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Not a lot in life is free. When you do get some kind of free offer, there’s usually a catch involved. This isn’t the case with the following free social media schedulers.
Sure, you don’t get access to all the features and you’ll be restricted in terms of how many social platforms you may connect and posts you may schedule. However, if you’re still starting out and responsible for managing and growing only your own social media presence, the free plans offered by the following tools will usually meet your needs. After all, why pay for things that you’re probably not going to use (at least not in the early days)?
We’ve searched the internet, read reviews, and tried out a number of social media scheduling tools to come up with a list of the best free social media scheduler tools. The majority of these free social media scheduling tools include a free plan. Those that don’t have a free plan offer a free trial and/or an affordable entry-level plan.
Loomly is an intuitive social media management platform that integrates with all the main social channels and more. Trusted by thousands of marketing teams that include global brands like L’Oréal Paris, Porsche, and BMW, it does a lot more than simply scheduling. In terms of its scheduling capabilities, it integrates with virtually all the major social networks and supports automated publishing even on platforms like TikTok. However, it currently doesn’t support automated publishing for Snapchat. That said, it can help with manual publishing by sending you reminders for the platform and for other custom channels. If you have no content to schedule, you can check out the custom post ideas that Loomly shares. Alternatively, you can refer to the central library where Loomly lets users store digital assets, like links and videos, to be used later. All in all, it can be a useful tool to check out if you want to leverage social ads. In addition to automated publishing for most social networks, it also includes automated pushing for Instagram and Facebook Ads via the Loomly Ads Manager. Pricing: Loomly offers a free 15-day trial (no credit card required). Pricing starts at $42 per month, but you can save a substantial 25% by signing up for yearly billing. Limitations of the free version: The main drawback of the free version is that it has an expiration date, and you’ll have to pay to continue using the features after the first 15 days. Sendible is trusted by thousands of marketers and has received a lot of recognition on G2 for its usability. Clients have also praised its affordability—one of the reasons why it has made it onto this list. In terms of capabilities, it offers a powerful scheduling platform that can simplify social media marketing. It supports most of the main social media networks including TikTok, and the only platforms that you might miss are Snapchat and Pinterest. Two standout features are its bulk scheduling and queues. You can schedule social media posts, videos, and images in bulk, making it an attractive solution for agencies. Then, to ensure that your content enjoys optimal reach, you can group posts into campaigns and schedule them for specific days and times. Adding and customizing content are also easy. Thanks to the calendar view, you can quickly get a visual overview of the content lined up. If you should spot a gap in your content calendar, it’s straightforward to rearrange posts. Then, to customize each post for different platforms, you can, for example, add emojis, hashtags, or mentions. Pricing: Sendible offers a free 14-day trial (no credit card required). Pricing starts at $29 per month when billed monthly, but you can save 15% by choosing to be billed yearly instead. Sendible’s entry-level plan includes unlimited scheduling. Limitations of the free version: The main drawback of the free version is that it’s only free for the first 14 days, after which you’ll have to sign up for one of the paid plans to keep accessing the features. If you’re looking to use a social media scheduler free of cost forever, you can check out Planoly’s free plan. Unlike the previous two tools, this one’s really free in that there’s no time limit to the free version. Planoly has gone through several improvements and now supports auto-posting across leading social networks including TikTok and LinkedIn. The free version allows you to schedule your posts for any one of these platforms. It even offers you basic Instagram analytics for up to one month of data. Pricing: Planoly offers a basic free plan with very limited functionalities. For the ability to plan for and schedule content across all social networks, pricing starts at $13 per month or $11.25 per month when billed annually. You can try out any of the paid plans for free for seven days. Limitations of the free version: The free version of Planoly is perhaps the most limited in that you can only connect one social profile. When it comes to media, it only supports images, which means you’ll need to sign up for a paid plan to schedule videos. Another major drawback is that it only supports uploads for Instagram or Pinterest, which limits your ability to schedule for other social networks. Moreover, different actions such as adding to the grid, cropping an uploaded image, or swapping images will count toward your 30 uploads for the month. Agorapulse is one of the best free social media scheduling tools as it offers a generous free plan that’s accessible for an unlimited timeframe. It’s also very generous in terms of integrations. It recently added TikTok to its list of supported networks, making it a great social media tool if you mainly target Generation Z. The only platform not currently supported which you might miss is Pinterest. Notable features include its