Is Metricool Free? What the Free Plan Covers and Where It Stops

Yes, Metricool is free, with a ceiling

Metricool runs a real Free plan, not a countdown. It costs $0, needs no credit card, and an account on it can be kept indefinitely, so you can plan and measure one brand for as long as you like without paying ^[1]. The ceiling is narrow, though. Free covers one brand, 20 published posts a month, 30 days of analytics and five AI credits a month. LinkedIn and X are not available on it at all. That is enough for a solo creator or a small shop with a single set of profiles. It is not enough for anyone who posts daily, sells to clients or needs a report to hand to a boss.

The company describes itself as freemium: basic services free, advanced services paid. That framing is honest. The Free plan is the full planner and analytics app with tight limits, rather than a stripped demo, and Metricool keeps the right to change what Free includes at any time. Below we walk through what you get, what you do not, how the post counter works, what happens if a paid plan drops back to Free, and what the first paid step costs. We read the pricing page, the help center and the terms; we did not open an account.

What you get on the Free plan

One brand, most networks

Metricool sizes every plan by brands, and a brand holds one profile per network: one Instagram account, one Facebook Page, one TikTok profile and so on. Free gives you exactly one brand plus one website or blog for the web tracker. Inside that brand you can connect Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest and Google Business Profile, plus Twitch for analytics and competitors. LinkedIn and X are the two exceptions. The brand itself cannot be deleted or swapped on Free, only renamed, so connecting a different set of accounts later means upgrading to a plan with a free brand slot.

The 20-post counter, and how it counts

The headline limit is 20 posts a month, and the details matter. Only posts that actually publish count; scheduled posts and drafts do not. The counter resets on the 1st of each month, and it sits in the planner where you can watch it. A post you duplicate across networks counts once for every network it goes out on, so one announcement sent to Instagram, Facebook and Threads uses three of your 20. Metricool sends an email, which you cannot switch off, when you get close to the limit. There is one more quiet cap: YouTube allows 10 posts per rolling 24 hours on Free, against 20 on paid plans.

Analytics, competitors and AI

Free shows 30 days of analytics history for your connected profiles, viewable inside the app with a watermark and no export. Extra history can be requested through chat only on paid plans, so Free stays at 30 days. Competitor tracking comes as a fixed demo of five profiles per network on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Twitch; you cannot remove or swap them. The AI assistant gives you five credits a month, and AI alt text draws on the same credits. Push and email notifications for manual publishing work on every plan, Free included, and Meta Ads and Google Ads data can be viewed, although it does not sync daily on Free.

The MCP works on Free

One generous detail: Metricool's official MCP server, which lets an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT read your analytics and schedule posts, works on every plan, Free included. Plan limits still apply. An assistant connected to a Free account still stops at 20 posts a month and 30 days of history, and sending posts for review through the MCP needs Advanced. This is separate from the public API, which Free does not include at all.

What Free leaves out

Most of what Free leaves out sits on the reporting, team and integration side of the product, while the planner and the basic analytics stay. The list is worth reading before you build a routine around the Free plan, because two of its items, LinkedIn and report downloads, can push a small account to pay on their own. Several others are features you might assume come with any planner. On Free you do not get:

• LinkedIn, either personal profiles or company pages.
• X (Twitter), which needs a paid plan plus the X add-on at $10 a month per connected account.
• PDF or PowerPoint report downloads, custom reports or any analytics export.
• SmartLinks, the link-in-bio pages.
• Flows, the comment and DM automation.
• Metricool Studio and Campaign Dashboards.
• Canva, Google Drive, the post library and the hashtag finder.
• The Advanced Analytics add-on, which Free cannot buy.
• Looker Studio, Zapier, Make (the automation tool) and the API, which are Advanced or Custom only.

Free is also a single-user plan. You cannot invite a teammate, and roles, permissions and post approval wait on Advanced. There is one workaround worth knowing. If someone on a paid plan shares a brand with you, you can use the paid features inside that shared brand from your Free account, while Free limits still apply to your own brand. You will still see the upgrade banner everywhere.

There is no standard free trial

People who search for a Metricool free trial usually expect a 14-day button, but Metricool does not offer one. The Free plan is the way to try Metricool, and the pricing page does not offer a standard trial of Starter or Advanced. Trials exist only through promotional or affiliate codes. Affiliate trial codes give 30 days to first-time users with no previous paid plan, and a code works once per account; a trial cannot be restarted or extended. A separate coupon for the Looker Studio connector gives 15 days on Advanced. Custom is excluded from trials.

A promo-code trial asks for a card or PayPal even though nothing is charged during the trial. If you do not cancel before it ends, the account moves onto the paid plan and renews on its cycle. Should that happen by accident, the 15-day withdrawal right on a first purchase is your safety net, because renewals and later payments are not refunded ^[2]. Your data is kept if you return to Free after a trial. In practice, most people should simply start on Free, connect the one brand that matters, and upgrade when a limit actually bites.

