Buffer Pricing: Free, Essentials and Team, and What You Pay per Channel

Buffer is often the first social media scheduler a small business tries, and the reason is its price. Unlike Hootsuite and Sprout Social, it has a real free plan, and its paid plans are priced by the number of social accounts you connect, not by the number of people who log in. That model is cheap for a shop with three accounts and less cheap for an agency with forty.

This guide covers the whole price list: what the Free plan really allows, how the per-channel price works, where the volume discount starts, what you save on yearly billing and when the Team plan pays off. Prices are from Buffer's own pricing page, in US dollars, before any sales tax. Buffer says it last changed its prices in November 2025.

Buffer pricing at a glance

The per-channel prices in that table apply to your first 10 channels. From the 11th channel on, each one costs less; the full rate table is further down.

There is no separate charge per user on any plan. On Essentials you get one login; on Team, as many as you need.

What a channel is

Buffer bills per channel, which it defines as one social account connected to Buffer: a single Instagram profile, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page, a TikTok account and so on. A bakery with Instagram, Facebook and a Google Business Profile has 3 channels. Buffer's own example: if you run five brands with an Instagram account and a Facebook page each, that's 10 channels.

Two details are easy to miss:

• Start Page counts. Buffer's link-in-bio page, Start Page, takes a slot like a social account: "A Start Page counts as a channel towards your plan."
• Not every account type posts automatically. Facebook groups and Instagram personal profiles get notification publishing only: Buffer reminds you on your phone and you post by hand. Instagram business and creator accounts, Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages and profiles, TikTok business profiles, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Google Business Profiles and X all publish automatically.

The Free plan: what you get for $0

Buffer's Free plan is not a trial. You can stay on it as long as you like. It includes:

• Up to 3 channels.
• 10 scheduled posts per channel at any one time. With 3 channels that is 30 queued posts; when one goes out, the slot frees up for another.
• 1 user.
• 100 ideas saved for later and 250 tags.
• The AI Assistant for writing and rewriting posts.
• The queue, the visual content calendar, the board view, templates and the browser extension.
• A community inbox to reply to comments, with 5 AI reply suggestions a week and 1 saved reply.
• Insights on followers, engagement, impressions and post performance, with 30 days of history.
• Integrations with Canva, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zapier, Make and others, plus email support.

For a business that posts a few times a week to two or three networks, 10 queued posts per channel is roughly two weeks of content planned ahead. That is enough for many owners who sit down every two weeks to plan.

What the Free plan leaves out: unlimited queues, analytics older than 30 days, reports, first comment scheduling, the hashtag manager and channel groups. If you make your images in Canva, Buffer's Canva integration works on the Free plan too; Canva's own plans are priced in our Canva pricing guide.

Essentials: one person, unlimited posts

Essentials costs $6 a channel a month on monthly billing, or $5 a channel a month billed yearly. For 3 channels, that is $18 a month, or $180 a year on yearly billing ($15 a month).

Compared with Free, Essentials adds:

• Unlimited scheduled posts per channel, under a fair use policy that caps it at 5,000 posts per channel. Buffer says nobody has ever reached that cap.
• Unlimited ideas and unlimited threaded posts.
• Unlimited AI reply suggestions and saved replies in the community inbox.
• Analytics with unlimited history, a performance overview, custom analytics, reports and custom UTM parameters for tracking clicks in Google Analytics.
• First comment scheduling for Instagram and LinkedIn, a hashtag manager, channel groups and custom video covers.

Essentials still has one user. If a second person needs to log in, even to draft posts for you to check, you need Team.

Team: unlimited users and approvals

Team costs $12 a channel a month on monthly billing or $10 billed yearly, for the first 10 channels. It includes everything in Essentials, plus:

• Unlimited team members. There is no per-user fee: five people cost the same as one.
• Content approval workflows, so a junior marketer or a freelancer can draft posts that you approve before they go out.
• Access levels and custom permissions, to choose which channels each person can use.
• Branded reports to send to a client or a manager.
• Higher API limits: 5 API keys instead of 3.

The jump from Essentials to Team doubles the price of your first 10 channels. With 3 channels, that is $15 a month more on yearly billing ($30 instead of $15). With 10 channels, $50 a month more.

Choose Team if more than one person touches your social accounts, or if you work for clients who want to approve posts before they go out. Stay on Essentials if it is just you: the extra features are about working with other people.

Volume pricing: channels above 10 cost less

Buffer's per-channel price falls once you pass 10 channels. These are the rates per channel on monthly billing:

Each rate applies only to the channels in its band. Ten channels on Essentials cost $60 a month; the 11th adds $4, not $6.

Notice the Team column: from the 11th to the 50th channel, Team costs the same per channel as Essentials. Above 10 channels, Team costs a flat $60 a month more than Essentials on monthly billing, until you pass 50 channels. That makes Team a better deal the more accounts you manage, which suits agencies.

