The best social media schedulers for solo founders in 2026

Short answer: if you want free, use Buffer or Metricool. If you want the cheapest paid plan, Publer starts at $5 a month for one account. If you post mostly to X and LinkedIn, Typefully. If you're Instagram-first, Later or Planoly. If you want an AI agent to do the posting, Buffer, Postiz, Post Bridge, Blotato and OneUp all have MCP servers. And if you sell something and want to know which post made the money, that's what I built seenpaid for.

I'm a solo founder and I make one of these tools, so read with that in mind. Every price below was read off each vendor's own pricing page on 23 September 2026. Where a page showed only the annual-billed price, I say so. Where I couldn't read a number, I don't give one.

What solo founders actually complain about

Scheduling tools are mostly priced for social media teams. That shows up in how people describe them:

• "Buffer starts charging per channel so you're looking at hundreds a month just for scheduling." (Careless-Character21, r/socialmedia, February 2026)
• "Expensive to upgrade beyond Free offering. Free offering is limited to 3 networks." (Andrea S., Buffer review on Capterra, August 2025)
• "The cost is too high for a small business relative to other options." (Tim K., Hootsuite review on Capterra, July 2026)
• "I cancelled my subscription, still got charged $150 after the trial period…" (Dante Araujo, Hootsuite review on Trustpilot, March 2026). Hootsuite's Trustpilot score was 1.3 out of 5 across 555 reviews when I checked.
• "…most content scheduling tools are over designed and over priced. seat based charging or lacking AI assistant, is there something between?" (r/socialmedia, April 2025)

So the questions that matter for one person aren't the ones on most comparison pages. Not "how many team seats" but: what does it cost for the accounts I actually have, can I try it without a card, does it post to the platforms I use, and can my AI agent drive it?

The shortlist at a glance

Entry paid plan, what it covers, and the things a solo founder trips over:

• Publer: $5/month (monthly billing), 1 social account. Free plan: 3 accounts, 10 scheduled posts each, no X. MCP: yes.
• Buffer: $5 per channel per month (shown billed annually). Free plan: 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel. MCP: yes, on every plan including Free.
• Planoly: $14/month, 1 social set. Free: the mobile app, 10 uploads a month. MCP: yes (new).
• OneUp: $15/month (shown billed annually), 5 accounts, $5 per extra account. No free plan. MCP: yes, scheduling only on this plan.
• Metricool: €16/month (about $20), up to 10 brands. Free plan: 1 brand, 20 posts a month. X is a paid add-on. MCP: yes.
• Later: $18.75/month (shown billed annually), 1 social set of up to 8 profiles, 30 posts per profile a month. No free plan. No API or MCP that I could find.
• seenpaid (mine): $19.99/month, 5 workspaces (brands), unlimited accounts in each. No free plan; the 7-day trial needs a card. MCP: yes, 50 tools.
• SocialBee: $29/month (monthly billing), 5 profiles. No free plan; 14-day trial with no card. No API or MCP that I could find.
• Postiz: $29/month, 5 channels, or free if you self-host. MCP: yes.
• Post Bridge: $29/month, 5 accounts, more than one per platform allowed. 7-day trial with nothing due today. MCP: yes.
• Blotato: $29/month, 20 accounts. No free plan; the trial excludes the API. MCP: yes, 36 tools.
• Typefully: free plan with 10 posts a month, and it includes the API and MCP. Paid plans are annual-only; the prices didn't load on its pricing page when I checked, so I'm not quoting them.
• Hootsuite: $99/month (shown billed annually), up to 10 accounts. No free plan; 14-day trial with no card, capped at 10–20 posts. MCP: yes.

Best free option: Buffer

Buffer's free plan gives you 3 channels and 10 scheduled posts on each, and its MCP server is on the free plan too (Metricool and Typefully also include MCP for free). It covers 12 platforms including Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Substack. The catch is the one in the quotes above: paid plans are per channel, so the price climbs with every account you add. At 5 channels you're at $25 a month billed annually.

Metricool is the other real free plan (1 brand, 20 posts a month, no card). Pick it over Buffer if you care more about analytics than posting volume. Its paid plan covers up to 10 brands, but X costs extra.

Cheapest paid: Publer

Publer's Professional plan is $5 a month on monthly billing, the lowest monthly-billed price here, and it has an MCP server. It covers one social account at that price, so if you post to four platforms you're on a higher tier. The free plan leaves out X entirely.

