How is this social media & content ranking decided?

Mechanically. The 12 approved social media & content listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.

Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

How much does social media & content software cost?

Across the 12 social media & content tools listed here, paid plans start between $0.04 and $100 a month, with a median entry price of $14.50. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $250 a month (Sprinklr). 5 of 12 also publish a $0 plan.

What is the cheapest social media & content software?

1 of the 12 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, DALL-E has the lowest published entry price at $0.04 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.

Is there free social media & content software?

Yes, 5 of 12 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.

What features should social media & content software have?

Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are api access (4 of 12 tools that publish plan detail), dedicated support (4) and custom dashboards (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as advanced analytics or basic monitoring, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.

How is social media & content software usually billed?

subscription (8), freemium (3), usage-based (1), counted across the 12 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 4 of 12 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.

What does social media & content software actually cover?

The 12 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ai (3), social-listening (3), consumer-intelligence (2), content scheduling (2), enterprise (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under social media & content may overlap on very little.

How many pricing tiers do social media & content tools offer?

12 of 12 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 10 of 12 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.

How many social media & content tools are listed on Softwr?

12 approved social media & content listings appear on this page, including Brandwatch, DALL-E, Mention, Metricool. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/social-media-content, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Social Media & Content · ranked shortlist

Best Social Media & Content software for Freelancers in 2026

12 approved social media & content listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

Tools ranked: 12
Entry price range: $0.04-$100
Publish a $0 plan: 5 of 12

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.

Where the ratings come from

No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.

What the pool is

Approved social media & content listings, capped at 20 per page; 12 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the social media & content category page.

The ranking

Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.

#1
Brandwatch
Highest rated here
Consumer intelligence and influencer analytics
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
consumer-intelligence, social-listening, Enterprise, research
Brandwatch breakdown Compare with DALL-E
#2
DALL-E
OpenAI's advanced image generation model
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $0.04 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $0.08.
Billing
usage-based
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
ai, dall-e, image-generation, openai
DALL-E breakdown Compare with Mention
#3
Mention
Real-time media monitoring made simple
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $41 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $83.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
media monitoring, social-listening, brand tracking, smb
Mention breakdown Compare with Metricool
#4
Metricool
All-in-one platform to plan, publish, and analyze social media content
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $20 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $53.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
Social Media Management, Content Scheduling, Social Analytics, reporting
Metricool breakdown Compare with Midjourney
#5
Midjourney
AI image generation with artistic excellence
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $10 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $60.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
ai, image-generation, art, design
Midjourney breakdown Compare with Opus Clip
#6
Opus Clip
AI tool cutting long videos into short vertical clips with captions for social
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $15 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $29 plus a tier sold by quote.
Billing
freemium
Published tiers
4 tiers
Opus Clip breakdown Compare with Planoly
#7
Planoly
Visual social media planning, scheduling, and link-in-bio platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $14 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $47.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
Social Media Scheduling, Instagram Planning, Link In Bio, Content Calendar
Planoly breakdown Compare with Runway
#8
Runway
AI-powered creative tools for video and images
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $12 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $76.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
ai-video, generative-ai, vfx, video-editing
Runway breakdown Compare with Sked Social
#9
Sked Social
Social media scheduling and approval workflow platform for teams and agencies
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $24 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $166 plus a tier sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
Social Media Management, Content Scheduling, Approval Workflow, Social Inbox
Sked Social breakdown Compare with Sprinklr
#10
Sprinklr
Unified customer experience management platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $100 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $250 plus a tier sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
Live Chat, omnichannel, customer-experience, ai
Sprinklr breakdown Compare with Tailwind
#11
Tailwind
Pinterest and Instagram marketing platform for scheduling and keyword research
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $11.99 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $29.98.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
Pinterest Marketing, Pin Scheduling, Keyword Research, Social Media Automation
Tailwind breakdown Compare with Talkwalker
#12
Talkwalker
Consumer intelligence to accelerate your brand
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
social-listening, consumer-intelligence, brand monitoring, hootsuite
Talkwalker breakdown

What social media & content software costs

Counted from the published pricing of the 12 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.

Cheapest paid plan: $0.04DALL-E
Median entry price: $14.50across 10 priced
Dearest entry price: $100Sprinklr
Publish a $0 plan: 5of 12

Paid social media & content plans in this set start anywhere from $0.04 a month for DALL-E to $100 for Sprinklr. The median entry price across the 10 tools that publish one is $14.50, half of them start below that figure and half above it.

Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Sprinklr's at $250 a month, 2.5× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.

5 of 12 publish a $0 plan, and 1 of those charge nothing at all. 6 tools have no free tier of any kind.

4 of 12 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.

DALL-E pricing Sprinklr pricing Sprinklr plans

How these vendors bill

The billing model each of the 12 social media & content listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.

subscription: 8
freemium: 3
usage-based: 1

Separately, 4 of 12 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.

What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for

Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 12 social media & content tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.

Named most often

API access , 4 of 12
Dedicated support , 4 of 12
Custom dashboards , 2 of 12
Custom integrations , 2 of 12
Sentiment analysis , 2 of 12

Named by fewer

Social listening , 2 of 12

Named by exactly one vendor: Advanced analytics, Basic monitoring, Engagement, LinkedIn access, Stealth mode, Unlimited tags. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.

What “Social Media & Content” covers in practice

The subject tags that recur across these 12 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.

ai3
social-listening3
consumer-intelligence2
Content Scheduling2
Enterprise2
image-generation2
reporting2
Social Media Management2

Carried by a single tool: Ads Management, art, Content Marketing, design, Keyword Research, midjourney, research, Social Media Automation. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.

How to choose between them

Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.

Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them

5 of 12 social media & content tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with api access, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.

Read the spread before you read the features

$0.04 to $100 is a $99.96 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $100 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.

Check which tier you actually land on

10 of 12 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 3 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, api access, dedicated support, custom dashboards, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.

The billing model matters more than the headline number

This category splits across 3 billing models: subscription on 8 listings, freemium on 3, and 1 other arrangement across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.

Compare social media & content tools directly

Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.

Go straight to the numbers

Build your own comparison See the shortlist instead

Questions people ask about social media & content software

Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.

How is this social media & content ranking decided?: Mechanically. The 12 approved social media & content listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?: No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.
How much does social media & content software cost?: Across the 12 social media & content tools listed here, paid plans start between $0.04 and $100 a month, with a median entry price of $14.50. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $250 a month (Sprinklr). 5 of 12 also publish a $0 plan.
What is the cheapest social media & content software?: 1 of the 12 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, DALL-E has the lowest published entry price at $0.04 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
Is there free social media & content software?: Yes, 5 of 12 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
What features should social media & content software have?: Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are api access (4 of 12 tools that publish plan detail), dedicated support (4) and custom dashboards (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as advanced analytics or basic monitoring, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
How is social media & content software usually billed?: subscription (8), freemium (3), usage-based (1), counted across the 12 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 4 of 12 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
What does social media & content software actually cover?: The 12 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ai (3), social-listening (3), consumer-intelligence (2), content scheduling (2), enterprise (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under social media & content may overlap on very little.
How many pricing tiers do social media & content tools offer?: 12 of 12 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 10 of 12 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
How many social media & content tools are listed on Softwr?: 12 approved social media & content listings appear on this page, including Brandwatch, DALL-E, Mention, Metricool. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/social-media-content, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Keep reading

Neighbouring categories

Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Where the ratings come from

What the pool is

The ranking

Brandwatch

DALL-E

Mention

Metricool

Midjourney

Opus Clip

Planoly

Runway

Sked Social

Sprinklr

Tailwind

Talkwalker