Social Media Scheduler Cost for Five Accounts in 2026

For one person posting to X, LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, and Bluesky, Publer is the lowest listed price at $20 a month, followed by SocialBee and Postiz at $29, Buffer at $30, Metricool at $35 with its X add-on, and Distinctful at $49, all in US dollars on monthly billing as of October 30, 2026. Later cannot cover this set at any price: it ended X support in August 2025 and does not list Bluesky.

The cheapest option that covers your accounts is the right pick if you only need a queue. If you also want help deciding what to post each week, the comparison changes, and the last section covers that.

What counts as five accounts here?

This guide prices one fixed basket: one person, no teammates, and one account each on X, LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, and Bluesky. The LinkedIn account is a personal profile, and the Instagram account is a professional (business or creator) account. Distinctful requires a professional account, and Buffer's pricing reference says personal Instagram profiles get reminder notifications instead of automatic publishing.

Vendors count that basket differently:

• Buffer bills per channel. Its pricing reference says "a channel is one social account you connect to Buffer," so this basket is five channels.
• Publer prices per social account. Its supported networks article says each network is counted as a different social account.
• SocialBee and Postiz sell plans with a fixed number of profiles or channels.
• Metricool sells plans by brand. Its brand guide allows one connection of each network per brand, so all five accounts fit in one brand.
• Later sells social sets. Its pricing page says a social set includes one profile from each supported platform.
• Distinctful includes a number of social accounts in each plan, per its pricing.

Adding a LinkedIn company Page or a second X account changes the math for every per-account tool, so recount before you compare.

What do Buffer, Later, Metricool, SocialBee, Publer, and Distinctful cost for five accounts?

Distinctful publishes this guide and is one of the options. Prices below come from each vendor's own pricing or help page, checked on October 30, 2026, in US dollars before tax. The yearly total is the monthly-equivalent price times twelve unless the vendor states the total.

Tool and plan	Covers all five?	Monthly billing	Billed yearly, per month	Yearly total
Publer Professional, 5 accounts	Yes	$20	$16	$192
SocialBee Bootstrap, 5 profiles	Yes	$29	about $24.17	$290
Postiz Standard, 5 channels	Yes	$29	$23	$276
Buffer Essentials, 5 channels	Yes	$30	$25	$300
Metricool Starter plus 1 X add-on	Yes	$35	$30	$360
Distinctful Grow, 12 accounts	Yes	$49	$39	$468
Later Starter, 1 social set	No: no X or Bluesky	$25 for 3 of 5	$18.75 for 3 of 5	$225 for 3 of 5

How each row was built:

• Publer: the plans calculator set to five social accounts and no extra members showed $20.00 a month, or $16.00 a month billed yearly, for Professional. Business showed $35.00 and $28.00.
• SocialBee: the pricing page lists Bootstrap at "$29/ month, billed monthly" or "$290/year, billed annually" for five social profiles. The page also showed a promotion code with a June 10 end date, which is excluded here.
• Postiz: the pricing page lists Standard at $29 monthly or $23 a month billed yearly, with five channels.
• Buffer: the pricing reference lists Essentials at $6 per channel monthly or $5 per channel with annual billing for 1 to 10 channels. The pricing page shows one channel at $60 billed yearly.
• Metricool: the pricing page lists Starter for up to five brands at $25 monthly or $20 a month on annual billing. The X add-on guide adds $10 a month or $120 a year per X account and says the billing cycle matches the main plan.
• Distinctful: Grow is $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly at $468 a year, with 12 social accounts, per the pricing page.
• Later: the pricing page shows Starter at $25.00 billed monthly or $18.75 a month billed yearly for one social set of eight profiles.

Why Later cannot cover this basket

Later's help center article Ending Support for X (formerly Twitter) says new X accounts could not be connected from July 30, 2025, and that Later sunset X support on August 28, 2025. After that date, scheduled X posts do not publish and X analytics collection stops. Its pricing page lists eight supported platforms, and Bluesky is not among them. Later still covers Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads, with Starter capped at 30 posts per profile per month. Covering the full basket means pairing it with a second tool. Our Distinctful vs Later comparison goes deeper on that fit.

