# Metricool Analytics and Reports: History, Competitors and Limits > How Metricool analytics and reports work: history per plan, nightly sync, competitors, the web tracker, PDF/PPT reports, Studio and why numbers differ. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/metricool-analytics — The Professional's Toolkit · updated October 2026_ --- **30 days** — Analytics history on the Free plan, with a watermark and no export; paid plans keep unlimited history. - **100** — competitors per network on paid plans (10 on YouTube) - **PDF / PPT** — reports from Starter up - **$25 a day** — Hashtag Tracker, per network ## What Metricool analytics actually covers Metricool measures four things in one place: your own social profiles, a website or blog, the competitors you choose to watch, and your Meta, Google and TikTok ad accounts. Everything is organized by brand, and a brand holds one profile per network, so a coffee shop with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Google Business Profile sees all four side by side. **Analytics is where the plans really differ.** This guide walks through each layer and the fine print the help center adds, from the nightly sync to the reasons your numbers will never quite match Instagram. We read the pricing page, the help center and Metricool's monthly product updates for this guide; we did not open an account. Two things help before you start. Every paid plan keeps your history without a time limit. Many of the best reporting tools, though, sit behind Advanced or an add-on. If you only need the basics, Free shows them. If you send reports to clients, the plan choice matters more than the price. ## How much history you get, and when it updates On the Free plan you see **30 days of analytics**, the charts carry a watermark, and nothing can be exported. Paid plans keep unlimited history. Starter costs $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually for up to 5 brands, and Advanced costs $67 a month billed monthly or $53 a month billed annually for up to 15 brands, excluding VAT [1]. History only starts when you connect, though. On first connection Metricool shows the previous 30 days, and it syncs your data automatically every 24 hours during the night. Refreshing a connection triggers a sync of roughly the last 2 months. ### Asking for extra history Paid plans can ask support, through the in-app chat, to pull older data. Networks generally hand over data from January 1st of the previous year up to the connection date, but each API sets its own ceiling [2]. Bluesky stops at 30 days before connecting, Threads at about 3 months, and Pinterest at 90 days. YouTube gives 30 days and needs about 7 days to gather every metric. A manual sync takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes. Free accounts cannot ask; they keep the 30 days. ### What can never be recovered Some numbers are only recorded while an account is connected. Follower counts on X, TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and personal LinkedIn profiles, YouTube subscribers and Instagram Stories cannot be rebuilt later. That is the practical reason to connect every profile your plan allows on day one; on Free that excludes LinkedIn and X. **Connect early. Then wait.** Demographics work the same way: Metricool shows only the latest snapshot and keeps no history of it, so the help center suggests downloading reports if you want a record over time. > 💡 **Connect every profile on day one:** Follower counts on most networks and Instagram Stories are only recorded while an account is connected, so connect every profile your plan allows, even the ones you are not posting to yet. ## What each network reports, and what the networks took away Each network has its own metrics page, and all of them report into the same brand view. Two filters are worth learning early. Posts published in the period show results accumulated from publication until yesterday. Posts viewed in the period show only the activity inside your chosen dates, for any post, old or new. The date filter never includes today. Mixing up the two views is the commonest reason a monthly report looks wrong. ### Instagram and Facebook rewrote the rules Much of what you used to measure is gone. Metricool cannot bring it back. Instagram replaced Impressions with Views on accounts, posts and Reels, and Metricool switched its naming on April 7, 2025, before Meta retired the old metric in its API on April 21, 2025. Stories still show Impressions, because Instagram does not return full view data once a Story expires. Profile Views, Website Clicks and profile button clicks stopped arriving on January 8, 2025, though earlier periods stay visible. On Facebook, Page Likes was discontinued on November 1, 2025, the Likes balance became Followers, and Page impressions became Views. Facebook gender and age demographics were deprecated by Facebook in September 2024. ### Follower balance and LinkedIn The follower balance is not the same everywhere. From January 1, 2026, Instagram accounts with 100 or more followers show acquired and lost followers separately, and TikTok Business accounts get the same breakdown for periods from September 29, 2025. Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitch and personal TikTok accounts show only a single net change, and Google Business Profile has no follower balance at all. LinkedIn analytics for personal profiles arrived in July 2025, covering followers, post impressions, members reached, engagements and video watch time. LinkedIn is not on the Free plan, though, and follower data starts only from first connection. On plans bought on the web, X metrics need a paid plan plus the X add-on at $10 a month per connected X account (the app-store Starter Mobile 5 plan includes X in its price), and the complete X set is on Advanced. ## The web and blog tracker Each brand can also measure one website or blog. The tracker is a JavaScript snippet that sends visit data in the background and, notably, **uses no cookies**. It reports page views, visits, visitors, traffic sources, visitor countries and top pages, and visits show in real time once it is installed. There is a lighter option for platforms that block