Best for X and LinkedIn writers: Typefully

If most of what you post is text for X and LinkedIn (plus Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon), Typefully is built for exactly that: a good editor, threads, X analytics. Its free plan includes the API and MCP, which is generous. It doesn't do Instagram, Facebook or TikTok yet (its own FAQ says "coming soon"), and the free plan stops at 10 posts a month.

Best for Instagram-first creators: Later or Planoly

Later's visual calendar and grid planning are what it's known for. The Starter plan is $18.75 a month billed annually for one set of up to 8 profiles, but only 30 posts per profile a month, which is tight if you post daily. I found no API or MCP.

Planoly says it invented grid planning. Starter is $14 a month for one social set, with link-in-bio, product selling and Instagram DM automation included, and it recently added an MCP server. The free version is mobile-only with 10 uploads a month.

Best if an AI agent will do your posting

If you already use Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, being able to say "schedule this for tomorrow at 9" and have it happen is the biggest time saver on this list. Five options do it well:

• Postiz: $29 a month for 5 channels, with the API, MCP server and its own agent on every paid plan. Or open source and free to self-host.
• Post Bridge: $29 a month for 5 accounts, API and MCP on all plans, and a 7-day trial with nothing to pay upfront.
• Blotato: $29 a month for 20 accounts, a low per-account price. It's built API-first, but the trial excludes the API, so you pay before you can test the agent side.
• OneUp: $15 a month (annual billing) for 5 accounts. MCP on the cheapest plan is limited to scheduling.
• Buffer: free, as above, if 3 channels is enough.

There's a full guide to connecting any of these to Claude, ChatGPT and other agents in the links at the end.

Best if you need to know which post made money: seenpaid

This is mine, so weigh it accordingly. Every scheduler above can tell you a post went out, and some tell you how many likes it got. None of them can tell you it produced a sale, because none of them connect to your payments. seenpaid does, through your own Stripe: each post carries a tracked link, and a payment that follows a click is matched back to the post. That part is optional.

Solo is $19.99 a month for 5 workspaces (brands), each connecting all 21 platforms with no cap on accounts, with a hosted MCP server of 50 tools. The honest downsides: there's no free plan and the trial needs a card, X is bring-your-own-key so you pay X for posting, TikTok videos land in your drafts, and new users can't connect Instagram or Facebook until Meta's review is done. If you don't sell anything online, the revenue part is worth nothing to you, and Buffer or Publer is the better buy.

Probably not for a solo founder: Hootsuite and SocialBee

Hootsuite is a solid product priced for teams: $99 a month billed annually is three to seven times the rest of this list, and the reviews above are mostly about cost and billing. If your company already pays for it, its MCP connectors are good. Buying it for yourself is hard to justify.

SocialBee's content categories and evergreen recycling are genuinely useful if you reuse a lot of posts, and its 14-day trial needs no card. But at $29 a month for 5 profiles, with no free plan and no API or MCP I could find, Postiz and Post Bridge give you more for the same money.

How to choose

• You want to pay nothing → Buffer (3 channels) or Metricool (1 brand).
• You want the lowest paid price → Publer at $5 for one account.
• You write for X and LinkedIn → Typefully.
• You're Instagram-first → Later or Planoly.
• You want an agent to post for you → Postiz, Post Bridge or Blotato, or Buffer if 3 channels is enough.
• You want to self-host → Postiz.
• You sell something and want to see which post sold it → seenpaid.

Head-to-head pages and guides

• seenpaid vs Buffer
• seenpaid vs Publer
• seenpaid vs Metricool
• seenpaid vs Later
• seenpaid vs Postiz
• seenpaid vs Post Bridge
• seenpaid vs Blotato
• seenpaid vs SocialBee
• seenpaid vs Hootsuite
• How to post to social media from Claude, ChatGPT or any AI agent
• The best social media MCP servers, compared
• seenpaid for SaaS founders: platforms, post ideas and cadence
• seenpaid pricing

Sources, all checked 23 September 2026: buffer.com/pricing and /mcp, hootsuite.com/plans and /integrations/mcp, later.com/pricing, publer.com help center (plans and MCP), socialbee.com/pricing, metricool.com/pricing, postiz.com/pricing, post-bridge.com/pricing, typefully.com/pricing and /social-media-scheduling, blotato.com/pricing, oneupapp.io/price, planoly.com/pricing, trustpilot.com/review/hootsuite.com. Quotes: reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/1rdaelf, capterra.com/p/143492/Buffer/reviews, capterra.com/p/121701/HootSuite/reviews, reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/1tiq9y6.