# Metricool AI: Credits, Studio, the MCP and Workflows That Pay Off > A practical guide to Metricool AI: AI credits per plan, alt text, Recurring Schedule, Studio, Campaign Dashboards, the Claude and ChatGPT MCP, and limits. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/metricool-ai — The Professional's Toolkit · updated October 2026_ --- **20 credits** — AI assistant credits per brand a month on Starter, about 600 words each, with no top-ups and no rollover. - **5 / 20 / 35** — AI credits a month: Free, Starter per brand, Advanced per brand - **Every plan** — official MCP for Claude and ChatGPT, Free included - **2 views** — Studio cap on Starter and Advanced without the Advanced Analytics add-on (not on Free), 10 versions each ## What Metricool's AI actually covers Metricool does not sell AI as a separate product. It threads AI through the app in seven places: a writing assistant in the post editor, an alt text generator, an Advanced-only scheduler called Recurring Schedule, Metricool Studio for reports written from a prompt, AI insights inside Campaign Dashboards, an AI-content label for the EU AI Act, and the official MCP server with its Claude and ChatGPT connectors. **The in-app AI writes text, not images or video**: captions, calls to action, hashtags, alt text and report commentary, plus the charts Studio builds from your data. That framing matters. If you hoped for a design generator inside the app, it is not here; the Carousel Agent for Claude, covered below, renders carousel slides on a paid plan. If you want help writing, scheduling and reading your numbers, most of it is. The pieces sit on different meters, which is the part most buyers miss. The writing assistant and, on lower plans, the alt text generator draw on a monthly credit budget. Recurring Schedule costs no credits but needs Advanced. Studio and Campaign Dashboards have their own view and dashboard caps, and they are free on Starter and Advanced only for a limited time before becoming a paid add-on. The MCP works on every plan, including Free, though plan limits still apply. The writing happens in Claude or ChatGPT, and we found nothing saying it draws on Metricool credits. This playbook takes each piece in turn, then shows what a social media manager can run with them. ## The AI assistant and its monthly credit budget ### How credits are counted The assistant lives in the post editor. Free accounts get 5 credits a month, Starter 20 credits per brand, Advanced 35 per brand, and Custom starts at 20 per brand and can be raised [1]. One credit covers about 600 words, counting both your prompt and the answer, and longer or more complex requests burn more because usage follows the tokens a request needs. You cannot buy extra credits, and unused ones reset at the start of each billing cycle. By our arithmetic, a Starter brand's 20 credits come to roughly 12,000 words a month and an Advanced brand's 35 to roughly 21,000, which is plenty for captions and thin for long drafts. ### What it writes Since its redesign, the assistant returns one post with shortcuts to refine it, instead of five alternatives. From there it can translate a post, fix spelling and grammar, change tone and style, and add calls to action, hashtags and emojis. It can also fill autolists, the evergreen queues Metricool reposts on a schedule. For X and Threads it writes a five-post thread in one pass, though on plans bought on the web X itself needs a paid plan plus the X add-on, $10 a month per connected X account for purchases since July 13, 2026 (earlier buyers keep $5); the app-store Starter Mobile 5 plan includes X in its price. The assistant is in the mobile app too, so a caption can be drafted away from the desk. **It is a caption tool, not a strategist.** Treat its first draft as raw material. ### Teaching it your voice Brand settings hold an AI configuration where you set a writing style for the whole brand and separate instructions per network. Metricool's plan pages list this "Adjust instructions" option as an Advanced feature, so expect it on Advanced and Custom, not on Free or Starter. Metricool can write those network instructions for you by reading your past posts. That generation spends no credits, has a 10-minute cooldown, and needs at least 15 text posts from the last two years, with about 30 giving the best result. It is not available for Google Business Profile yet, so instructions for that network are written by hand. Ten minutes here saves dozens of rewrites later. A brand whose LinkedIn should sound formal and whose TikTok should not gets that split once, instead of fighting it in every prompt. > 💡 **Set voice