Social media schedulers: what you get for free and when you pay

Social media schedulers: the short answer

If you schedule the posts for one business on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook yourself, you can do it for free. On its free plan, Buffer lets you connect three channels and schedule ten posts per channel at a time. Meta Business Suite schedules for free for Facebook and Instagram, but not for LinkedIn. With a scheduler, you start paying as soon as a second colleague needs to work in the same program, a colleague needs to approve posts or you manage more than three channels. That starts at around $30 to €54 per month and with the big packages rises to hundreds of euros per user. On 21 October 2026 we checked the pricing pages of seven schedulers. This article is written for businesses in the Netherlands and Belgium.

What a social media scheduler does

With a social media scheduler you write posts in advance and put them in a calendar. The program publishes them on your business pages at the chosen time. Most schedulers also do three things:

• Analytics: reach, reactions and followers per post and per channel, often with a report you can share.
• A shared inbox: reply to comments and messages from all channels in one place.
• Collaboration: several users, roles and an approval step before a post goes live.

It is these last features that usually decide when you have to pay. In these packages, a channel is one linked account, such as your LinkedIn company page or your Instagram account.

Our fixed month

To compare the packages fairly, we take one month: one business, three channels (LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook) and three posts per week per channel. That is 36 posts per month. We look at what that costs for someone doing it alone, for two colleagues of whom one approves, and for an agency or business with a second brand.

What does each package cost?

The packages in our social media scheduler category, with the prices as the supplier showed them on its own site on 21 October 2026. Buffer, Later and Sprout Social charge in US dollars.

There is also Meta Business Suite, the built-in scheduler of Facebook and Instagram. Meta counts it among its free tools for businesses. You schedule posts and stories for both channels and reply to messages, but LinkedIn and TikTok are not included. We have not included Meta Business Suite in our category, because it belongs to a Facebook or Instagram account and cannot be chosen separately.

What does our fixed month cost?

On your own: one business, three channels, 36 posts

• Buffer Free: free. Three channels is exactly the limit, and you can line up ten posts per channel at a time. If you schedule the next posts once a week, you manage 12 posts per channel per month. If you want to fill the whole month in one go, Essentials costs $18 per month for three channels.
• Meta Business Suite plus LinkedIn separately: free, but you post to LinkedIn yourself in LinkedIn and you have no overview of the three channels together.
• Metricool: the free plan does not fit, because LinkedIn is missing and 20 posts per month is too few. Starter costs €20 per month.
• Later Starter: $25 per month; 30 posts per channel is plenty.
• StoryChief Starter: €59 per month, mainly interesting if you also publish blog articles from the same program.
• Hootsuite and Sprout Social: €99 and $79 to $99 per month for one user. You pay for an inbox, monitoring and reports that you hardly use in this month.
• Coosto: from €249 per month. The package is made for teams with monitoring and social customer care; what it costs for your channels and users is in the quote.

Two colleagues, one approves

This is where the free plans stop: Buffer Free and Metricool Free have one user.

• Buffer Team: $36 per month for three channels ($30 with annual billing), with unlimited team members and approvals.
• Later Growth: $50 per month ($37.50 annually), with two users and approvals included.
• Metricool Advanced: €54 per month (€43 annually), excluding VAT.
• StoryChief: two users on Starter cost €79 per month, but approvals only come with Growth, €299 per month.
• Hootsuite: two Standard licences cost €198 per month with annual billing; with approvals (Advanced) €798.
• Sprout Social: with approvals (Professional) $598 per month for two users, with annual billing.
• Coosto: from €249 per month; what two users cost is in the quote.

Adding a second brand: six channels

• Buffer: Free stops at three channels. For six channels, Essentials costs $36 and Team $72 per month.
• Metricool: Starter stays at €20 per month, because that plan covers up to five brands.
• Later: Starter has one set of channels; for a second brand you need Growth, $50 per month.
• Hootsuite: Standard covers up to ten channels, so the price per user stays the same.
• Sprout Social: Essentials and Standard have five channels. According to the help page on pricing you can buy a sixth channel, but the price is not given there. Professional has unlimited channels and costs $299 per user per month with annual billing.
• StoryChief: Starter has four channels, so you buy two more at €5 per channel per month with annual billing. Together with Starter (€49 annually) that is €59 per month.
• Coosto: the price depends partly on the number of channels, so a second brand changes the quote.

When is free enough?

Free is enough if you work alone, have no more than three channels and are happy with a month or so of analytics (Buffer Free keeps 30 days). You need a paid scheduler plan as soon as:

• a colleague needs to write along or approve posts;
• you manage more than three channels, or more than one brand at Metricool;
• you want to compare analytics over a longer period or send a report to a client or management;
• you want to reply to comments from all channels in one inbox and see who has picked up what.

If you use social media as part of a wider campaign, with email and a website, also look at marketing automation software. Some of those packages have their own social scheduler.

What should you look out for?

• Per channel, per brand or per user. Buffer charges per channel, Metricool by number of brands, Later per set of channels, and Hootsuite and Sprout Social per user. Work it out with your own numbers, because which one is cheapest depends on them.
• Annual or monthly. Many prices on the pages are for annual billing. Monthly is 20 to 33 percent more expensive, but you are not tied in.
• Dollars and VAT. With Buffer, Later and Sprout Social you pay in dollars, so the price in euros moves with the exchange rate. At Buffer, a business enters its VAT number so that VAT is reverse-charged; this is in the frequently asked questions on the pricing page. Check with the other packages before you pay.
• Privacy. A scheduler gets access to your business accounts and sometimes to messages from customers. Ask for a data processing agreement, as the GDPR (in Dutch AVG, the European privacy law) requires, and remove former employees' access straight away.
• What cannot be automated. Not every post is published automatically everywhere. Buffer mentions notifications for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube: at the scheduled time you get a message on your phone and finish the post in the app yourself. Try your own kinds of posts during the trial.

Frequently asked questions about social media schedulers

Is there a good free social media scheduler?

Yes. Buffer is free for one user with three channels, including LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. Metricool is free for one brand, but without LinkedIn and with 20 posts per month. For Facebook and Instagram only, Meta Business Suite is free.

What does a social media scheduler cost for a small team?

For two people with approvals, Buffer Team costs $36 per month for three channels, Later Growth $50 and Metricool Advanced €54. Hootsuite and Sprout Social charge per user and, with approvals, cost hundreds of euros or dollars per user per month.

Can I schedule LinkedIn posts for free?

With Buffer Free you can, for up to three channels in total. Meta Business Suite does not schedule LinkedIn posts, and Metricool's free plan does not connect LinkedIn.

What is the difference between Hootsuite and Buffer?

Buffer is a simple scheduler that charges per channel and has a free plan. Hootsuite charges per user, starts at €99 per month and adds a shared inbox, monitoring of your brand and competitors and more extensive reports. For scheduling alone, Buffer is much cheaper.

Do I need a scheduler in Dutch?

Not necessarily: the schedulers publish to the same channels, whatever language you write in. Coosto is a Dutch package from Eindhoven with a Dutch interface, demo and quote. StoryChief has its European office in Ghent. The other packages have an English-language pricing page; Metricool also has a Dutch version of its site.