LinkedIn Tools: 16 Options Compared for 2026

LinkedIn is where most B2B pipeline conversations now start, and the tooling around it changed sharply over the last eighteen months. Several well known analytics products stopped operating, LinkedIn tightened what third party applications may access, and the products still standing are almost all the ones built on official API permissions rather than browser extensions that read the page.

This guide names sixteen tools across five categories, sets out the job each one is genuinely good at, and gives starting prices in USD taken from each vendor's own pricing page. Vulse is one of the tools listed. Where a different product is the better answer, that is what you will read here, because a list that recommends one vendor for every job helps nobody choose software.

Choose by the job, not the feature list

Most of these products overlap on paper and diverge sharply in practice. Start from the job you need done:

→ Write and format better posts as an individual: AuthoredUp, Taplio, Supergrow

→ Schedule across LinkedIn and other networks: Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social

→ Measure profile level reach and engagement for named people: Vulse, AuthoredUp

→ Run a programme across a team and prove its return: Vulse, DSMN8, Sociabble, EveryoneSocial, Oktopost

→ Benchmark company pages against competitors: Socialinsider, Sprout Social

→ Cover the basics at no cost: LinkedIn's own creator and page analytics

If you can name the job in one sentence, the shortlist usually writes itself. If you cannot, no tool will settle it for you.

What changed: the 2025 to 2026 shakeout

The LinkedIn analytics category is much smaller than it was two years ago, and the reason is architectural. A generation of tools read data by driving a logged in browser session. That approach worked while it was tolerated, and it stopped working when LinkedIn enforced its platform terms.

Shield. Shield Analytics was the default profile level LinkedIn analytics product from 2018 onwards, and it has wound down. Its own notice at shieldapp.ai says LinkedIn and Google made clear it could not continue operating as it was built, and that the founders chose not to contest it. For anyone still holding a Shield export, see Shield alternatives.

Aware. The product formerly at useaware.co has shut down. The domain now redirects to Taplio, on a page Taplio publishes as an Aware alternative after the shutdown.

Inlytics. Inlytics is no longer a standalone product either. inlytics.io now resolves to Taplio.

Keyhole. Worth correcting the version of this story doing the rounds: Keyhole still operates, and its social listening is now offered through Muck Rack alongside that company's PR intelligence. It remains a company page tool rather than a profile level one.

Kleo. Kleo shifted towards content discovery and inspiration, browsing what has worked for other people, rather than sustained analytics on your own profile.

The lesson for a buyer is simple. Ask where the data comes from before you ask what the dashboard looks like. A tool on LinkedIn's official Marketing Developer Platform API, holding the closed permissions for member social data and profile analytics, has a licence to do what it does. A tool reading the page is one enforcement decision from ending.

The sixteen tools at a glance

| Tool | Category | Best for | Key strength | Starting price (USD) |

| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Vulse | Employee advocacy and profile analytics | Teams measuring reach and participation per person | Profile level analytics through LinkedIn's official API, ISO 27001 certified | $18 per user/month, 1 to 10 seats, billed annually |

| Taplio | Content creation and personal branding | Solo creators and founders building an audience | Large post inspiration database plus AI drafting | $39/month |

| AuthoredUp | Drafting, formatting and post analytics | Individual writers and ghostwriters | Formatting, previews and post level metrics inside LinkedIn | $19.95/month |

| Supergrow | Content creation | Budget conscious solo creators | Lowest entry price for AI drafting and carousels | $19/month |

| Buffer | Multi platform scheduling | Small teams posting to several networks | Straightforward scheduling with a usable free tier | $5 per channel/month, free tier available |

| Hootsuite | Multi platform social management | Mid market social teams | Network breadth and a unified inbox | $99 per user/month, billed annually |

| Hootsuite Amplify | Employee advocacy add on | Existing Hootsuite customers | Advocacy inside a deployment you already run | Quote only, add on |

| Sprout Social | Enterprise social suite | Larger teams consolidating on one suite | Reporting depth and approval workflow | $79 per seat/month, billed annually |

| Sprout Social Employee Advocacy | Advocacy add on | Sprout customers adding advocacy | Curated share feed inside Sprout | Paid add on, Standard plan and above |

| Oktopost | B2B social management | Regulated B2B marketing teams | Campaign attribution into the CRM | Quote only |

| DSMN8 | Employee advocacy | Large advocacy programmes | Modular advocacy with unlimited admin seats | Quote only, annual contract |

| Sociabble | Employee communications and advocacy | Enterprise internal comms | Advocacy within a wider employee experience platform | Quote only |

| EveryoneSocial | Employee advocacy | Enterprise rollouts from 500 users upwards | One plan priced by registered users | Quote only |

| Socialinsider | Social analytics and benchmarking | Agencies benchmarking company pages | Competitive company page benchmarking | $83/month, billed annually |

| LinkedIn native tools | Publishing and basic analytics | Everyone, as a baseline | First party data at no cost | Free |

| Shield | Discontinued | Not applicable | Formerly the standard for profile level analytics | Discontinued |