instructions first:** On Advanced and Custom, where Metricool's plan pages place custom AI instructions, generating per-network instructions from your past posts spends no credits and needs at least 15 text posts from the last two years (not available for Google Business Profile yet). Do it before you write a single AI caption. ## AI alt text, and why Advanced changes the math The alt text generator writes image descriptions for Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest, LinkedIn and X. On Free and Starter each description spends credits from the same monthly pool as the writing assistant; on Advanced and Custom it is unlimited. It works per image in carousels and on Reels images, but **it does not work in Stories**, and it cannot be added to content scheduled through autolists. For a brand that publishes many image posts, the credit draw adds up fast. On Starter, every description draws on the same 20 credits per brand as your captions, so heavy alt-text use leaves less for writing. Advanced removes that tension. It is a quiet reason to move up. ## Recurring Schedule: the Advanced-only scheduler Recurring Schedule began life as Scheduling with AI and was renamed in February 2026. It takes one piece of content and spreads it across several brands with a frequency you set and a time zone for each brand, and it can use the best times for each selected network. Two tabs, Step by step and Prompt from scratch, walk you through the setup. It is Advanced and Custom only. It costs no credits. It schedules up to 6 months (180 days) ahead and 200 posts at a time, and the task history covers 30 days. Recurring posts cannot be sent for review. It suits chains, franchises and agencies posting one evergreen message across many brands, not campaigns that need sign-off. ## Metricool Studio: reports from a written prompt ### How Studio works Studio is Metricool's AI reporting engine, and Metricool describes it as powered by Claude and built into the app. You describe the report you want, and it builds Analytics and Calendar views from the data Metricool already holds. There are two modes. Step by step guides you through a brand, a comparison between brands or two periods of one brand; Prompt from scratch takes a written brief of up to 15,000 characters. Analytics views cover at most three months. Generation runs in the background and a bell icon tells you when it finishes. The report follows the language of your prompt, and identical prompts can return slightly different results, so save the version you send a client. ### The limits without the add-on Studio is not on Free. Starter and Advanced get it **free for a limited time**, with a cap: two views, each holding up to 10 versions, and a new view needs one of the two deleted first [2]. Full access, subject to fair use, needs the Advanced Analytics add-on, from $12 a month on Starter and $36 on Advanced. Studio reads only Metricool data. It cannot pull Google Analytics, a CRM or media files, nor chart competitor follower growth, since only the latest follower count is stored. Charts cannot be edited by hand. Views share as public read-only links, export to PDF for Analytics views only, and stay off the mobile app. > ⚠ **Studio is free only for now:** Studio and Campaign Dashboards are free on Starter and Advanced for a limited time and are announced as future paid add-ons. Without the Advanced Analytics add-on you get two Studio views of 10 versions each. ## Campaign Dashboards and their AI insights Campaign Dashboards group the organic and paid posts of one campaign, including Google Ads, Meta Ads and TikTok Ads content, and add up to three goals for views, interactions and paid clicks. The AI part is the insights block, and it has a hard floor: **at least 10 posts**, below which the Regenerate button stays disabled. The insights read only that campaign's data. There are no benchmarks. Each dashboard belongs to one brand, runs on desktop only, covers at most 180 days, and keeps its name, dates and networks fixed once created. Without the Advanced Analytics add-on, Starter and Advanced get three dashboards per brand that cannot be deleted. Like Studio, the feature is free only for a limited time. ## Claude, ChatGPT and the official MCP The MCP is the open connection that lets an outside AI read and act on your Metricool account. It is official, open source on GitHub and PyPI, and it works on every plan, Free included, though plan limits still apply and a Free account still stops at 20 posts a month. Since September 2026 Metricool is an official connector in Claude's directory and a verified ChatGPT app. Through it an assistant