Facebook Analytics Tools Compared: Native, Paid and API

November 8, 2026

Facebook analytics tools fall into three groups: Meta's own insights for Pages you manage, paid dashboards that add reports and competitor tracking, and APIs you build on. This guide compares them with prices from each vendor's own page, and shows the formulas they all use, so you can check their numbers.

First: owned data versus public data

Reach, impressions and audience details exist only for Pages you manage. Meta's Page Insights API needs a Page token from a person who can perform the ANALYZE task on the Page Insights reference. No outside tool can show another Page's reach. For competitors, every tool works from public numbers: followers, posts, reactions, comments, shares and video views.

Meta also says that "By June 15, 2026, a number of the Page Insights metrics will be deprecated for all API versions" source. If an older dashboard has gaps, that may be why.

The tools

Tool	Starting price (vendor page)	Good at
Meta Business Suite and Page Insights	Built into Meta's tools	Your own reach, impressions and audience
Sprout Social	Essentials $79 per seat a month billed yearly; competitor reports from Professional at $299 pricing	Teams that also need publishing, inbox and approvals
Hootsuite	Standard from $99 per user a month, benchmarking up to 5 competitors; Professional $199, up to 20 plans	Large teams with many networks
Metricool	Free plan with 1 brand, 5 competitor profiles, 30 days of analytics; Starter from $20 a month billed yearly pricing	Small businesses and freelancers
Socialinsider	Adapt $82 a month, up to 20 accounts, 14-day trial pricing	Benchmarking and agency reports
Fanpage Karma	Free plan with 5 owned and 5 competitor profiles; Professional 29 euros a month billed yearly plans	Cheap competitor dashboards
Rival IQ	Drive $239 a month for 10 companies, 14 days free pricing	Competitive benchmarking across networks
Social data API	Per call	Custom dashboards, many Pages, your own warehouse

The free plans from Metricool and Fanpage Karma are worth trying before you pay for anything.

The formulas behind the dashboards

Tools label these differently. Ask which one a number uses.

Engagements per post = reactions + comments + shares. Some tools add clicks, which you only have for your own Page.
Engagement rate by followers = engagements / followers x 100. Works for any Page, so it is what competitor reports use.
Engagement rate by reach = engagements / reach x 100. More accurate, own Pages only.
Video view rate = views / followers. A rough reach proxy for reels.
Follower growth rate = (followers now - followers then) / followers then x 100.

Use medians over the last 20 to 30 posts rather than averages. One viral post can double an average.

Questions to ask before you buy

How far back does competitor history go when you add a new Page? Some tools start counting only from the day you add it.
Do competitor accounts count toward your account limit?
Can you export raw post-level data, or only charts and PDFs?
Which engagement formula does the tool use, and can you change it?

How to pick

Only your own Page: Meta's native insights are enough for most people.
You also publish and reply from the tool: Sprout Social or Hootsuite, where analytics is one part of a suite.
Mostly benchmarking: Socialinsider, Rival IQ, Fanpage Karma or Metricool.
Hundreds of Pages, custom metrics, or data in your own database: an API. You build the dashboard, but you pay per call and own the numbers.

How to do it with ScrapeIO

For the public side, the Facebook profile API gives followers for any Page and the Facebook profile posts API gives each post's likes, comments, shares and created_at, enough for every formula above except the reach-based ones. Add the Facebook profile videos API for reel views. A 10-Page weekly benchmark is a few dozen calls. You can also compare tools on our social media data API roundup.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

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