unified publishing calendar and rescheduling. Via its shared calendar, you can get a comprehensive overview of where you stand in terms of content. Here, you’ll be able to see which posts have been scheduled, published, rejected, or still waiting to be approved. These features make it useful if you need to collaborate with clients or other team members. Then, to help you make the most of your content, you can publish content multiple times. This way, you can reach new users at new times to generate more views. Pricing: In addition to offering a free plan, Agorapulse offers an extremely generous free trial of 30 days (no credit card required). Paid plans start at $69 per month, which gets reduced to $49 per month if you choose the annual billing option. Limitations of the free version: The free version of Agorapulse only lets you schedule up to 10 social media posts and add one user and three social profiles. It only provides basic reporting and retains up to one month of data. Plus, you won’t have access to the content library or an advanced social inbox, which makes it challenging to use it as a tool for managing your entire social media efforts. IconoSquare is a comprehensive analytics and social media management tool designed to help businesses and marketers optimize their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter strategies. With a wide array of features, it allows users to gain insights into various aspects of their social media presence, such as community, content, engagement, reach, impressions, profile activity, page performance, and much more. The platform also offers a custom dashboard feature, allowing users to build personalized dashboards that display relevant insights for their brand and campaigns. These dashboards can be exported as reports to share with team members and clients. Monitoring features help users stay informed about conversations related to their brand and products, enabling them to listen and engage with audiences while accessing valuable tags and mentions analytics. Furthermore, IconoSquare’s Albums and Albums Analytics features allow users to analyze the performance of event-related publications. IconoSquare’s Post Scheduler makes it easy for users to schedule Instagram and Facebook posts, stories, and carousels in advance, as well as add saved captions or hashtag lists, cross-post content, and leverage automatic publishing and tagging features. The platform also includes a Media Library for uploading and managing images using Dropbox or OneDrive, ensuring that previously used images are not duplicated. Pricing: The platform offers a 14-day free trial (no credit card needed). You can also sign up for paid plans starting as low as $29 per month. Limitations of the free version: The major drawback of the free version is that it’s accessible for a limited timeframe, after which you’ll need to sign up for a paid plan to keep using it. HeyOrca emerges as a distinctive player in the realm of social media scheduling tools, designed with an acute awareness of the diverse needs of small to medium-sized agencies, nonprofits, and businesses. It emanates from a founder’s genuine struggle with existing tools and evolves into a comprehensive, user-centric solution. Unlike the predominant, complex platforms, HeyOrca epitomizes simplicity and efficiency without compromising on the robust features essential for seamless social media management. The best part is that it lets you schedule social media posts free of cost for an unlimited timeframe. Central to HeyOrca’s ethos is fostering enhanced collaboration between teams and clients. Its client-specific calendars stand as a testament to this commitment, offering tailored, intuitive interfaces that mitigate the complexities often associated with social media planning and approvals. Every feature is engineered to streamline processes, enhance accuracy, and augment the creative latitude of social media managers. The AI Caption Writer is a hallmark of HeyOrca’s innovation, a feature that underscores its commitment to simplifying and improving content quality. It enables users to generate engaging, contextually apt captions automatically. Pricing: Pricing starts with a free plan and extends to tiered paid options ranging from $24.65 to $149 per month, based on features and the number of calendars needed. Users benefit from a 40% discount when adding five or more calendars. Limitations of the free version: Although there’s no time limit for the free version of HeyOrca, you can only schedule up to 30 posts. This translates to one social media post a day for one account, which can be very limiting if you’re looking to ramp up your social media activity with a regular posting schedule across various channels. If you’ll be posting mainly to Instagram, Later is one of the best free social media scheduling tools to try out and is great for visual content. In addition to Instagram, you can also use it to schedule posts to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn. You can use the free trial for scheduling social media posts free of cost for a limited period. Later supports bulk scheduling and lets you post to all social media at once free of cost during the trial period. It even provides with personalized recommendations on the best time to post so you can adjust your posting schedule accordingly. Pricing: Later lets you sign up for a free forever plan without a credit card. For access to more advanced features, the paid plans start from $20.83 per month. You also get to try these paid plans for free for 14 days. Limitations of the free version: The free plan is limited to one user and one access group. You can only add one social set and schedule up to five posts per social media platform included in the set. If you’re new to social