Category one: content creation and drafting

Taplio

Taplio is the best known LinkedIn content tool and it deserves that position. The post inspiration database is large, the AI drafting is competent, and the workflow from idea to scheduled post is quick. For a founder building a personal audience it is a reasonable default.

Read the plan structure carefully, because the credit model does most of the work. Starter at $39 per month excludes AI and comment credits, so the post generator, draft improver, image generation and carousel generator sit behind the next tier. Growth at $69 per month adds 250 AI credits and 500 comment credits monthly, plus lead lists and organisation management. Pro at $199 per month lifts those ceilings. Annual billing brings the three to $32, $49 and $149. If you want the AI features, Growth is the real entry point.

Where it thins out is team use. Individual measurement across a group of colleagues, participation tracking and per person reporting to a budget holder are not what Taplio is built around. If that is your problem, see Taplio alternatives.

Supergrow

Supergrow is the value play in this category. Starter is $19 per month and Pro is $39 per month, with a teams plan at $139 per month covering four accounts and an enterprise tier for ten executives or more. Annual billing saves twenty per cent and there is a seven day trial. You get AI drafting, carousels and scheduling for roughly half the price of comparable Taplio functionality, with lighter analytics and team reporting as the trade.

AuthoredUp

AuthoredUp is a writing tool and an unusually good one. It works inside LinkedIn as an extension, giving you proper formatting controls, accurate previews across devices, a library of more than two hundred hooks and around a hundred and fifty CTA templates, side by side post comparison, reaction breakdowns and metrics that LinkedIn itself buries, including saves, sends, reach, profile views and followers gained. It can import your LinkedIn archive, which matters if you want history from before you signed up.

Pricing is per connected profile rather than per seat, so managers and ghostwriters do not consume a licence. Individual is $19.95 per month, or $16.63 per month billed annually. Business is $14.95 per profile per month with a three profile minimum, or $12.46 billed annually, and the custom growth plan starts at ten profiles. There is a fourteen day trial with no card, and company pages are unlimited on every plan.

For a single writer or a small ghostwriting operation, AuthoredUp is often the better buy than anything else here. Where teams outgrow it is set out in AuthoredUp alternatives.

Vulse

Vulse approaches drafting from the measurement side. It uses data-led drafting: post suggestions and tone guidance are shaped by what has performed for that specific person and team, drawn from their own historical reach and engagement. Content pillars, approvals and scheduling sit in the same place as the reporting, which is the point. If you want a tool purely to write faster on your own, AuthoredUp or Supergrow will feel more direct.

Category two: scheduling and publishing

Buffer

Buffer remains the cleanest answer for straightforward multi network scheduling. The free tier covers three channels, ten scheduled posts per channel and thirty days of insight history. Essentials is $5 per channel per month and Team is $10 per channel per month with unlimited team members, billed at $60 and $120 per channel per year. Approval workflows, custom permissions and branded reports are on the Team plan.

Buffer is a scheduler, not a LinkedIn analytics product. Profile level reporting across named colleagues is outside its scope.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite covers a wide set of networks with a unified inbox and bulk scheduling. Standard is $99 per user per month, Professional $199, Advanced $399, all billed annually, with a fourteen day trial and a custom enterprise tier. It suits a social team managing many brand accounts. It is expensive per seat for a LinkedIn only use case, and its LinkedIn depth is shallower than the specialists in this list.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the enterprise suite option. Essentials is $79 per seat per month billed annually, or $99 billed monthly. Standard is $199, Professional $299 and Advanced $399 per seat per month, with a custom enterprise tier and a thirty day trial. Reporting and approval workflows are strong and platform coverage is broad. Employee advocacy is a paid add on available on Standard and above.

LinkedIn native scheduling

LinkedIn now allows native scheduling from the composer for profiles and pages. It is free and it works, with no approval flow, bulk import or cross person reporting, so treat it as a starting point.

Category three: analytics and measurement

This is the category the shakeout hit hardest, and it is worth being precise about what kind of analytics you actually need. Company page analytics and profile level analytics are different problems.

