Is Buffer Free? The Free Plan, Its Limits and the 14-Day Trial

Yes, Buffer is free, and the free plan has no end date

The short answer is yes. Buffer has a free plan that needs no credit card and has no end date, so it is not a trial that expires. It connects up to three social channels for one user and holds ten scheduled posts per channel at a time ^[1]. You also get 100 ideas, three tags, Insights with 30 days of history, the Community comment inbox with five AI reply suggestions a week and one saved reply, the AI Assistant, a Start Page and the API with one key. That is a working scheduler. It is not a demo. Nothing on it switches off after a set number of days.

The catch sits in the word channel. Buffer bills by connected channel once you pay, so the free plan is generous for one person running a few accounts and thin for anyone who needs a team, more networks or long reporting. This guide maps where it stops. Most limits are counts rather than locked features: ten posts, three channels, 30 days, one user. Some features, though, are simply missing, and a few of the rules about trials and downgrades can cost money if you skip them.

What you can do on Free, feature by feature

Publishing: ten posts per channel, refilled as they go out

Scheduling on Free works the same way it does on paid plans. You write a post, pick a time or add it to the queue, and Buffer publishes it. The limit is a ceiling on what waits in the queue, not a monthly allowance. With three channels you can hold 30 scheduled posts at once, and each time a post publishes, its slot opens again. There is no monthly or yearly cap. A business posting once a day to each channel can keep about a week and a half ready at all times. A creator batching a month of content in one sitting will hit the wall on day ten.

Threads work too, with a limit. On X, Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon, Free allows one scheduled thread at a time per queue, while thread drafts stay unlimited. CSV bulk upload is also on Free, from each channel's settings, but it accepts up to ten posts per channel per upload and stops at your remaining queue slots. Rows past that limit are skipped without an error. Drafts, post groups, templates (one custom template of your own) and the Canva integration are all available. Links are not shortened by default, and buff.ly can be turned on per channel on any plan, Free included (not on Pinterest, Mastodon or Instagram).

Planning, analytics and comments

The Create space gives you 100 ideas, three idea groups, three tags and up to three content feeds. Insights, Buffer's analytics, is included at its core: you get the last 7 days, the last 30 days and month to date, plus the AI takeaways that summarize performance. Chart snapshots can be downloaded on every plan, Free included. The sent posts view also shows 30 days of history. For a solo owner checking whether last week's posts landed, that is enough. For anyone reporting to a boss or a client each quarter, it is not.

Community, the comment inbox, covers ten networks on every plan, including Free. You can reply to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, X, TikTok, YouTube and Mastodon comments and to Google Business Profile reviews from one screen. Free caps AI reply suggestions at five a week and saved replies at one. Two smaller differences show up in practice. Free notification emails show only comment counts, not previews. And on X, Free sees comments on new posts only, while paid plans pull in the past 30 days when a channel is connected or refreshed.

AI, the Start Page and the API

The AI Assistant is unlimited on every plan, Free included. It drafts and rewrites posts from prompts of at least four words, adjusts tone and length per network, and is optional: it only acts when you open it. Buffer says the assistant runs on OpenAI and that the text you type is shared with OpenAI, which is worth knowing before you paste a client brief into it.

The Start Page, Buffer's link-in-bio page, is free too, with an email signup form. There is one trap. On Free a Start Page is one of your three channels, so building one leaves room for two social accounts. The API is on Free as well. You get one key and 3,000 requests per 30 days, alongside the same 100 requests per 15 minutes every plan gets and 250 requests per 24 hours. That is enough to post from Zapier, n8n or an AI assistant through Buffer's MCP server. All apps share the one client and its limits.

The three-channel rule and the cap nobody expects

Three channels means three connected accounts at once: say, one Instagram profile, one Facebook page and one LinkedIn page. Free supports newer networks as well, including Mastodon, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky and Substack Notes. Swapping is allowed, so you can disconnect one account and connect another. But Buffer adds a second, quieter limit. Free carries a lifetime cap of eight unique channels per social network, and it counts accounts even after you disconnect them ^[2]. Paid plans do not have this cap.

