What is the difference between Sentyment and Sprout Social?
Sprout Social is a social media management suite. Its core job is running your own accounts: scheduling and publishing posts, handling replies and DMs in a shared inbox, and reporting on how your channels perform, with analytics and listening sold around that core. Sentyment does not manage anything; you paste the URL of a post, video, or thread and it reads the comments underneath, on posts nobody at your company owns or connected.
Sentyment vs. Sprout Social at a glance
These tools are only compared because both touch sentiment. Sprout is bought to run a social team, and sentiment is a feature near the top of its price list, at $399 per seat per month.
| Feature | Sentyment | Sprout Social |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | On-demand analysis of comment threads | Publishing, inbox, and social team workflow |
| Entry price | USD $29/mo, month to month | USD $79 per seat/month, annual billing |
| Price to get sentiment | $0 on the free plan | $399 per seat/month, or a Listening add-on |
| Free plan | Yes, 20 credits/month, no card | No, 30-day trial only |
| Pricing model | Credits per analysis, no seat fees | Per seat, so cost scales with headcount |
| Publishing and scheduling | No | Yes, this is the main product |
| Shared inbox | No | Yes, from the $199 Standard plan |
| Posts you do not own | Yes, any public URL | Via the Listening add-on |
| Sources | 6 social platforms | Connected accounts, plus Listening sources |
| Stated accuracy | 93% classification, self-reported | No figure published |
| Free trial | Not needed, the free plan is permanent | 30 days, no card |
How much does Sprout Social cost?
Sprout Social is priced per seat, from USD $79 per seat per month on Essentials to $399 on Advanced, on annual billing. There is a 30-day free trial and no card is required to start it. On the published price list sentiment appears only at the top, on Advanced, where it is scoped to the Smart Inbox and Reviews. Confirm current figures at sproutsocial.com/pricing before you buy.
| Plan | Annual, per seat / mo | Monthly | Social profiles | Brand keywords per group | Sentiment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $79 | $99 | 5 | Not included | No |
| Standard | $199 | $249 | 5 | 10 | No |
| Professional | $299 | $399 | Unlimited | 10 | No |
| Advanced | $399 | $499 | Unlimited | 20 | Smart Inbox and Reviews |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Custom | Yes |
Two numbers in that table collide:
- The $399 column matters. It buys Advanced on annual billing, but only Professional month to month, and Professional has no sentiment at all.
- Annual billing is a single upfront payment for the whole term. Three people on Advanced is $14,364 up front, not a monthly debit of $1,197. Month to month the same three seats are $499 each, so $1,497 a month.
- Sentiment on Advanced covers what lands in your inbox: messages to your profiles, your reviews, and X brand keyword hits. It is not sentiment across the open web.
- Listening, where sentiment tracking across "millions of unfiltered conversations" lives, is an add-on that Sprout's pricing page lists as available "to the Standard plan and up". Sprout does not publish its price, so that part of the bill comes from a demo.
How much does Sentyment cost?
Sentyment has no seats. Standard is USD $29 a month for 300 credits and Pro is $79 for 1,000, and a credit is spent when an analysis runs, so adding your whole team costs nothing extra. There is a free plan with 20 credits and no card. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.
| Analysis | Credits |
|---|---|
| Reddit or YouTube URL | 1 |
| Reddit Trends keyword search | 1 |
| Instagram, TikTok, X, or Facebook URL | 5 |
| Influencer Trust: single post or video | 5 |
| Influencer Trust: profile scan (3 recent posts) | 10 |
What does sentiment analysis actually cost in each tool?
In Sentyment, sentiment is the product: $0 on the free plan, then $29 a month for 300 credits, which is 300 Reddit or YouTube threads or 60 Instagram posts. In Sprout Social it is a feature near the top of the price list, on Advanced at $399 per seat per month on annual billing, scoped to your inbox and reviews. The other route is the Listening add-on from Standard at $199, which is where open-web sentiment lives and whose price Sprout does not publish, so the cheapest real path depends on a quote you cannot see before you ask for one.
Nobody buys Sprout Social for sentiment, though. That $399 seat is carrying publishing, scheduling, a shared inbox, unlimited profiles, approval workflows, review management, the Sprout API, and reporting for a team that runs social accounts all day, and a team like that gets its money back. It breaks the other way round. If sentiment is the only thing you want, Advanced is the cheapest published tier that has it, and three people who need to see it are three seats: $14,364 a year, paid up front.
Our $29 is not three seats' worth of capacity, though, and it would be misleading to let that pass. It is 300 credits shared across however many people you like, so the pool is smaller and nobody gets charged per head. The two are shaped differently, and a team running heavy volume across five people will feel that.
Can Sprout Social analyse comments on posts you do not own?
Not in the way you probably mean. Sprout's inbox, sentiment and reporting are built around the profiles you connect, with one exception: Brand Keywords, which Sprout describes as custom X searches that run constantly and drop results into your Smart Inbox. That gets you X mentions matching a term, on Standard and up, capped at 10 keywords per group and 20 on Advanced. What it does not get you is the comment section under a specific post you do not control, on X or anywhere else.