What happens when a paid plan drops back to Free

Free is also where every paid account lands when it stops paying. If you cancel or downgrade, you keep the paid plan until the end of the billing period, and only then does the account move to Free. Only the oldest brand by creation date stays active. The others are hidden, not deleted ^[1]. To keep a different brand, delete the ones you do not need from the Connections panel before the downgrade or cancellation completes; once it completes, the choice is locked.

A few other details follow the downgrade. Posts published earlier in the same month on a paid plan still count toward the 20-post Free limit, so a heavy month can leave you with nothing to spend. SmartLinks are not deleted and their public pages keep working, but you cannot edit them from Free. Invoices from the paid period stay downloadable. A failed payment ends the same way: after a few days of retries the account reverts to Free, and reactivating a paid plan restores the data history. That makes Free a safe floor rather than a cliff.

When Free stops being enough

Most accounts outgrow Free for one of four reasons, and it pays to know which one is coming. The first is volume. Twenty published posts a month, counted per network, is about five a week on a single network, or fewer than two a week if every post goes to three networks. A brand that posts daily to two or more networks will hit the counter in the first half of the month; daily posts to a single network run out around the 20th.

The second is a missing network. If LinkedIn matters to your business, Free is out on day one, and X needs a paid plan plus its add-on regardless. The third is reporting. A freelancer or agency that must send a client a PDF, or a marketer who needs more than 30 days of history to show a trend, needs Starter at minimum. The fourth is scale: a second brand, a second Google Business Profile location or a second person in the account.

If none of these applies, stay on Free. Plenty of small accounts post a few times a week to Instagram and Facebook, check their numbers once a month and never need more. There is no reason to upgrade early in anticipation. Moving from Free to a paid plan starts the billing cycle on the day you buy, and upgrades apply immediately, so you lose nothing by waiting until a limit really bites. Our Metricool for small business guide looks at that kind of setup in more detail.

The first paid step: Starter and what it costs

Starter is the plan that removes the post cap and adds LinkedIn; X still needs the X add-on on top. It costs $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually ($240 a year) for up to 5 brands, and $45 a month billed monthly or $36 a month billed annually for up to 10 brands, with prices excluding VAT ^[3]. Annual billing saves 20% on Starter, and Metricool advertises up to 24% across its plans. Here is how the step up looks:

Unlimited on Starter is not a blank check. The Fair Use Policy sets a base threshold of 600 posts per brand a month, above which a manual check can pause posting. Starter also adds SmartLinks, Google Drive and Canva, and limited access to Studio and Campaign Dashboards. Studio, Campaign Dashboards and Flows are free on paid plans for a limited time only and are announced as future paid add-ons, so do not count them as part of the price for good. One more route exists: the iOS and Android apps sell only Starter Mobile 5, billed monthly through Apple or Google, with the X add-on included and no promo codes.

Why X changes the first-step math

If X is one of your networks, the real first step is higher. On plans bought on the web, X is not included: it needs Starter or above plus the X add-on at $10 a month per connected X account. On monthly billing for up to 5 brands, that is $25 plus $10, or $35 a month for one X account, by our arithmetic. Starter is still a one-user plan, so a team that needs a second login or post approval should look at Advanced instead, which starts at $67 a month billed monthly or $53 a month billed annually for up to 15 brands. Our Metricool pricing breakdown covers every tier and add-on.

How Metricool's Free plan compares with Buffer's and Later's

Buffer is the closest free rival, and its Free plan is built on a different unit. Buffer counts channels, not brands: Free allows 3 channels and 1 user, with 10 scheduled posts per channel at a time that refill as they publish, 30 days of insights and API access with 1 key and 3,000 requests a month. A lifetime cap of 8 unique channels per network applies on Free. For someone posting to three networks, Buffer's rolling queue can carry more volume than Metricool's 20 published posts. Metricool's free brand, though, connects far more networks at once and adds competitor tracking.

Later also has a free plan, though its pricing page does not show it; the help center describes it as aimed at creators. It allows 12 posts per profile a month, a calendar limited to two weeks back and forward, a link-in-bio page carrying a Later banner and introductory analytics. Hootsuite has no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial that its pricing page lists without a card (its terms say a trial with a payment method on file converts to paid), limited to 10 to 20 posts a day per organization. If a free tier is the deciding factor, the choice narrows to Metricool, Buffer and Later (whose Free plan is described only in its help center), and the Metricool vs Buffer comparison goes deeper on the paid side.

The bottom line

Metricool is genuinely free for one brand, and it is one of the more complete free tiers in social media management: most networks, a planner, 30 days of analytics, a competitor demo, a few AI credits and even the MCP. The limits are sharp, though. Twenty published posts a month, counted per network, no LinkedIn, no X, no reports and one user. Start on Free, because there is no standard trial to wait for. Move to Starter at $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually, for up to 5 brands, the month the counter, a missing network or a client report forces your hand.