PlanVortex vs Postiz: the real cost of self-hosting a social publishing tool
Postiz is AGPL-3.0 open source, has 35,400 GitHub stars, and self-hosts on your own servers for free. PlanVortex is a hosted API you pay for. If the licence were the whole cost, this comparison would be over in one line. It is not: only ten of Postiz's providers work without you registering your own developer app on each platform's portal, and that registration — Meta app review, TikTok audit, LinkedIn product approval — is the expensive part of publishing to social networks.
This page is about that gap, and it starts, as always, with what Postiz does better.
What does Postiz do better than PlanVortex?
It is free, and it is yours. AGPL-3.0, self-hostable, no vendor between your product and the networks. For a team with infrastructure people and a preference for owning the stack, that is a real answer and no SaaS argument beats it.
More platforms, including a long tail nobody else covers. Its README lists Instagram, YouTube, Dribbble, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Threads, X, Slack, Discord, Mastodon and Bluesky, and its API documentation claims 32 platforms in total — Nostr, Lemmy, Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium, WordPress and Listmonk among them. If you publish to a developer audience, Dev.to and Hashnode are not on anyone else's list.
Cheaper cloud pricing at scale. $29/month for 5 channels, $39 for 10, $49 for 30 and $99 for 100, all with unlimited posts and API access. At 0.92 EUR/USD, 30 channels is about €45/month against €90 on PlanVortex, and 100 channels about €91 against €225. That is the honest headline of this comparison, and it deserves to be said before anything else.
35,400 stars and an active community. The code is auditable, the roadmap is public, and if something breaks you can read why.
What does self-hosting actually cost?
Three services to operate, and a developer app on almost every platform. The licence is €0; neither of these is.
The stack, per their own installation docs, is Docker Compose bringing up Postgres, Redis and Temporal alongside the app. That is a database to back up, a cache to keep alive and a workflow engine to monitor, for a system whose whole job is to fire at a scheduled minute.
The bigger item is the developer apps. Their provider documentation splits the list in two: ten providers — Bluesky, Lemmy, Nostr, Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode, WordPress, Listmonk, Moltbook and Skool — need no app at all, because you paste your own credentials. For everything else:
"For the remaining platforms you register an app on the platform's developer portal, then set the keys as environment variables on your instance."
— docs.postiz.com/providers, consulted September 3, 2026.
So FACEBOOK_APP_ID, FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET, INSTAGRAM_APP_ID, LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID, GOOGLE_GMB_CLIENT_ID and the rest are yours to obtain. Which means, for the networks that matter commercially:
| Network | What you have to get through |
|---|---|
| Facebook and Instagram | A Meta app with business verification and permission review for content publishing |
| TikTok | Developer registration and audit of the publishing scope |
| Product approval per application | |
| YouTube | Google Cloud project and OAuth verification |
| X | A paid API tier, billed per call |
None of that is a weekend. It is weeks of calendar time with review queues you do not control, and it repeats every time a platform changes its permission model — which is the actual, recurring work behind a social publishing integration, and the reason Meta tokens expiring is a subject with its own article.
With PlanVortex those apps are ours. You connect an account and the token, its refresh and its expiry are somebody else's problem.
Which one is the better API to build on?
It depends on one number, and the number is 100.
Postiz's public API is well shaped: API-key or OAuth2 authentication, immediate or scheduled posting, per-platform settings schemas, image upload and multi-platform batching. But its documentation states the limit plainly: "90 requests per hour (100 for the cloud) limit applies to only the create post endpoint." That is per instance, not per plan. Self-hosters can raise it with API_LIMIT; on their cloud you cannot.
For a tool a team uses, 100 posts an hour is far more than anyone needs. For an integrator publishing on behalf of two hundred end clients, it is the ceiling of the whole product, and batching is the documented way around it.
PlanVortex's rate limits are per app and scale with the plan, and the headers X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset come back on every response made with app credentials, so you can see where you stand without guessing.
The other structural difference is multi-tenancy. PlanVortex is built around it: clients, organizations, roles, per-organization API scoping and a connection flow you can drive from your own onboarding with a temporal token. Postiz's OAuth2 exists for building an app for other Postiz users, which is a different shape.
How do the two price models compare?
