We sell a competing product, so weigh this accordingly. VoiceMoat is not a Buffer replacement and this page says so where it matters. ‼️ Every figure below was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 27 August 2026, in both billing positions, and the arithmetic is worked in the open so you can check it rather than trust it.

What does Buffer actually cost?

Buffer is $5 per channel a month billed yearly and $6 billed monthly on Essentials, and $10 or $12 per channel on Team. There is a free plan for up to three channels. ‼️ The number that matters is not the price, it is the multiplier, because you pay it again for every account.

Buffer's published plans in both toggle positions, read in a browser on 27 August 2026.

• ‼️ This is the most misreported price in the category, and the reason is the toggle. Buffer's page opens on yearly and shows $5, with $60 billed yearly underneath. Switch to monthly and the same plan is $6. Articles copy the $5 and write "/month" next to it.

• The free plan is real, not a trial. Three channels, ten scheduled posts per channel, one user account, and Buffer's own page says "Free forever".

• ‼️ "1 user account" on Essentials is the clause that catches teams. The tier that lifts it is Team, and Team does not add a seat fee, it doubles the per-channel rate to $10 and then states "Unlimited team members".

• The paid trial is 14 days.

• One channel means one connected account, so a business with Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is already at four before anyone adds a second brand.

The plan-by-plan breakdown is at Buffer pricing, and the six different units these tools bill by are covered in our social media tools answers.

Sources: Buffer pricing.

The exact point where Buffer stops being cheapest

Four channels. Three channels on Essentials is $15 a month billed yearly, comfortably under Later's Starter at $18.75. Four is $20, which is already more, and Later's Starter holds eight profiles for that same flat $18.75. At six channels Buffer is exactly level with Sendible.

One person, annual billing, using each vendor's own published figures. Buffer's column multiplies. The other two are flat until their profile cap is reached.

• ‼️ The crossover against Later is between three and four channels, and it is not close after that. At eight channels Buffer costs $40 against Later's $18.75, which is more than double for the same number of accounts.

• The crossover against Sendible is exactly six, where both are $30. Below six Buffer is cheaper, above six Sendible Core runs out of profiles and the comparison moves to its $84 tier.

• ‼️ This is the whole case for and against Buffer in one table. A solo creator with two or three accounts should probably use Buffer. A business with eight accounts is paying a premium for a pricing model that does not suit it.

• None of this compares what the tools do. Later's tier includes a visual calendar and link in bio; Sendible's includes monitoring and reporting. We have not tested any of them and no quality claim appears on this page.

• ⚠️ Every row is annual billing. On monthly, Buffer's column becomes $6, $18, $24, $36 and $48, and the crossover against Later moves to between four and five channels, because Later's monthly is $25.

Add a second person and the answer inverts

Buffer Essentials includes one user account, so any team is on Team at $10 per channel. Three people on six channels is $60 a month on Buffer against $30 on Sendible Core, because Sendible states unlimited users on every plan and prices by profile instead.

Three people, annual billing. The unit each vendor bills by decides this completely, and it is not the headline price.

• ‼️ Buffer is twice Sendible at six channels and nearly twice at sixteen, purely because the seat is what forces the tier and then the channel is what multiplies it.

• ‼️ Sendible's price does not move when you add people. Both its rows are set by the profile count alone. That is the structural difference and it is worth more than any feature comparison at this size.

• Later becomes competitive again at sixteen channels because its Scale tier is flat, holds 48 profiles and includes four users.

• ⚠️ The Sprout column is marked as impossible on the second row for a reason. Its Essentials tier caps at 5 social profiles, so it cannot deliver sixteen at that price at all, and a table that quietly filled in a number there would be misleading.

• Buffer's counter-argument is real and we will state it: Team's $10 includes unlimited team members, so a ten-person team on six channels is still $60. It is the small team on many channels that pays the premium, not the large one.

Sources: Buffer pricing, Sendible pricing, Later pricing, Sprout Social pricing.

Where we fit, and where we do not

We make VoiceMoat, and it is not a Buffer replacement. Buffer connects and schedules channels. We write posts for Twitter and LinkedIn in your own voice. If you are leaving Buffer because the per-channel maths stopped working, the answer on this page is Later or Sendible, not us.

• ‼️ Said plainly: we do not publish to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Pinterest, and we have no channel-based pricing to compare against the table above.

• Where a writing tool is a different purchase is when the connecting and scheduling was never the hard part.

• Our prices, on the same basis as every table above: Free at $0, Creator $35 a month, Pro $69, Enterprise $150, annual billed at ten times monthly so two months are free.

• Buffer's free plan is more generous than ours for scheduling and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Ours runs at 10 credits a day and exists to keep an account alive after a trial.

Sources: VoiceMoat pricing.

What this page could not answer

Two tools that belong in an honest Buffer comparison are not priced here, because they did not serve us US dollars. They are named rather than quietly dropped.

• ‼️ Metricool served this machine euros and Publer served rupees. We do not convert prices, so neither appears in any table above. Publer is the one that would most likely have changed the crossover table, since it also bills per social account.

• What Publer's free plan says regardless of currency: "3 social accounts (except 𝕏)" and "You cannot connect Twitter / X accounts in the free version."

• ‼️ Three of the vendors we checked chose our currency for us without asking, and only Sendible offered a switcher. If you are outside the US the numbers you see will differ from this article, and that is true of every published comparison of these tools.

• Whether any of these tools is better than the others. We have not run them side by side and no quality claim appears anywhere above.

• ⚠️ Prices change, and a per-channel model changes fastest of all, because the total moves every time you connect an account. Everything here was read on 27 August 2026 in both billing positions.

• We sell a competing product, which is why this page gives you each vendor's own numbers and the arithmetic rather than a verdict.