Postiz alternatives: 5 schedulers compared for 2026

This guide is for people who tried Postiz, or are evaluating it, and want either a more polished hosted product, help deciding what to post (not just when), or a comparison of schedulers you can drive from Claude or ChatGPT. Full disclosure: we make Eden, which is first on this list. We explain exactly who it is for and who should pick something else.

First, credit where it is due. Postiz is a genuinely impressive open-source project: 34,000+ stars on GitHub under an AGPL-3.0 license, publishing to 30+ platforms (including long-tail networks like Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, Warpcast, and Dev.to), a REST API on every paid plan, and an MCP server included with every account. If you love Postiz and just want it hosted, its own cloud starts at $29/mo. The reasons people look elsewhere are specific: no permanent free cloud tier (7-day trial, then you pay or self-host), a UI that moves fast and sometimes shows it, and nothing that helps you figure out what to write in the first place. Every tool below is measured against those gaps.

The short version

Tool	Best for	Price from
Postiz (the incumbent)	Most platforms, open source, agent-friendly	$29/mo cloud, or free self-hosted
Eden	Research plus scheduling plus the broadest MCP	Free plan; paid from $29/mo
Buffer	Cheapest polished queue, free MCP on every plan	Free plan; from $5/channel/mo (annual)
Metricool	Analytics and competitor tracking with an MCP	Free plan; from $25/mo
Publer	Per-account pricing and workspace flexibility	Free plan; from $4/account/mo (annual)
Mixpost	Self-hosted with a one-time license, no subscription	Free Lite; Pro $299 one-time

1. Eden

Eden is an AI content workspace for creators: research what works, write in your voice, schedule and publish, all in one place. Where Postiz starts at the moment you have a finished post, Eden starts two steps earlier, at "what should I even make?"

The core difference is the research layer. Eden indexes 3M+ posts (and growing) across X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Substack, and its Discover feed surfaces outliers with a multiplier that scores each post against that creator's own baseline, so you see what actually overperformed rather than what big accounts posted. You can filter by platform, topic pillar, follower range, and outlier minimum, search creators by topic with matching posts as receipts, and save anything into swipe-file boards. No scheduler in this list, Postiz included, has anything like this built in.

The second difference matters if Postiz's MCP is what drew you in. Eden also has a hosted MCP server, and it is broader: alongside scheduling, it exposes creator research, indexed post search, and your own post analytics to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Raycast, n8n, Zapier, or Make. Postiz's MCP lets your agent publish. Eden's MCP lets your agent research a niche, check what worked last month, and then schedule, in one conversation. We compared the field in detail in our guide to social media MCP servers.

What Eden does well:

• Discover feed of outlier posts, searchable index of 3M+ posts, creator analysis with receipts
• Scheduling for X, LinkedIn (including PDF carousels), Threads, Instagram (with Auto-DM automations), TikTok, Facebook Pages, YouTube Shorts, and Substack (Notes and articles, one of very few schedulers with real Substack support)
• Voice-trained Custom AI that studies your writing samples and drafts in your cadence, plus Deep Social, an agent that researches your niche and returns a receipts-backed report
• A library and boards for saved posts, links, PDFs, and highlights, with Readwise, Kindle, and Snipd imports
• MCP covering research, analytics, and scheduling, plus free Claude workflows (Weekly Strategist, Content Command Center)

Where it falls short for a Postiz user: platform breadth. Eden publishes to 8 platform families and does not schedule Bluesky, Mastodon, Pinterest, Reddit, Discord, Telegram, or Google Business. Postiz covers 30+. Eden is also closed source and hosted only, so there is no self-host option. Skip Eden if you need those long-tail networks, if self-hosting is the whole point for you, or if you genuinely do not care about research and just want the cheapest possible queue.

Price: Free plan ($0, 100 saved items, 50 one-time AI credits, no card). Paid from $29/mo (Starter), Pro at $79/mo, Studio at $199/mo with team seats. Pricing details.

Best for: creators and small teams who want the research and writing layers Postiz does not have, and the broadest scheduler MCP available.

