Hootsuite Pricing 2026: Plans, Per-Seat Costs and What You Get for Twitter (X)
- Hootsuite list prices (billed annually, per user/month): Standard $99, Professional $199, Advanced $399, Enterprise custom. Taxes are extra; monthly billing costs more per seat.
- Seats multiply the bill. A three-person team on Professional is 3 x $199 = $597/month before tax on annual billing.
- Account limits: Standard = 10 social accounts; Professional and up = unlimited. Your X account counts as one social account.
- Listening for X: Professional adds 30-day Quick Search and 90-day trend forecasts; Enterprise adds 13 months of history via Lumen (powered by Talkwalker).
- Study finding: 93.7% of X posts matching the word "hootsuite" only had it inside a link, mostly
utm_source=Hootsuite; about 16 posts a day actually name the brand. - Data-only option: tracking 4 vendor accounts + 3 brand keywords came to about 7,612 posts a month: $1.14 at $0.15 per 1,000 tweets vs $38.06 at X's $0.005 per post read.
Hootsuite is a social media management suite: one dashboard to schedule posts, answer messages, report on performance and listen to conversations across X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and more. Its pricing is per seat, so the number that matters is not only the plan price but the plan price times the number of people who log in.
This page answers the price question first, with every number taken from Hootsuite's own plans page this year, then explains what each tier gives you on X (Twitter) and puts Agorapulse and Emplifi in one compact side table. For Sprout Social's plans, see our Sprout Social pricing breakdown; for what Hootsuite's and Sprout's APIs return, see the Sprout Social API guide; for free dashboards that replaced TweetDeck, see the TweetDeck alternative page. This page does not rank alternatives to Hootsuite.
The last part is the X angle nobody else measures: we pulled 980 real posts with 65 API requests to see what the X conversation around Hootsuite, Agorapulse and Emplifi looks like, and what it costs to collect it raw if a dashboard seat is more than you need.
93.7% of 300 posts (84.3% carried utm_source=Hootsuite); about 16 posts a day actually name the brand. Collected in 2026.
Hootsuite plans and prices in 2026
Hootsuite's plans page lists four tiers. The three self-serve plans show a per-user monthly price billed annually; Enterprise is quote only. The page footnote says the prices are based on annual billing and do not include applicable taxes.
Monthly billing. Hootsuite's FAQ says Standard, Professional and Advanced can also be billed month to month, and that annual billing gives a lower per-user monthly rate. The plans page does not print the month-to-month figures, so ask Hootsuite or check the checkout screen before you commit.
Seats. Plans are sold per user. The FAQ says you can buy as many seats as your organization needs, and also notes that some features are only available with multiple user seats. Budget the seat count first, then the plan.
Payment. Hootsuite accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover, JCB and PayPal; annual Enterprise plans can be invoiced and paid by card, check, wire or ACH, according to the same FAQ.
What each Hootsuite tier actually adds
Standard ($99/user/month, billed annually). Up to 10 social accounts, content planning and scheduling, a unified inbox, analytics and reporting, competitive benchmarking against up to five competitors, AI post and image generation, and social listening. Hootsuite's example for the 10-account cap is five Facebook pages plus five Instagram profiles.
Professional ($199/user/month, billed annually). Everything in Standard plus unlimited social accounts, automated inbox replies and DM workflows, AI smart replies, link shortening and tracking, automatic boosting of top posts, customizable and scheduled reports, benchmarking against up to 20 competitors, and deeper listening: search up to 30 days of conversations with Quick Search, compare up to five results, export listening results and forecast trends up to 90 days ahead.
Advanced ($399/user/month, billed annually). Everything in Professional plus content approval workflows, internal comments, the ability to suspend scheduled posts, message assignment with skill-based routing, customer satisfaction surveys, team productivity tracking, and branded report exports that can be emailed outside Hootsuite.
Enterprise (custom). Everything in Advanced plus single sign-on, custom compliance solutions and integrations, advanced social listening with 13 months of historical data, alerts, scheduled reports and brand review monitoring, social attribution and ROI reporting, a Salesforce integration for customer care, the Parliament employee advocacy product, and expert-led onboarding. Hootsuite's structured data on the plans page lists the listening add-on as Lumen by Talkwalker, described as enterprise-tier social listening powered by Talkwalker.
The practical split: Standard is a publishing and inbox tool with light listening. Professional is the first tier where listening becomes a research tool (a 30-day search window). Historical listening beyond 30 days is an Enterprise conversation.