Which network add-ons or plan tiers change the total?

The basket stays the same, but small changes move each bill differently:

• X on Metricool. X is the only network in this basket with a separate fee. Each connected X account adds $10 a month or $120 a year, and the add-on requires Starter or higher, per Metricool's plan guide.
• A sixth account. On Buffer, it adds $6 a month at the current channel rate. On Publer, the calculator prices by account, and its plans article says every tenth account is free. SocialBee Bootstrap and Postiz Standard stop at five, so a sixth account moves you to SocialBee Accelerate at $49 a month or Postiz Team at $39 a month. Distinctful Grow has room for 12 accounts before Scale at $99 a month.
• A LinkedIn company Page. Buffer and Publer count a profile and a Page as separate accounts. SocialBee's pricing page lists both but does not say how they count. In Metricool, a Page needs its own brand. Distinctful posts to your LinkedIn member profile only and does not publish to company Pages, per its LinkedIn page.
• More Later social sets. Later's pricing page lists extra social sets at $11.25 a month each, in its yearly-billed view, on Growth and Scale. Extra sets still exclude X and Bluesky.

How do monthly and annual billing compare?

Every tool here charges less per month for a yearly commitment, but you pay the year up front. For this basket, monthly billing for twelve months against the yearly price works out to:

• Publer: $240 against $192, a $48 difference. Publer's plans article describes yearly billing as a 20% discount.
• SocialBee: $348 against $290, a $58 difference. Its pricing page says annual plans are 16% off.
• Postiz: $348 against $276, a $72 difference.
• Buffer: $360 against $300, a $60 difference.
• Metricool: $420 against $360, a $60 difference. The X add-on is $120 a year either way.
• Distinctful: $588 against $468, a $120 difference.

Annual billing makes sense once a trial month confirms the tool fits your week. Committing a year to save $48 to $120 is a poor trade if you switch tools in month three.

What do free plans and trials actually cover?

No free plan checked here covers all five accounts:

• Buffer Free: up to three channels and ten scheduled posts per channel at a time, per its pricing reference. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial.
• Publer Free: up to three accounts, excluding X, and ten scheduled posts at a time per account, per its plans article. Professional has a 7-day free trial.
• Metricool Free: one brand and 20 posts a month, with no LinkedIn or X connection, per its plan guide. A paid-plan trial is not documented on the pricing page.
• SocialBee: no free plan. Its pricing page offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
• Postiz: no free plan. Its pricing page lists a 7-day free trial.
• Later: its pricing page offers a 14-day free trial.
• Distinctful: no free plan. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial.

A free plan can still work for part of the basket. Buffer Free can hold three of the five accounts if you are willing to post to the other two by hand.

Which option fits scheduling alone versus planning from your business?

If you already know what you want to say and need a reliable queue for these five networks, pick on price and workflow. Publer is the lowest listed total. Buffer is close behind and simple to reason about at $6 per channel. SocialBee and Postiz fit exactly five accounts. Metricool earns its higher bill if you use its reporting. You may not need Distinctful's planning workflow for that job, and paying $49 for a queue would be a mismatch.

Distinctful is a social media scheduler for entrepreneurs that plans and drafts each week from your business: your offers, your voice, and what already worked. Chat writes drafts from your strategy, content pillars, and voice rules, and nothing posts until you schedule or publish it. It publishes to all five networks in this basket, including Bluesky and X threads. Grow costs more than the queue-only tools, but includes 12 social accounts, so the price does not climb as you add a few more.

A practical way to decide: count your accounts, check the table for tools that cover all of them, and run one real week in a trial. If the hard part was scheduling, choose the cheaper queue. If the hard part was deciding what to post, try the planning workflow.

For deeper comparisons, see Buffer vs Metricool for solo creators and schedulers that support Threads and Bluesky.