5 Free and Paid Social Media Analytics Tools

1. Google Analytics

We can’t talk about analytics without talking about Google Analytics, and it’s our top choice because it’s powerful and free. Most people think of Google Analytics as a tool to analyse website performance, but it also holds a lot of information about social media.

Using Google Analytics, you can tell how a user is interacting with your site, with details like pages-per-session and average session duration. This is Universal Analytics language. Universal Analytics was fully replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and as of July 2024, users can no longer access UA properties at all. The specific reports named are outdated:

Here are some other examples of what Google Analytics can tell you about social media:

• What social media platform is bringing the highest number of visitors to your website, by displaying sources of social media traffic.
• Goals Completion information, which allows you to assign goals for your social media posts, and then analyse the completion of those goals.
• Number of conversions from your social media posts.
• Number of assisted social media conversions.

With all that data available, and the right price (free), it’s no wonder it’s Number One.

2. CoSchedule

Source: CoSchedule

We like CoSchedule for its in-depth post analysis that can be a benefit to all types and sizes of business. This tool analyses the performance of social media posts to recommend improvements.

For instance, CoSchedule will analyse your social media data and let you know the best day and best time to post, as well as the best type of content to post. It will also provide information on:

• Engagement with your social media posts.
• The performance of a campaign across multiple platforms.
• The performance of your business across various social media channels.
• How many times a link has been shared.

CoSchedule offers a free 14-day trial, followed by various pricing plans depending on whether the plan is for an individual, a business, or an agency, and on the size of the business. It requires a credit card and now has a permanent free “Calendar” tier that didn’t exist in 2018.

3. Hootsuite

We would be remiss if we discussed social media analytics and didn’t have Hootsuite on the list. Hootsuite is one of the most established analytics services around, and it supports all major social networks like Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and Threads (plus Bluesky, which was added in 2025).

Hootsuite provides a central dashboard view for every social media platform and gives you basic information like number of followers, traffic, and growth rates. It then digs into more granular information such as demographics of followers and geography.

It will filter results in a variety of ways, such as by location, keywords or hashtags, and gives you a snapshot of what’s being said about your brand, for instance, or your industry.

Hootsuite will also measure the impact of a campaign, including measurement of conversions by social media platform and return on investment between owned and paid media.

It offers a free 30-day trial and then has a variety of price ranges, again depending on the business and its size.

4. Cyfe

Source: Cyfe

Cyfe is another powerful analytics tool that you can try out for free. This business dashboard syncs data from a wide number of marketing tools. It has multiple integrations and dashboards that cover advertising, monitoring, emails, Search Engine Optimisation, sales and web analytics, as well as social media analytics.

For social media, Cyfe will give you real-time data on how your brand is doing across 15+ platforms, including Facebook Ads and Facebook Pages, Instagram, X, LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Vimeo, to name a few. It also measures the return on investment of your social efforts.

Cyfe will give you statistics like followers and engagement, while also monitoring things like top-performing posts. Cyfe also provides a great view of your social media analytics with dashboards that allow easy reporting and sharing on the performance of your business on social media.

5. Iconosquare

Source: Iconosquare

There are also tools built for marketers who want analytics as the main event rather than an add-on to a scheduler. If deep, visual reporting on a focused set of platforms is your priority, this is where a specialist shines.

Iconosquare is an analytics-first social media platform that goes deep on the visual and short-form networks most brands care about today. It supports eight networks such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, X (Twitter), Pinterest, Threads, and YouTube, and was one of the earliest tools to integrate TikTok analytics. 

Rather than just counting followers, Iconosquare helps you understand what’s actually working. It will show you things like:

• Engagement, reach, impressions, and average reach rate on a per-post basis, so you can see which content earns attention.
• Dedicated Stories analytics for Instagram, measuring reach and impressions on ephemeral content, the kind of temporary-content tracking Snaplytics used to specialise in.
• The best times to post, plus hashtag effectiveness and follower demographics.
• Competitor tracking and industry benchmarks, so you can compare your results against your industry rather than guessing.
• Automated, customisable, brandable reports that are handy if you’re reporting to clients or a manager.

On pricing, it fits nicely into a “free and paid” list. Iconosquare offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and after the trial you can drop down to a free plan covering one user and two social profiles with basic analytics and limited reporting. Paid plans start at around $39/month and scale up for larger teams and agencies.

If your focus is on a handful of key visual platforms – especially Instagram and TikTok – and you want reporting depth over a giant network count, Iconosquare is a strong pick.

Final Thoughts

Social media data only becomes valuable at the point where you can interpret it and act on it. Each tool in this list solves that problem from a different angle, which is why the right pick depends on your situation rather than any universal ranking.

If you want capability at zero cost, Google Analytics remains the strongest starting point. If you manage several platforms at once, a centralised dashboard like Hootsuite will save you more time than any single-platform tool.

Businesses that need reporting beyond social will get more mileage from a broader dashboard such as Cyfe. Teams concentrating on one channel are usually better served by a specialist tool built for it.

Whatever you choose, the objective stays constant: turning raw engagement numbers into decisions you can defend to your stakeholders. A tool that surfaces data you never act on is a subscription, not an advantage.

That gap between measuring and acting is where most social media efforts stall, and it is a strategy problem rather than a tooling one. Master this through Equinet Academy’s Social Media Marketing Strategy & Optimisation course, where you will learn to set objectives, select metrics that map to real business outcomes, and optimise campaigns based on what your analytics are actually telling you.

Now that you know which tools to use, this course teaches you the framework for using them well.