What a Hootsuite plan gives you on Twitter (X)
Hootsuite treats an X profile as one social account, exactly like a Facebook page or an Instagram profile; its FAQ uses "your personal X account" as an example. On Standard that profile uses one of your 10 slots. From Professional upward the slot count is unlimited, which matters if you run several brand, regional or executive X accounts.
Publishing and inbox. All plans schedule and publish to X and pull X replies and messages into the unified inbox. Automated replies and DM workflows start at Professional; routing X messages to specific teammates starts at Advanced.
Listening. Standard includes basic listening to monitor your brand and competitors. Professional is where you can search the last 30 days of conversations and export results. Anything older, plus alerts and broader data sources, is Enterprise listening through Lumen.
Dependence on X's API. Hootsuite reaches X through X's official API, so X outages reach Hootsuite too. Hootsuite's status page documents one example: on March 10, 2025 intermittent X API issues affected Streams, publishing, connecting X profiles, analytics, listening and the inbox; analytics were backfilled afterward, but X messages missed during the interruption were not recovered and failed scheduled posts had to be rescheduled (status.hootsuite.com).
What you do not get. A Hootsuite seat does not hand you the raw X posts as data you can store, join with your own systems or feed to a model. Exports exist on some tiers, but the product is a dashboard, not a data pipe. That is the gap the rest of this page measures.
Hootsuite vs Agorapulse vs Emplifi pricing at a glance
Two vendors come up next to Hootsuite in the same pricing searches. Agorapulse publishes prices; Emplifi does not show them on a page we could load this session.
Agorapulse detail. Its pricing page (agorapulse.com/pricing) shows a 30-day free trial with no credit card, a pay-monthly or pay-annually switch (annual saves up to 20%), 10 social profiles on Standard, Professional and Advanced, and extra profiles at $10/month each on annual billing or $15/month each on monthly billing. Its page counts an X (Twitter) profile toward the profile limit. Advanced Listening is a separate add-on sold through a demo.
Emplifi detail. Emplifi's pricing page (emplifi.io/pricing) could not be loaded from our network this session, so we do not print a price. Third-party listings such as G2 report starting prices in the four figures per month for its Essential tier; treat Emplifi as quote only and ask its sales team for a written figure.
Hootsuite's Sprout Social comparison is covered in our Sprout Social pricing page, so it is not repeated here.
Study: what the X conversation around these tools looks like
Before paying for listening, it helps to know what the X stream around a brand actually contains. We searched X for each vendor's name with its own account excluded, and pulled the recent timelines of @hootsuite, @Agorapulse, @emplifi_io and @SproutSocial. 980 posts in total, collected in 2026.
The headline: a keyword search for "hootsuite" is mostly not about Hootsuite. Of 300 matching posts across two windows, 281 (93.7%) contained the word only inside a link, and 84.3% carried utm_source=Hootsuite in that link. These are posts published with Hootsuite by news outlets and brands, matched because X search looks inside expanded URLs. 237 of the 300 (79.0%) were in Italian, and in each window the five busiest authors produced more than half of the matches.
Agorapulse is the opposite case: 97 of 100 matches named it in the text, but the 100 posts stretched back over 508 days, about 0.2 a day, and 36.0% were replies. Emplifi sat in between: 2.5 matches a day, 40.0% only inside a link.
Why this matters for pricing. A listening tool, or an API, that counts every keyword match will count publishing footprints as conversation. If you pay per seat that noise is free but clutters the dashboard; if you pay per post returned it is a small line on the bill. Either way, filter on the post text before you report share of voice.
How active are the vendors' own X accounts? The second half of the study pulled each vendor's most recent original posts (replies excluded by default). All four accounts posted in 2026, but none posts daily on X any more.
@hootsuite has 6,138,042 followers but its last 100 posts spanned 517 days, about one post every five days, with a median of 10,601 views. @emplifi_io posted most often (0.41 a day) and 97.9% of its posts carried media. @Agorapulse had the lowest reach, a median of 78 views.
For a buyer, the takeaway is modest: the social media management vendors themselves treat X as a low-frequency broadcast channel. Watching their X output costs fractions of a cent a month on a per-tweet API, and is not a reason to buy a seat.
The X data bill: a Hootsuite seat vs paying per tweet
Hootsuite sells a complete workflow, and if your team publishes, answers DMs and builds client reports every day, a seat is the right unit. But many teams look at Hootsuite pricing because they want one narrow thing: a feed of X posts about a brand, a competitor or a set of accounts. For that job, the study gives a concrete number. Four vendor timelines plus three brand keywords came to about 7,612 posts a month at the daily rates we measured.
