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Free Social Media Scheduler: Plans Compared

By The PostReach team. Published . Updated . More posts

Drafted with AI help. The PostReach team checked the facts on 5 November 2026.

PostReach cover on a mint green background with the words: Free schedulers: plans compared.
In this post

The free social media scheduler we’d try first is Buffer’s free plan: 3 accounts, 10 scheduled posts per account at any one time, with LinkedIn and X included. Publer and Social Champ also give 3 accounts but leave out X, Metricool gives 1 brand and 20 posts a month without LinkedIn or X, and PostReach, our own product, gives 2 accounts with no card. Most free plans stop at 3 accounts, so 5 accounts that include LinkedIn cost US$12 to $30 a month on these tools. All checked 5 November 2026.

If you don’t need X or Pinterest, look at Social Champ too. It holds 15 scheduled posts rather than 10, and its comparison table ticks a social inbox and first-comment scheduling on Free. If you only post to Facebook and Instagram, Meta Business Suite may be all you need.

What “free” means in a scheduler

Four limits decide whether a free plan works for you. Each quote below was read on the vendor’s page on 5 November 2026.

Accounts. Buffer, Publer and Social Champ each allow 3. Metricool counts brands, and one brand holds “1 profile for each social network or ad platform”, so its free plan can hold more than 3 accounts, as long as each is on a different network and none is LinkedIn or X.

Posts. There are two kinds of limit, and they feel different. Buffer, Publer and Social Champ limit how many posts wait in the queue at any one time, and a slot comes back when a post goes out. Metricool limits you to “up to 20 posts per month” in total. As an example, if you post 3 times a week to one account, 10 slots let you plan a little over 3 weeks ahead and 15 slots let you plan 5 weeks. Metricool’s 20 is about 5 posts a week across the whole brand, and its pricing page doesn’t say whether one post sent to two networks counts once or twice.

History. Buffer keeps 30 days of insights on Free, and Metricool 30 days of analytics. Publer says “we will store the published posts on our servers for only 24 hours”.

Networks. A plan with 3 accounts is no use if one of them is on a network it leaves out. Publer says plainly: “You cannot connect Twitter / X accounts in the free version.”

Free plans compared

Read on each vendor’s own page on 5 November 2026. Free plans change often, so check before you build a routine around one.

Plan Accounts Scheduled posts Left out AI agent (MCP)
Buffer Free 3 channels, 1 user 10 per channel at a time Approvals, reports, notes, first-comment scheduling, channel groups, hashtag manager, custom video covers Yes, “included on every plan”
Publer Free 3 accounts, no X, 1 user, 1 workspace 10 per account at a time, plus 25 saved drafts X, and analytics and MCP, which sit on Business No. Business and Enterprise only
Social Champ Free 3 accounts, 1 user 15 at a time X, Pinterest, WhatsApp Business, approvals Yes, its comparison table ticks MCP access on Free
Metricool Free 1 brand, with no LinkedIn or X 20 a month Approvals and team management, which start on Advanced Yes, with “Limits may apply”
Meta Business Suite No limit stated. Needs a business portfolio No post-count limit stated Every network outside Meta. Approvals not stated None stated
PostReach, in early access First 2 accounts, no card. Unlimited people No charge per post, within safeguards Social listening, an inbox, ad management, and X without a card Needed. Your AI agent does the drafting

Free without a plan: scheduling on the networks themselves

You may not need a tool at all. These are the limits on each network’s own help pages, checked 5 November 2026.

Where How far ahead Catches
Facebook Page, in Business Suite “between 20 minutes and 29 days away” You need Facebook or Task access to the Page
Instagram app “up to 30 days in advance” “up to 25 posts a day”, public accounts only. Product tagging, collaborative posts, sponsored posts and fundraisers don’t work with scheduling
Instagram, in Business Suite Not stated on the pages we read Scheduling is offered, but we found no day or post limit
LinkedIn profile “between 10 minutes and 3 months from the current time” Events and jobs can’t be scheduled
LinkedIn company Page “between an hour from the current time to three months” Super admin or content admin only. “You can’t schedule events, multiple photos, reshares, polls, jobs, and service posts”
X, in X Pro Not stated “allows you to schedule posts in advance”. Long posts: “Currently you cannot save a draft or schedule a longer post on web.”
X, in the Ads composer Not stated Covers scheduled posts in your ads account
X, normal composer Not confirmed We didn’t find an X help page that describes it

The price of this route is your time. You open a different tool for each network, and there’s no single calendar. For a shop with one Instagram and one Facebook Page, that can be fine. Our notes on scheduling Instagram from an AI chat and scheduling LinkedIn the same way show the route if you’d rather not open each app.

