Ayrshare alternatives in 2026: nine social APIs, and what each one actually bills for
Most people leaving Ayrshare are not unhappy with the API. It works, the documentation is good, and publishing on behalf of your users — the hard part — is properly supported. They leave because the bill starts at $149/month before the first customer, and because it grows with how many customers they have rather than how much they publish.
So this is not a list of things that are "better than Ayrshare". It is a list of what each one bills for, because that is the decision.
Every price below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 15 September 2026.
What Ayrshare actually costs
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Premium | $149/month | 1 profile, up to 14 accounts |
| Launch | $299/month | Up to 10 profiles, up to 140 accounts |
| Business | from $599/month | 30 profiles, up to 420 accounts |
| Enterprise | custom | From 300 profiles |
Plus two add-ons that are not in any plan: Max Pack at $300/month (the AI features) and Ads at $100/month.
There is no permanent free tier. The 28-day trial needs no card, and it is worth noticing where it sits: on Launch, the $299 plan, not on the entry one.
The nine, in one table
The column that matters is the second one.
| Bills for | Free tier | Entry paid | API on free? | MCP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ayrshare | user profiles | No | $149/mo | — | Action (27 tools) + docs |
| PlanVortex | connected accounts | 3 accounts | €15/mo | Yes | 28 tools, 13 networks |
| Zernio | connected accounts | 2 accounts | $6/account | Yes | — |
| bundle.social | the plan | 3 accounts | $100/mo | Yes | — |
| Upload-Post | profiles | 10 uploads/mo | $24/mo | Yes | — |
| Outstand | posts | — | $19/mo + 3,000 posts | — | 28 tools, 12 platforms |
| Postiz | channels | self-hosted | $29/mo | self-hosted | Yes |
| Blotato | accounts | 7-day trial | $29/mo | unclear by plan | Yes |
| Metricool | brands | 1 brand | from €20/mo | MCP yes, API needs Advanced | Yes |
| Buffer | channels | 3 channels | $5/channel | personal keys only | No |
The four that are free to start
PlanVortex — free plan with 3 connected accounts, unlimited publications, unlimited users, 1 GB and the API and an app included, no card. Paid plans are €15 (6 accounts), €30 (10) and a custom plan from €45 with 15. Accounts are billed in graduated tiers: the first 10 sit inside a €30 base, 11 to 25 are €3 each, 26 to 100 are €2 and beyond that €0.90. Thirteen networks, an MCP server with 28 tools, Node and Python libraries. Data in Spain, and the AI writes the posts and generates the images.
Zernio — the first 2 accounts free with full API access, then $6 per account for 3 to 10, $3 for 11 to 100, and $1 beyond. Ten accounts is $48/month. Bootstrapped, eight people in Girona, English-only site, billing in USD, and no GDPR, SLA or data-residency commitments in their documentation. No AI of any kind.
bundle.social — free plan with 3 accounts and API access, then $100/month for unlimited connected accounts and $400 for Business. X is billed per use on top ($0.015 a post, $0.20 with a link). The unlimited-accounts plan is the thing to notice: past roughly 35 accounts it beats every per-account model on this page.
Upload-Post — free tier of 10 uploads a month with full API access to 22 platforms, which is the widest platform list here. Then $24/month for unlimited posts across 5 profiles, $50 for 25 profiles with white-label, $147 for 75. Annual billing drops the entry to about $16.
The one that bills for something else entirely
Outstand charges per post: $19/month including 3,000 posts, then $0.007 per post up to 10,000 and $0.005 beyond — with unlimited connected accounts on every plan. It ships a hosted MCP server with 28 tools across 12 platforms, and white-label with BYOK, so your customers see your brand on the OAuth screen.
This is the model that breaks the comparison, and it is worth doing the arithmetic rather than hand-waving it:
| Your shape | Outstand | PlanVortex |
|---|---|---|
| 100 accounts, 2,000 posts/month | $19 | €225 |
| 10 accounts, 50,000 posts/month | ~$268 | €30 |
If you have many accounts and publish modestly, Outstand is dramatically cheaper than us and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If you have few accounts and publish constantly, per-account billing wins, because our publications are not metered at all. Work out which shape you are before choosing on price.
Eight of their platforms use managed keys; four (X, Google Business, Vimeo, Reddit) need you to register your own app first.
The rest
Postiz — open source, and free if you host it yourself, which is the honest reason to pick it. Hosted plans are $29 (5 channels), $39 (10), $49 (30) and $99 (100), with the API and an MCP included on all of them. Self-hosting trades a subscription for maintaining OAuth apps, rate-limit handling and platform changes yourself — that is real work and it never stops, but the code is yours.
Blotato — $29/month for 20 social accounts, $97 for 40, $499 for Agency, with AI credits on every tier and a 7-day trial. It is built around AI content production more than around being an API, and its pricing page does not say which plans include API access.