How the polling line is built. A check that finds nothing costs the 15-credit minimum, $0.00015. Polling one query every 5 minutes for a month is 8,640 checks, $1.30 at most; seven queries make $9.10, and adding the $1.14 of tweets actually returned gives the $10.24 ceiling. Polling every 60 seconds raises the floor to $6.48 per query, $46.50 for all seven with the data.
Against X's own rate card. X lists $0.005 per post read on its pay-per-usage plan (docs.x.com/x-api/getting-started/pricing), capped at 3 million post reads a month before Enterprise. At $0.15 per 1,000 tweets returned, the same posts cost about 33x less: $5.00 vs $0.15 per 1,000.
What the comparison leaves out. The API rows buy raw posts only. You store them, deduplicate them, filter the link-only matches and build any chart yourself. Hootsuite's seat buys scheduling, the inbox, approvals and reports. Compare like with like: if you need those features, the seat price is the honest number; if you need the data, the per-tweet price is.
Pulling the same X data yourself
The code below runs the study's core loop for any brand: search X for the brand name with the brand's own account excluded, split the matches into posts that name it versus link-only footprints, and read the vendor's own recent posts. Reads need no X account, only an API key. Fields are read exactly as the API returns them: tweets[], has_next_page and next_cursor at the top level for search; data.tweets[] for /twitter/user/last_tweets.
Cost of one run. Each page returns up to 20 tweets and is billed at 15 credits per tweet returned, so a full page costs $0.003 and an empty one the $0.00015 minimum. Five search pages for three brands plus two timeline pages for four accounts is at most 23 pages, about $0.07.
Posting as well as reading. If you also want to publish to X from your own code, write actions run through an authenticated session: one /twitter/user_login_v2 login ($0.10, with a proxy you supply) returns login_cookies, then each post through /twitter/create_tweet_v2 is 60 credits ($0.0006), billed per HTTP 200 call. The call acts as that account, so keep a normal human pace; X's automation rules apply, the account can be rate-limited, locked or suspended, and the session can need a fresh login. This is not a way around any limit, and it is not a replacement for Hootsuite's approval workflow.
New accounts that pass the automatic bot check get up to $1 of free credits (at most 100,000 credits, no card, one per person or network, expiring after 31 days). Before the first payment the rate limit is 0.2 requests per second; once paid it is 20, with 50 on Scale and 500 on Business. Purchased credits never expire.
import os
import requests
BASE = "https://api.twitterapi.io"
HEADERS = {"X-API-Key": os.environ["TWITTERAPI_IO_KEY"]}
def search_pages(query, max_pages=10):
"""Yield tweets for an X search query, newest first. Billed per tweet returned."""
cursor = ""
for _ in range(max_pages):
params = {"query": query, "queryType": "Latest"}
if cursor:
params["cursor"] = cursor
r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/twitter/tweet/advanced_search", headers=HEADERS, params=params, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
page = r.json()
for tweet in page.get("tweets", []):
yield tweet
if not page.get("has_next_page"):
break
cursor = page.get("next_cursor", "")
def classify(tweet, word):
"""'text' if the brand is named in the post, 'link_only' if it only appears in a link URL."""
if word in (tweet.get("text") or "").lower():
return "text"
links = [u.get("expanded_url") or "" for u in (tweet.get("entities") or {}).get("urls") or []]
if any(word in u.lower() for u in links):
return "link_only"
return "other"
def brand_report(word, own_handle, max_pages=10):
counts = {"text": 0, "link_only": 0, "other": 0}
mentions = []
for t in search_pages(f"{word} -from:{own_handle}", max_pages):
kind = classify(t, word)
counts[kind] += 1
if kind == "text":
mentions.append({
"id": t["id"],
"createdAt": t["createdAt"],
"likes": t.get("likeCount", 0),
"views": t.get("viewCount", 0),
"isReply": t.get("isReply", False),
})
total = sum(counts.values())
print(f"{word}: {total} matches, {counts['text']} name it in the text, {counts['link_only']} only in a link")
print(f" data cost of this pull: ${total * 0.00015:.4f} (15 credits per tweet returned)")
return mentions
def vendor_timeline(user_name, max_pages=2):
cursor = ""
posts = []
for _ in range(max_pages):
params = {"userName": user_name}
if cursor:
params["cursor"] = cursor
r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/twitter/user/last_tweets", headers=HEADERS, params=params, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
body = r.json()
data = body.get("data") or {}
posts.extend(data.get("tweets", []))
if not body.get("has_next_page"):
break
cursor = body.get("next_cursor", "")
return posts
if __name__ == "__main__":
for word, handle in [("hootsuite", "hootsuite"), ("agorapulse", "Agorapulse"), ("emplifi", "emplifi_io")]:
brand_report(word, handle, max_pages=5)
for acct in ["hootsuite", "Agorapulse", "emplifi_io", "SproutSocial"]:
posts = vendor_timeline(acct)
views = sorted(p.get("viewCount", 0) for p in posts)
median = views[len(views) // 2] if views else 0
print(f"@{acct}: {len(posts)} recent posts, median views {median}")
Which Hootsuite plan, if any, fits your X use case
You publish to X and a few other networks, alone. Standard at $99/user/month (annual) covers scheduling, the inbox and basic listening for up to 10 accounts. Check that your X, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles fit under 10.
