Managing social media posting effectively is key to consistently reaching your target audience on their preferred platforms. The best free social media schedulers allow you to schedule posts on multiple platforms and include features like analytics reports, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, content curation, or inspiration hubs. After reviewing dozens of platforms, here are the best free social media scheduler tools:
- Best free social media scheduler overall: Metricool
- Best for unlimited posting: SocialOomph
- Best scheduler with landing page builder: Buffer
- Best for Meta (Facebook) platforms: Meta Business Suite
- Most generous free trial: Sprout Social
- Most user-friendly: Pallyy
- Best social media and project management bundle: CoSchedule
Your social media is only as good as the tools you use to create it. Find out everything you need to build your social media posts in our guide to the best social media marketing tools.
Best Free Social Media Scheduling Tools at a Glance
Monthly Post Limit | # of Social Profiles | Channel Options | Learn More | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 50 | 1 social profile per channel | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Google Business Profile, web/blog, paid socials | |
 | Unlimited | 1 | Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter, Tumblr | |
 | 30 | 3 | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Shopify, TikTok, Google Business Profile, Mastodon | |
 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Facebook, Instagram | |
 | Unlimited for 31 days | Unlimited | Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok | |
 | 15 | 1 social profile per channel | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Pinterest, TikTok | |
 | 5 | 2 | Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest |
Metricool: Overall Best Free Social Media Scheduler
Pros
- Feature-rich free-forever plan
- Up to 50 scheduled posts a month
- Can create one social profile on all channels
- Offers web and blog post scheduling
- Includes paid social management
- Artificial intelligence (AI) assistant
- Strong analytics and competitor analysis
Cons
- Free version doesn’t include LinkedIn
- Reports are only available in paid plans
- Only one third-party integration
- 50 posts a month
- One social profile for all channels
- Competitor analysis for five competing brands
- Analytics for up to three months of data
- Best Time feature to post during optimal times
- Autolisting
- Built-in image and video editor
- Social inbox with message management
- One Smart Link for link-in-bio
- Web/blog real-time analytics
- Instagram hashtag analysis
- Canva integration
- You need more than one social profile per channel
- You need a LinkedIn profile
- You want to receive extensive data analytics and competitor analysis
- You need social media reports to go over
Paid plans start at $18 per month, billed annually. This includes five brand social sets and up to 2,000 posts per month.
Metricool stands out to us as the best free social media scheduler for small businesses for its impressive suite of features under the free-forever plan. With Metricool, you can efficiently manage a single brand and schedule up to 50 monthly posts across various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, your website and blog, Google Business, and even paid socials.
Metricool’s free plan rivals premium social media scheduling tools in terms of features. The platform offers several additional tools to streamline your social media management. Its “Best Time” feature helps optimize post scheduling for maximum engagement, while the auto-list functionality allows for automatic publishing using extensive lists of publications. Metricool also includes an in-house image and video editor, as well as a Canva integration.
Additionally, the platform’s inbox and message management feature helps you stay organized and responsive to your audience. Although the new artificial intelligence (AI) feature is limited to three uses a month, it’s still a huge help in terms of content generation.
Finally, Metricool’s analytics is top-tier for providing valuable insights through competitor analysis for up to five competitors and analytics with up to three months’ worth of data. Even Instagram Reels and Stories have their own analytics.
Metricool Social Media Scheduler Interface
Metricool has a drag-and-drop planner where you can schedule social media posts for free. (Source: Metricool)
In spite of the extensive range of social media management features, the interface for Metricool’s scheduler isn’t overwhelming. The drag-and-drop social media planner is color-coded and includes distinguishable icons for easy navigation. Personally, I think the planner itself is user-friendly. However, some reviews say that they want to see more improvements in the interface due to it looking outdated.
Need a social media planner? Learn how to make a social media plan in five steps, and use our free social media plan download to get started.
Our Expert Opinion
Feature-wise, Metricool is the best free social media scheduler for businesses wanting a complete solution for building brand presence online. The AI assistant, optimal time posting, analytics, and social inbox are just some of the premium features you can get for free on Metricool. Since it is limited to one brand (one social profile per channel) and up to 50 posts, it is not recommended for agencies or freelancers marketing multiple brands.