2. Buffer

Buffer is the most polished mainstream scheduler you can move to from Postiz, and one of the cheapest. It has been doing one job well since 2010: a clean queue, a calendar, and reliable publishing across the major networks.

What Buffer does well:

• A genuinely free plan: 3 channels and 10 scheduled posts per channel, forever
• Simple per-channel pricing with volume discounts above 10 channels
• An official MCP server (launched May 2026) that is free on every plan, including free, with OAuth setup and support documented for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Raycast, and others
• First-comment scheduling, hashtag manager, and solid analytics on paid plans

That MCP point deserves emphasis for this audience: Buffer is one of the few schedulers besides Postiz where the MCP costs nothing extra and is first-party. It sits on Buffer's newer GraphQL API (still in public beta), and covers pulling channels, checking the queue, and creating or scheduling posts.

Where it falls short: Buffer is a queue and only a queue. There is no research layer, no outlier detection, no competitor analysis, and the AI Assistant is a generic writing helper rather than something trained on your voice or your niche. Platform coverage is the mainstream set, so Postiz users publishing to Nostr, Warpcast, or Dev.to lose those. Substack is not supported.

Price: Free plan (3 channels). Essentials from $5/channel/mo billed yearly ($60/year per channel). Team from $10/channel/mo billed yearly.

Best for: anyone who wants Postiz's core queueing job in a calmer, more polished hosted product at the lowest price, with a free first-party MCP.

3. Metricool

Metricool is an analytics-first social media manager from Spain that added scheduling, and it shows in the best way: its reporting and competitor tracking are deeper than anything Postiz offers.

What Metricool does well:

• Analytics across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Twitch, Pinterest, and more, plus web traffic and ad campaigns in one dashboard
• Competitor analysis (5 profiles free, up to 100 on Starter) and best-time-to-post heatmaps
• PDF and PPT report exports, Looker Studio connector on Advanced, built for client reporting
• An official hosted MCP server (ai.metricool.com/mcp, also on GitHub and PyPI) that covers both pulling performance metrics and scheduling content from Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Make, or n8n

For someone comparing MCP-capable schedulers, Metricool is the analytics counterpart to Postiz's publishing: its MCP is strongest when you ask an agent "what worked last quarter?" rather than "post this everywhere."

Where it falls short: the free plan is restrictive where creators feel it most, with 1 brand, 20 posts a month, and no LinkedIn or X connections at all. X access costs extra as an add-on. The interface is dense, built for marketers managing client dashboards rather than creators running their own accounts, and there is no research layer for finding content ideas outside your own and your competitors' numbers.

Price: Free plan (1 brand, 20 posts/month). Starter from $25/mo (5 brands). Advanced from $67/mo. X/Twitter is a paid add-on.

Best for: marketers and agencies who left Postiz wanting serious analytics and client reports, and who want an official MCP for the analytics side.

4. Publer

Publer is a hosted scheduler whose pricing model is its sharpest feature: you pay per social account, not per plan tier, so a solo creator with two accounts pays very little.

What Publer does well:

• Professional from $4/account/mo billed yearly ($5 monthly), Business from $8/account/mo billed yearly, and every 10th account is free
• Broad mainstream coverage: Facebook (including Groups via reminders), Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads, LinkedIn (including PDF carousels), Pinterest, Google Business, YouTube, Telegram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and WordPress
• Bulk scheduling up to 500 posts, RSS automations, spintax-powered post recycling, and eternal post history on paid plans
• A free plan with 3 accounts and 10 scheduled posts per account

Where it falls short: X accounts are excluded from the free plan entirely (Publer cites Twitter's Enterprise API costs), and analytics live only on the Business tier, so the cheap Professional plan is publish-only with no performance data. There is no official MCP server; community-built MCP wrappers for Publer's API exist on GitHub, but nothing first-party, which matters if the agent workflow is why you liked Postiz. And like the others, it has no research layer.

Price: Free plan (3 accounts, no X). Professional from $4/account/mo billed yearly. Business from $8/account/mo billed yearly, which adds analytics, unlimited AI, and API access.