scripts: a tracking pixel without JavaScript, which collects only visits and geographic data. The JavaScript tag works on Shopify, Wix, Blogger, Prestashop, SitioSimple and Squarespace. Canva websites do not support the tracking code at all, so a site built there cannot be measured this way. The tracker has one hard limit. It collects data only from the moment you install it. Nothing earlier can be retrieved. If your blog runs on an RSS feed, the connection loads only the posts present in that feed, so a feed showing 10 posts gives you 10. A bigger feed plus a request to support fills in more. For most small businesses the tracker is a second opinion beside Google Analytics, not a replacement. ## Watching competitors and hashtags Competitor tracking is included on every plan, with very different room. Free gets a fixed demo of 5 competitor accounts per network on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Twitch, and you cannot edit, swap or delete them. Paid plans allow **up to 100 competitors per network**, and up to 10 on YouTube. The supported networks are Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bluesky, YouTube and Twitch. YouTube and X competitors are paid-only, and X also needs the add-on. Instagram competitors require your own Instagram account to be connected through Facebook. Competitor data is organic and public. Followers and likes are tracked from the moment you add the account, and paid plans can ask support to sync up to 300 older posts per competitor. Because reach is not public, Metricool calculates competitor engagement from followers instead. That makes a rival's engagement rate incomparable with your own unless you add your own account as a competitor too. **It is a simple trick.** It is also the one most guides skip. ### The Hashtag Tracker is bought by the day There is no social listening in Metricool, only the Hashtag Tracker, and it is not part of any plan. It costs $25 a day per network, and every 4 days bought earn 1 free day. It follows hashtags on X and Instagram only. One day covers one hashtag on one network for 24 hours, up to 10,000 posts on Instagram (Metricool's pages give different caps for X: 25,000 or 100,000 posts per session), and tracking both networks together uses two days of balance per day. X sessions can look back up to 7 days; Instagram sessions start on the day you create them and skip Stories. Tracking on X also needs the X add-on and a connected X account. > ⚠ **Report links never expire:** Anyone with a report link can open it without signing in, and deleting a manual report does not disable links already copied. Share them with care. ## Ads reporting next to organic results Metricool connects three ad platforms: Meta Ads, Google Ads and TikTok Ads. Meta covers both Facebook and Instagram campaigns, Google Ads adds a Keywords tab with spend, clicks, conversions and Quality Score per keyword, and TikTok Ads reports impressions, cost, clicks, conversions, CPM, CPC and CTR per account and per campaign. The Summary tab rolls paid impressions, clicks, CPM, CPC and spend from all three into one view. You can create campaigns for Meta and Google from Metricool; TikTok ads are monitored only. Two details matter here. Since September 9, 2025, Meta Ads results come from the same Meta API field that Ads Manager uses, and since June 10, 2025, conversions follow your Ads Manager attribution setting. Instagram engagement, though, is always calculated from organic data, even with Meta Ads connected. On the Free plan, Meta Ads and Google Ads data does not sync daily, which makes Free a poor place to watch live spend. ## Reports you can hand to a client Reports start at Starter. Free has no PDF or PowerPoint download at all. On Starter and above you build a report, choose networks and layout, and download it as **PDF or PPT** [3]. Reports can also be scheduled, for example monthly, to you, a client or a team, and since January 2026 a reply-to address can be set on automatic monthly reports. You can pick a report language from more than 10. A Google Business Profile report has no 90-day limit and can cover six months or a year, which native Google exports cannot. ### Templates, links and white label Your own report templates, with brand colors, a client logo, sections and backgrounds, need Advanced or Custom; Starter users do not see the custom reports option. Sharing is generous. It is also risky. Anyone with a report link can open it without signing in, the link never expires, and deleting a manual report does not disable links already copied. The download link in an automatic report email does not expire either. Treat those links like documents you have mailed out. The Download manager keeps the last 100 manual reports, while scheduled reports are not stored there. On the Custom plan, White Label adds agency branding to automatic reports, which can go out monthly or manually. Agencies weighing that should read our guide to [Metricool for agencies](/articles/metricool-for-agencies). > 💡 **Add yourself as a competitor:** Metricool calculates competitor engagement from followers, not reach. Adding your own account as a competitor gives you a figure you can compare fairly. ## Studio, Campaign Dashboards and the Advanced Analytics add-on Metricool's reporting area now groups five tools: Reports, Campaign Dashboards, Metricool Studio, the Looker Studio connector and the Hashtag Tracker. **Studio** builds analytics or calendar views from a written prompt of up to 15,000 characters, or step by step, and shares them through a read-only public link that refreshes automatically when the view uses a relative period. It covers a maximum period of 3 months, works only on data Metricool already collects, and cannot pull in Google Analytics or a CRM. **Campaign Dashboards** gather the organic and paid posts of one campaign, for one brand, across a range of up to 180 days, with up to three goals and AI insights once a campaign holds at least 10 posts. Both tools are desktop only, and neither is on the Free plan. Both are free on Starter and Advanced **for a limited time** and are announced as a future paid add-on, so do not build a client process on them as if they were permanent. Without