You run many X accounts or want a 30-day search. Professional at $199/user/month is the first tier with unlimited accounts and Quick Search over 30 days of conversations.
Several people approve and answer. Advanced at $399/user/month adds approvals and message routing. Multiply by seats before comparing.
You need history, alerts and SSO. Enterprise is quote only; the 13-month listening history is an Enterprise feature.
You only need X posts as data. A per-tweet API is the smaller bill: in our study about $1 to $10 a month for four accounts and three brand keywords, depending on how often you poll. Plans for higher volume are on the pricing page (Starter $29, Builder $99, Pro $199, Scale $499 and Business $1,499 monthly), but pay-as-you-go needs no subscription.
How we collected this
Question. What does the X conversation around Hootsuite, Agorapulse and Emplifi contain, how often do the vendors themselves post, and what would collecting it cost per month at a per-tweet price?
Accounts and queries. Timelines of @hootsuite, @Agorapulse, @emplifi_io and @SproutSocial via /twitter/user/last_tweets (default, replies excluded), profile data via /twitter/user/info, and /twitter/tweet/advanced_search with queryType Latest for hootsuite -from:hootsuite (two windows, one a fixed single-day query), agorapulse -from:Agorapulse and emplifi -from:emplifi_io.
Window and sample. The most recent posts available at collection time, collected in 2026: 980 posts from 65 requests. Search pagination ended after 5 to 9 full pages per query, so the hootsuite keyword covers about 30 hours in total and its daily rate is an estimate from two windows.
Method. A match is "text" if the brand word appears in the post text and "link only" if it appears only in an expanded link URL. Monthly volumes are daily rates times 30. Costs use 15 credits per tweet returned ($0.15 per 1,000) and the 15-credit minimum per empty check, and X's $0.005 per post read.
What the sample cannot show. It does not measure Hootsuite's own listening coverage, private DMs, or what a Hootsuite customer sees in its dashboard. Short search windows are sensitive to bursts from a few large publishers. Vendor timelines exclude replies.
Privacy. Aggregates only. The four vendor accounts are organizations and are named; search results are mostly private individuals, so their raw pages were not kept and the published sample is de-identified (no ids, URLs, text or handles).
import os
import requests
BASE = "https://api.twitterapi.io"
HEADERS = {"X-API-Key": os.environ["TWITTERAPI_IO_KEY"]}
def search_pages(query, max_pages=10):
"""Yield tweets for an X search query, newest first. Billed per tweet returned."""
cursor = ""
for _ in range(max_pages):
params = {"query": query, "queryType": "Latest"}
if cursor:
params["cursor"] = cursor
r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/twitter/tweet/advanced_search", headers=HEADERS, params=params, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
page = r.json()
for tweet in page.get("tweets", []):
yield tweet
if not page.get("has_next_page"):
break
cursor = page.get("next_cursor", "")
def classify(tweet, word):
"""'text' if the brand is named in the post, 'link_only' if it only appears in a link URL."""
if word in (tweet.get("text") or "").lower():
return "text"
links = [u.get("expanded_url") or "" for u in (tweet.get("entities") or {}).get("urls") or []]
if any(word in u.lower() for u in links):
return "link_only"
return "other"
def brand_report(word, own_handle, max_pages=10):
counts = {"text": 0, "link_only": 0, "other": 0}
mentions = []
for t in search_pages(f"{word} -from:{own_handle}", max_pages):
kind = classify(t, word)
counts[kind] += 1
if kind == "text":
mentions.append({
"id": t["id"],
"createdAt": t["createdAt"],
"likes": t.get("likeCount", 0),
"views": t.get("viewCount", 0),
"isReply": t.get("isReply", False),
})
total = sum(counts.values())
print(f"{word}: {total} matches, {counts['text']} name it in the text, {counts['link_only']} only in a link")
print(f" data cost of this pull: ${total * 0.00015:.4f} (15 credits per tweet returned)")
return mentions
def vendor_timeline(user_name, max_pages=2):
cursor = ""
posts = []
for _ in range(max_pages):
params = {"userName": user_name}
if cursor:
params["cursor"] = cursor
r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/twitter/user/last_tweets", headers=HEADERS, params=params, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
body = r.json()
data = body.get("data") or {}
posts.extend(data.get("tweets", []))
if not body.get("has_next_page"):
break
cursor = body.get("next_cursor", "")
return posts
if __name__ == "__main__":
for word, handle in [("hootsuite", "hootsuite"), ("agorapulse", "Agorapulse"), ("emplifi", "emplifi_io")]:
brand_report(word, handle, max_pages=5)
for acct in ["hootsuite", "Agorapulse", "emplifi_io", "SproutSocial"]:
posts = vendor_timeline(acct)
views = sorted(p.get("viewCount", 0) for p in posts)
median = views[len(views) // 2] if views else 0
print(f"@{acct}: {len(posts)} recent posts, median views {median}")
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Questions readers ask
How much does Hootsuite cost per month?
