How to schedule social media posts: the tools and the method

Buffer does one job and does it with very little friction. You connect your accounts, write a post once, tweak the text per network if you want to, and drop it into a queue of time slots you set in advance. The calendar view shows the week at a glance. It is the tool most guides send beginners to, and the reason is simple: there is almost nothing to learn.

Pricing is per channel, and a channel is one connected account: one Instagram profile, one Facebook Page, one LinkedIn page. The free plan covers up to 3 channels and holds 10 scheduled posts per channel at any time. That is a queue limit, not a monthly one: once a post goes out, the slot frees up and you can add another. Essentials costs $6 per channel per month on monthly billing, or $5 on yearly billing ($60 a year per channel), and lifts the queue limit under a fair use cap of 5,000 posts per channel. Team, at $12 per channel monthly or $10 yearly, adds unlimited team members and approval workflows. Three accounts on Essentials come to $180 a year billed yearly, or $216 on monthly billing. Nonprofits get 50% off paid plans. Public reviews in 2026 praise the per-channel billing and the free plan, and one recurring complaint is posts to Pinterest that fail and need a manual retry. To push posts from other apps into Buffer, see the Buffer integration for Zapier or the Buffer integration for Make.

Metricool combines a planner and an analytics dashboard. The planner is a colour-coded calendar that marks the best times to post based on your own audience, and you schedule by clicking a slot. The analytics side shows what each post did, and builds reports you can download as PDF or PowerPoint. For a small team, it replaces a scheduler and a reporting tool at once. Pricing is per brand, where a brand is a client or a project with all its social accounts.

The free plan manages 1 brand and schedules up to 20 posts per month, a monthly quota that resets each month, with 30 days of analytics history. Read the line under it: the free plan works with all networks except LinkedIn and Twitter. If LinkedIn is where your buyers are, free Metricool is not an option. Starter costs from $20 a month on yearly billing or $25 monthly for up to 5 brands, with unlimited publishing under a fair use policy and unlimited analytics history. X is a paid add-on on top: $10 a month per connected account. Advanced starts at $53 a month yearly for up to 15 brands. Even the free plan lists Metricool's MCP server, which connects it to an AI assistant: see the Metricool integration for Claude, or the Metricool integration for Make to connect it to the rest of your stack.

Meta Business Suite is Meta's own tool to manage a Facebook Page and an Instagram account, and it is free on desktop and in its mobile app. Its Planner shows your content in a weekly or monthly view. You create a post, pick Facebook, Instagram or both, and choose a date and time instead of publishing. You can schedule posts, stories and reels, save drafts, duplicate a post and run A/B tests that show two versions of the same content to compare them. To use it, your business needs a business portfolio that holds your Page and your Instagram account.

The limit is in the name: it only publishes to Meta's networks, Facebook and Instagram, plus Threads by cross-posting from the desktop version. LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and X need another tool, which is why most businesses that post to more than two networks end up paying for a scheduler anyway. Scheduling on Instagram also needs a public account. A few features of the Planner, like Moments, which suggests important dates to plan around, are only available to businesses based in the US. Because it is Meta's own interface, a post scheduled here does not depend on a third-party connection that can expire.

Hootsuite is the oldest of the big dashboards, and it shows in the breadth of what it covers: one calendar for up to 10 accounts on its entry plan, unlimited scheduled posts, custom performance reports from Professional, approvals and co-working on the Advanced plan, and an AI assistant, Wisdom, on every plan. For a team that runs social as a daily job, having all of it in one window is the selling point.

It has no free plan. Standard costs $99 per user per month billed annually and manages up to 10 social accounts from one calendar with unlimited scheduled posts; Professional is $199 and Advanced $399 per user per month, also billed annually. Monthly billing exists on all three plans. One person on Standard is $1,188 a year. The 14-day trial is not the full product: trial accounts have daily posting limits of 10 to 20 posts per organization, and bulk scheduling is not available during the trial, so you cannot load a month of content to test it. Public reviews in 2026 are harsh on billing, with several users reporting charges they did not expect after cancelling: set a reminder before the trial ends. If it is too much, our ranking of social media tools compares lighter options, and the Hootsuite integration for Make and the Hootsuite integration for Zapier cover automations.

Agorapulse puts publishing and a unified inbox side by side. You schedule into a calendar or into queues, and every comment, mention and private message from your accounts lands in one inbox you can clear like email. For a business where social is also customer service, that inbox is what you pay for.

Standard costs $79 per user per month on annual billing, or $99 on monthly billing, which saves $240 a year per user on the annual plan. It includes 10 social profiles; past that, you pay for extra profiles. Professional is $119 a user yearly or $149 monthly, Advanced $149 or $199. The trial lasts 30 days with no credit card, and when it ends you can stay on the free plan instead of being charged. To feed it from other tools, see the Agorapulse integration for Zapier.

Sprout Social is the premium option of the category. Its plans are sold on optimal send times, profile and post-level reporting, and, from Standard, a consolidated inbox and collaboration tools for teams where several people draft and review. Every guide we read ranks it, and every one of them warns about the price.

Pricing is per seat. Essentials costs $79 per seat per month on annual billing, or $99 billed monthly, and connects up to 5 social profiles with optimal send times and profile and post-level reporting. Standard is $199 per seat per month, Professional $299 and Advanced $399, with annual billing. A team of three on Essentials pays $2,844 a year on annual billing. Essentials and Standard both stop at 5 social profiles, and unlimited profiles start on Professional at $299 a seat: one brand on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube already fills the two entry plans. The trial lasts 30 days with no credit card. For agencies running many clients, our ranking of social media tools for agencies goes further.

Sendible is built around clients. You group each client's accounts in a workspace, schedule from a shared calendar, bulk schedule, and set up smart queues (10 per plan on Core) that keep evergreen content in rotation. Its pricing logic is the opposite of Sprout Social's: every plan includes unlimited users, so adding a colleague or a client reviewer costs nothing.

Core costs $35 a month on monthly billing or $30 a month on yearly billing ($360 a year), and is meant for 1 or 2 brands or locations. Plus is $99 monthly, Premium $199, Elite $299 and Enterprise $750, with about 15% off when you pay annually. There are no contracts on the standard plans and you can cancel at any time. The trial lasts 14 days and asks for no card at sign-up; at the end of it you are asked to add one. White labelling, to show the tool under your agency's name, is an extra fee on Elite and Enterprise. For more agency options, see our agency ranking.