Social Media pricing in 2026: what 6 tools actually charge
In short
The median entry price across 6 Social Media tools is $23.88 a month, ranging from $5 (Buffer) to $99 (Sprout Social). 2 publish an ongoing free plan. Paying annually saves 19% on average. All prices read from the vendors' own pages on 19 August 2026.
What Social Media actually costs
We read the entry price off each vendor's own pricing page rather than repeating a figure from memory. Across the 6 Social Media products where that succeeded, the median entry price is $23.88 a month. The cheapest is Buffer at $5, the most expensive Sprout Social at $99 — a spread of 19.8x across products that get filed in the same category.
That spread is the useful part. A category median tells you whether a quote is ordinary; the range tells you that "Social Media" describes tools aimed at quite different buyers, and that the cheap end and the expensive end are rarely competing for the same job.
Every entry price we could verify
Each figure below is the cheapest paid tier, per seat, as published by the vendor. Prices were last read on 19 August 2026.
- Buffer — $5/mo on Essentials (that figure is the annual rate) · has a free plan
- Hypefury — $6/mo on Flexible
- Later — $18.75/mo on Starter (that figure is the annual rate) · has a free plan
- SocialBee — $29/mo on Bootstrap · $24.20/mo paid yearly, 17% off
- Hootsuite — $99/mo on Standard
- Sprout Social — $99/mo on Essentials (that figure is the annual rate) · $79/mo paid yearly, 20% off
Which ones you can start on for free
2 of these 6 publish an ongoing free plan rather than a countdown trial: Buffer, Later. A free plan is not a discount — it is a different commercial model, and it usually means the paid tier is priced to convert someone already inside the product.
What paying annually is worth here
2 of them publish both a monthly and an annual price, and the average saving for paying up front is 19%. The largest is Sprout Social: $99 a month becomes $79 when billed yearly, 20% off. Both numbers were read from the same page in the same visit, so that percentage is arithmetic rather than a marketing claim.
How to read these numbers
An entry price is the floor, not the bill. It buys the cheapest paid tier for one seat, and most of these products meter something on top — seats, contacts, messages, credits. Treat the number as "the least this can cost" and check the vendor's page for what your actual usage lands on.
Every price here carries the date it was read, because a price is only true as of that date. We re-check them weekly, and where a vendor's page did not make clear whether a figure was the monthly or the annual rate, the listing says so rather than guessing.
Questions
- How much does Social Media software cost?
- The median entry price across the 6 Social Media products we could verify is $23.88 per month, for the cheapest paid tier, one seat. The range is $5 to $99.
- Is there free Social Media software?
- Yes — 2 of these publish an ongoing free plan: Buffer, Later. These are free tiers rather than time-limited trials.
- Where do these prices come from?
- Each one was read by machine directly from the vendor's own pricing page, most recently on 19 August 2026, and is published with a link to the page it came from. We do not estimate prices, and where a page publishes no self-serve price we say so instead of guessing.
