Metricool for Small Business: Free vs Starter, Google Reviews, Real Costs

Who this guide is for

Picture the owner of a bakery, a dental practice or a hardware store who also runs the company's social accounts, or the one person in a ten-person firm whose job title includes the word marketing. You look after one brand, maybe a few, and nobody approves your posts but you. Metricool pitches itself to exactly this reader: instead of juggling seven apps and answering messages late, one tool does the work of a small team ^[1]. The question is how little of it you can pay for. We read the pricing page, the small-business page and the help center to answer that; we did not open an account.

The short version is simple. Metricool sizes its plans by brands, not by users or channels, and a brand holds one profile per network plus one website. One shop with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and a Google listing is one brand. That structure suits small businesses well, because the price does not climb each time you add a network. It also has a catch for anyone with several physical locations, which we cover below. Everything here assumes one person doing the work, because that is what the two cheaper plans allow.

Is the Free plan enough for one brand?

Metricool's Free plan costs nothing, needs no card and can be kept indefinitely. It gives you one brand, 20 published posts a month, 30 days of analytics, five AI credits a month and a fixed demo of five competitor profiles per network. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest and Google Business Profile all connect. LinkedIn and X do not. Only posts that actually go out count against the 20, but a post sent to three networks counts three times. A shop that posts the same photo to Instagram, Facebook and its Google listing twice a week will hit the limit in less than a month.

So Free works for a business that posts a few times a week to one or two networks and wants to see whether a planner changes its habits. It does not work for anyone who needs LinkedIn for B2B leads, a monthly report for a partner, or a link-in-bio page. Free has no PDF reports, no SmartLinks, no Canva or Google Drive connection and no post library, and its analytics stay inside the app with a watermark. The full list sits in our guide to whether Metricool is free. Treat Free as the trial, because there is no standard free trial of the paid plans.

When Starter pays off

Starter is the plan most small businesses will end up on. It costs $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually ($240 a year) for up to 5 brands, or $45 a month billed monthly and $36 a month billed annually for up to 10 brands ^[2]. That price buys unlimited publishing under the Fair Use Policy, LinkedIn, unlimited analytics history, PDF and PowerPoint reports, 100 competitors, SmartLinks, Canva and Google Drive, and 20 AI credits per brand a month. Flows, plus limited versions of Studio (2 views) and Campaign Dashboards (3 per brand), come with it for a limited time; Metricool has announced them as future paid add-ons, and the full Studio and Campaign Dashboards need the Advanced Analytics add-on, from $12 a month.

The trigger to upgrade is usually one of three things. You run out of the 20 posts, you need LinkedIn, or someone asks for a report you can send. Any one of them is worth the money for a business that sells through social media. The longer analytics history matters too: Free keeps only the last 30 days, while paid plans keep history from the day you connect, and older data can be requested from support within each network's limits (generally back to January 1 of the previous year, much less for Bluesky, YouTube and Pinterest). Annual billing saves 20% on Starter ($20 instead of $25 a month for 5 brands); Metricool's advertised saving of up to 24% applies to its 50-brand Advanced tier. If none of these applies, stay on Free.

That last row is the one to read twice. Starter is a single-user plan. Inviting a teammate, roles and permissions, post approval and the API wait on Advanced, which starts at $67 a month billed monthly or $53 a month billed annually for up to 15 brands. For a one-person marketing role that is fine; for an owner who wants an assistant to log in separately, it is not.

Local businesses: Google Business Profile and reviews

For a shop, a clinic or a restaurant, the Google listing often matters more than Instagram. Metricool connects Google Business Profile on every plan, schedules posts to it and shows its reach, clicks, reviews and published content in analytics. The inbox handles Google reviews, with the star rating visible and replies sent from the platform, next to social comments and direct messages. Metricool's local-business page also mentions saved replies and notes. Note that on Google the inbox manages reviews, not comments, and some Google metrics may be missing for the last five or six days.

