Best social media scheduling tools
Every scheduler can queue a post. What separates them is how many of your networks they reach, how quickly you can fill a month of calendar, what happens to the replies once a post is live, and what the bill looks like when you add a few more accounts. This list is ordered on those four things.
Who wrote this
Optimate publishes this page, so treat it as a vendor's list rather than an independent review. We've tried to earn the read by ranking on fit rather than on who's paying for the page — Optimate isn't first on every list here, and where a competitor is the better answer we say so and link you to them.
How this list is ordered
Ranked for a business or agency posting to roughly 5–15 accounts: network coverage, calendar and bulk-scheduling tools, whether comments come back into the same tool, and the monthly cost at ten accounts. Prices quoted are from each vendor's published pricing (Postiz's from the price list in its open-source code); tools we haven't verified get positioning only.
Pricing checked 25 August 2026. Tools without a figure are ones we haven’t verified directly — check their site rather than trust a number we didn’t read ourselves.
Number 1: Optimate
Free plan · Pro £29/mo · Studio £59/mo · Agency £135/moBest for: Publishing to every major network, with replies and stats in the same place
One calendar for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, Google Business, Bluesky and Mastodon, with drag-and-drop rescheduling, CSV bulk upload, a preview for each platform and an Instagram grid view. Comments from YouTube, Google Business, Bluesky, X, Facebook, Instagram (through a Facebook Page) and Threads come back into one Inbox, and your own results show the best days and hours to post. Pro is £29/month for 10 accounts with unlimited team members, and from Studio each client gets their own accounts, brand kit and approval link. It isn't the cheapest way to queue posts to one or two channels, and it reaches fewer networks than Publer or Postiz.
Number 2: Buffer
Free plan · from $5/channel/moBest for: The simplest queue for one or two channels
Running since 2010 and still one of the simplest reliable queues on the market. Per-channel pricing makes it the cheapest option for a couple of channels and one of the more expensive at larger scale.
Number 3: Publer
Free plan · from $5/account/moBest for: The most networks for the least money
Priced per social account, with a usable free plan, an unusually wide network list (Telegram, WordPress and Facebook Groups reminders included), RSS automation and post recycling. Additional team members cost extra, which matters once more than one person schedules.
Number 4: SocialPilot
From $20/mo (5 accounts)Best for: Scheduling for lots of client accounts at a low price per account
Aggressively priced per connected account, with white-label client reporting and generous AI credit allowances. One of the best value options for agencies below about twenty accounts.
Number 5: Postiz
Self-hosted free · hosted from $29/mo (5 channels)Best for: Technical teams who want to self-host or automate
Open source, so a team that can run its own server pays nothing for the software, and it posts to over 30 networks including Reddit, Discord and Medium. There's no shared inbox for replying to comments, and self-hosting means applying to each network for API access yourself.
Number 6: Later
From $25/mo (8 profiles)Best for: Planning Instagram by how the grid looks
Instagram-native heritage, with a grid preview, a media library and a link-in-bio tool bundled in. Strong for visual brands that plan by how the feed looks; less of a fit if most of your posting is to text-led networks.
Number 7: Hootsuite
From $99/user/mo billed annuallyBest for: Large teams that need governance more than price
Scheduling sits inside a much bigger enterprise product with listening, approval chains and audit trails. Priced per user with no free plan, so it only makes sense if you need the rest of it.
Optimise your profiles before you schedule anything
Scheduled posts send people to your profile, so check it first. Paste your bios and our free checker scores each one against that platform's real limits: length, whether it says what you do, whether there's a link and a reason to click it, and whether your handle matches across platforms. It runs in your browser, with nothing to sign up for.
Check my biosCommon questions
What is the best social media scheduling tool?
It depends on how many accounts you run. For one or two channels, Buffer is the simplest and cheapest. For five to fifteen accounts across 11 networks with comments and stats in the same place, Optimate is the one we'd pick, and we publish this page, so weigh that. For the widest network list on a budget, Publer; to self-host, Postiz.
What are social media optimisation tools?
"Social media optimisation" (SMO) usually means improving what you already post rather than just scheduling it: better profiles and bios, posting at the times your audience is active, writing for each platform's format, and learning from what performed. Most schedulers now cover some of it. In Optimate that's best days and hours from your own results, analytics with plain-English recommendations, per-platform previews and caption limits, and profile health checks. For bios specifically, our free bio checker scores your profiles with no sign-up.
What's the difference between a scheduling tool and a social media optimisation tool?
A scheduler gets the post out at the right moment. An optimisation tool tells you what the right post and the right moment are. Analytics-first tools like Metricool lean towards optimisation; queue-first tools like Buffer lean towards scheduling. The tools at the top of this list try to do both, so you don't pay for two subscriptions.
Is there a free social media scheduler?
Yes. Buffer, Publer and Optimate all have free plans that keep working indefinitely, and Postiz is free if you host it yourself. Hootsuite, Later and SocialPilot have no free plan. Our free social media tools list compares what each free tier actually includes.
Can I schedule to Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn from one tool?
Yes, every tool on this list covers the main networks, though not all of them reach the same ones. Optimate publishes to LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, Google Business, Bluesky and Mastodon from one calendar; check each vendor's own network list for anything less common you rely on. LinkedIn: personal profiles for now; Company Pages once LinkedIn approves Optimate.
Try Optimate against your own accounts
14-day free trial, no card required — enough to judge the content quality for yourself rather than take our word for it. The free plan after that covers 3 connected accounts.
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