Buffer Pricing
- Marketing pricing
- $5/mo at the smallest
- Free plan
Buffer pricing starts at $5 a month, which is $60 over twelve months. There is a free plan, and a trial on the paid tiers: 14 days. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 9 August 2026.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
Buffer ranking and coverage
- In Marketing
- #1 of 14
- Overall
- #12 of 122 tied
- Terms score
- 7.7 /10
- Referenced here
- 2 pages
Cost position 9.2 · Portability 5 · Subscription flexibility 9 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
Buffer pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Free; paid from $5 per channel/month |
|---|---|
| Smallest invoice | $5 a month, or $60 a year |
| How that is reached | Essentials at $5 a month |
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | 14 days |
| How it charges | freemium |
| Priced plans published | 3 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 9 August 2026 |
Every Buffer plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 9 August 2026. Charged as freemium. Free trial: 14 days.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | per month | Up to 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel |
| Essentials | $5 | per month | per channel - Billed yearly at $60 per channel. Unlimited scheduling, 250 tags |
| Team | $10 | per month | per channel - Billed yearly at $120 per channel. Unlimited team members |
What Buffer actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.
| Plan | Quoted | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentialsper channel | per month | $5 | $60 |
| Teamper channel | per month | $10 | $120 |
Buffer pricing over time
Read from 14 archived captures of the vendor's pricing page , spanning December 2015 to September 2026. Every figure below links to the capture it came from, so you can check it against the page as it stood on the day.
- Team changed 4 times between 1 December 2015 and 2 September 2026, from $50 to $10, down 80% overall.
- Essentials changed 2 times between 1 July 2022 and 2 September 2026, from $5 to $5.
Team
| Published price | Charged | Seen from | Last seen | Capture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | Not stated | 1 December 2015 | Single capture | Archive |
| $99 | Not stated | 4 March 2017 | 20 May 2019 | Archive |
| $10 | Not stated | 1 July 2022 | Single capture | Archive |
| $12 | Not stated | 1 July 2023 | Single capture | Archive |
| $10 | Not stated | 3 August 2024 | 2 September 2026 | Archive |
- ↑ $50 to $99, between 1 December 2015 and 4 March 2017 (+98%). before / after
- ↓ $99 to $10, between 20 May 2019 and 1 July 2022 (-89.9%). before / after
- ↑ $10 to $12, between 1 July 2022 and 1 July 2023 (+20%). before / after
- ↓ $12 to $10, between 1 July 2023 and 3 August 2024 (-16.7%). before / after
Essentials
Compiled 18 September 2026 from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Plan names were matched against the archived page text and the first currency-anchored figure within 160 characters was recorded, rejecting any figure with a competing plan name standing between it and the name it was matched to. The currency and the unit were read from each capture rather than assumed: captures served in a currency other than $, and captures where no plan name sat beside a figure, are listed as unread rather than dropped. Archived pages show the price as served to the archive's crawler, which may differ by region from the price you are shown.
Buffer pricing against its competitors
Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.
| Product | Cheapest paid entry | Free plan | Against Buffer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer | $5 a month | Yes | This product |
| Later | $18.75 a month | No | +$13.75 a month (+275%) |
| Hootsuite | $99 a month | No | +$94 a month (+1880%) |
Which Buffer plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You post to three networks or fewer, lightly | Free | Three channels and 10 queued posts per channel. A real trial, not a permanent plan. |
| You are a solo creator on a handful of networks | Essentials | $5 per channel. Three channels is $15 a month, against $99 for a suite you would not open. |
| Several colleagues contribute posts | Team | $10 per channel with unlimited team members and draft approvals. |
| You manage more than about ten channels | Reconsider per-channel pricing | The model inverts at scale. Ten channels on Team is $100 a month, where flat-rate suites become competitive. |
| You need listening, an inbox or client reporting | Do not buy Buffer | Buffer is a publishing queue by design. Hootsuite or Sprout Social do management. |
Verdict by who you are
Solo founder or creatorYes
Per-channel pricing makes this the cheapest credible scheduler for a small footprint.
Small in-house marketing teamYes
Unlimited team members on Team means the cost follows channels, not headcount.
Agency with many client accountsNo
Per-channel pricing becomes expensive past roughly ten channels, and there is no client management layer.
Brand handling high inbound volumeNo
No serious inbox or listening. Messages will be missed.
Should you buy Buffer?
Buy Buffer if…
- Solo founders and creators on a few networks
- Small teams wanting scheduling without a suite
- Anyone whose social budget is under $50 a month
Do not buy Buffer if…
- Agencies managing dozens of client accounts
- Teams needing social listening and inbox management
- Organisations wanting deep competitor analytics
What leaving Buffer would cost
moderate lock-in
Buffer scores on public API. Portability 5/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
Per-channel pricing changes who should buy it
Buffer charges per connected channel, not per user. Essentials is $5 per channel per month and Team is $10, both billed yearly at $60 and $120 per channel. Those are the yearly-billing figures, which is the default the pricing page loads with; the page describes the yearly discount as saving two months, so monthly billing costs proportionally more. Team includes unlimited team members.
Work out your own number before comparing. Three channels on Essentials is $15 a month. Hootsuite starts around $99. For a solo operator the difference is not marginal, it is the entire decision. Run the same arithmetic at twenty channels and the conclusion reverses, which is exactly the point at which you have outgrown Buffer.
What the free tier actually covers
Three channels, ten scheduled posts per channel, 100 stored ideas, three tags and one user account. The AI Assistant is included even here. That is enough to evaluate the product and enough for genuinely light use, but a normal posting cadence exhausts ten queued posts in a week or two. Treat it as a real trial rather than a permanent plan.
There are only three plans. Buffer no longer sells an agency tier, so the feature comparison runs Free, Essentials and Team and nothing above it.
Scope is a feature here
Buffer does not do social listening, sentiment analysis or competitor benchmarking, and it does not pretend to. What it does is get posts out reliably, on time, across networks, with analytics good enough to see what performed. If your need is a publishing queue, that restraint is why the product stays fast and cheap.
If you need to monitor conversations, handle inbound at volume or report to clients in depth, you need a suite and should price Hootsuite or Sprout Social instead.
The company is worth a note
Buffer is bootstrapped, profitable and publishes its own revenue and salary figures. It bought back investor equity rather than pursuing an exit. For a tool you are asking to hold your publishing schedule for years, that reduces the usual risk of acquisition followed by repricing, and it is a fair consideration alongside the feature list.
Buffer questions, answered
- Is Buffer worth it?
- Buffer is the sensible default for anyone whose social media need is scheduling rather than management.
- How much does Buffer cost?
- Free; paid from $5 per channel/month. The cheapest paid tier we recorded is Essentials, published at $5 a month, which works out at $5 a month or $60 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Buffer have a free plan or free trial?
- Buffer has a free plan. A free trial is available: 14 days.
- What is the best Buffer alternative?
- It depends on the job. Hootsuite: Far more capable on listening and approvals, at many times the price. Later: Stronger for visual planning on Instagram and TikTok. Metricool: Better analytics and advertising reporting for a similar budget.
- Can I self-host Buffer?
- No. Buffer is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about Buffer. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from Buffer's own pricing page on 9 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
3 rows, each with its billing period
-
Original screenshots : yes
2 captured by us: pricing page, homepage
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
1 primary source, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
-
Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Where Buffer appears on this site
2 other pages here reference Buffer. Every one is listed below, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.
- Another profile Later names it as a competitor
- Another profile Sprout Social names it as a competitor
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Pricing verified as yearly-billing rates; confirmed no agency tier is sold
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Buffer pricing - checked 9 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
