The free tier in this category has been shrinking for three years. Hootsuite dropped its free plan in 2023. Later dropped its own and replaced it with a 14-day trial. A lot of articles still recommend both, which tells you how much of this content gets written from memory.
Here is what still exists, checked in September 2026, and where each one stops being useful.
Buffer, the best general-purpose free plan
Three channels, ten queued posts per channel, X included. That last detail matters because Publer’s otherwise identical free tier excludes X, and X is often one of the three networks a small operation cares about.
Ten queued posts per channel is the real constraint, not a monthly cap. If you top the queue up twice a week you will never hit it. If you want to batch a month in one sitting, you will hit it immediately. Buffer knows exactly what it is doing with that limit.
Metricool, the best free analytics
One brand, twenty posts a month, thirty days of analytics history, and five competitor profiles tracked. Metricool gives away reporting that several paid tools charge for, and for a single business posting a few times a week it is the most complete free product in the category.
Two limits to know. LinkedIn and X are not on the free plan, which rules it out for a lot of B2B. And twenty posts a month is genuinely twenty, across everything, so a brand posting daily to three networks blows through it in a week.
Publer, nearly Buffer
Three accounts, ten scheduled posts each, no X. Publer’s free tier mirrors Buffer’s closely enough that the choice comes down to whether you need X and which interface you prefer.
Publer’s advantage arrives after you start paying, where $5 for the first account and $4 for each extra is the cheapest per-account rate anywhere.
Vista Social
Three profiles and one user, free, which is more generous on profile count than most of what remains. Vista Social is a fuller platform than its free tier suggests, with listening and review management on paid plans starting around $39.
Zoho Social, if you already use Zoho
One brand, six channels, limited features. Zoho Social free is unremarkable in isolation and quite good if Zoho CRM is already in the building, because the lead attribution actually connects to something.
Standard at $15 a month, or $10 annually, is the cheapest paid entry point in this whole category, with the catch that a second user forces you up to Premium at $65 and a second brand forces you to Agency at $320. Those are steep walls.
Pallyy, the thinnest
One account, fifteen posts a month. Pallyy’s free plan is a demo. Its Pro plan at $25 for one brand across every network is the actually interesting product.
The native schedulers, which cost nothing at all
Meta Business Suite schedules Facebook and Instagram with no post limit. TikTok’s web uploader schedules ten days ahead. LinkedIn has scheduling built into the composer. YouTube has always let you set a publish time.
These are unlimited and free and nobody recommends them, because they only work one platform at a time and there is no single calendar. For one or two networks that is an acceptable trade. Anyone telling you a small business needs a paid scheduler for one Facebook page is selling something.
Where free stops making sense
The break point is usually the fourth account, and it arrives faster than people expect. A business that starts with Instagram and Facebook adds TikTok, then someone makes a LinkedIn page, then there is a second location. Suddenly the free plan does not fit and the per-channel price looks very different than it did.
At that point the arithmetic is worth doing properly. Five channels on Buffer Essentials is $30 a month. The same five accounts on SchedPilot Silver is $21, with analytics included, and going from five accounts to twenty does not change the bill at all once you are on Gold at $35. SchedPilot has no free plan, only a seven-day trial, so it is the wrong answer for anyone still on one account. It becomes the right answer at roughly the point free stops working.
Publer is the other honest answer here, at $21 for five accounts, if you get analytics from somewhere else.
What to actually do
One or two networks, posting a few times a week: use the native schedulers and pay nobody. Three networks: Buffer free, or Metricool free if you want the reporting and don’t need LinkedIn. Four or five: this is where you start paying, and $21 is the number. More than ten accounts: flat pricing, and the per-channel tools stop being competitive entirely.
Free plans that disappeared, and why it keeps happening
Three years ago this article would have been twice as long. Hootsuite had a free plan until 2023. Later had one until recently. Several smaller tools have quietly converted theirs into trials without announcing it.
The reason is structural rather than greed. Every connected social account costs the vendor API overhead whether or not the user pays, and the platforms have made that overhead worse. Meta’s app review process, LinkedIn’s partner requirements and TikTok’s audit all cost money per integration. A free user with five connected accounts is a running expense with no revenue attached.
Expect more of this. If a free plan is central to your setup, assume it will get thinner and have a fallback in mind.
How to get the most out of a free plan
Two tactics genuinely extend the life of a free tier, and one that gets recommended does not.
Run two free plans side by side. Buffer free for publishing, because the queue is the best mechanism for consistency, and Metricool free for reporting, because its analytics beat anything Buffer sells. Between them you have a functioning setup at no cost, and the only friction is two logins.
Use the native schedulers for the networks your free tool does not cover. Meta Business Suite handles Facebook and Instagram with no post limit at all, so spending one of Buffer’s three free channels on a Facebook page is often a waste.
What does not work is creating several free accounts with different email addresses to get around channel limits. It violates the terms of every tool here, it will eventually be noticed, and losing a queue mid-campaign costs more than $21 a month.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hootsuite still free?
No. Hootsuite removed its free plan in 2023 and the cheapest tier is now $99 per user per month with a 14-day trial. Any article recommending Hootsuite’s free plan was written before that and has not been updated since.
Does Later have a free plan?
Not any more. It is a 14-day trial, then $25 a month on Starter, or $18.75 billed annually.
What is the catch with free social media schedulers?
Queue depth, usually, rather than features. Ten posts per channel sounds fine until you try to batch a month. The other common limit is analytics, which is where free tiers are thinnest, because reporting is what most people upgrade for.
Can I schedule to Instagram for free?
Yes. Meta Business Suite does it with no limit, and Buffer, Metricool, Publer, Vista Social and Pallyy all include Instagram on their free plans. Your account needs to be Business or Creator rather than personal, which is a free change in Instagram’s settings.
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