For most owners this never matters. They connect their own three accounts and leave them. It matters for freelancers and agencies who try to rotate client accounts through one free login, connecting Client A this month and Client B next month. After eight unique Instagram accounts, for example, that network is closed on Free for good. The rule effectively stops that rotation. If your work involves many clients, plan to pay from the start, or give each client an account of their own. It is a fair rule. It is just easy to miss.

What the free plan cannot do

The missing features cluster around three needs: saving time at volume, reporting, and working with other people. First comment scheduling is not on Free; it arrives on Essentials for Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook Pages. Neither are the hashtag manager, channel groups for posting to several accounts in one click, custom video covers or notes. The queue ceiling of ten per channel rules out batching a month at once, and threads stay at one scheduled per queue. Bulk upload jumps from ten posts per channel per upload on Free to 100 on paid plans.

Reporting is the second gap. Free shows 30 days of Insights, with no last-month or custom date ranges. Exports to CSV, Markdown or PDF are paid-only; on Free you can download chart snapshots and nothing more. Buffer's pricing page lists branded reports with your logo on Team only, while its help center describes a PDF export with your own cover logo on any paid plan. The third gap is people. Free has one user, the owner. There is no way to invite a teammate, and approval workflows and per-channel access levels belong to Team. Sharing a single login is possible but leaves no record of who posted what. None of this makes Free a bad plan. It makes it a one-person plan, with a few smaller limits on top:

• One custom template on Free, against five on Essentials and unlimited on Team.
• Three content feeds on Free, against 50 on paid plans.
• One saved reply and five AI reply suggestions a week in Community.
• X sent-post data only on paid plans and trials.
• Three tags, while paid plans allow up to 250.

The 14-day trial on Team, and how it ends

Buffer also offers a trial, separate from Free. Each account gets one 14-day trial, and it places you on the Team plan with every feature and the ability to invite users ^[3]. Existing users start it from the Approvals tab of the Publish dashboard. Customers on legacy Pro, Premium or Business plans cannot start a trial of the new plans. You get one. Use it when real channels and teammates are ready.

How the trial ends depends on one thing. If a card is already stored, the account upgrades automatically when the trial ends and the first payment is taken. If there is no card, the account moves to Free on its own, and channels beyond three are locked. Converting keeps your channels, scheduled posts, analytics and reports. Dropping to Free keeps them connected but locked above the third. Decide before day 14 whether you want to be charged, and keep your card off the account until you have.

What upgrading costs: every channel, not just the fourth

This is the rule that surprises people most. Once you leave Free, every connected channel is billed, including the three that used to cost nothing. There is no arrangement where the first three stay free and you pay only for extras. Essentials costs $6 per channel a month billed monthly, or $5 per channel a month billed yearly. Team costs $12 per channel a month billed monthly, or $10 per channel a month billed yearly, and adds unlimited users. A Start Page counts as a channel on paid plans as well.

The jump is small at first. Three channels on Essentials come to $180 a year on yearly billing, or $216 a year paid monthly, by our arithmetic. The same three channels on Team come to $360 a year on yearly billing. Adding a fourth channel to Essentials on monthly billing takes the bill to $24 a month. Above ten channels the price per channel falls in steps, which our Buffer pricing guide works through in detail with yearly totals at several sizes.

On the web, Buffer takes cards, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Cash App and Link, plus US bank accounts through Stripe on payments over $250 (no PayPal), in US dollars, with taxes extra. Adding a channel mid-cycle is charged at once and prorated, while removing one takes effect at the next billing date. Refunds cover monthly plans within 7 days and annual plans within 30 days of starting; after that, fees are non-refundable. Subscriptions bought in the iOS or Android app are billed and refunded through Apple or Google instead (Apple: purchases from the last 90 days). If you are moving up from Free mainly for one feature, such as first comments or exports, check that Essentials covers it before you pay for Team.

Going back to Free: what gets locked and what survives

Accounts land on Free in three ways: by choice, after a trial ends without a card, or after a failed payment, which Buffer retries four times over three weeks ^[4]. When you cancel, the paid plan stays active to the end of the period you paid for, and then the account drops to Free. If you have more than three channels, you choose which three stay active. The rest are locked but stay connected, so you can unlock them later by upgrading again.

