The most crowded group in this category, and the one where pricing model matters more than features. Per seat, per channel, per account and flat-rate plans all appear below, and the cheapest tool on paper is frequently not the cheapest tool for your situation. Work out your account count and team size before comparing headline prices.
Tool
Best for
Starting price
What that price covers
Free plan
Buffer
creators and small teams wanting simple, affordable multi-network scheduling
from ~$5/mo per channel (free plan)
1 user per channel; the free plan has 3 channels and 10 posts per channel
Free trial
SocialPilot
agencies and small teams needing affordable multi-account scheduling and client reports
from ~$20/mo ($17 annual)
1 user, 5 social accounts
Free trial
Later
Instagram-first creators, brands and agencies who want visual planning and link-in-bio
from ~$25/mo (14-day trial)
1 user, 1 social set of 8 profiles, 30 posts per profile ($18.75 billed annually)
Free trial
Publer
creators and small teams needing affordable multi-network bulk scheduling
free plan; from ~$5/mo per account
$4 per extra account, $2 per extra member; a free plan exists
Free trial
RecurPost
agencies and SMBs recycling evergreen content on a set-and-forget schedule
from ~$9/mo
2 social accounts, 1 user
Free trial
SocialBee
solopreneurs and agencies automating consistent evergreen posting
from ~$29/mo
5 profiles, 1 user, 1 workspace (Bootstrap)
Free trial
FeedHive
creators and marketers who want AI-assisted scheduling and recycling
from ~$17/mo (listed as €15)
4 social accounts, 5 team members in one workspace (Creator)
Free trial
Metricool
agencies and social media managers who want analytics, scheduling and ads reporting in one place
free plan; from ~$20/mo
unlimited publishing; the free plan has 1 brand and 20 posts a month
Free trial
Hootsuite
scheduling and managing your own social accounts
from ~$99/mo per user
1 user
Free trial
ViralHunt
discovering viral content and turning it into posts, as a team
from $29/mo
1 user (Creator). Studio: $99/mo for up to 4 users and 4 projects, no per-seat charge
Yes, and it never expires
Every price was read off the vendor's own pricing page. We show no G2 or Capterra ratings because we are not listed there, and an invented rating would destroy the only thing these pages have, which is that all of it can be checked.
Buffer
from ~$5/mo per channel (free plan)
Simple scheduling & publishing
Buffer is a simple, popular social media scheduler for planning and publishing posts across up to 11 networks including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Threads, Pinterest and Bluesky. It offers a clean queue and calendar, an AI Assistant for drafting, own-account analytics, a reply inbox, a link-in-bio page and team approvals. Its permanent free plan (3 channels, 10 posts each) makes it a favourite for solo creators. It is built to publish your content, not to discover viral posts across networks.
Pros
Very affordable, with a genuinely usable permanent free plan
Broad publishing coverage, 11 networks including Threads and Bluesky
Clean, beginner-friendly scheduling with an AI Assistant
Cons
Per-channel pricing adds up for many accounts
No viral/trend discovery, you source content yourself
No social listening; deeper features gated to the Team plan
A team of five:
$50/mo (Team, 5 channels) (Team is $10 per channel with unlimited users: five channels are $50, people are free).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-10-10.
SocialPilot is a social media management and scheduling platform aimed at agencies and small teams. It centralises publishing across ten networks with a content calendar, bulk CSV scheduling (up to 500 posts) and optimal-time posting, plus a unified inbox for comments and messages, analytics with white-label client reports, approval workflows, an AI content assistant and a content library. It is built to schedule and report on the accounts you own, not to discover what is going viral across networks.
Pros
Low price with generous account and user limits vs rivals
Bulk scheduling across 10 networks with a content calendar
Later is a social media management platform built around visual planning: its Visual Planner lets you drag-and-drop and preview an Instagram grid before publishing, alongside a calendar, media library and auto-publishing for images, video, carousels, Stories and Reels across 8 networks (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, it dropped X in 2025). Its well-known Link in Bio tool turns a bio into a clickable landing page, and it adds Best Time to Post, an AI caption writer (metered by credits) and analytics for your own accounts; higher tiers add approvals and a social inbox, and its Mavrck-based "Later Influence" arm handles influencer campaigns. It is built to plan and publish your content, not to discover what is going viral across networks.
Pros
Best-in-class visual/grid planning and content calendar for Instagram
Mature, popular Link in Bio monetization tool
Broad publishing (8 networks) plus optional influencer marketing under one brand
Cons
No cross-network viral discovery or trending radar, analytics cover your own accounts
Tight plan limits (e.g. 30 posts/profile and 1 user on Starter); AI metered by credits
Dropped X (2025); no permanent free plan and no built-in content workflow
A team of five:
$48.75/mo (Growth (2 users) plus 3 extra users at $3.75/mo each).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-09-03.
Publer is a social media scheduler focused on bulk-uploading, auto-recycling and publishing across 13+ networks including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. It offers a calendar, bulk/CSV scheduling, RSS auto-posting, an AI Assist writer, a link-in-bio page, a browser extension, team collaboration with approvals, a Kanban-style Ideas workspace and a public REST API. Pricing is per social account with a permanent free tier. It publishes your content, it does not discover what is going viral across networks.
Pros
Very affordable per-account pricing with a permanent free plan
13+ networks with strong bulk scheduling and recycling
AI writer, link-in-bio, browser extension and a public API
Cons
No viral/trending discovery, outbound publishing only
No social listening or inbox for comments/DMs
Basic analytics gated to the Business plan; seat add-ons add up
A team of five:
$29/mo (about) (Professional: $5 for the first account, $4 for each of four more, $2 for each of four extra members).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-10-10.
