Agorapulse vs Sprout Social

Agorapulse is a social media management suite built in Paris. It was founded in 2010 by Emeric Ernoult and Benoît Hédiard, grew largely self-funded, raised a €16.5 million round in 2019, and in May 2025 bought the French social listening tool Mention. It says more than 31,000 social media managers use it daily. Its core job is to let a team publish, answer every comment and message from one inbox, listen to brand mentions and prove the return on social work.

It covers Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky and Google Business Profile. Pricing is per user: Standard covers scheduling and a unified inbox, Professional adds ad comment monitoring, assignments and team reports, and Advanced adds automated moderation rules, bulk actions, ROI analysis and competitor benchmarking. Every plan includes 10 social profiles, with extra profiles at $10 to $15 a month. The long-running free plan was discontinued on July 6, 2026; users were offered a free tier of Archie, its AI tool that turns articles and videos into posts, instead.

Agorapulse fits agencies and in-house teams for whom community management is the heavy part of the job; its inbox and moderation tools are among the best in the category, and support is fast. It falls short on per-user cost for large teams. Hootsuite has more integrations, Sprout Social deeper analytics at a higher price, and Buffer or Later are cheaper for solo publishing.

Buying tip: since prices are per user, give seats only to people who answer the inbox and use approvals for occasional contributors.

Sprout Social is a social media management platform founded in 2010 in Chicago and publicly traded on Nasdaq since 2019. It serves mid-market and enterprise brands, agencies and public organizations that treat social media as both a marketing channel and a customer care channel, and it is widely regarded as having the strongest reporting in its category.

The Smart Inbox merges messages, comments and mentions from Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and review sites into one stream with tagging, assignment, collision detection and SLA tracking, so care teams can work it like a help desk. Publishing includes a shared content calendar, approval workflows, optimal send times and an asset library. Analytics produce presentation-ready reports on profiles, posts, competitors, paid performance and team response times. Add-ons extend the platform with social listening and sentiment analysis, Employee Advocacy and influencer marketing, the latter built on the 2023 acquisition of Tagger. Plans (Essentials, Standard, Professional, Advanced and Enterprise) are priced per seat, and listening and other premium modules are billed separately.

Sprout fits organizations where several people manage social every day and leadership expects polished reporting. Per-seat pricing makes it expensive for small businesses, freelancers and solo creators. Hootsuite is the closest all-round rival with broader app integrations, Agorapulse offers a strong inbox and reports at lower prices, and Buffer or Later are better for small teams focused mainly on scheduling.