Cheeky Merlin vs Sprout Social

Sprout Social prices per seat ($79-$399/seat/mo), so cost multiplies with team size. Cheeky Merlin's Studio plan is $299/mo flat with your whole team included. But cheaper is the wrong question if you need what Sprout does — they are not substitutes for each other, and plenty of agencies will sensibly run both.

No, and it isn't trying to. Sprout is a dedicated social platform with listening, a unified inbox and deep cross-network analytics; Merlin has none of those. Merlin includes a content calendar with client approvals as a supporting tool, and publishing to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Google Business is pending each platform's app review. If social is the job, Sprout is the better buy.

It works on the stage before the audience exists. Merlin scores a predicted conversion rate before a client's budget is committed, sources and scores real prospects against their ideal customer profile, builds the landing page those prospects arrive on, answers the inbound enquiries with real research, and then checks its own prediction against what actually happened. Sprout does not attempt any of that, which is not a criticism — it is a different product.

So cost doesn't multiply every time you add a team member. Studio is $299/mo flat and Agency is $499/mo flat, both with team seats included — hiring a coordinator changes your bill by nothing. What scales instead is active clients, which is the thing that actually costs us anything to run.