RecurPost is a social media scheduler best known for content recycling: you organise evergreen posts into category-based libraries that re-publish automatically on a repeating schedule. It publishes to ten networks, with a visual calendar, bulk/CSV scheduling, per-platform customisation, best-time recommendations, AI writing tools and a Chrome extension. For agencies it adds client workspaces, approval workflows and white-label reports. It manages your outbound posting, it does not discover what is going viral across networks.
SocialBee is a social media scheduler built around content recycling: you sort posts into content categories, build a category-based calendar, and let evergreen posts re-publish automatically with expiration rules. It covers 10+ networks and adds an AI content assistant, RSS curation, analytics with PDF reports, a social inbox and agency workspaces with approvals. It is designed to automate consistent, always-on posting of your own content, not to discover what is going viral across networks.
Pros
Category-based scheduling with evergreen recycling
10+ networks plus an AI content assistant and RSS curation
Affordable, with agency multi-workspace plans and approvals
Cons
No viral-content discovery or trending radar
No public API, and the browser extension was retired (2026)
Engagement limited to a social inbox, no true social listening
A team of five:
$139/mo (Pro $99 (25 profiles, 3 users) plus two extra users at $10 each; Pro50 ($179) seats 5 per workspace).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-10-10.
FeedHive is an AI-first social media scheduler for publishing across networks like Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and Threads. Its emphasis is AI: a writing assistant, hashtag and image generation, and performance prediction that scores posts before they go out. Signature features include post recycling, conditional posting and automation workflows with webhooks, plus smart scheduling, a social inbox, analytics, workspaces and a REST API on higher tiers. It is a publishing/automation tool, it does not discover viral content across networks.
Pros
Strong AI toolset incl. performance prediction before posting
Post recycling and conditional-posting automation with webhooks
Broad platform coverage with workspaces and a REST API
Cons
No viral discovery, trending radar or listening
Cheapest plan is limited; only a 7-day trial, no free tier
Outbound-only, no niche/topic research to source content
A team of five:
€15/mo (about $17) (Creator already seats 5 in one workspace; Brand (€22) gives 5 workspaces of 20).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-10-10.
Metricool is an all-in-one social media management and analytics platform: plan and publish content, measure performance, and manage paid campaigns across 11 networks (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Twitch, Google Business) from one workspace. Its standout strengths are unified analytics with automated PDF/Looker Studio reports, a drag-and-drop calendar with best-time scheduling, and integrated ads management for Meta, Google and TikTok, rare at its price. It also has competitor benchmarking (tracking the account metrics of rivals you specify), a social inbox, SmartLinks (link-in-bio) and an AI caption assistant; paid tiers add multi-brand, team roles and client approval. It measures and publishes your (and named competitors') output, it is not a cross-network viral-discovery engine.
Pros
Broad, well-regarded native analytics and automated reporting across 11 networks
No content discovery, trending radar or repurposing, it measures output, not the viral landscape
LinkedIn and X are paid per-connection add-ons, so real cost climbs
No content-production board, team chat or DM automation
A team of five:
$53/mo (Advanced, 15 brands) (priced by brands, not users; team roles and post approval start on Advanced).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-10-10.
Hootsuite is one of the best-known social media management tools: schedule and publish posts to your own accounts, manage a unified inbox, run analytics and basic social listening from a single dashboard. At its core it is a scheduler built around the accounts you own, not a tool for discovering viral content across networks or surfacing trends you do not already follow.
Pros
Mature scheduling + publishing across many accounts
Unified inbox and analytics
Basic social listening included
Cons
Scheduler-first, not viral discovery
Per-seat pricing adds up fast
No cross-network viral radar
A team of five:
$495/mo (5 users on Standard, priced per user).
Read off their own pricing page on 2026-09-02.
ViralHunt schedules and auto-publishes, so there is real overlap, but a dedicated scheduler will out-schedule us on automation depth and we are not going to claim otherwise. What we add is the half none of these do: knowing what to post. If simple cheap publishing is the entire need, several tools above do it well and cost less.
The dashboard, one section per network. This is the screen the tools above do not have, because none of them watches other people's posts.
Every price above was read off the vendor's own page and dated. ViralHunt has a free plan that does not expire, so you can check ours the same way.
Most comparison pages are written from marketing copy. This one is not.
each of these tools's pricing was read off their own pricing page, not from a third-party roundup.
Every capability we call partial says partial. We do not turn an almost into a tick.
Where each of these tools does something we do not, the table says so.
What we did not check, and why
We have not run each of these tools daily for weeks. We verify pricing, seat terms and documented capability; we do not publish an opinion on their interface that we have not earned.
Enterprise tiers behind a custom quote are out of scope, because there is no public figure to verify.
And one that cost us: for months this table said Ahrefs starts at $129/mo. It starts at $29, and they also run a free tier. We were overstating a competitor's price by 4.4x, in the direction that flattered us. We found it while verifying and corrected it. If you spot another one, it is a mistake rather than a tactic.
Frequently asked questions
How were these tools chosen?
They are the tools we are most often compared against in this category. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on the date shown on each comparison page, not from a third-party roundup.
Is this list ranked?
No. Ranking tools that answer different questions produces a number rather than an answer. Each entry says what it is the better buy for, and the section at the end says which to pick for which situation.
Where does ViralHunt sit?
ViralHunt schedules and auto-publishes, so there is real overlap, but a dedicated scheduler will out-schedule us on automation depth and we are not going to claim otherwise. What we add is the half none of these do: knowing what to post. If simple cheap publishing is the entire need, several tools above do it well and cost less.
See what is viral in your niche right now
2.7 million posts measured across 12 networks. Free plan, no card, and it does not expire.