What the free plans leave out

Again, as read on 5 November 2026.

Approval. On Buffer, approval workflows are “No” on Free and Essentials. On Metricool they start on Advanced. On Social Champ, the free plan has 1 user, so there’s no one to approve. If a second person has to check posts, a free plan on these tools won’t enforce it.

A second login. Buffer, Publer and Social Champ give you 1 user on Free. Metricool lists team and client management from Advanced.

Failed-post handling. The pricing pages we read, free or paid, don’t say what happens when a post fails. Test it: remove a tool’s access in the network’s settings before a post is due, and see whether anything tells you.

Not the calendar. Buffer lists a “Visual content calendar” on Free, and Social Champ a full month view. Don’t assume other features follow.

Extra accounts. This is the catch people miss. On Buffer, “you will pay for each channel” once you upgrade, “including any channels you had while on the Free plan”. On Social Champ’s pay-per-profile plans, “the subscription cost applies to every connected account, including the three initially used on the Free tier”. So a fourth account on Buffer doesn’t cost one channel’s price. It costs 4 x $6 = $24 a month.

What it costs once you outgrow free

One user, per month, on the lowest plan that fits, checked 5 November 2026. “Monthly” means billed month to month. “Yearly” means the monthly rate when you pay for a year. Buffer and Social Champ show “$” with no currency code; Publer, Metricool and PostReach state US dollars.

Tool and plan 5 accounts 10 accounts 30 accounts
Buffer Essentials $30 monthly, $25 yearly $60 monthly, $50 yearly $135 monthly. Yearly not stated
Publer Professional, yearly $16 $28.80 $86.40
Social Champ Starter $25 monthly, $20 yearly $50 monthly, $40 yearly $120 monthly, $90 yearly
Metricool Starter $25 monthly, $20 annual $25 or $20, at most 5 per network $25 or $20 at most 5 per network. $45 or $36 at most 10
PostReach, launch price, billed monthly US$12 US$32 US$82

The arithmetic:

  • Buffer: (10 x $6) + (15 x $4) + (5 x $3) = $135 for 30 channels. Its own example table stops at 25 and 50, so the yearly figure for 30 isn’t stated.
  • Social Champ: (10 x $5) + (10 x $4) + (10 x $3) = $120 monthly, and (10 x $4) + (10 x $3) + (10 x $2) = $90 yearly, by its per-account bands. Its Standard bundle covers 10 accounts for $29 + (4 x $5) = $49 monthly, with 2 people. A Halloween offer runs until 9 November 2026, and we couldn’t tell whether these prices already include it.
  • Metricool: X adds “$10/month per connected account”. We read the first price block as annual, because that’s the default tab. The page doesn’t label it.
  • Publer: the calculator shows these yearly-billed figures. Switch it to monthly to see that price. “For every 9 social accounts, the 10th one is free.”
  • PostReach: the first 2 stay free. So 3 x US$4 = US$12, then 8 x US$4 = US$32, then US$32 + (20 x US$2.50) = US$82. The launch price stays for as long as you stay subscribed. List prices are US$5 and US$3 in those bands.

For Later, Hootsuite and the wider field, see our priced list of schedulers for small business.

Free trials aren’t free plans

These tools have no free plan, only a trial, and a trial can end in a bill. If Sprout’s the one you’re weighing, we go further in Sprout Social alternatives for small teams. Checked 5 November 2026:

Tool Trial Card? 5 accounts 10 accounts 30 accounts
Later, yearly billing 14 days Not stated on their pages $18.75, one per network $37.50, at most 2 per network $60, at most 4 per network
Hootsuite, annual billing 14 days Not stated. “regular billing begins and you’ll be charged” unless you cancel first $99 $99 $199
Sprout Social, annual billing 30 days “No credit card required” $79 $299 $299
Postiz 7 days Yes: “Starting a trial requires a payment method” $29, or $23 yearly $39, or $31 yearly $49, or $39 yearly
SocialBee 14 days “no credit card” $29, or $24 yearly $49, or $40.80 yearly $114, or $95 yearly

Sprout Social and SocialBee show “$” with no currency code. SocialBee’s 30 is its Pro plan ($99, 25 profiles) plus one set of 5 profiles ($15). Its page says add-ons are bought in the app, and we didn’t check that one can be added to Pro. Its Pro50 plan is $179 monthly or $149 yearly.

Postiz also has a route that costs no subscription: it’s open source, under AGPL-3.0, and you can host it yourself. Its docs are frank about the difference from the hosted service. On cloud, “There is no free plan”. Self-hosted, you get every feature, but for network developer apps “You register each one and supply keys”, and support is “Community Discord, no guaranteed response”. Free software, then, plus a server and your own time.