Hootsuite's plans page lists Standard at $99, Professional at $199 and Advanced at $399 per user per month, billed annually and excluding taxes. Enterprise is custom. Month-to-month billing is available on the three self-serve plans at a higher per-user rate that the page does not print.
Is there a free Hootsuite plan?
No free plan is listed on Hootsuite's plans page. Standard, Professional and Advanced each have a free 14-day trial; regular billing starts when the trial ends unless you cancel. Trial accounts have daily posting limits of 10 to 20 posts per organization depending on plan, and bulk scheduling is not available during the trial.
Is Hootsuite priced per user?
Yes. Hootsuite sells plans per user (seat) and lets you add as many seats as you need, so a team's bill is the plan price times the seat count. Three people on Professional, billed annually, come to $597/month before tax.
Does Hootsuite have nonprofit pricing?
Hootsuite's FAQ says it offers a discounted rate for nonprofits on some plans and that organizations apply to see if they qualify. The discount amount is not published on the plans page.
How many X (Twitter) accounts can I connect to Hootsuite?
An X profile counts as one social account. Standard allows up to 10 social accounts in total across all networks; Professional, Advanced and Enterprise allow unlimited accounts.
Which Hootsuite plan includes social listening for X?
All plans include basic listening to monitor your brand and competitors. Professional adds Quick Search over 30 days of conversations, exports and 90-day trend forecasts. Enterprise adds 13 months of history, alerts and broader data sources through Lumen, which Hootsuite describes as powered by Talkwalker.
How does Agorapulse pricing compare to Hootsuite?
Agorapulse's pricing page lists Standard at $79, Professional at $119 and Advanced at $149 per user per month on annual billing ($99, $149 and $199 on monthly billing), each with 10 social profiles, plus a Custom tier. Hootsuite lists $99, $199 and $399 per user per month billed annually. Both price per user.
Can I get X data without a Hootsuite seat?
Yes. A read API returns X posts as JSON without an X account. In our study, four vendor timelines plus three brand keywords were about 7,612 posts a month: $1.14 at $0.15 per 1,000 tweets returned, or $38.06 at X's $0.005 per post read. You get raw data, not Hootsuite's scheduling and inbox.
Continue
- X API pricing (docs.x.com): pay-per-usage rate card, $0.005 per post read, 3M monthly cap
- X API search operators (docs.x.com): how keyword and from: operators match posts
- TwitterAPI.io docs: advanced search endpoint used in the study
- TwitterAPI.io docs: user last tweets endpoint used in the study
- TwitterAPI.io docs: user info endpoint (follower counts)
- TwitterAPI.io docs: authentication with the X-API-Key header
- Twitter (X) API overview: endpoints, pricing and limits
- Sprout Social pricing: plans, seats and listening
- Sprout Social API and the Hootsuite API: what they return
- TweetDeck alternatives for monitoring X columns
- X API options for social listening teams
- Twitter engagement rate calculator
- TwitterAPI.io pricing: pay per tweet returned
- 01Pipedream Pricing in 2026: Connect Plans, Credits and the Workflows Shutdown
- 02Cloudflare Pay per Crawl: How the HTTP 402 Handshake Works, and What It Means for Twitter (X) Data
- 03ScrapingBee Pricing in 2026: Plans, Credit Costs and Alternatives
- 04Firecrawl Pricing: Plans, Credit Costs and What an X (Twitter) URL Costs
- 05LunarCrush API: What It Returns, What It Costs, and When Raw Twitter (X) Data Is the Better Input
- 06Base44 pricing in 2026: plans, credits, and what an app with Twitter (X) data really costs
- 07Devin Pricing in 2026: Plans, Quotas, ACUs and What X Users Actually Pay
- 08Sprout Social Pricing: Plans, Seats, Listening and the Nonprofit Rate
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