Hootsuite vs Buffer vs Sprout Social vs Agorapulse for LinkedIn Company Pages: Pricing, Limits and Gaps (2026)

For a LinkedIn company page, Buffer is the cheapest and simplest at $6 per channel per month, Hootsuite suits multi-network teams from $99 a month, and Sprout Social offers the deepest analytics at $199 per seat. The right choice depends on how many people and pages you manage, and whether you need approvals. Agorapulse and Sendible round out the field for agencies, and below are real prices, free plan limits, API scopes and an honest verdict on each.

One thing to say up front: all five incumbents are good schedulers. The differences are in pricing model, depth of analytics, approval workflows, and one gap they all share, which we get to at the end.

Hootsuite vs Buffer vs Sprout Social for LinkedIn: pricing compared

Prices below are list prices at the time of writing, billed monthly. Every vendor discounts annual billing, and every vendor changes prices, so treat these as a snapshot and confirm on their pricing pages before you buy. GBP figures are rough conversions where the vendor prices in dollars.

The pricing models matter more than the headline numbers. Buffer is cheap if you run one or two channels, but per-channel pricing climbs if you manage many. Sprout Social's per-seat model means a three-person team on the entry plan is already near $600 a month. Hootsuite's Professional plan covers ten social accounts for one user, which is generous on channels but tight on collaboration: approvals need the Team plan at $249 per month.

LinkedIn-specific features, side by side

For a company page, three things separate these tools: analytics depth, approval workflows, and whether the tool creates content or only holds it.

Be clear-eyed about the AI columns. Every incumbent now ships some form of AI assistant, and they are genuinely useful for tightening a caption you have already started. What none of them do is read your website, learn what your business does, gather raw material from your staff and produce a finished draft when you have written nothing. They improve text; they do not replace the person who was supposed to write it. If your queue is empty, a better composer does not help, which is the argument made at length in our piece on Buffer alternatives that actually write the posts.

Free plans and trial limits

• Buffer: a genuinely useful free plan, three channels with a small queue of scheduled posts per channel. The best free option here.
• Hootsuite: no free plan, 30-day free trial that requires payment details.
• Sprout Social: no free plan, 30-day trial. The trial is full-featured, which is worth using to test the reporting.
• Agorapulse: a limited free tier plus a 30-day trial of paid features.
• Sendible: 14-day trial, no free plan.
• Helio Posts: a five-day free trial with no card required, then one flat monthly price for the whole account, however many brands, with every feature included; details are on the pricing page.

Which LinkedIn API scopes each tool uses

All five incumbents, and Helio Posts, publish through LinkedIn's official Marketing Developer Platform. In practice that means the same core scopes: w_organization_social to post to a company page, r_organization_social to read post performance, and rw_organization_admin for page-level analytics and admin access. You grant these through LinkedIn's own OAuth screen, never by handing over your password or installing a browser extension.

That shared foundation is genuinely good news: none of these tools puts your page at risk the way automation extensions do. If you are evaluating anything outside this list, our guide to verifying whether a vendor uses the official LinkedIn API shows you how to check in five minutes.

Verdicts: who each tool suits

Sprout Social: enterprise social teams

The most expensive by a distance, and worth it if you have a dedicated social team that lives in reporting, needs listening, and answers to stakeholders who want polished dashboards. Overkill for a company page that posts twice a week.

Hootsuite: multi-network breadth on one dashboard

Strong if LinkedIn is one of six networks you manage and you want everything in one place. The single-user entry plan limits small teams; budget for the Team tier if approvals matter. More on when it falls short in our Hootsuite alternatives for LinkedIn piece.

Buffer: solo founders and tiny teams

The easiest to learn, the cheapest to run, and the best free plan. If you write your own posts and just need them published on time, Buffer is hard to argue with.

Agorapulse: agencies that need inbox and approvals

The strongest value in the mid-market, with a proper social inbox, external client approvals and good reporting at well under Sprout's price.

Sendible: agencies that need white label

Built for agencies from the start, with white-label dashboards and reports clients can see under your brand. Less polished than Sprout, far cheaper.

Helio Posts: businesses where nobody has time to write

The only tool here where the queue fills itself: it reads your website, collects raw material from staff through a drop-in link, drafts posts and branded images, and routes everything through a named human approver.

The gap all four incumbents share

Every tool above solves scheduling. None of them solves the reason most company pages go quiet, which is that nobody writes the posts in the first place. A scheduler with an empty queue publishes nothing, however good its analytics.

Helio Posts exists for the second case. It is not a Sprout replacement for enterprise reporting, and it will not manage your Instagram. It creates and publishes LinkedIn company page content, with a human sign-off gate, for businesses and agencies where writing is the bottleneck. You can see exactly how it works step by step, and it comes with a five-day free trial with no card required, so you can test it against your current scheduler before moving to one flat monthly price for the whole account, however many brands, with every feature included.

Related: LinkedIn Company Page Analytics Explained: The Numbers That Matter and the Ones That Lie, Sprout Social Alternatives for LinkedIn Company Pages: Cheaper Options for Small B2B Teams, Agorapulse Alternatives for Agencies Managing LinkedIn Clients: Cost at 5, 20 and 50 Pages