SocialOomph: Best for Unlimited Posting
Pros
- Unlimited posting on a free-forever plan
- Although only offers one profile, the choices include niche platforms that aren’t usually offered, such as Discord, Mastodon, and Tumblr
- Offers blog posting on Tumblr and WordPress on paid plans
Cons
- Only one social profile
- No analytics or reports
- Does not include Instagram
- Difficult to set up
- Clunky website with no calendar view
- Unlimited posting
- One social profile on one channel
- Post auto-destruct feature
- Image carousel and video scheduled posting
- You have more than one social profile
- You need to manage accounts on multiple platforms
- You would benefit from a blog posting scheduler
Paid plans start at $15 per month, billed annually. This includes one social profile and unlimited scheduled posts as well as access to all posting features.
SocialOomph is the only free social media scheduling tool on this list that offers unlimited scheduled posting. There aren’t a lot of features that come with its free-forever plan, but it is the no-brainer solution for post-heavy businesses looking for a free scheduler. This is especially useful for Twitter and Mastodon, platforms with short-form content where multiple posts a day are expected.
With SocialOomph, you can manage a single social profile and access basic scheduled posting. It includes niche platforms such as Discord and Mastodon, but does not include Instagram in its offerings. It’s also important to know that although SocialOomph boasts unlimited posting, a maximum of three posts per hour is set for scheduled posts.
Instructions for adding a Facebook app to SocialOomph before connecting an account (Source: SocialOomph)
Upon trying SocialOomph’s social media scheduler free version, we found that it was complicated to set up compared to other providers. Unlike other platforms where you can just log on to your Facebook business accounts, SocialOomph requires you to create an app for the social media channel first before connecting your account. This might make it difficult for beginners to use.
SocialOomph Social Media Scheduler Interface
SocialOomph’s planner uses a list view instead of a calendar view. (Source: Influencer Marketing Hub)
Our Expert Opinion
For social media planning on Twitter, Mastodon, or other post-heavy accounts, SocialOomph is the best bet for social media scheduling. Of all our top picks, SocialOomph is the only one to offer unlimited posting. The website may be clunky and it can be difficult to set up, but the sheer social media posting power is unmatched.
Buffer: Free Social Media Scheduler With Landing Page Builder
Pros
- Up to 30 posts a month on 3 profiles/channels
- Multiple social media channels to choose from, similar to Metricool
- Hashtag suggestions and Reel scheduling
- 100 ideas stored as content inspiration
- 30+ third-party integrations
- 50 AI credits
- Free mobile social media scheduling app (Android and iOS)
Cons
- No analytics or reports
- Social inbox is only available in paid plans
- Up to three profiles or channels
- Up to 30 posts a month
- 50 AI credits
- A landing page for your business
- Instagram reels, stories, and carousels scheduling
- 100 ideas stored for content inspiration
- Custom video thumbnails
- 30+ integrations such as Zapier, Pocket, Feedly, and more
- You need additional engagement tools such as important comment detection and easy account switching
- You would benefit from analytics, insights, and custom reporting
- You want to handle messages in a built-in social inbox
Paid plans start at $5 a month per channel, billed annually. This includes unlimited posting.
Buffer markets itself as an all-in-one social media toolkit—and we can’t help but agree. Although the free plan lacks reporting and engagement tools, it comes with a bunch of handy features that are difficult to find in other free social media scheduling tools, such as hashtag management, Instagram Stories scheduling, and an artificial intelligence (AI) content assistant.
Buffer’s free plan includes 30 scheduled posts, which allows daily posting for one profile. Along with Metricool, Buffer supports the greatest number of social media channels on this list: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok, and Google.
The free-forever plan also comes with your own Start Page, which is a landing page for your brand—a unique offering that can help businesses wanting to highlight their products or services. The landing page builder is easy to use and has several templates you can customize.
Buffer’s landing page builder is beginner-friendly. (Source: Buffer)
Buffer is an excellent choice in terms of what they offer, such as AI tools and Stories schedulers. However, plenty of their features are still gated behind their paid plans—including a social inbox where you can check messages from all of your accounts and performance data and analytics.
Buffer Social Media Scheduler Interface
Buffer has a clean and easy-to-use calendar as a social media planner. (Source: Buffer)
Buffer was incredibly easy to set up and use. It has a simple, no-nonsense calendar where you can drag and drop posts to schedule them. The interface is sort of reminiscent of Meta’s Creator Studio, but cleaner and more intuitive. Even social media management beginners can use this calendar effectively, so we can easily recommend it to those just starting out.
Our Expert Opinion
Buffer has plenty of features that make it one of our top picks for the best free social media scheduling tools, such as a custom landing page, AI assistant, and up to 100 content ideas. It has an intuitive social calendar that makes it easier to schedule content pieces. It is best for businesses that plan to post daily for their brand, without a need for reporting and campaign analytics.