media scheduling tools, Buffer is a good place to start. Not only does it offer a free plan (which is always welcoming if you’re not sure if you’ll actually use the tool), but it’s also very easy to understand and use. In fact, this is probably our favorite feature of Buffer. It’s dashboard is clean and their own branding that they’ve applied consistently spurs you on to do the same for your own business. In addition to scheduling social media posts, you can also use it to plan and publish your content on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. It even supports direct scheduling for TikTok, which will auto-publish your post at the chosen time. Alternatively, it gives you the option to set reminders for when it’s time to post to the platform. On top of its social media management features, its free plan also offers a useful landing page builder. With this feature, you can create a landing page for your brand that you can then use to share important info like a special promo or upcoming sale. Pricing: Buffer offers a free plan with access to a limited number of social media channels. To access more features and add more social media channels, paid plans start at $5 per month per channel. You can also try these paid plans for free for 14 days. Limitations of the free version: Like with all of the free plans, there are certain features that are excluded. In Buffer’s case, arguably the biggest downside to its free plan is that it doesn’t include any analytics, insights, or reporting whatsoever. Moreover, the free version of Buffer only lets you connect up to three social media channels and schedule up to 10 posts per channel. You also don’t have the option to schedule first comment or videos. If you’re specifically searching for a free social media scheduler to help you with LinkedIn, be sure to check out CoSchedule. While it also includes scheduled social messages for Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, it’s one of the best tools for LinkedIn specifically. All in all, it’s a great tool if your goal is to save time without spending a dime. If you take a look at some of the case studies, the results speak for themselves with customers reporting that they’ve managed to increase their marketing workload by between five and 12 times. And, it’s not just about posting more content. Customers have also shared that CoSchedule has helped them to streamline their workflow, increase their visibility, and drive more organic traffic. One of the features included in the free plan that deserves special mention is the single calendar. Even if it will be only you on your marketing team, this unified content calendar is still extremely useful as it will let you see all your projects at a quick glance. If a project needs to be changed, rescheduling it is easy. All you need to do is drag and drop the project to the new date. Pricing: Buffer offers a forever free plan with limited social scheduling capabilities. You can sign up for the Social Calendar plan starting at $19 per month for access to more advanced tools and capabilities. Limitations of the free version: The free version of CoSchedule is limited to one user and two social profiles. You can schedule a maximum of 15 social messages with this plan, which isn’t much for brands that want to maintain a regular posting schedule on social media. Moreover, it doesn’t support free post scheduling for Twitter. If access to analytics is a must-have feature, Crowdfire’s free plan will get you fired up. While you’ll only get access to one day’s data, it includes advanced analytics as well which is rare to find with a free plan. This free post scheduler supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. With the free version, you can even schedule posts for Pinterest. It also has auto-tailored posts for the different platforms with previews before posting which comes in very handy if you’ll be posting on multiple platforms. Though, one feature that it lacks in this department is bulk scheduling, which is only available with one of the Premium or VIP plans. Additionally, Crowdfire is the ideal scheduling tool if you want to streamline your content creation. It lets you curate an unlimited number of articles and images from across the internet even with the free version. Pricing: Crowdfire offers a free plan with limited scheduling features. For the ability to link more accounts and access additional features like post analytics, you’ll need to sign up for one of its paid plans starting at $9.99 per month or $7.48 per month with an annual subscription. Limitations of the free version: With the free plan, you can only link up to three social media accounts and schedule a maximum of 10 posts per account. This version also misses some key features such as custom posting schedule, video scheduling, and bulk scheduling. Moreover, it doesn’t support scheduling for Pinterest. If you know that you’ll be posting frequently on only one platform, SocialOomph might be the most cost-effective solution. This free social media scheduling tool lets you schedule an unlimited number of social media posts from one social profile. That being said, compared to the other free post schedulers, SocialOomph is more difficult to understand and use. Connecting your social accounts via its clunky dashboard can test your patience. Though, you probably suspected that this would be the case when you were greeted by its rather dated home page. Another con is that it doesn’t offer integration with all the major social media platforms. For instance, you can’t schedule posts for Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok. On the other hand, unlike most other social media tools, you can also add a Discord account and blog platforms (WordPress or Tumblr). Drawbacks aside, it