A cheaper alternative to Sprout Social, in five points
Split the jobs: AyeWatch for listening at $9, Buffer for posting from free.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom · Editorial team
· 3 min read
Looking for a cheaper alternative to Sprout Social? Here is the short version, in five points. Sprout charges per seat, from $79 a month on yearly billing, and its listening is an extra on top of the $199 Standard plan. The cheapest swap depends on which half of Sprout you actually use, so the points below start there.
Know which half you are paying for
Sprout Social does two broad things. It runs your own accounts: scheduling, a shared inbox, reports. And, with a paid add-on, it listens to what others say about you. Most small teams use one half much more than the other.
A quick test: open last month's work and count. If most of it was writing and queuing posts, you are paying Sprout for publishing. If most of it was reading what people said about you elsewhere, you are paying for listening. If it was answering a busy inbox with three colleagues, you may already be on the right tool.
For listening, AyeWatch costs $9 a month
AyeWatch watches the web and social platforms for you and sends an alert when something matches a sentence you wrote, such as "people on Reddit asking for a tool like ours" or "price changes on our rival's website".
- Pro: $9 a month, up to 50 monitors, hourly checks.
- Pro+: $19 a month, up to 200 monitors, the fastest ASAP checks.
- Free Preview: three runs on up to three topics, no card. The runs do not renew.
It covers X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok, plus news sites, blogs, forums and any web page you point it at. Checks use credits, so faster checking costs more. Each alert has a short summary and links to the sources. Alerts land in the app and as push notices on any plan; Slack, Discord and email come with paid plans.
For posting, Buffer starts at free
Buffer schedules posts. It is free for up to three accounts with ten queued posts each, and a slot frees up again once a post goes out. Paid plans are $5 per account a month on yearly billing, with no cap on queued posts. Because you pay per account rather than per person, a solo creator or a two-person shop pays very little. It does not listen for mentions.
The catch: AyeWatch does not post
AyeWatch has no scheduler, no inbox and no reply button, and it does not draw sentiment charts. It will not replace Sprout for a team that answers customers in social DMs all day or sends monthly social reports to a boss. For that, Sprout or Hootsuite ($99 per user a month yearly, with basic listening included) is the right kind of tool. Sprout also lets you try everything for 30 days without a card.
The cheap combo
| Need | Tool | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Listening | AyeWatch Pro | $9 |
| Posting to 3 accounts | Buffer Free | $0 |
| Both, for one person | AyeWatch plus Buffer | $9 |
| Sprout Social Essentials, one seat | Sprout | $79 (no brand keywords) |
Add a second person and the gap grows: Sprout charges for each seat, while AyeWatch Pro and Buffer's paid plans are priced per account or per plan, not per teammate. If you later need faster alerts, Pro+ at $19 a month adds the ASAP speed and room for 200 monitors, which is still a fraction of one Sprout seat.
That is the whole trick: split the jobs and pay for each one at its own price. Try the AyeWatch preview on your brand name first and see what it finds before you cancel anything.