Only 8 of the 25 social media schedulers we checked in July 2026 still offer a genuinely usable free plan — Buffer, Publer, Metricool, Zoho Social, Pallyy, Social Champ, CoSchedule, and Tailwind. Two more (Planable and Planoly) are "free" in name only, and the rest offer nothing beyond a time-limited trial. The trend is unmistakable: Later killed its free plan entirely (its cheapest plan is now $25/month), Agorapulse dropped its free tier, Crowdfire exited scheduling altogether, and SocialOomph shut down after 17 years.
Nobody seems to have documented this collapse in one place, so we did. Below is a tool-by-tool census of which social media schedulers still have a free plan as of July 2026, what those free plans actually include, and where the catches are.
How we checked (and why you should double-check us anyway)
Every claim in this article comes from the official pricing page of each tool, checked in July 2026. Not review-site roundups, not last year's blog posts — the actual pricing pages, this month. Several turned out to contradict what popular "best free scheduler" listicles still say, which is exactly why we bothered.
Full disclosure: Schedchie is our product — so check the numbers yourself; every competitor price below comes from their official pricing page as of July 2026. And here's the part that keeps us honest: Schedchie does not have a free plan either. We offer a 14-day free trial, then it's €7.99/month. So we have no incentive to trash free plans to make ours look better — we don't have one to promote. The data below simply says what it says.
The free-plan census: 25 schedulers, July 2026
We included our own tool in the census, marked clearly. Tools with a real free plan come first, then the technicalities, then everyone who only offers a trial. All prices are per month and verified on official pricing pages as of July 2026.
| Tool | Free plan in July 2026? | What you actually get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer | Yes | 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel, 1 user, basic analytics | The 10-post queue per channel refills but caps hard; paid is $5/channel, so 10 channels costs $50/mo |
| Publer | Yes | 3 social accounts, 10 pending posts per account (30 total), 25 drafts | No X (Twitter) accounts on free; published posts are deleted from your history after 24 hours |
| Metricool | Yes | 1 brand, 20 posts/mo, 30-day analytics | Connecting X costs +$5/account even on paid plans; everything lives under a single brand |
| Zoho Social | Yes (free edition) | Free edition covering 6 channels | Free-edition limits are lightly documented — verify on Zoho's pricing page; Standard is $15 for 1 brand |
| Pallyy | Yes | 1 account, 15 posts/mo | A second account means Starter at $15/mo — which is still capped at 20 posts |
| Social Champ | Yes | 3 accounts, 15 posts | The next step up is $29/mo for 6 accounts, plus $5/profile add-ons |
| CoSchedule | Yes | 1 profile, 15 messages | X profiles cost an extra $8/mo; paid Social Calendar is $19/user on annual billing |
| Tailwind | Yes | 1 account, 5 posts/mo | Five posts a month is barely weekly posting; Pro is $17.99 at promo pricing |
| Planable | Technically | Your first 50 posts, total | Not a monthly allowance — once the 50 lifetime posts are used, it's $33/workspace for 4 pages and a 60-post cap |
| Planoly | In name only | Mobile app only, 10 uploads | No web scheduling on free; this used to be a real free plan before it was hollowed out. Paid starts at $14 |
| Later | No — killed its free plan | Starter $25, 1 social set, 30 posts per profile | The biggest free-plan removal of 2025–26; unlimited posting requires the $110 Scale plan |
| Agorapulse | No — dropped its free plan | $79/user, billed annually | Priced per user, so costs multiply with team size |
| Sendible | No (14-day trial) | Core $9 for 6 profiles, 100 posts/day | The cheapest of the no-free-plan crowd alongside Radaar; the next tier (Plus) jumps to $39 |
| Radaar | No (14-day trial) | Basic $4.99 for 3 profiles, 90 posts/mo | Unlimited posting requires Standard at $9.99 |
| SocialPilot | No (14-day trial) | Essentials $20 for 5 accounts | Extra accounts are +$4/mo each |
| FeedHive | No (7-day trial) | Creator €15 for 4 accounts, 30 scheduled posts | The trial is only 7 days — the shortest we found |