offers a lot of functionality. With regards to posting and scheduling specifically, it makes it easy to tag which posts need approval or revision and which ones have been scheduled and published. Pricing: SocialOomph has a free plan with basic scheduling features. For more advanced posting features, you need to sign up for one of its premium plans which start at $15 per month. Limitations of the free version: With the free plan, you can only add one social profile. Although you get unlimited scheduled posts, this capacity is still restricted with the ability to schedule a maximum of three posts every hour. So it’s really only suitable for individual users who only need to schedule posts for a single social media account. Trusted and loved by more than one million members that include the likes of Shopify, Tailwind initially started as a tool for Pinterest marketing and analytics. Fast-forward more than a decade and they’ve expanded their functionality to include a number of other social networks. One of the features that set Tailwind apart from other social media management tools is that it also includes email marketing in their free plan. While it’s very basic (you can only send up to 20 emails per month), it’s a good place to start. Plus, this way you don’t necessarily have to invest in another tool for your email marketing. As mentioned, it started out as a Pinterest marketing tool and as an official Pinterest partner, it’s still where its strong suit is. In fact, according to their website, you can plan and schedule an entire week of pins in just 20 minutes. Not only will it help you to save time, but with its SmartSchedule feature you will know that you reach your audience at the time that they’re most engaged. On average, their users can get nearly seven times more repins and almost four times more followers. That said, take nothing away from its Instagram scheduler. One special feature regarding its Instagram functionality that deserves special mention is that its free plan also includes a bio link tool. While other tools also offer this, it’s often only available if you sign up for one of the premium plans. Pricing: Tailwind provides a free forever plan with limited scheduling capabilities. For more scheduled posts, you need to sign up for one of its paid plans which start at $19.99 per month or $12.99 per month with an annual subscription. Limitations of the free version: The free version of Tailwind lets you connect only one account for each social media platform and schedule a maximum of 20 posts across all channels. Moreover, only one user can access the free tool. NapoleonCat is an all-in-one social media management platform that’s trusted by brands like Energizer and has been featured by publications like SocialMediaToday. From individual content creators to small businesses to marketing agencies to growing teams, NapoleonCat can be used for various business needs. You can use it to publish and schedule content on several main channels – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google My Business, and LinkedIn – all via a single dashboard. It can be especially useful if Instagram plays a big role in your marketing strategy. You can also use it to publish and schedule Instagram Reels, schedule your first comment with your Instagram post, create Instagram carousels, and automate moderation of conversations on Instagram. Pricing: NapoleonCat offers a free 14-day trial (no credit card required). Pricing starts at $32 per month for unlimited scheduling, but you can get two months free if you pay annually. Limitations of the free version: The main drawback of the free version is that it’s only accessible for a limited number of days, after which you’ll need to sign up for one of the paid plans. SocialPilot is a popular alternative to Sendible and offers sophisticated scheduling features. With SocialPilot’s social media scheduler, you can publish your content across Pinterest, TikTok, Google My Business, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube without effort. Considering this impressive list of supported networks, it’s a great solution if you want to post on multiple channels. Then, with the help of its advanced Post Composer feature, you can customize your posts for each of these different platforms by, for example, adding hashtags, alt texts, and mentions conveniently via one place. To make sure that all your custom elements appear as you have in mind, you can use the post-preview window. It will show you what your post will look like after it has been published on the individual networks. SocialPilot not only shines in terms of integrations and customization, but also flexibility. It provides multiple scheduling options, making it a great tool if your target audience is scattered all over the world. You can schedule your posts immediately or add them to queues, helping you to reach your audience at a time that’s most convenient to them. Its bulk scheduling and content calendars are two of the other time-saving features that deserve special mention. You can schedule up to 500 posts at once, helping to fill up your content calendar quickly. And, just to make sure that there aren’t any gaps, you can use the content calendar for a micro as well as macro level view. If you spot an issue, you simply use the drag-and-drop functionality to reschedule posts. Pricing: SocialPilot offers a free 14-day trial (no credit card required). Pricing starts at $30 per month, but you can save 15% by switching to yearly billing. Limitations of the free version: The free version of SocialPilot is only accessible for a limited number of days, which is its greatest con. Here’s the thing about Hootsuite. It’s one of the best social media management apps available on the market, but its free plan is