Metricool — the incumbent in Spain, and a better product than most of this list for managing your own brands: analytics, scheduling, and Meta, Google and TikTok Ads. Free plan with 1 brand; Starter from €20/month for up to 10 brands; Advanced from €54 for up to 50. The API is on Advanced and up, though its MCP server runs on any plan including free. It bills per brand, not per connection, which is cheaper if each customer connects many networks.
Buffer — the free plan gives 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel and 1 API key with 3,000 requests a month; Essentials is $5 per channel. But the API keys are personal: Buffer revoked third-party app integrations in 2019 and the current GraphQL API is a personal-key beta with no third-party OAuth. You cannot publish on behalf of your users, at any price, so if that is why you are leaving Ayrshare, Buffer is not a destination.
When you should stay on Ayrshare
Three cases, and they are real.
You need Reddit, Pinterest or Snapchat. Ayrshare has all three. PlanVortex has none of them — they are on the roadmap and not shipped — and most of this list is similar.
Your customers each connect many networks. Per-profile billing bundles a customer's fourteen accounts into one unit. Run your own numbers before assuming per-account is cheaper; it usually is, but "usually" is not "always" and the crossover depends on your shape.
You are already live and it works. None of the differences on this page justifies a rewrite on its own. The reason to move is the bill, and the bill has to be big enough to pay for the migration.
Where PlanVortex fits, including where it loses
It is built for one case: a software company publishing on behalf of its customers, from inside its own product. Clients, organizations and accounts are separate in the data model rather than a client_id column, and create_connect_link returns a link your customer opens to authorize their own Instagram on your screens, under your brand. That works on the free plan, which is the actual difference from Ayrshare — not the API, the floor.
Two things that are ours and not on this list: the AI generates images, not just captions, and it plans a whole week; and X is billed per publication rather than as a flat monthly fee per connected account.
Where it loses:
- Outstand and bundle.social are much cheaper at high account counts. Arithmetic above.
- No Reddit, Pinterest or Snapchat.
- No advertising. Metricool and Blotato do ads; we do not, and will not.
- No n8n node. There are two working routes — the MCP Client node, or HTTP Request nodes — and neither is as short as installing a node.
- Postiz is open source and we are not. If self-hosting is a requirement, that is the end of the conversation.
The short version
- Leaving over the $149 floor? PlanVortex, Zernio, bundle.social and Upload-Post all have a free tier with API access.
- Leaving over per-profile billing? Work out whether you are account-heavy or post-heavy first. Outstand's per-post meter and bundle.social's unlimited accounts win the account-heavy case decisively.
- Leaving because you want an agent to drive it? PlanVortex and Outstand both ship 28-tool MCP servers; PlanVortex's runs on the free plan.
- Need Reddit, Pinterest or Snapchat? Stay.
PlanVortex's API is documented at /en/developers, the MCP server at /en/agents, and there is a head-to-head at PlanVortex vs Ayrshare.
What is the cheapest Ayrshare alternative?
Four have a permanent free tier with API access: PlanVortex (3 connected accounts, unlimited publications, no card), bundle.social (3 accounts), Zernio (2 accounts) and Upload-Post (10 uploads a month across 22 platforms). Postiz is free if you self-host the open-source version. Ayrshare's own floor is $149/month with no free plan — its 28-day trial sits on the $299 Launch plan, not the entry one. Verified September 15, 2026.
Why do developers leave Ayrshare?
Rarely because of the API, which is good and well documented. Almost always because of the bill: $149/month before the first customer, and pricing per user profile, so the cost tracks how many customers you have rather than how much you publish. If your product has 200 small customers, that model works against you.
Which Ayrshare alternative is cheapest at scale?
It depends on what scales. If you have many connected accounts and modest posting volume, Outstand ($19/month including 3,000 posts, unlimited accounts) and bundle.social ($100/month, unlimited accounts) are far cheaper than anything billing per account, PlanVortex included. If you have few accounts and publish constantly, per-account billing wins because publications are not metered.
Do any Ayrshare alternatives have an MCP server for AI agents?
Yes: PlanVortex (28 tools, 13 networks, on all four plans including free), Outstand (28 tools, 12 platforms), Postiz and Metricool. Ayrshare has two — an Action MCP with 27 tools that needs a plan from $149/month, and a read-only Documentation MCP that cannot publish. Connecting the wrong one is the single most common way to lose an afternoon with Ayrshare.
Should I stay on Ayrshare?
Yes, in three cases. If you need Reddit, Pinterest or Snapchat, they have all three and most of this list does not. If your customers each connect many networks, per-profile billing can beat per-account billing. And if you are already live on it and it works, the migration cost is real and none of these differences is worth a rewrite on its own.