The downgrade is gentle with your content. Scheduled posts beyond the free limit of ten per queue still publish. Existing ideas remain even above the free limit of 100, and surplus idea groups and tags are locked rather than deleted. Additional users lose access, since Free supports only the owner. Sent post history shrinks to 30 days in view. On the developer side, all API keys except the earliest one created are revoked automatically, so any automation running on a newer key stops. Move important integrations to your oldest key before you downgrade.

Discounts if Free is not enough

Three groups can pay half price instead. Nonprofits and charities get 50% off any paid plan after applying with documentation, and TechSoup members can verify through TechSoup. Buffer also says nonprofits can stay on Free as long as they like. Startups get 50% off any paid plan for the first 12 months if they have fewer than 50 employees, are two years old or younger, sit between pre-seed and Series A or have no funding, and have never paid for Buffer. Agencies, consultancies and development shops are excluded.

Open-source projects with more than 1,000 GitHub stars qualify for the same 50% off all paid plans, by email request. The startup and nonprofit discounts cannot be combined. We found no separate education discount, though Buffer's discount form is open to non-profit or tax-exempt organizations, so a school or university with that status may be able to apply for the 50% nonprofit discount. For a nonprofit with ten channels on Team billed yearly, half price means $600 a year instead of $1,200, by the same arithmetic as above. Our nonprofit guide covers the application in more detail.

How Free compares with free options elsewhere

Most rivals in this category do not offer a free plan at all. Hootsuite has none. It offers a 14-day trial, one per person, limited to 10 to 20 posts a day per organization and without bulk scheduling; its pricing page says the trial needs no credit card, while its terms and help center say a trial with a payment method on file converts and is charged. Its paid plans are priced per user; the pricing page lists annual prices, and month-to-month billing costs more but its price is not published. Later does have a Free plan, although its pricing page does not show it: 12 posts per profile a month, a calendar limited to two weeks, and a Link in Bio page with a Later banner. Its paid plans come with a 14-day trial that needs a card and converts to a paid plan unless you cancel before it ends. Sprout Social's trial runs for 30 days with no card. So a permanent free scheduler is rarer than it looks.

Metricool is the closest match. Its free plan covers one brand on every network it supports except LinkedIn and Twitter, schedules up to 20 posts per month, shows 30 days of analytics, includes a competitor demo of up to five profiles per network that cannot be edited or deleted, and includes an AI assistant with five credits per brand a month, plus its own MCP. Metricool also says its free plan can be used indefinitely. The trade-off is clear. Metricool's free tier counts posts per month and adds a competitor demo, while Buffer's counts posts waiting in the queue, includes LinkedIn and X, and gives unlimited AI Assistant use.

Which free plan suits you depends on where you post. If X matters, Buffer's is the only free plan here that covers it; for LinkedIn, Later's Free plan can post there too, but only 12 posts per profile a month, while Metricool's Free plan leaves LinkedIn out. If you post often, Buffer's refilling queue allows far more posts a month than Metricool's 20; Metricool's Free plan suits one brand that posts less and wants a look at competitor numbers. If you are weighing paid tools anyway, our Buffer alternatives guide compares the trade-offs plan by plan.

Who should stay on Free, and who should not

Free fits a solo owner, a creator or a small nonprofit running three accounts or fewer, posting a few times a week, and checking results monthly. It fits a developer testing the API or an AI workflow before committing. It also fits anyone trying Buffer without a card, since nothing expires. If that describes you, there is no reason to pay. Use the queue, the AI Assistant and Community, and upgrade only when a specific limit starts costing you time.

Leave Free when the limits stop being occasional. The signs are simple. You keep running out of queue slots. You need a teammate or an approval step. A client asks for a report covering more than 30 days. You want first comments or channel groups. Or you need a fourth account. At that point Essentials fixes the volume problems for one person, and Team fixes the people problem. Just remember that the first three channels join the bill.

The bottom line

Buffer is genuinely free: three channels, one user, ten queued posts per channel, 30 days of Insights, the Community inbox, unlimited AI Assistant use and the API, with no card and no end date. That beats most of the category, where a trial is the only free option. The limits that matter are the queue ceiling, the single user, the short analytics window and the lifetime cap of eight channels per network. Use the 14-day Team trial with no card on file, remember that upgrading bills every channel, and check the nonprofit, startup and open-source discounts first.