The catch is in the structure. Each Google Business Profile location needs its own brand. A business with three locations therefore uses three brands, and the inbox works per brand, with no inbox across brands. Starter's five brands cover up to five locations if each location's social profiles live in the same brand; a sixth location means the 10-brand tier. Free covers one location only.

Google posts themselves are simple. A post carries one image or video and up to 1,500 characters, and there are two formats, plain or with an image. Mentions, alt text, first comments, locations and cover images are not available from Metricool, so finish those in Google directly. Metricool also does not send push or email alerts for new inbox messages, so set a time each day to check reviews.

A realistic weekly routine

A sustainable rhythm for a small business is one planning session a week and a short daily check. On Monday, open the planner, look at the Best Times view and drop the week's posts into the slots it suggests. Personalized Best Times need at least 100 followers, and Instagram must be connected through Facebook. New accounts can wait up to seven days for them to appear. Facebook accounts connected after September 24, 2024 get general times based on behavior studies, and LinkedIn and YouTube always do.

Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are the core for most local and consumer businesses, and Metricool covers all three. Instagram posts, Reels and Stories auto-publish for business or creator profiles. Stories with links, mentions or stickers, Reels with interactive stickers or audio outside Metricool's library, and carousels with videos over 60 seconds go out by phone notification instead, which needs the mobile app. TikTok videos auto-publish when the option is on. Published posts cannot be edited from Metricool.

Autolists for evergreen posts

Autolists are the time saver for an owner with little time. You load a list of posts, set weekly time slots, and Metricool publishes them in order. With Repeat on, each published post moves to the end of the list, so a store's opening hours, delivery reminder or top review can cycle without new work. A list holds up to 200 posts, posts beyond that are not published, and each post takes up to 10 attachments. You can fill a list manually, from a CSV file or from your blog's RSS feed. Alt text cannot be added to autolist posts.

Recurring posts are a different feature. Setting one post to repeat on a schedule, for example every Friday, is called Recurring Schedule and needs Advanced or Custom. It is capped at 180 days and 200 posts at a time. On Starter, autolists are the way to get the same effect. Links in autolist posts can go through Metricool's URL shortener, but its help pages disagree on whether the shortener reports clicks, so do not count on click statistics.

Measuring what matters: web tracker, competitors, reports, SmartLinks

Each brand includes one website or blog. Metricool's tracker counts visits from installation onward, uses no cookies and shows visits in real time. The JavaScript tag works on Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and similar builders; a pixel without JavaScript, used for sites such as WordPress.com, records only visits and location. A site with no visits for three days in a row is disconnected automatically.

Competitor tracking is worth a few minutes a month. Paid plans follow up to 100 competitors per network and 10 on YouTube; Free shows a demo of five per network that you cannot change. Data is organic and public only, so engagement is measured against followers rather than reach. Add your own account as a competitor to compare like with like.

Simple PDF reports and SmartLinks

On Starter you can generate PDF or PowerPoint reports and schedule them to arrive by email, which covers the monthly summary for a partner or a bank. Custom report templates need Advanced, so Starter uses the standard layout. SmartLinks, Metricool's link-in-bio pages, are on paid plans only: unlimited pages, up to 100 buttons each, click analytics and automatic sync of your latest Instagram posts. They are edited on a desktop browser and use Metricool's domain, not yours.

Ads, boosts and who gets the bill

Paid reach is often the next step after organic posting. Metricool connects Meta Ads, Google Ads and TikTok Ads for reporting, with a summary tab for impressions, clicks, CPM, CPC and spend. Boosting is simple and limited: a boost runs about two days with a minimum budget of $2 (a Meta rule), roughly $1 a day, with no custom targeting, and works on single-image Facebook and Instagram posts and on Reels. The charge goes to your Meta ads account, not your Metricool subscription ^[3], so any refund is a question for Meta. Campaigns can also be created for Meta and Google, images only. New Meta ad accounts may be blocked from third-party campaign creation for several weeks.