Meta Business Suite: Free Social Media Scheduling Tool for Facebook & Instagram
Pros
- Unlimited posting for Facebook and Instagram
- Completely free to use, no paid plans
- Inspiration hub for future content
- Bulk posting available
- Has post testing to find what types of content perform best
- In-depth insights and analytics
- Ads manager is also available
Cons
- Limited to just Facebook and Instagram
- User reviews show bad experiences with customer service
- Unlimited Facebook or Instagram profiles
- Unlimited posting
- Inspiration hub
- Post, reels, stories, ads, and live video scheduling
- A/B testing
- Built-in video creator
- Social inbox for Facebook and Instagram
- Content and audience insights
Meta, the technology conglomerate that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, is known for consistently distributing free user tools and features. Their Meta Business Suite is no exception, with all available features included in its free-forever platform. It has everything you need for social media marketing on Facebook and Instagram, including a social media scheduler, content and audience analytics, social inbox, ads manager, and more.
One of the unique features you can find on Meta Business Suite is A/B testing. This allows you to test four versions of your post for 30 minutes. After the test period, the version with the highest number of reactions is then posted.
Since Meta Business Suite is created by the same company that handles Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, powerful features are integrated into the platform, such as messaging ads, automations, messaging insights, and collections of your creative assets. It even has a built-in video creator with a Vimeo integration.
The platform has a Vimeo integration which allows you to create videos straight from the calendar. (Source: Meta Business Suite)
Content creation is also made easier with features like smart crop and preview, ensuring your posts are visually appealing and optimized for various display sizes. It includes a story highlight clipping tool, enabling you to curate and showcase your best moments in a visually appealing way. Auto-captions and subtitles also make your video assets more effective.
On July 5, 2023, Meta launched a new social platform called Threads. Although it skyrocketed with 100 million sign-ups within five days of its launch, it is yet to be included in Meta Creator Studio.
Meta Business Suite Social Media Scheduler Interface
Meta Business Suite’s planner interface has all you need for publishing. (Source: Meta Business Suite)
Out of the many features of Meta Business Suite, you can do most of your work straight from the calendar. Just press the Create button at the top or the different icons on the sidebar. There are also tips found directly inside. Additionally, you can drag and drop the posts to reschedule them.
Our Expert Opinion
Meta Business Suite is arguably the best free social media scheduler if you only plan to post on Facebook and Instagram. It has a barrage of powerful tools and features that can improve your content, such as smart cropping, auto-captions, video generator, and hashtag management. Nevertheless, it can only do so much for your business since you can’t use it for other platforms.
Did you know? Paid social on Facebook is an effective way to reach a highly targeted audience. Check out our guide on how to advertise on Facebook to learn more.
Sprout Social: Most Generous Free Trial Social Media Scheduler
Pros
- Five social profiles and unlimited posting in the Standard plan
- 31-day free trial with unlimited experience, no credit card required
- All-in-one social inbox with built-in customer relationship management (CRM) tools
- Extensive social listening and monitoring features
- Comprehensive analytics and custom reports
Cons
- Free for only 31 days
- Paid plans are expensive compared to other scheduling tools (but also far more robust)
The Standard plan ($249 per month) includes the following:
- Five social profiles
- All-in-one social inbox
- Unlimited post scheduling, queuing, and publishing
- Newly upgraded and intuitive social content calendar
- Review management across App Store, Play Store, Facebook, Google Business Profile, Tripadvisor, and Yelp
- Content suggestions
- Profiles, keywords, and locations monitoring
- Tasking and social CRM tools
- Group, profile, and post-level reporting
- Paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts
- iOS and Android mobile apps
After 31 days, you will be asked to choose your plan and provide your billing information. There is no free plan to use after the free trial.
- Upgrade to Professional for unlimited social profiles, extensive reports, custom workflows, optimal send times, CRM, and social e-commerce features
- Upgrade to Advanced for chatbots and automation tools, digital asset and content library, inbox automations, and automated link tracking
Sprout Social is a social media management solution leader. Known for its intensive social listening, monitoring, publishing, and customer relationship manager (CRM) tools, it is easily one of the most comprehensive platforms in the industry. Although Sprout Social does not have a free plan, users can get full access to any of their plans (except Enterprise) for 31 days.
The channels integrated into Sprout are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WhatsApp, TikTok, YouTube, and Google Business Message. Sprout Social has a powerful and intuitive dashboard that allows users to manage profiles from these channels in a single interface.
