Which social scheduler is cheapest for a small business?

Buffer's free tier covers three channels, and Metricool's free tier includes analytics but caps at one brand and 20 posts a month. Paid, Buffer is $6 per channel and Metricool starts at $22 as of late 2026.

Is Hootsuite still worth it?

Not for a small business. It starts at $99 per user a month and has dropped its free plan, so five people costs $495 a month. It is priced for agencies now.

Which one has the best free plan?

It depends what you need. Buffer's covers more channels; Metricool's includes analytics, which is rare at zero. If you want to know what worked rather than only schedule, Metricool's free tier is more useful.

Does it matter which one I pick?

Less than whether you batch. All three schedule reliably. What decides whether an account survives is producing a fortnight of posts in one sitting rather than looking for an idea each morning.

Do I need a scheduler at all?

If you post daily across more than one channel, yes, because publishing live means a busy day breaks the run. Below that a phone reminder is genuinely enough.

Comparison

Buffer vs Later vs Metricool for a one-person business

September 8, 2026 · 4 minute read

The short answer

Metricool if you want analytics without paying, since its free tier includes them. Buffer if you want the simplest scheduler, free for three channels and $6 a month per channel after. Later if visual planning matters. Hootsuite is now $99 per user with no free plan, which is why it is not on this list.

Why Hootsuite is not on the list

It used to be the default answer and it is now priced for a different customer. Hootsuite starts at $99 per user a month and has discontinued its free plan, so a team of five is $495 a month on Standard.

For an agency managing thirty accounts that may be reasonable. For a salon owner posting to three channels it is not, and the free tier that made it the default is gone.

What the three cost

As of late 2026. All three have usable free tiers, which is the main reason they are the realistic shortlist.

Pricing

Buffer: free for three channels. Paid at $6 a month per channel, so eight channels is around $15 on the Essentials plan
Metricool: free tier covering one brand and 20 posts a month, and it includes analytics, which is unusual at zero. Starter from $22 a month
Later: positioned around visual planning and Instagram-first workflows, priced between the two

Buffer, if you want it to be boring

Buffer does one thing and does it without ceremony: you write a post, pick channels, and it goes out. The interface has stayed deliberately plain while competitors added dashboards.

The per-channel pricing is the thing to watch. It is cheap at three channels and stops being cheap at ten, so a business genuinely cross-posting everywhere ends up paying more than the headline suggests.

Best for: someone who already knows what they want to post and wants the smallest possible amount of software between them and posting it.

Metricool, if you want to know what worked

The distinguishing feature is that analytics are in the free tier. Every competitor treats reporting as the thing you upgrade for, and for a business trying to work out which posts land, that is exactly backwards.

The free tier is limited to one brand and twenty posts a month, which is under the daily target for a single channel, so most businesses will end up on Starter at $22.

Best for: someone who wants to see what happened rather than only schedule what happens next.

Every competitor treats reporting as the upgrade. For a business working out what lands, that is backwards.

Later, if the feed is the product

Later grew up around Instagram and still shows it. The visual planner, where you arrange the grid before anything publishes, matters if your feed is a shop window: a salon, a bakery, a florist, anyone whose grid is browsed as a whole.

For a plumber it is irrelevant. Nobody scrolls a plumber's grid for aesthetic coherence, and the feature you are paying for goes unused.

The features worth checking before you commit

Most feature lists in this category are noise. Four things genuinely change whether a scheduler is usable day to day, and they are rarely the ones on the comparison page.

The first is whether it can actually publish to the channel or only remind you to. Some platforms restrict automatic publishing for certain post types, and a scheduler that sends you a notification at 7am to go and post manually has not saved you anything.

Ask these four

Does it publish automatically to every channel you use, or does it fall back to a reminder for some
Can you queue a fortnight in one session without fighting the interface
Does it show you what performed, or only what was sent
What happens when a post fails, and will you find out before a customer does

What none of them fix

Scheduling was never the bottleneck. The bottleneck is having something to schedule, every day, for a year, and no tool in this category solves that.

The businesses that succeed with any of them share one habit: they batch. One sitting produces a fortnight of posts, and the scheduler exists to space them out. The businesses that fail open the scheduler each morning hoping for an idea.

So pick on price and free tier, not on features. Then put the effort into the batching session, which is the part that actually decides whether the account is alive in six months.

Common questions

Which social scheduler is cheapest for a small business?: Buffer's free tier covers three channels, and Metricool's free tier includes analytics but caps at one brand and 20 posts a month. Paid, Buffer is $6 per channel and Metricool starts at $22 as of late 2026.
Is Hootsuite still worth it?: Not for a small business. It starts at $99 per user a month and has dropped its free plan, so five people costs $495 a month. It is priced for agencies now.
Which one has the best free plan?: It depends what you need. Buffer's covers more channels; Metricool's includes analytics, which is rare at zero. If you want to know what worked rather than only schedule, Metricool's free tier is more useful.
Does it matter which one I pick?: Less than whether you batch. All three schedule reliably. What decides whether an account survives is producing a fortnight of posts in one sitting rather than looking for an idea each morning.
Do I need a scheduler at all?: If you post daily across more than one channel, yes, because publishing live means a busy day breaks the run. Below that a phone reminder is genuinely enough.