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

Round-ups of LinkedIn tools tend to name the same four schedulers and then go strangely vague on what any of them actually cost per seat, or whether they will write a single word for you. This piece fixes that. If you are weighing Hootsuite vs Buffer vs Sprout Social for LinkedIn, with Agorapulse and Sendible in the mix, here is the direct comparison: real pricing in pounds and dollars, the LinkedIn-specific features that matter for a company page, free plan and trial limits, which API scopes each tool uses, and an honest verdict on who each one suits.

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.

ToolCheapest paid planPricing modelApprox costBufferEssentialsPer channel$6 per channel per month (about £5)SendibleCreatorFlat, then per user$29 per month for one user (about £23)AgorapulseStandardPer user$79 per user per month (about £63)HootsuiteProfessionalFlat, one user$99 per month (about £79)Sprout SocialStandardPer seat$199 per seat per month (about £160)Helio PostsEarly accessPer brand, plannedFree during early access, all features included

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.

ToolCompany page analyticsApproval workflowWrites posts?HootsuiteYes, solid on higher plansTeam plan and aboveAI caption assistant onlyBufferBasic engagement metricsTeam planAI assistant polishes your draftSprout SocialDeepest of the five, strong reportingYes, well builtAI suggestions, not drafting from scratchAgorapulseGood, includes labelling and reportsYes, including external approversAI writing assistantSendibleGood, white-label reports for agenciesYesAI assist on your textHelio PostsPublishing focus, not a reporting suiteAlways on, named human approverYes, drafts complete posts and image cards

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: free during early access, with future pricing planned per brand run and every feature on every workspace.

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 is free during early access, so testing it against your current scheduler costs nothing but an afternoon.

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