For conversations at that level you need the Listening add-on, which is where Sprout puts its topic-level sentiment tracking, Smart Categories, and Spike Alerts.
Sentyment has no concept of owning an account. You paste a URL, it reads the comments underneath, and it does not care whose post it is. A competitor's launch video costs the same handful of credits as your own, and so does a review thread on a subreddit you have never posted in.
How accurate is each tool's sentiment analysis?
Sprout publishes no accuracy figure and Sentyment publishes 93% classification accuracy on a labelled benchmark, but comparing the two would be a category error. Sprout's sentiment is judged on a different problem: triaging an inbox, where what matters is catching the angry customer before someone replies to them. A model that is mediocre at open-web classification can be perfectly good at that, and a model that tops a benchmark can still be the wrong tool for a queue.
So the question worth asking is what a wrong score costs you. In Sprout a human reads the message before replying, so the model is a sorting aid and a bad call costs a few seconds. In Sentyment the score usually ends up in front of a stakeholder, which is why it shows every result next to the comments that produced it. Sarcasm still defeats automated sentiment in both, ours included.
Who should actually use Sprout Social?
Sprout Social is the better choice whenever the job is running social accounts:
- Teams that publish and schedule across multiple accounts every day
- Anyone who needs a shared inbox so several people can handle replies, comments, and DMs without colliding
- Marketing teams that need approval workflows, assignment, and permissions across a social function
- Brands managing review platforms alongside social, since review management is included from Standard
- Teams that want open-web listening in the same tool as publishing, via the Listening add-on, which carries topic-level sentiment, Smart Categories, and Spike Alerts that Sentyment has no equivalent for
- Anyone who needs the Sprout API or helpdesk integrations, both on Advanced
- Larger organisations that need SSO, onboarding, and priority support on Enterprise
Who should actually use Sentyment?
Sentyment is the better choice when sentiment is the deliverable itself:
- Anyone who wants sentiment without reaching the $399 tier to get it
- Teams researching posts they do not own, on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit
- Founders and researchers with no social accounts to manage in the first place
- Growing teams, since credits do not multiply with headcount the way seats do
Sentyment cannot replace Sprout for anyone who actually runs social accounts. It has no publishing, no scheduling and no inbox. It does not monitor or alert, keeps no archive, and covers six social platforms with no news, blogs, podcasts, or review sites, and the Free plan reads up to 250 comments per URL. If the problem is "we need to run our social presence", this is not a candidate.
Can you use Sprout Social and Sentyment together?
Yes, and this is the cleanest of the pairings, because the two products barely overlap. Sprout runs the channel: publishing, replies, reporting on your own accounts. Sentyment takes the research questions that sit outside your own profiles, like what a competitor’s audience is saying or whether a creator’s comment section is worth sponsoring. At $29 a month it costs less than adding one more Sprout seat, which is usually how it gets approved. The wider distinction is covered in Sentiment Analysis vs. Social Listening.
Frequently asked questions
Does Sprout Social include sentiment analysis?
On the published price list, only at the top: Advanced, USD $399 per seat per month on annual billing, and there it covers the Smart Inbox and Reviews. The other route is the Listening add-on, available from Standard at $199, which carries topic-level sentiment across the open web at a price Sprout does not publish. Sentyment includes sentiment on every plan, including the free one.
How much does Sprout Social Listening cost?
Sprout does not publish a price for the Listening add-on. It is available on the Standard plan and above, and the only route to a figure is a demo. Budget for it on top of the per-seat cost, not inside it.
Does Sprout Social have a free plan?
No. There is a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, then a paid seat. Sentyment has a permanent free plan with 20 credits a month.
Can you pay for Sprout Social monthly instead of annually?
Yes, at a premium of roughly 20% to 25%. Monthly rates are $99 Essentials, $249 Standard, $399 Professional, and $499 Advanced, against annual rates of $79, $199, $299, and $399. Annual billing is taken as one upfront payment for the whole term, so it is a larger cheque rather than a smaller monthly one. Watch the collision at $399: annual Advanced and monthly Professional cost the same, and only Advanced has sentiment. For an enterprise platform that publishes nothing at all, see Sentyment vs. Brandwatch.
Can Sprout Social analyse a competitor's Instagram comments?
Not from the core plans, which reach your connected profiles plus X keyword searches. Instagram is not covered by brand keywords, so that job belongs to the Listening add-on. Sentyment analyses the comments on any public Instagram post URL for 5 credits, with no account connection and no add-on.
Conclusion
The price gap between these two measures a difference in category, not a bargain. Sprout is how a team runs its social presence, priced per seat from $79 to $399 on annual billing, with sentiment arriving at the top of that range and open-web listening sold separately by quote. Sentyment is $29 a month for sentiment on any public comment thread, with no seats and nothing else attached. Teams that run social accounts should buy Sprout, and will get their money back on the parts that have nothing to do with sentiment. The awkward case is the team that wants only the sentiment, because that team is buying a whole suite to reach one feature.