In addition to scheduling, Sprout Social provides powerful social listening and monitoring features. It allows you to monitor conversations, keywords, and hashtags related to your brand, helping you stay on top of trends and engage with your audience effectively. Sprout Social also offers in-depth analytics and reporting tools. You can even opt for a custom report to highlight the most valuable insights of your business.
Sprout Social Social Media Scheduler Interface
Sprout Social’s scheduler is available in different views and layouts for improved navigability.
(Source: Sprout Social)
Aside from weekly and monthly views, Sprout Social also has a list view for scheduled posts. The interface itself is well-designed and intuitive, with only a minimum learning curve required for beginners. You can filter the posts in the calendar by profile, post type, and tags. The sidebar provides quick access to team management features. This robust platform even made it our top alternative as the best social media marketing agency for self-managed services.
Our Expert Opinion
We recommend Sprout Social for businesses looking for a free social media scheduling tool to try out before they purchase a subscription. Sprout Social’s full-service social media suite includes impressive publishing, social listening, and monitoring features that are some of the best in the industry.
Pallyy: Most User-friendly Social Media Scheduler
Pros
- Free-forever plan includes one profile per channel (one total social set)
- Visually pleasing, user-friendly, customizable interface
- Access to caption-writing AI
- Includes basic analytics and insights
- Competitor analysis
- Strong Instagram-oriented features, such as unique hashtag tool or Instagram grid view
Cons
- Only 15 posts a month
- Can’t schedule image carousel posts
- Social inbox only in the paid plan
- Additional social set is charged separately
- One social set (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Pinterest, TikTok)
- 15 posts per month
- User-friendly and customizable interface
- Automatic TikTok publishing
- “Best Time to Post” feature
- Access to basic analytics dashboards with 30 days’ worth of data, including audience, post, and stories insights
- Competitor analysis
- Five monthly credits for AI caption generator
- Media library, caption lists, and hashtag lists for easy post creation
- Customizable post templates
- 30 credits for the unique hashtag tool every week
- You need custom and shareable analytics reports for clients or multiple managed profiles
- You need to schedule Instagram stories and reels regularly
- You need unlimited social media post scheduling and bulk posting
- You want to handle messaged in a multi-platform social inbox
The paid plan is priced at $13.50 a month, billed annually. It includes one social set (additional social sets are priced at $15 each) and unlimited scheduled posts.
Pallyy is a relatively new player in the social media management solutions market, but it has made its mark. The free-forever plan includes one social set (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Pinterest, and TikTok) and up to 15 monthly posts. It has a highly visual interface, making it an excellent tool for visual content posting, like Instagram content. This includes features such as post previewing or a media library sidebar.
Pallyy is particularly useful for influencers or businesses focusing on Instagram marketing. There are Instagram-specific features such as a more intensive analytics dashboard, grid view to see how your content would look on your Instagram profile, Instagram preview, Instagram first comment tool, and best time to post feature for Instagram.
Pallyy’s AI caption generator is available in the caption list feature. (Source: Pallyy)
Nevertheless, Pallyy also offers fantastic general social media management tools. A few of our personal favorites include the AI caption generator (five credits a month in the free plan), caption lists, templates, and hashtag lists that help streamline the content creation process. The unique hashtag finder tool can also be used to find 30 unique hashtags—the limit is refreshed weekly.
A glaring issue that I found in their free plan is that despite being marketed as a social media tool for Instagram marketing, Pallyy’s scheduling capabilities do not support image carousels in the free plan.
Pallyy Social Media Scheduler Interface
Pallyy’s social media calendar is customizable and easy to use. (Source: Pallyy)
Pallyy’s interface for the social media scheduler is extremely impressive. Aside from the basic monthly and weekly calendar view, you can also set the scheduler to list view, grid view (how it would look on Instagram), board view, and table view. This makes it incredibly easy to see each piece of content that will be sent out, the status of each one, and more details about the posts.
Our Expert Opinion
Pallyy has all the essentials for businesses that are just starting out in social media. Although the usage of some of the features is limited in the free plan, it still has access to captions, hashtags, and template lists for quick post creation as well as a built-in AI caption generator. At the same time, Pallyy’s reporting capabilities are more than enough for any social media beginner. All these and more are found in a customizable and user-friendly interface.