can list brands, read analytics (ad accounts read-only), see what is scheduled versus still a draft, and create, edit and schedule posts. Sending posts for review needs Advanced. It cannot touch the inbox, comments, SmartLinks, Google Business Profile reviews, autolists, Canva or Drive files, or ad campaign management. A few practical rules come with it. Media must arrive as a link, from a public URL, Google Drive or Dropbox, because attaching a file in Claude does not work yet, while ChatGPT accepts attachments. Best-time suggestions through the MCP cover six networks: Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Claude Code needs a Claude Pro or Max plan, and Claude Free allows one custom connector at a time. In ChatGPT, your account needs access to Apps, and OpenAI decides which of its plans include them. The MCP uses your account's permissions, and access is revoked in the AI client, since the help center says it cannot be removed from inside Metricool (some Metricool pages also mention account settings) [3]. For the step-by-step connection, see our [Metricool MCP setup guide](/articles/metricool-mcp). ## Workflows a social media manager can run this week ### The Monday check and the competitor read Metricool publishes ready prompts built on the MCP's own tools, and two of them make a solid weekly routine. The first lists every connected brand and pulls the last seven days of analytics for each, which turns a morning of tab-switching into one question. The second reads the competitors you already track in Metricool and pulls their recent posts next to your own figures. No permission is needed from the rival accounts, because Metricool tracks public data, but the competitors must be set up in Metricool first. On Free that means a fixed demo set, so this workflow earns its keep on Starter and above. ### Per-network timing and repeats without Advanced In the planner, one post carries one publishing time for every network it targets. Through the MCP you can ask for separate posts per network, each at its own best time, and each becomes an independent scheduled post you can move without touching the others. The MCP can also repeat a post on dates you name, on any plan, with each date saved as its own post. On Free, every date and every network counts toward the 20 published posts a month. That is a workaround worth knowing. Planner recurrence needs Advanced, while the conversational route does not. Every post created this way lands in the planner, where you review and edit it like any other. ### The Claude skills and agents Metricool ships Metricool also publishes Claude skills and agents that run on top of the connector. The Instagram Benchmark Skill scores an account against 375,000 real accounts, the YouTube one against 71,177 channels in the same subscriber tier, and the LinkedIn one against 63,000 profiles and pages, though LinkedIn needs a paid plan. The Social Media Report Agent builds a self-contained HTML report that opens in any browser without a login, ready to send to a client. The Carousel Agent renders slides at 1080 x 1350 and publishes to Instagram and LinkedIn. It needs a paid Metricool plan, Claude Desktop or the command line, and Node.js 18 or higher. **The Carousel Agent asks for your approval at each step before anything goes live.** > 💡 **Push long writing to the connector:** Drafts written in Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP happen in that client, and we found nothing saying they use Metricool credits; your AI client's own plan limits apply. Keep the in-app assistant for short captions, translations and fixes. ## Labels, data and the rules on AI output Article 50 of the EU AI Act has been enforceable since August 2, 2026, and Metricool added a toggle to mark posts as AI-generated. It covers Instagram images, Reels and carousels, TikTok videos (not photos) on personal and Business accounts, and YouTube videos from the web post creator, with the YouTube toggle not yet in the mobile app. The flag is passed to the network at publishing. Metricool is clear that compliance remains your responsibility. If you publish to an EU audience and use AI for visuals or voice-overs, switching it on is a habit worth building now, before a platform makes the decision for you. On data, Metricool's terms say its third-party AI providers are contractually barred from training models on customer content, and that you own the outputs [4]. The same terms put the burden on you: review every output before it goes public, and do not paste special category personal data, trade secrets or confidential third-party information into the AI tools. Usage may be rate-limited, and outputs come without warranties. For the MCP, Metricool says data is not stored in the AI model, while the outside model itself is governed by its owner's terms. **Read the AI client's own policy too.