If you want your Google reviews on your website, EmbedSocial and Elfsight are two of the names you keep running into. Both give you a copy-and-paste widget. They charge in very different ways, though, and they refresh your reviews at very different speeds. That second part matters more than most comparison pages admit: if a customer leaves a five-star review this morning, one of these tools can show it within hours and the other may take up to three days.
This page is a research comparison. We have not installed either widget on a client site yet; everything below comes from each company’s own pricing and help pages, checked on October 20, 2026. If you are still deciding whether you need a widget at all or a full review platform, start with our guide to review management software for small businesses.
EmbedSocial or Elfsight: the 30-second answer
Pick Elfsight if you have one website, one Google location and modest traffic: the Google Reviews app costs $5 a month billed yearly ($60 a year), the lowest paid price of the two. Pick EmbedSocial if new reviews need to appear quickly or you want Google reviews and social feeds under one plan: its paid plans start at $29 a month, sync every 3 hours, and include unlimited widgets.
| EmbedSocial | Elfsight (Google Reviews app) | |
|---|---|---|
| You pay for | Sources (1 Google location = 1 source) | One app, with caps on widgets and monthly views |
| Free plan | 1 source, 500 views/month, syncs every 24 hours | 1 widget, 200 views/month, Elfsight branding |
| Cheapest paid plan | Pro: $29/month (3 sources, 5,000 views) | Basic: $5/month billed yearly (3 widgets, 5,000 views) |
| How often new reviews are pulled | Every 3 hours on Pro and Pro Plus; every 30 minutes on Premium | 72-hour cache |
| Widgets | Unlimited on every plan | 1, 3, 9 or 21 depending on plan |
| Try before paying | 7-day free trial on paid plans (card verified, not charged) | Full refund within 14 days |
Prices checked October 20, 2026.
How each one bills you, and why it changes the math
The two companies count different things, so the cheapest tool depends on what you are embedding.
EmbedSocial charges by source. Its help center defines a source as one connected account, location or hashtag: one Google location is one source, one Facebook page is one source. Widgets do not count, so you can build a carousel for the homepage, a badge for the footer and a grid for a reviews page from the same Google location without paying more. The limits that scale are sources and monthly views.
Elfsight charges by app. The Google Reviews app is priced on its own, with a cap on widgets and on monthly views. If you also want reviews from other platforms, Elfsight sells a separate All-in-One Reviews app that starts at $10 a month billed yearly. Every Elfsight plan allows unlimited websites, which helps if you run more than one domain.
| EmbedSocial plan | Monthly price | Sources | Views/month | Review sync |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 500 | Every 24 hours |
| Pro | $29 | 3 | 5,000 | Every 3 hours |
| Pro Plus | $49 | 6 | 20,000 | Every 3 hours |
| Premium | $99 | 15 | 100,000 | Every 30 minutes |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Every 5 minutes |
EmbedSocial says yearly billing saves 20% but does not list yearly totals on the pricing page.
| Elfsight Google Reviews plan | Price (billed yearly) | Widgets | Views/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 200 |
| Basic | $5/month | 3 | 5,000 |
| Pro | $10/month | 9 | 50,000 |
| Premium | $20/month | 21 | 150,000 |
Elfsight also lists Enterprise tiers from $30 a month billed yearly. Its pricing page warns that going over the monthly view limit “will temporarily deactivate your app”, so pick a plan with room for your busiest month.
What a year costs in three common setups
These are our own calculations from the published prices above, using EmbedSocial’s monthly price (yearly billing would cut it by 20%) and Elfsight’s yearly price.
| Setup | EmbedSocial | Elfsight |
|---|---|---|
| One Google location, under 500 widget views a month | $0 (Free, 24-hour sync) | $0 (Free, 200 views) or $60 (Basic) |
| One location, about 4,000 views a month | $348 (Pro) | $60 (Basic) |
| Three locations, about 15,000 views a month | $588 (Pro Plus; Pro tops out at 5,000 views) | $120 (Pro) |
On price alone, Elfsight wins every paid scenario. What the extra money buys with EmbedSocial is faster syncing, unlimited widgets and the option to pull social feeds into the same plan.
Refresh speed: when does today’s review show up?
This is the biggest practical gap. Elfsight’s help center says its Google Reviews widget uses a 72-hour cache and checks your Google source for new reviews every 72 hours. If nothing appears after that, Elfsight asks you to contact support; it does not describe a manual refresh button.
EmbedSocial lists its sync speed by plan: every 24 hours on Free, every 3 hours on Pro and Pro Plus, every 30 minutes on Premium. Its help article adds that a review only syncs once it is published on Google, so a review still held by Google’s filters will not show up in either tool.
Why it matters for a service business: if you send review requests right after each job, the freshest reviews are the ones that convince the next caller. A three-day lag also confuses owners who check the site the same evening and assume the widget is broken. We cover that exact problem in why a Jobber website may not show new Google reviews.
Free plans compared
EmbedSocial Free is permanent and covers one Google Business Profile, 500 views a month and a 24-hour sync. Setup means creating an account and connecting the Google account that manages your listing, so you need owner or manager access to the profile. One inconsistency to know about: the free widget page says it collects up to 500 reviews, while its FAQ says the free widget shows the latest 5 reviews. Check what you see after connecting before you design a page around it.
Elfsight Free gives you one widget with 200 views a month and Elfsight branding. A small site with a few visitors a day can burn through 200 views quickly, after which the widget is switched off until the month resets.
If you only need a handful of reviews on one page and you can live with a daily refresh, EmbedSocial’s free plan is the more usable of the two. On a Squarespace Basic plan neither widget will run; see how to add Google reviews to Squarespace for a free workaround.
Where each tool falls short
- EmbedSocial: the jump from free to $29 a month is steep for a one-location business. Pro’s 5,000-view cap means a busy site may need Pro Plus at $49. The free plan’s review count is stated two different ways on its own site.
- Elfsight: the 72-hour cache is the main weakness. Reviews from other platforms need the separate All-in-One app. The low view caps on Free and Basic deactivate the widget when exceeded, and paid plans are shown billed yearly.
If you are weighing Elfsight against a cheaper WordPress-first option instead, read our Trustindex vs Elfsight comparison, which runs the same three-year cost math.
Which one should a local service business choose?
- Solo operator or small crew, one location, simple site: Elfsight Basic at $60 a year, if a 72-hour delay is acceptable. Start on EmbedSocial Free if you get under 500 views a month and want reviews to show the next day.
- You send review requests after every job and want them visible fast: EmbedSocial Pro, which syncs every 3 hours.
- Several locations or a busy site: Elfsight Pro ($120 a year, 50,000 views) is far cheaper; EmbedSocial Pro Plus ($49 a month) is the choice if fast sync and unlimited widgets matter more.
- You also want Instagram or Facebook feeds on the site: EmbedSocial, because one plan covers social sources and reviews.
A widget only displays reviews. If you also need to send review requests and reply from one inbox, compare full platforms in the reviews and reputation hub.
How we put this comparison together
We read each company’s pricing page and help articles on October 20, 2026 and built the cost table from those published prices. We have not run either widget on a live site for this page, so we do not score them. Our full process is on the how we test page.
Sources
- EmbedSocial: Pricing
- EmbedSocial help: what is a source and how sources are counted
- EmbedSocial: free Google reviews widget
- EmbedSocial help: how to generate and embed Google reviews
- Elfsight: Google Reviews pricing
- Elfsight: All-in-One Reviews pricing
- Elfsight help: why my reviews are not being updated