| SocialBee | No (14-day trial) | Bootstrap $29 for 5 profiles | Works out to roughly $5.80 per profile |
| MeetEdgar | No (30-day trial) | Eddie $29.99 for 5 accounts | Extra accounts cost $1.99–$4.99/mo each |
| Loomly | No (trial only) | Starter $49 on annual billing, 12 accounts | Month-to-month is $65 |
| Swat.io | No (21-day trial) | Small €39 for 3 channels | That's €13 per channel — it's built for teams, not solo users |
| Vista Social | No (14-day trial) | Professional $79 for 15 profiles | $79 is the entry tier — there is no cheaper way in |
| Hootsuite | No (14-day trial) | Standard $99/user billed annually, 10 accounts | That's $1,188/year minimum before adding a second user |
| Sprout Social | No (30-day trial) | Essentials $99/seat | Per-seat pricing: a team of three pays $297/mo |
| Predis.ai | No free plan found on official pricing page | Core $19 | Some third-party sites still claim a free tier; the official pricing page lists only paid plans — verify on the official site before counting on it |
| Schedchie (that's us) | No — 14-day free trial | €7.99 flat: unlimited accounts, unlimited posts, AI assistant included | X (Twitter) publishing is a €4.99 add-on per 30 posts (X API fees); no team approval workflows yet |
Quick tally, as of July 2026: 8 real free plans, 2 free-in-name-only, 15 tools with no free plan at all. In 2023, most of this list had a free tier. If you're comparing the survivors in detail, our rundown of the top free schedulers in 2026 goes deeper on each one.
Free plans that died (2025–2026)
This is the part existing "best free scheduler" articles haven't caught up with. Five significant free options disappeared or were gutted within roughly eighteen months.
Later: free plan killed, $25 minimum
Later's free plan was one of the most popular entry points in social media scheduling — for years, "free Instagram scheduler" basically meant Later. As of July 2026, it's gone. The cheapest way into Later is now the $25/month Starter plan, which covers one social set and caps you at 30 posts per profile per month. Unlimited posting doesn't arrive until the $110 Scale plan. If you signed up for Later expecting the free tier you read about in a 2024 listicle, this is why you can't find it.
Agorapulse: free tier dropped
Agorapulse also removed its free plan. Entry now starts at $79 per user, billed annually — a tool that once had a genuine freemium on-ramp is now firmly positioned for agencies and teams with budgets.
Crowdfire: exited scheduling
Crowdfire, once a staple of free-scheduler roundups, pivoted away from social media scheduling entirely in 2026. It's not that the free plan died — the product category did, for them. Any article still recommending Crowdfire as a free Buffer alternative is running on stale data.
SocialOomph: shut down after 17 years
SocialOomph — one of the oldest scheduling tools on the internet, dating back to the early Twitter era — shut down entirely in 2026 after 17 years of operation. A reminder that with any tool, free or paid, longevity is not guaranteed.
Planoly: hollowed out, not killed
Planoly technically still advertises a free option, but it's mobile-app-only and capped at 10 uploads. There's no web scheduling on it at all. We'd call this the quiet way to kill a free plan: keep the word "free" on the site, remove the reasons anyone wanted it.
The pattern behind all five is the same: platform API costs went up (X's enterprise API pricing being the loudest example), and free users became expensive to serve. Expect more of the survivors to tighten limits rather than loosen them.
When a free plan costs more than €8
Here's the honest math, because a free plan is only free while you fit inside it.
The typical surviving free plan gives you 1–3 accounts and somewhere between 5 and 20 posts per month. Now look at what consistent posting actually requires: posting just four times a week on three networks is roughly 50 posts a month. That blows past every free tier on this list — Buffer's 10-per-channel queue, Metricool's 20 posts, Pallyy's 15, Tailwind's 5.
And the moment you outgrow free, the pricing cliff is steep, because most tools price per channel or per seat:
- Buffer: $5 per channel sounds tiny, but 10 channels is $50/month.
- Later: the first rung is now $25/month — and still caps you at 30 posts per profile.