AI help: credits, alt text and the MCP

The built-in AI assistant writes and rewrites captions, changes tone and adds hashtags or calls to action. It runs on credits: five a month on Free, 20 per brand a month on Starter, 35 per brand on Advanced. One credit covers roughly 600 words of prompt and answer. Credits cannot be bought and do not roll over. AI alt text, which describes images for screen readers, draws on the same credits on Free and Starter and is unlimited on Advanced. It works on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest, LinkedIn and X, but not on Stories or Google posts.

For an owner who already pays for Claude or ChatGPT, the official MCP server is the quiet bonus. It works on every plan, including Free. You can ask the assistant which posts performed best last month, or have it draft and schedule next week's posts at the best times. It covers brands, analytics and the planner, but not the inbox, reviews, SmartLinks or autolists, and plan limits still apply, so Free still stops at 20 posts.

What a year costs, and the billing rules

Budget examples, with and without X

Free costs nothing. Starter for up to 5 brands costs $240 a year billed annually, or $25 a month billed monthly, which comes to $300 over twelve months. If all five brands are in use on the annual plan, that is $4 a brand a month. On plans bought on the web, X is not included: it needs a paid plan plus the X add-on at $10 a month, or $120 a year, per connected X account (the app-store Starter Mobile 5 plan includes X in its price). One X account on top of a monthly plan brings the bill to $35 a month, and on an annual plan to $360 a year, by our arithmetic. Each further X account adds the same $10 a month. Prices exclude VAT.

Read these before you pay

There is no standard free trial; trial codes exist only through promotions or affiliates. The withdrawal right covers 15 days after the first purchase only ^[4]. Renewals are not refunded, and that includes annual renewals. Upgrades apply at once and are prorated. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the cycle, and Metricool keeps the oldest brands by creation date unless you delete the unwanted brands from the Connections panel before the downgrade or cancellation completes. After that, the choice is locked. EU customers pay VAT at their country's rate; companies outside Spain with a VAT number validated in VIES are invoiced without VAT. Payment is by card or PayPal, in dollars or euros.

Where Metricool falls short for a small team

The first limit is people. Starter has one user, so a second person means sharing a login or paying for Advanced. The second is the mobile app. It publishes, replies to messages and shows basic stats, but SmartLinks, ads, Studio, Campaign Dashboards, Flows, thread scheduling and subscription management are web only. An owner who runs everything from a phone will be back at a desktop weekly.

Support is the third. Help comes by in-app chat and email on every plan, with no phone line. The small-business page says the team answers without chatbots, but Metricool publishes no response times. Low-star public reviews often mention support, failed posts and lost analytics data. Read those as a map of what can go wrong, not a trend. The inbox also has gaps: no deleting or hiding comments, no auto-replies and no alerts.

How it compares with Buffer for a small shop

Buffer is the rival with the most search interest next to Metricool. Its Free plan allows three channels and one user, with 10 scheduled posts per channel at a time and 30 days of insights. Paid Buffer prices each channel separately. By our arithmetic, four channels on Buffer Essentials cost $24 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed yearly ($240 a year), against Metricool Starter at $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually for up to 5 brands. If one of those channels is X, Metricool adds $10 a month for the X add-on. Both keep you at one user at that level. Buffer's insights do not cover Google Business Profile, which matters for a local business. Our full Metricool vs Buffer comparison covers the rest.

The bottom line

Metricool fits a small business well when one person runs the social accounts. Start on Free, and move to Starter when the 20-post cap, LinkedIn, reports or SmartLinks start to matter. At $20 a month billed annually for up to 5 brands, Starter is cheap for what it covers. Plan around three things: each Google location takes a brand, X costs extra per account on plans bought on the web, and only the first purchase can be refunded. If a second person needs a login, price Advanced or look elsewhere. Our Metricool pricing guide has the full plan grid.