What is the best free social media scheduler?
Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 28 August 2026.
Three things get capped on a free scheduling plan and only one of them is usually advertised. The channel count is on the pricing page. The posts per channel is in the small print. Whether X is included at all is often neither, and for most founders reading this, X is the point.
That last one decides the ranking here, because a free plan with three channels that excludes the one you actually post to is not a free plan for you.
Our pick
A real free-forever plan: three channels, ten posts per channel, a hundred ideas, thirty days of analytics. The interface is the easiest here to learn and X is included. Per-channel pricing gets costly past six or eight channels, and team approvals need the pricier tier, but as a free plan nothing else is this straightforward.
What we judged on
- Whether X is included in the free plan
- How many channels, and how many posts per channel
- What the first paid tier costs when you outgrow it
- Whether self-hosting is a real option
Also worth it
Three social accounts free with unlimited workspaces, plus RSS automation on the lower tiers, and pay-per-account pricing that scales with actual usage. Read the free plan carefully: X is excluded from the three accounts, which for a lot of founders makes it a different offer than it looks.
If the job is writing threads rather than scheduling everywhere, this is the better tool and there is a real free tier to test it on. Fewer platforms than Buffer, with no Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest, and it is priced per social set, which reads oddly next to flat-fee rivals.
Not for this job
It is open source and self-hosting is free and unlimited, which is genuinely the cheapest way to do this at any volume. But there is no hosted free tier, only a seven-day trial, so if you were hoping to click sign up and post for nothing, that is a server you are about to rent instead.
Prices, side by side
| Tool | From | Free tier |
|---|---|---|
| Buffer | Free, then $5/mo | 3 channels, 10 posts/channel, 100 ideas, 1 user, 5 AI replies/week, 30-day analytics, free forever |
| Publer | Free, then $5/mo | 3 social accounts (excluding X), 1 user, 1 workspace, 10 posts/account, 25 drafts, free forever |
| Typefully | Free | 1 social set, limited posts/month (~10-15, unconfirmed), basic scheduling and API access |
| Postiz | From $29/mo | No hosted free plan, 7-day trial only; open-source version self-hosts free with your own server |
Read on 28 August 2026. Every price change we have recorded.
Questions people ask
Which free scheduler includes X?
Buffer includes X in its three free channels. Publer's free plan excludes X from its three accounts, which is the detail most comparisons of the two miss.
What is the cheapest paid scheduler?
Buffer and Publer both start at $5 a month. Buffer prices per channel and Publer per account, so which is cheaper depends entirely on how many places you post.
Is self-hosting a scheduler worth it?
Postiz is open source and free to self-host with unlimited use, so past roughly eight channels the arithmetic favours it. You are trading a subscription for a server, its updates, and being the person who fixes it when an API changes.
This is one question about post scheduling. See all 14 compared, or browse the other guides.
Some tools on this page pay us a commission if you sign up through our link. It costs you nothing extra and it does not decide the pick. Full disclosure.