CoSchedule: Social Media Scheduler With Project Management
Pros
- Comes with a project management tool with unlimited marketing projects
- Integrations with WordPress, Mailchimp, Active Campaign, and other popular third-party apps
- Comes with email subject line tested and headline studio
- Optimal post time feature
- Excellent onboarding process and customer support
Cons
- Limited social channels offered: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter
- Only five scheduled posts a month, the lowest on this list
- Real-time marketing calendar
- Social media publishing of up to five posts
- Unlimited read-only observer calendar views
- Customizable task workflow templates
- Best posting time feature
- Unlimited marketing projects and social campaign projects
- You want to work with your team together
- You want to streamline content generation with an AI writing assistant
- You need unlimited social media post scheduling and bulk posting
- You need to cover more social profiles, including Twitter
The paid plan is priced at $29 per month, billed annually. This includes 10 social profiles and unlimited scheduled posts.
CoSchedule is a work management software for search engine optimization (SEO) content marketing that’s used in conjunction with web content. There are two plans: Free and Pro. The free-forever plan includes two social profiles and five scheduled posts per month. Although this is a much more limited option compared to Meta Business Suite or SocialOomph, which offer unlimited posting, what sets CoSchedule apart is its work management software integrated into the real-time marketing calendar.
Users can create tasks directly from messages and add them to their calendars, as well as other marketing campaigns that they may launch. This includes blog posts, email campaigns, ad campaigns, newsletters, podcasts, and more. You can even create your own tag and description for more options. The free plan can accommodate unlimited marketing and personal projects.
It’s easy to connect a social media account to CoSchedule. Even so, the onboarding process and resources are a great way to get started. Out of all of the platforms I’ve tried so far, CoSchedule was the first to immediately offer an introductory call the moment I signed up for their free plan. For absolute beginners, this can be a huge help.
Unfortunately, only four platforms are integrated into CoSchedule: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Nevertheless, you can also use it for email campaigns and other marketing efforts, so that helps even out its calendar capabilities.
The email subject line tester on CoSchedule is a free tool to optimize email subject lines. (Source: CoSchedule)
A few features that caught our attention are the email subject line tester and headline studio. These tools can help create more compelling content. The AI writing assistant that can be used for social posts is, sadly, gated behind the paid plan.
CoSchedule Social Media Scheduler Interface
CoSchedule real-time marketing calendar includes blog posts, events, social media posts, and more.
(Source: CoSchedule)
As with most platforms on this list, CoSchedule has a drag-and-drop calendar that can be used to easily schedule projects and posts across various platforms. A few unique features include advanced filtering options (by channel, content type, color label, tags, and more) and display settings. It’s one of the cleanest calendars on this list, and upon using it, I felt like it was similar to the feel of Google Calendar based on intuitiveness.
Our Expert Opinion
CoSchedule is an excellent free marketing calendar that is useful for managing all types of marketing content. We recommend CoSchedule for businesses that only plan to post weekly (or less) and want to see all their other marketing campaigns and tasks in a single calendar. Unlimited project management is CoSchedule’s strongest feature, making it effective for small businesses or startups that don’t have set systems in place yet.
How We Evaluated
The best free social media scheduler tools can accommodate the number of social profiles and posts that your business needs per month. In our research to find the best free social media schedulers, we came up with key criteria. Our aim was to provide an objective analysis of each platform’s capabilities and features.
Here’s a breakdown of the factors we considered to find the best free social media tool:
- Number of scheduled posts: We examined the maximum number of posts allowed per month or specific time frame to determine the scheduling capacity of each tool.
- Social channels supported: We considered the social media platforms supported by each scheduler, including popular ones like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
- Number of profiles: We considered the number of social media profiles or accounts that could be managed within a single scheduler.
- Reporting and analytics: We evaluated the reporting and analytics features provided by each platform to assess the level of insights and data available to users.
- Content types supported: We looked at the types of content supported, such as images, videos, carousels, Stories, and other formats, to determine the flexibility and versatility of each scheduler.
- Ease of use: We considered the user interface, intuitiveness, and overall user experience of each scheduler to evaluate its ease of use and accessibility.
- Additional features: We examined any unique or noteworthy features offered by the schedulers, such as AI assistants, hashtag suggestions, content ideas, or integrations with third-party tools.
Based on these criteria, we found that Metricool is the best free social media scheduler for small businesses. It supports nine social media channels with up to 50 monthly posts, a solid amount for establishing an online brand presence. It’s also filled to the brim with useful features, such as an AI assistant, analytics reports, a social inbox, and a built-in image and video editor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bottom Line
The best free social media scheduler tools do more than just schedule posts. Our top picks include reporting, basic social inboxes, AI tools, visual content tools, and other features that help make users’ social media campaigns more successful. Businesses don’t need to break the bank to streamline their processes, and platforms such as Metricool prove that you can do it at no cost at all.