PostReach: first 2 accounts free, then US$4 an account

PostReach hasn’t launched, so this describes the plan as published. Your first 2 accounts are free, forever, with no card, on the pricing we publish. After that it’s US$4 an account a month up to 10, and US$2.50 from 11 to 50, at launch prices.

What you get on the free accounts. Posting to Instagram professional accounts, Facebook Pages or LinkedIn, drafted by your own AI agent. A named person approves each exact post, and it’s on record. There’s no charge per person, per workspace or per post, apart from X. You also get the calendar, and analytics where each network shares figures. If a post can’t go out, it gets up to 3 tries, and you get an email if it stops.

What you don’t get. PostReach writes nothing and runs no AI, so you need an AI agent. There’s no social listening, no ad management and no unattended mode, and the inbox isn’t here yet. YouTube and TikTok aren’t open, and Threads, Pinterest and Bluesky have no date. LinkedIn connections last 60 days and need reconnecting: we email 7 days before and on the day. A card is needed for a third account and before any X account, and X posts are charged at X’s published rates with no markup: US$0.015 a post, or US$0.20 with a link, under a monthly limit that starts at US$10 and that you can change. If you don’t use an AI agent, Buffer’s or Social Champ’s free plan will suit you better.

Solo and watching costs? Our page for solopreneurs shows how it fits into a working week.

Using a free plan with the AI agent you already have

Two free tiers can meet here, and both have limits worth knowing (checked 5 November 2026).

On the scheduler’s side. Buffer includes MCP on Free. Metricool says it “works with any Metricool plan, including the free account”, with your plan’s limits. Social Champ’s table ticks it on Free. Publer keeps it for Business and Enterprise. PostReach works with any AI agent that can add a remote MCP server. Developers looking at the servers themselves can see which ones publish in LinkedIn and Instagram MCP servers compared.

On the agent’s side. Anthropic says custom connectors work on every Claude plan, but “Free users are limited to one custom connector”. So if your scheduler uses that one, there’s no room for another. OpenAI’s article says “Custom MCP server connections and full MCP support are available for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise/Edu customers on ChatGPT web”, and that Pro users can connect custom servers only “with read/fetch permissions”, which isn’t enough to publish. It says nothing about Free, Go or Plus. Ready-made connectors may work differently, so check the scheduler’s own instructions for your plan.

An agent can draft and move posts, but it can’t take responsibility for them. We cover where that line sits in what an AI agent can and can’t do as a social media manager.

When to move off free

Stay free until one of these happens:

  • You add an account past the limit: a fourth on Buffer, Publer or Social Champ, a third on PostReach.
  • You need X. Publer, Social Champ and Metricool all need a paid plan or add-on for it.
  • You keep hitting the queue limit. If you want more than 3 or 4 weeks planned on one account, slots run out.
  • A second person needs a login, or has to sign off posts.
  • You want more than 30 days of figures, or a report to send a client.
  • Posting has become a chore. If juggling limits is why you’ve stopped, a few dollars a month is the smaller cost. We make that case in why complexity is the enemy of consistent growth.

Before paying, work out the full bill and not the headline rate, using the table above. Remember that on Buffer and Social Champ’s per-profile plans, your free accounts stop being free.

FAQ

Is any free scheduler really unlimited?

No plan here is both free and unlimited across networks. Meta Business Suite states no post-count limit for Pages, but it only covers Meta’s networks. Buffer caps the queue at 10 per channel, Publer at 10 and Social Champ at 15. Self-hosted Postiz has no plan limits, but you run it. All checked 5 November 2026.

Can I schedule Instagram posts for free?

Yes. The Instagram app schedules reels, photos and carousels on public accounts, up to 25 posts a day and 30 days ahead (checked 5 November 2026). Buffer’s free plan publishes automatically to business and creator accounts, while personal profiles only get reminders. Metricool Free and Publer Free also cover Instagram.

Which free plans work with X?

Buffer’s free plan lists X profiles for automatic publishing. Publer, Social Champ and Metricool leave X out of their free plans. On PostReach, an X account needs a card and costs US$0.015 a post, or US$0.20 with a link. X Pro also schedules posts. All checked 5 November 2026.

What happens to my free accounts if I upgrade?

On Buffer and on Social Champ’s per-profile plans, you start paying for them. Buffer’s FAQ says you pay for each channel, including those from the free plan. Social Champ’s says the same. On PostReach, the first 2 stay free, so 5 accounts cost 3 x US$4 = US$12 a month at launch prices (checked 5 November 2026).

Sources

All read on 5 November 2026.

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