo: 5 seats on Essentials, their cheapest plan. The starting price ($79/seat/mo) covers 1 seat, billed annually ($99 monthly).

Is there a cheaper Sprout Social alternative?

ViralHunt from $29 a month for one person, or $99 a month for a team of up to 7 with 5 brands, with a viral-content radar across 12 networks, an editorial board and scheduling. Compare them feature by feature on the comparison page.

Try the Sprout Social alternative

Free plan, no card, no expiry date. Paid plans start at $29 a month.

Start free