** ## Limits, and when AI is not worth the credits Some AI here is close to free. Voice instructions, an Advanced feature per Metricool's plan pages, cost no credits. Short captions, translations and grammar fixes are cheap, since each fits well inside the 600 words one credit buys. Long blog-style drafts are where credits vanish, and with no top-ups and no rollover, a burst of long generations can leave a brand without help for the rest of the month. Write those in Claude or ChatGPT through the connector instead, where the writing happens in the AI client and we found nothing saying it uses Metricool credits. The same goes for alt text on Starter: if every image needs one, the honest options are writing short descriptions yourself or moving to Advanced at $67 a month billed monthly or $53 a month billed annually ($636 a year) for up to 15 brands. Studio deserves the same caution. Two views are enough to judge it, not to run monthly client reporting across many brands, and both Studio and Campaign Dashboards are announced as future paid add-ons. Build processes on them knowing the price may change. Campaign insights on a campaign with fewer than 10 posts will not appear at all. And remember what none of this does: no image generator in the app, no inbox automation through the MCP, no AI on comments. For the plan-by-plan costs behind these choices, see our [Metricool pricing guide](/articles/metricool-pricing). ## FAQ **How many AI credits does Metricool give?** Free gets 5 credits a month, Starter 20 per brand, Advanced 35 per brand, and Custom starts at 20 per brand and can be raised. One credit covers about 600 words, counting prompt and answer. **Can I buy more Metricool AI credits?** No. Extra credits cannot be purchased, and unused credits reset at the start of each billing cycle instead of rolling over. **Does Metricool's AI generate images?** Not inside the app. Its built-in AI features produce text, such as post copy, calls to action, hashtags and alt text. Metricool's Carousel Agent for Claude, which needs a paid Metricool plan, can render carousel slides. **Can I use Metricool with Claude or ChatGPT on the Free plan?** Yes on Metricool's side. The official MCP and the Claude and ChatGPT connectors work on every Metricool plan, including Free, though Free still stops at 20 posts a month and sending posts for review needs Advanced. On Claude Free you get one custom connector at a time, and ChatGPT needs an account with access to Apps. **Is Metricool Studio included in my plan?** Not on Free. Starter and Advanced get it free for a limited time, capped at two views of 10 versions each, and full access needs the Advanced Analytics add-on. **Does Metricool train AI on my content?** Its terms say third-party AI providers are contractually barred from training on customer content, and that customers own the AI outputs. ## The bottom line Metricool's AI is practical rather than flashy. The writing assistant and alt text are useful on every plan but rationed by credits that cannot be bought or carried over, Recurring Schedule and unlimited alt text are reasons to choose Advanced, and Studio and Campaign Dashboards are worth trying while they cost nothing extra. The standout is the MCP. It works on every plan, does its writing in the AI client (we found nothing saying it draws on Metricool credits), and turns Claude or ChatGPT into a reporting and scheduling assistant for your whole account. Set your voice instructions first, push long writing to the connector, and keep a human approving everything that goes live. ## Sources [1] Metricool Help: how to create posts with metricools ai text generator — https://help.metricool.com/how-to-create-posts-with-metricools-ai-text-generator-sv0j8 (2026-10) [2] Metricool Help: metricool studio limits data and permissions — https://help.metricool.com/metricool-studio-limits-data-and-permissions-ur6c3 (2026-10) [3] Metricool Help: faqs about the metricool mcp — https://help.metricool.com/faqs-about-the-metricool-mcp-1i3w0 (2026-10) [4] Metricool Terms and Conditions — https://metricool.com/legal-terms/ (2026-10) [5] Metricool pricing page — https://metricool.com/pricing/ [6] Metricool Help Center — https://help.metricool.com/plans-add-ons-and-api-access-explained-xux1u [7] Metricool refund policy — https://help.metricool.com/metricool-refund-policy-0lrpo [8] G2, Metricool reviews — https://www.g2.com/products/metricool/reviews