There are more than fifty schedulers and most lists of them are written to be ranked, not read. This one is written by a company that sells one of them, so take the obvious bias into account: Preflight appears where it belongs, and the tools that beat it for a given job are named as the pick for that job.
Prices are monthly billing in October 2026, from each vendor's own page; "8 channels" means one brand on eight networks.
The twelve, in one table
| Tool | 8 channels / month | Free plan | API | MCP | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer | $48 | 3 channels | GraphQL, all plans | All plans | Free-plan API, Substack Notes, native apps |
| Preflight | $13 | 3 channels | REST, Pro+ | Pro+, with validate_post | Checking posts first; Discord, Telegram, Mastodon, Bluesky; big video; EU |
| Publer | ~$33 | 3 accounts | Yes | Beta | Cheap per-account pricing, WordPress, Telegram |
| Metricool | $25 (+$10 per X account) | 1 brand | Advanced | All plans | Analytics |
| Postiz | $39 | self-host | Yes | Yes, with CLI | Open source, 30+ channels, agents |
| PostFast | €29 | no | All plans | All plans | Flat plans with seats, Google Business |
| Post Bridge | $39 | 5 posts | Paid | Paid; in ChatGPT and Claude directories | API-first, assistant integrations |
| Later | $25 | no | no | no | Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest visual planning |
| SocialBee | $49 | no | no | no | Content categories and evergreen recycling |
| Kontentino | €69 | no | no | no | Agency approvals and client workflow |
| Hootsuite | $99 per user | no | Partner | Per product | Listening, enterprise permissions, SSO |
| Typefully | ~$12.50 | yes | Yes | Yes | Writing for X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky; no video networks |
By what you need
Creators posting video to many networks
Pick: Preflight. Flat $13 for eight channels, video to 2 GB with resumable uploads, YouTube publishes at the minute, and the post is checked against TikTok's frame rate, Instagram's JPEG and ratio rules and YouTube's byte count before it leaves. The gaps: X is text-only and there is no native app.
Runner-up: Buffer, if you want X with media and a native app, at about three times the price.
Small agencies with clients who approve posts
Pick: Kontentino if the budget allows €149 for Standard, where approvals live; it is the most complete client workflow in the category.
Pick: Preflight Pro at $24 otherwise: approval links that need no client account, account presets per client, per-channel posting schedules, a printable monthly report, three seats; Studio at $64 for sixty channels and ten seats.
Communities on Discord and Telegram
Pick: Preflight or Postiz. They are the only two hosted tools that post to Discord channels natively, and both do Telegram, Mastodon and Bluesky with those networks' own options. Preflight is cheaper hosted; Postiz is open source with more channels.
Analytics first
Pick: Metricool. The best reporting at the price, with scheduling attached. Note the X add-on at $10 per account.
Developers and AI assistants
Pick: Buffer for an API on a free plan; Postiz for open source with a CLI; Preflight for a REST API with scopes, idempotency keys, webhooks and an MCP server with validate_post; Post Bridge for the ChatGPT and Claude directory listings; Ayrshare if the API is the whole product and the budget starts at $149.
Writers on X, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky
Pick: Typefully. Built for text, with the best writing experience and MCP; no Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
Evergreen content on a loop
Pick: SocialBee. Categories, recycling, queues per category. No API.
Enterprise
Pick: Hootsuite or Sprout Social: listening, SSO, permissions, support contracts. Nothing on the rest of this list competes there.
Things that changed in 2025 and 2026
- X's API went pay-per-use in February 2026: $0.015 per post and $0.20 per post containing a link, billed to the tool. Later and Hypefury dropped X; Metricool doubled its X add-on; Vista Social charges $29; most others absorb it for now.
- MCP servers became standard between May and September 2026: Buffer, Metricool, Postiz, PostFast, Post Bridge, Blotato, Ayrshare, Mixpost, Typefully, SocialPilot, ZoomSphere and Preflight all have one.
- Buffer added Substack Notes in September 2026, the first scheduler to do so.
- Vista Social dropped its free plan and $39 tier; its entry is now $99.
- Hootsuite re-tiered, raising Advanced from $249 to $399.
- Postiz grew from about $21,000 to $145,000 MRR between March and July 2026 on an "agentic" repositioning.
How to test one in an afternoon
- Connect your three hardest networks: TikTok, Instagram and whichever community network you use.
- Post a 120 fps phone video, a PNG, and a caption with 31 hashtags and six emoji. See whether the tool stops you before upload or tells you afterwards.
- Schedule something for ten minutes from now and watch whether it arrives at the minute.
- Try to reconnect an account and see whether the tool keeps the account's history or starts over.
- Read the price page with your actual number of channels and people.
Prices from each vendor's pricing page on 5 October 2026. Corrections to [email protected]; the row will be changed with a new date.
Questions people ask
- What is the cheapest social media scheduler for 8 channels in 2026?
- Preflight Starter at $13 a month. Metricool and Later are $25, PostFast €29, Publer about $33, Postiz and Post Bridge $39, Buffer $48, Hootsuite $99.
- Which schedulers have a free plan?
- Buffer, Preflight, Publer and Metricool (three channels or one brand); Typefully for one social set; Post Bridge for five posts a month. Later, Hootsuite, SocialBee, PostFast, Kontentino and Postiz's hosted service have none.
- Which schedulers have an MCP server?
- As of autumn 2026: Buffer, Metricool, Postiz, PostFast, Post Bridge, Blotato, Ayrshare, Mixpost, Typefully, SocialPilot, ZoomSphere, Vista Social (beta), Publer (beta) and Preflight.