TL;DR

Sprout Social:
$249-499/user/mo. Per-seat monthly.
FairPost:
$0.10-0.25/post. No subscription. Full features from day one.
The markup:
Sprout Social's pricing is a 500x markup over infrastructure cost ($0.005/post).

A Sprout Social alternative that charges what it costs.

Sprout Social charges $249-499/user/mo. The infrastructure to run social media scheduling — servers, APIs, storage, delivery — costs roughly $0.005/post. FairPost charges $0.10-0.25/post. No subscription. No seat limits. No annual contract.

Why people leave Sprout Social

Extremely expensive ($249 minimum per user)

Annual contracts expected

Price is prohibitive for small businesses

FairPost vs Sprout Social

FairPost Sprout Social
Pricing model Pay per use Per-seat monthly
Price $0.10-0.25/post $249-499/user/mo
Free tier Free actions included 30-day trial
Contract None Annual billing typical
Zero-usage month $0 Still charged
Feature gating All features included Features locked by tier
Infrastructure cost $0.005/post 500x markup

What it actually costs to run

The infrastructure cost for social media scheduling — servers, APIs, storage, delivery — is roughly $0.005/post. Sprout Social charges $249-499/user/mo. That's a 500x markup.

Fair charges $0.10-0.25/post — cost plus a small margin.

When to choose which

Choose Sprout Social if

Enterprise social media teams with big budgets

Choose FairPost if

You want social media scheduling without a subscription. FairPost charges $0.10-0.25/post. Use a lot? Pay a little more. Use nothing? Pay nothing. All features included from the first use.

Where Sprout Social gets expensive

  • $249/user/mo is among the most expensive in the category
  • Priced for enterprise, marketed to SMBs

Switch from Sprout Social. Keep the features. Lose the subscription.

FairPost — $0.10-0.25/post. No subscription. No seat pricing. No annual contract. Your first actions are free.

Try FairPost free → Full comparison

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Fair is the anti-subscription. 13 tools, one account, pay for what you use.