Postiz's prices verified at postiz.com/pricing on September 3, 2026; PlanVortex's against production code the same day. Dollars at 0.92 EUR/USD.
| Channels / accounts | Postiz cloud | PlanVortex |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | $29 → €26.68 | €0 (free plan) |
| 5 | $29 → €26.68 | €15 |
| 10 | $39 → €35.88 | €30 |
| 30 | $49 → €45.08 | €90 |
| 100 | $99 → €91.08 | €225 |
| Self-hosted | €0 in licence | Not available |
Below ten accounts PlanVortex is cheaper, and its free plan is the widest thing on the table: three accounts, unlimited posts, API included, no card. From thirty channels up Postiz is clearly cheaper, and there is no way to dress that up.
What the money buys on the other side is the operational half: the developer apps, the token refresh cycle, the platform migrations, the infrastructure, and — the piece with no equivalent in Postiz — the AI that writes the posts and generates the images, and a finished dashboard in three languages you can put in front of your end client.
Both do have AI images: Postiz includes 100 AI images and 10 AI videos a month on Team, up to 500 and 60 on Ultimate. PlanVortex generates images too, and adds the weekly planner that turns a theme, your own photos or your product catalog into a full week of posts per network.
When does each one make sense?
Postiz, if you have people who run infrastructure and want to own the stack; if you publish to Mastodon, Dev.to, Hashnode, Nostr or Reddit, which PlanVortex does not cover; if 30 to 100 channels on their cloud fits your budget better; or if an auditable, forkable codebase is a requirement rather than a preference.
PlanVortex, if registering and maintaining a Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and Google app is not work you want to own; if you need WhatsApp, Telegram or Google Business Profile reviews; if the publishing has to sit inside your own onboarding with your screens; or if you want the content generated as well as delivered. And if you want to try before deciding, the free plan is €0 with three accounts and the API included.
One last item that belongs with a lawyer rather than on a comparison page: AGPL-3.0 extends copyleft over the network. Running Postiz unmodified for your own use is fine; modifying it and offering it as a service obliges you to make your modified source available to its users. If Postiz is going to sit underneath a commercial product, that question is worth asking before the second sprint, not after.
Postiz's prices, limits and provider list change on their own cycle. Theirs are verified as of September 3, 2026 against postiz.com/pricing, docs.postiz.com and their GitHub repository; if their current site says something different, theirs wins. PlanVortex's are verified against production code the same day, with the full breakdown on the pricing page.
Is Postiz really free?
The licence is: Postiz is AGPL-3.0 and you can self-host it on your own infrastructure at no cost. What is not free is what surrounds it — a Postgres, a Redis and a Temporal to run, and a developer app registered on each platform's portal, since only ten of its providers work without one. Their own docs say it plainly: for the remaining platforms you register an app on the platform's developer portal and set the keys as environment variables.
Does Postiz have an API?
Yes, on every paid cloud plan and on self-hosted installs, with API-key and OAuth2 authentication. The number to know before you design around it is the rate limit: their documentation states 90 requests per hour, 100 on the cloud, and that this applies to the create-post endpoint. It is a per-instance limit, not a per-plan one, and self-hosters can raise it with the API_LIMIT environment variable.
How much does Postiz cloud cost?
Standard is $29/month for 5 channels, Team $39 for 10, Pro $49 for 30 and Ultimate $99 for 100, all with unlimited posts, API access and AI image and video quotas, plus a 7-day free trial. Converted at 0.92 EUR/USD, 30 channels come to about €45/month and 100 to about €91 — cheaper than PlanVortex on the accounts line at those sizes, which is the honest headline of this comparison.
What does AGPL mean if I embed it in my SaaS?
AGPL-3.0 extends copyleft over the network: if you modify Postiz and offer it as a service, you have to make the source of your modified version available to its users. Running it unmodified for your own use is fine. It is a real legal question for a commercial product built on top of it, and the sort of question that belongs with your lawyer rather than with a comparison page.
Which one has more networks?
Postiz, and by a wide margin if you count the long tail: its README lists Instagram, YouTube, Dribbble, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Threads, X, Slack, Discord, Mastodon and Bluesky, and its API documentation claims 32 platforms including Nostr, Lemmy, Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium and WordPress. PlanVortex covers 13 and has WhatsApp, Telegram and Google Business Profile, which Postiz does not. Slack is on both lists.