Company page reporting is well served. LinkedIn's own page analytics are reasonable, and Socialinsider, Sprout Social and Hootsuite all report on pages and benchmark them against competitors.

Profile level analytics is the thin part. LinkedIn gives an individual member a rolling window of post analytics and some audience detail, and it gives an administrator almost nothing about the members of their own team. That is the specific gap Shield filled, and it is the gap that closed when Shield wound down.

Vulse

Vulse reports at the level of the individual person: reach per person, in network against out of network reach, engagement rate, posting consistency and participation across the team, held as history rather than a rolling window. That reporting is delivered through LinkedIn's official Marketing Developer Platform API, including the closed permissions required for member social data and profile analytics, and Vulse holds ISO 27001 certification. The analytics and reporting page covers the metric set in detail.

AuthoredUp

For post level depth on your own content, AuthoredUp is excellent: reaction breakdowns, correlation plots, CSV export, an analytics API and archive import. It is per profile rather than per programme, so aggregate reporting across thirty colleagues is not the job it is designed for.

Socialinsider

Socialinsider is a company page and competitive benchmarking tool. Adapt is $83 per month billed annually at $990 for twenty profiles, three months of history and one seat. Optimize is $124 per month, $1,490 annually, thirty profiles, six months of history and two seats. Predict is $199 per month, $2,390 annually, forty profiles, twelve months of history and five seats, with an enterprise tier and a fourteen day trial. Note the history limits if you need year on year comparison.

LinkedIn native analytics

Free, first party and the baseline everyone should read before buying anything. Thin at the individual level and effectively absent at the team level, which is why the rest of this category exists. Our fuller treatment sits at LinkedIn analytics tools.

Category four: employee advocacy and team programmes

Advocacy tools solve a different problem from content tools. The job is getting a group of people posting regularly, keeping it on message, and showing a budget holder what came of it.

Vulse

Vulse is built for LinkedIn specifically, which is the trade off to understand. If your programme spans six networks, look at the enterprise suites below. If LinkedIn is where the pipeline is, the depth is the advantage: per person reporting, team leaderboards, content pillars, approvals and multi profile management, all on official API permissions. Pricing is public and banded by seat count.

DSMN8

DSMN8 is a serious advocacy platform aimed at larger programmes, with modules for advocacy, executive influence, boosted posts and newsletters. Every package includes unlimited admin seats, onboarding, live in platform support and integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce and Marketo. Pricing is quote based on an annual contract, and DSMN8 states it typically begins at a few dollars per employee per month.

Sociabble

Sociabble positions advocacy inside a broader employee experience and internal communications platform. If your requirement is as much internal comms as it is social reach, that framing fits well. Pricing is quote based on company size, user count and the modules you select.

EveryoneSocial

EveryoneSocial targets large rollouts, quoting examples from five hundred person pilots to programmes above fifty thousand users. It sells a single plan priced by registered users on an annual term, with implementation, a named customer success manager, all integrations, SSO and SCIM included, and it lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and CCPA compliance. Pricing is quote only.

Oktopost

Oktopost is a B2B social management platform with advocacy alongside it. Its distinguishing strength is attribution: tying social activity to campaigns and pushing that into the CRM, which suits marketing operations teams. Pricing is by request.

Hootsuite Amplify

Amplify is Hootsuite's advocacy module, sold as an add on. Its argument is consolidation: if Hootsuite is already deployed, Amplify avoids a second vendor. Pricing is quote based on top of your Hootsuite licence.

Sprout Social Employee Advocacy

The same logic applies at Sprout. Employee Advocacy is a paid add on from the Standard plan upwards, giving employees a curated feed of approved content. Sensible if Sprout is already your suite, though compare per person measurement depth against a LinkedIn specialist.

Category five: LinkedIn's own tools

Before buying anything, use what is already there. Creator mode surfaces your topics and newsletter, native scheduling handles simple planning, and post analytics give an individual a rolling view of impressions, engagement and audience detail. LinkedIn has added an in network against out of network reach split that is useful for judging whether content travels beyond people who already know you.

The ceiling arrives in three places: history is limited, administrators get no view across their team's individual profiles, and there is no consolidated export for a board pack.

Official API access versus browser extensions

This distinction is worth understanding because it decides which of these tools will still be here in two years.

A browser extension runs inside your logged in LinkedIn session and reads what is on the screen. It can therefore reach data the API does not expose, which is why extension based tools often looked more capable. The cost is that it breaks whenever LinkedIn changes its markup and can be stopped by enforcement at any time. Shield's wind down notice shows what that ending looks like.