extremely limited. Also, as soon as you want to access more of its functionality, it becomes pretty expensive pretty quickly. There’s a significant price difference between its different subscription plans. For example, if you need to add multiple users, you can end up paying more than double. That said, it comes with powerful publishing capabilities that offset these limitations with the option to set your posts to go out at the best time for optimal results. Its bulk scheduling feature lets you plan hundreds of posts in advance. With additional tools such as Canva templates, Grammarly spellcheck, and automated captions, Hootsuite can help you save hours of time spent on planning and creating social media posts. Pricing: Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial. Paid plans start at $99 per month for single user access. Limitations of the free version: The biggest disadvantage of the free version is that there’s a time limit. It’s free to use only for the first month, after which you’ll need to start paying for access.1. Loomly
Noteworthy free features:
2. Sendible
Noteworthy free features:
3. Planoly
Noteworthy free features:
4. Agorapulse
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5. Iconosquare
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6. HeyOrca
Noteworthy free features:
7. Later
Noteworthy free features:
8. Buffer
Noteworthy free features:
9. CoSchedule
Noteworthy free features:
10. Crowdfire
Noteworthy free features:
11. Socialoomph
Notable free features:
12. Tailwind
Noteworthy free features:
13. NapoleonCat
Noteworthy free features:
14. SocialPilot
Noteworthy free features:
15. Hootsuite
Noteworthy free features:
Platform Best for Supported Channels No. of users (with free account/trial) No. of profiles (with free account/trial) Scheduling Loomly Agencies, freelancers, startups, nonprofit organizations, influencers, and individuals Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok 2 10 Unlimited Sendible Businesses of all sizes and agencies Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok 1 6 Unlimited Planoly Businesses of all sizes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok 1 1 30 HeyOrca Agencies and teams Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, TikTok 3 3 30 Agorapulse Mid-sized agencies, mid-sized businesses and some enterprise brands Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok 1 3 10 Iconosquare Brands and Agencies Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok 1 3 Unlimited Later Businesses of all sizes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok 1 6 5 per month per platform Buffer Businesses of all sizes, agencies, influencers, and individuals Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok, Mastodon 1 3 10 per channel CoSchedule Professional marketers, marketing teams, and marketing agencies Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram 1 2 15 Crowdfire Businesses of all sizes, agencies, influencers, and individuals Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram 1 3 10 per account SocialOomph Social media users Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter 1 1 Unlimited Tailwind Businesses of all sizes, influencers, and individuals using only Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest 1 3 20 NapoleonCat Small businesses, e-commerce, agencies, marketers, digital influencers Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, My Business, YouTube, Messenger, TikTok 1 3 Unlimited SocialPilot Digital marketing agencies and SMBs Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok 1 10 Unlimited Hootsuite Businesses of all sizes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok 1 10 Unlimited
Wrapping Things Up
Nowadays every business needs a strong online presence and without a social strategy there’s no way to achieve that. Though, creating social media content is a time-consuming process if you’re doing it manually. Luckily, there’s an answer and it doesn’t necessarily need to cost you anything.
With the help of one of these social media management platforms, you can plan, create, and schedule posts in advance. You can even use some of these social media scheduling tools free of cost for an unlimited period of time. This gives you ample time to consider whether you should upgrade to a paid version or switch to a different option.
With regards to which tool is the best, it depends on your social media strategy. If you want to increase your social media activity on all major platforms, a tool like Planoly or Tailwind won’t tick all your boxes. On the other hand, if you want to make a point of keeping track of analytics, Crowdfire might be the better option. Nevertheless, any one of these tools listed deserve your consideration.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best scheduling tool for social media?
These 15 social media scheduling tools will help boost your social media marketing workflow:
- Iconosquare
- Buffer
- CoSchedule
- Crowdfire
- HeyOrca
- Hootsuite
- Planoly
- Socialoomph
- Tailwind
- Later
- Sendible
- SocialPilot
- Loomly
- NapoleonCat
- Agorapulse
Is there a free social media scheduling tool?
If you are looking for a free social media scheduling tool, consider suing CoSchedule or Later. These platforms allow you to schedule social posts for Instagram and Facebook. CoSchedule also lets you use Pinterest, LinkedIn or Twitter, too.
What is the easiest social media scheduler?
These are the best and easiest social media scheduling tools for 2024:
- Loomly
- Sendible
- Planoly
- HeyOrca
- Agorapulse
- Iconosquare
Is Hootsuite a scheduling tool?
Hootsuite is used by marketing departments to schedule content across all social media platforms. It helps streamline social media marketing practices into manageable tasks.