Best for: budget-conscious creators with a small number of accounts who want mainstream platform breadth, including Bluesky and Mastodon, and can live without a first-party MCP.

5. Mixpost

Mixpost is the closest philosophical sibling to Postiz on this list: a self-hosted, open-source-rooted scheduler you run on your own server. The difference is the business model. Where Postiz's cloud is a subscription and its self-host version is fully free under AGPL, Mixpost sells a one-time license: pay once, own it forever.

What Mixpost does well:

• Mixpost Lite is free, MIT-licensed, and public on GitHub (3,500+ stars), covering Facebook Pages, X, and Mastodon with a calendar, media library, and basic analytics
• Mixpost Pro is $299 one-time (1 year of updates, perpetual fallback license) and adds Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, and Bluesky, plus an AI assistant, approval workflows, API, webhooks, and multi-tenant support
• Unlimited social accounts and team members on any license, with no per-seat or per-channel charges
• An Enterprise tier ($1,199 one-time) with white-label branding and billing, aimed at people launching their own scheduling SaaS

Where it falls short: it is a Laravel application you install, update, and debug yourself, so everything that pushed you away from self-hosting Postiz applies here too. Lite's three platforms are too few for most creators, which makes the real entry price $299. There is no MCP server, so the agent-driven workflow that defines Postiz is absent. Platform count trails Postiz's 30+ even on Pro.

Price: Lite free (self-hosted). Pro $299 one-time. Enterprise $1,199 one-time.

Best for: self-hosters who like Postiz's ethos but prefer a one-time license and unlimited accounts over a cloud subscription, and who do not need MCP or agent workflows.

How to choose

• Stay with Postiz if platform count is your top criterion (30+ networks, including Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, and Nostr), you value open source, and its MCP-driven publishing already covers your agent workflow.
• Choose Eden if you want the step before scheduling handled too: outlier research across 3M+ indexed posts, creator analysis, voice-trained drafting, and an MCP that adds research and analytics to what Postiz's MCP does. It is also the only pick here with real Substack scheduling.
• Choose Buffer if you want the cheapest polished hosted queue and a free first-party MCP, and you publish to mainstream platforms only.
• Choose Metricool if analytics, competitor tracking, and client reports matter more than publishing breadth.
• Choose Publer if per-account pricing fits your account count and you want Bluesky and Mastodon in a hosted product.
• Choose Mixpost if you are committed to self-hosting and would rather pay $299 once than subscribe.

Frequently asked questions

Is Postiz really free?

The self-hosted version is genuinely free and open source under AGPL-3.0, with 34,000+ GitHub stars. Postiz Cloud has no permanent free tier: there is a 7-day trial, then plans start at $29/mo for 5 channels.

Which Postiz alternatives have an official MCP server?

Eden, Buffer, and Metricool all run first-party hosted MCP servers, and Publer has community-built ones only. Eden's covers research, analytics, and scheduling; Buffer's covers queue and publishing and is free on every plan; Metricool's leans toward analytics plus scheduling. See our full MCP comparison for setup details.

What can Eden's MCP do that Postiz's cannot?

Postiz's MCP publishes and schedules posts through your connected channels. Eden's MCP does that for its supported platforms and also lets the agent search 3M+ indexed posts, analyze creators in your niche, and read your own post analytics, so Claude or ChatGPT can research, decide, and schedule in one session.

What is the cheapest hosted Postiz alternative?

Publer, at $4 per social account per month billed yearly, if you have one or two accounts. Buffer's $5 per channel per month (annual) is close behind and includes its MCP for free. Both also have permanent free plans, which Postiz Cloud lacks.

Is Mixpost still maintained?

Yes. The open-source Lite repository (MIT license) shows commits into 2026, and the paid Pro and Enterprise editions are actively sold with a year of updates and a perpetual fallback license. Lite covers only Facebook Pages, X, and Mastodon, so most users end up on Pro at $299 one-time.

Postiz proved that a scheduler should talk to your AI tools. Eden takes the same idea further up the workflow, from "publish this" to "figure out what works, write it, then publish it." The free plan includes 100 saved items and 50 one-time AI credits, no card needed. Start free.