Official API access works the other way. A vendor applies for LinkedIn's Marketing Developer Platform, is reviewed, and is granted specific permissions. Member social data and profile analytics sit behind closed permissions that LinkedIn grants selectively. That is slower to obtain and narrower in scope, and it is durable. Vulse is built on those permissions, which is why its profile level reporting continued uninterrupted through the period that removed several competitors.

Where Vulse fits, and who should choose something else

Vulse is a LinkedIn employee advocacy and analytics platform for teams that need to measure individual performance and prove a return. It reports at person level through official API permissions, holds ISO 27001 certification, and publishes banded pricing.

Teams pricing, per user per month billed annually: $18 for 1 to 10 seats, $14 for 11 to 49, $10 for 50 to 99, and $6 at 100 seats and above. Billed monthly those become $24, $19, $13 and $8. In pounds sterling the annual bands are £16, £12, £8 and £5. A Personal plan is available at $21 per month, or $17 per month billed annually, and there is a free trial. Onboarding, training and every integration are included in each seat, seat bands start from a single seat, and Vulse publishes a price promise on its pricing page. Individuals can start on the Personal plan.

Choose something else when:

→ You are one person who mainly wants to write and format better: AuthoredUp

→ You want the largest content inspiration library and personal brand workflow: Taplio

→ Budget is the binding constraint on a solo account: Supergrow

→ You publish across six networks and LinkedIn is one of them: Buffer, Hootsuite or Sprout Social

→ You need competitor company page benchmarking: Socialinsider

→ You are rolling out to tens of thousands of employees across many channels with heavy internal comms requirements: EveryoneSocial, Sociabble or DSMN8

Buyer's checklist

Take this to any vendor demonstration:

→ Data source: which LinkedIn API permissions do you hold, and is any part of this an extension reading the page

→ Portability: can I export my full history, in what format, and on what notice

→ Historical depth: how far back does reporting go, and does it survive a plan change

→ Per person reporting: can I see reach and engagement for each named colleague, not just an aggregate

→ Participation: can I see who posted, who did not, and how that trends

→ Certification: ISO 27001 or SOC 2, and where is data hosted

→ Real price: what does this cost at my seat count on the plan that includes the features I demonstrated today

That last one catches the most budget surprises. Credit ceilings, add on advocacy modules and per channel multipliers all move the number between the pricing page and the invoice.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best LinkedIn tools in 2026? It depends on the job. For individual writing, AuthoredUp. For personal brand content at volume, Taplio. For budget conscious solo creators, Supergrow. For multi network scheduling, Buffer or Hootsuite. For team level employee advocacy and per person measurement on LinkedIn, Vulse. For enterprise programmes across many channels, DSMN8, Sociabble or EveryoneSocial.

What happened to Shield LinkedIn analytics? Shield has wound down. Its own notice states that LinkedIn and Google made clear it could not continue operating as it was built, and the founders chose not to contest that. Displaced users lost profile level reporting and their historical data.

Which LinkedIn tools use the official LinkedIn API? Vulse is built on LinkedIn's Marketing Developer Platform API, including the closed permissions for member social data and profile analytics. The enterprise advocacy platforms are also API based. Tools that operate as browser extensions, including AuthoredUp, work inside your LinkedIn session instead, which is a different architecture with different durability.

How much do LinkedIn tools cost? Entry level content tools run from about $19 to $39 per month for one person. Vulse Teams starts at $18 per user per month billed annually in the 1 to 10 seat band. Enterprise suites such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social start near $99 and $79 per seat per month. Enterprise advocacy platforms are quote based.

What is the best LinkedIn tool for a team rather than an individual? Look for seat management, an approval step, participation tracking and reporting for each named person. Most content tools are built for one account and report accordingly. Vulse, DSMN8, Sociabble, EveryoneSocial and Oktopost are built for groups.

Do I need a paid tool if LinkedIn has its own analytics? Not if you are one person checking recent posts. You do once you need history beyond LinkedIn's window, a view across colleagues' individual profiles, or an export for reporting.

Is Taplio or AuthoredUp better? Different jobs. Taplio is stronger for finding ideas, drafting at volume and lead workflows. AuthoredUp is stronger for formatting, previews and post level analytics on what you have already published.

Related reading

→ Shield alternatives

→ Taplio alternatives

→ AuthoredUp alternatives

→ LinkedIn analytics tools

→ Vulse analytics and reporting

→ Personal plan for individuals

→ Best employee advocacy tools

→ How to measure employee advocacy ROI: a practical framework

Prices on this page were checked on 10 August 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page.