the Advanced Analytics add-on you get 2 Studio views with up to 10 versions each, and up to 3 Campaign Dashboards per brand that cannot be deleted. The add-on unlocks both fully under fair use, and it starts at $12 a month on Starter and $36 a month on Advanced, following the billing cycle of your plan [4]. ### Detailed post analytics: 15 or 30 days The same add-on controls detailed post analytics, a day-by-day view of how a post performs after it goes out. Advanced shows the first 15 days without the add-on, and the add-on extends that to 30 days. Starter gets the full 30 days only with the add-on, and Free gets nothing. Coverage is narrow: Instagram posts and Reels, TikTok posts, and LinkedIn posts and newsletters, each from a fixed start date. Collection is not retroactive either, so days before you gained access stay empty. ## Looker Studio for multi-brand dashboards The Looker Studio connector, which Metricool still calls Data Studio, is for people who want to build their own dashboards across brands. It needs Advanced or Custom, cannot be bought as an add-on to Starter, and is not available for white-label accounts or shared brands. It includes every brand on the account with their websites, social networks and ad platforms, and it can blend Metricool data with Google Analytics, BigQuery or Google Sheets. Metricool itself recommends Advanced with the connector for analysis across several brands, since standard reports and Campaign Dashboards each belong to one brand. Metricool Studio can also compare several brands in one view, within the limits described above. The connector has quirks. Fields from different blocks cannot be mixed in one chart, except evolution fields. Followers is a last-value metric in Metricool, so monthly totals in Looker Studio come out inflated unless you switch the aggregation to maximum or average. Data arrives in GMT while Metricool shows your account time zone and excludes the current day. The connector also uses your API token, which opens every brand on the account, so share the finished report, never the token. Our [Metricool API guide](/articles/metricool-api) covers the token in more detail. ## Why your numbers will not match Google Analytics or the native apps Expect differences. Most are small and explainable. On the website side, Metricool may log several visits from the same IP in a short period as one session, so its session counts can run lower than GA4. It also counts only from the day the tracker went in. On the social side, time zones do most of the damage. Instagram groups data by its own time zone, and Meta consolidates Facebook followers in Pacific Time, while Metricool uses your account time zone, which can shift a number by a day. LinkedIn figures can also differ from LinkedIn's own interface because Metricool reads the official API. The way you connect Instagram matters too. Connecting with Instagram login gives basic metrics only, with no competitor analysis and no Collabs analytics; connecting through a Facebook Page gives every feature. Each method keeps its own history, so switching creates a new connection with gaps in follower and Stories data, and you are left with the last 30 days. When a post is cross-published from Instagram to Facebook, Instagram may show a combined total while Metricool shows each platform separately. None of this is a bug. It is the cost of reading other companies' APIs. ## FAQ **How far back does Metricool analytics go?** On first connection it shows the previous 30 days. The Free plan keeps 30 days; paid plans keep unlimited history and can ask support for older data, within each network's API limits. **Can I export Metricool reports on the Free plan?** No. Free shows analytics in the app with a watermark and no export. PDF and PPT reports start at Starter, and your own templates need Advanced or Custom. **How often does Metricool update its data?** Data syncs automatically every 24 hours during the night. Refreshing a connection triggers a sync of about the last 2 months. **How many competitors can I track in Metricool?** Free has a fixed demo of 5 accounts per network. Paid plans allow up to 100 competitors per network and up to 10 on YouTube; X competitors also need the X add-on. **Why don't Metricool numbers match Google Analytics?** Metricool's tracker uses no cookies, counts only from installation and may log several visits from the same IP in a short period as one session, so its session counts can run lower than GA4. **Is Metricool Studio free?** Studio and Campaign Dashboards are free on Starter and Advanced for a limited time, with limits, and are announced as a future paid add-on. Full access needs the Advanced Analytics add-on, which is sold separately on top of the plan. ## The bottom line Metricool's analytics put a lot in one place: unlimited history on every paid plan, up to 100 competitors per network (10 on YouTube), a cookie-free web tracker and ads reporting beside organic posts. The Free plan is a fair preview, but 30 days with a watermark and no export will not carry client work. Starter is the floor for real reporting for one user; Advanced adds more users, templates and the Looker Studio connector, and detailed post analytics need Advanced or the Advanced Analytics add-on. Connect every profile early, through Facebook for Instagram, and budget for Studio and Campaign Dashboards becoming paid one day. For the full plan math, see our [Metricool pricing breakdown](/articles/metricool-pricing). ## Sources [1] Metricool pricing page — https://metricool.com/pricing/ (2026-10) [2] Metricool Help: historical data available — https://help.metricool.com/historical-data-available-5zavf (2026-10) [3] Metricool Help: how to generate reports — https://help.metricool.com/how-to-generate-reports-szc5k (2026-10) [4] Metricool Help: your guide to the advanced analytics add on — https://help.metricool.com/your-guide-to-the-advanced-analytics-add-on-ft6hi (2026-10) [5] Metricool Help Center — https://help.metricool.com/plans-add-ons-and-api-access-explained-xux1u [6] Metricool refund policy — https://help.metricool.com/metricool-refund-policy-0lrpo [7] G2, Metricool reviews — https://www.g2.com/products/metricool/reviews