What Buffer costs at 1, 3, 10, 25 and 50 channels

Buffer publishes example totals for both billing options:

On yearly billing you pay the year up front: 3 channels on Essentials come to $180 for the year, 10 channels on Team to $1,200.

The average cost per channel tells the volume story. At 10 channels on Team, billed yearly, you pay $10 a channel. At 50 channels, $213 a month works out to about $4.26 a channel.

Yearly or monthly billing?

Buffer's examples show yearly billing at five-sixths of the monthly price, which it describes as saving approximately 2 months: you pay for 10 months and get 12. Its billing FAQ calls the same thing a 20% discount, which is true the other way round: monthly billing costs 20% more than yearly. In plain numbers, 3 channels on Essentials cost $216 a year on monthly billing and $180 on yearly billing, a saving of $36.

You can switch between monthly and yearly billing at any time, and Buffer applies prorations or refunds automatically when you do. That makes monthly billing a reasonable way to start: try a paid plan for a month or two, then move to yearly once you know how many channels you really use.

Buffer takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Discover and Diners Club cards. It does not accept PayPal, checks or bank transfers.

Free trial, nonprofits and other things to know

• 14-day free trial. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial. If you don't enter payment details by the end, Buffer moves the account to the Free plan; scheduled posts still go out as long as the channels aren't locked.
• Channels lock above 3 after a trial. If you connected 6 channels during the trial and drop to Free, the channels above the Free plan's limit of 3 are locked.
• Your free channels stop being free when you upgrade. Moving from Free to a paid plan means paying for every connected channel, including the 3 you had on Free. Upgrading from 3 free channels to 4 on Essentials costs $24 a month on monthly billing, not $6.
• Nonprofits get 50% off paid plans.

What to watch:

• The bill grows with every account. Before you upgrade, disconnect anything you no longer post to, such as an old X account or a test page.
• Essentials is single-user. Sharing one login between several people breaks the approval trail, which is the reason Team exists.
• Buffer's support on every plan is by email and a self-service knowledge base; the pricing page lists no phone or live chat support.

Three example bills

A coffee shop owner, alone, posting to Instagram, Facebook and a Google Business Profile. That is 3 channels. If 10 queued posts per channel is enough, the Free plan costs $0. If the owner wants a month planned ahead or analytics beyond 30 days, Essentials costs $15 a month billed yearly, $180 for the year.

A real estate team of three sharing Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for the office, plus a TikTok account. That is 5 channels and 3 people, so Team: $50 a month billed yearly, $600 for the year, with approvals so the broker can check posts before they go live.

A small agency managing Instagram and Facebook for 12 clients. That is 24 channels on Team. On monthly billing: the first 10 channels at $12 ($120) plus 14 more at $4 ($56), $176 a month. Buffer's examples price yearly billing at five-sixths of monthly, which would bring it to about $147 a month; check the exact figure in Buffer's calculator before you commit.

How to keep the bill down

• Count channels before you upgrade. List every account you post to at least monthly; drop the rest.
• Post where your customers are. Three active channels on Essentials cost half as much as six half-used ones.
• Start monthly, then switch to yearly. Monthly billing costs $3 a month more for 3 Essentials channels, and you avoid paying a year up front for channels you end up removing.
• Apply for the nonprofit rate if you qualify: it halves the price.

Buffer vs Hootsuite on price

Hootsuite, the older and better-known rival, is priced per user instead of per channel. Its Standard plan costs $99 per user a month, billed annually, for up to 10 social accounts. Professional is $199 per user a month with unlimited accounts. Hootsuite does not list its monthly-billing prices on its plans page; it says annual billing has the lower per-user rate. We cover all of its tiers in Hootsuite pricing.

Buffer figures are Buffer's yearly example totals × 12; Hootsuite figures are $99 × 12 × the number of users.

The price gap is wide, and it is not only about price. Hootsuite Standard includes brand and competitor monitoring, which Buffer does not offer. If you need to watch what people say about your brand across social networks, Buffer is the wrong tool at any price. If you need to plan, publish, reply to comments and see what worked, Buffer does it for a fraction of the cost.

Sprout Social, the other big name, is priced per seat from $79 a month on annual billing for 5 profiles; see our Sprout Social pricing guide for what a team pays there.

Is Buffer worth it for a small business?

Start on the Free plan if you post to three networks or fewer and plan content a week or two ahead. It costs nothing and does not expire.

Choose Essentials when you need more than 10 posts queued per channel, want analytics older than 30 days, or post to a fourth account. For most owner-run businesses this lands between $15 and $25 a month on yearly billing.

Choose Team when a second person drafts, approves or replies. Because Team has no per-user charge, a team of three sharing 10 channels pays $100 a month on Buffer Team billed yearly, against $297 a month for three Hootsuite Standard seats.

If you run email campaigns as well, compare the cost of your social tool with your email tool: our email marketing for small business guide prices the main options side by side.