- SocialPilot: $20 for 5 accounts, then +$4 for each additional one.
- Hootsuite and Sprout Social: $99 per user/seat before you've done anything.
Against that cliff, the flat-price budget tools look very different. Radaar's Standard plan is $9.99 for unlimited posting. Sendible's Core plan is $9 for 6 profiles with a 100-posts-per-day ceiling. And Schedchie is €7.99 flat for unlimited accounts and unlimited posts — of the 25 tools in this dataset, only Schedchie and Radaar Standard ($9.99) offer both with no caps, and Schedchie is the cheaper of the two. (Being upfront about our own catches: X publishing is a €4.99 add-on per 30 posts because of X's API fees, our analytics are essential-level rather than enterprise-depth, and we don't have team approval workflows yet — a shared login works for small teams, with no per-seat fees. Our comparison table puts these numbers side by side if you want to check our work.)
When free is genuinely the right choice
Fair is fair: if you post fewer than about 15 times a month on one or two accounts, a free plan is not a compromise — it's the correct choice, and paying anything would be wasted money. In that situation, Buffer's free tier (3 channels, solid interface) and Metricool's (20 posts plus real analytics) are the two we'd point a friend to. Publer's is decent too if you can live with the 24-hour post history. Don't let anyone — including us — talk you into €8/month you don't need. Revisit paid tools only when you're bumping into caps every week; our free and affordable tools guide covers that transition in more detail.
FAQ: free social media schedulers in 2026
Is there a completely free social media scheduler?
Yes — as of July 2026, Buffer (3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel), Publer (3 accounts, 10 pending posts each), Metricool (1 brand, 20 posts/month), Zoho Social, Pallyy, Social Champ, CoSchedule, and Tailwind all offer real free plans. All of them cap accounts, posts, or both, so they suit light posters — roughly 15 posts a month or fewer.
Did Later remove its free plan?
Yes. As of July 2026, Later no longer offers a free plan. Its cheapest option is the Starter plan at $25/month, limited to one social set and 30 posts per profile per month. Unlimited posting requires the $110/month Scale plan.
Does Buffer still have a free plan in 2026?
Yes. Verified on Buffer's official pricing page in July 2026: the free plan includes up to 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable), 100 ideas, and 1 user. Paid plans start at $5 per channel per month.
What replaced Crowdfire?
Nothing directly — Crowdfire pivoted away from social media scheduling in 2026. Former Crowdfire users looking for a free replacement usually land on Buffer, Publer, or Metricool; those wanting a cheap paid option with no caps tend toward flat-price tools like Radaar ($9.99 unlimited posting) or Schedchie (€7.99 unlimited accounts and posts).
What happened to SocialOomph?
SocialOomph shut down entirely in 2026 after 17 years in operation. It was one of the longest-running scheduling tools on the web. Existing users needed to migrate; there is no successor product.
What is the cheapest paid social media scheduler?
By sticker price, Radaar Basic at $4.99/month (3 profiles, 90 posts/month) and Buffer or Publer at $5 for a single account/channel are the cheapest entry points as of July 2026. The cheapest without caps on either accounts or posts is Schedchie at €7.99/month flat — with the caveat that X publishing is a paid add-on there. Radaar's $9.99 Standard plan is the closest flat-price alternative.
Is Schedchie free?
No. Schedchie has a 14-day free trial (no free plan), then costs €7.99/month for unlimited social accounts and unlimited scheduled posts across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Threads, and Bluesky. X (Twitter) is a €4.99 add-on per 30 posts due to X API fees.
The bottom line
The free-plan era of social media scheduling is winding down: 8 real free plans left out of 25 tools checked, and the direction of travel is clear. If you post lightly, grab one of the survivors above — genuinely, that's the right call. If you've outgrown the caps and don't want per-channel pricing to sneak up on you, you can try Schedchie free for 14 days — no credit card tricks, and it's a flat €7.99/month after that for unlimited accounts and posts. Every number in this article is on our pricing page and the official pages we cited, so verify before you commit — that goes for us too.