Postiz Pricing 2026: Cloud Cost vs Self-Hosting Math
Postiz pricing in 2026: what each cloud tier costs at 5, 10, and 30 channels, and when self-hosting stops saving money.
Postiz pricing starts at $29 a month for 5 channels, and the number that decides whether you pay it is not on the pricing page at all. Postiz is AGPL open source, so every cloud tier is competing against a free version of itself that you host. The real question is not which tier to buy. It is whether to buy one.
Both sides are worth taking seriously. The cloud tiers are straightforward and the channel counts are generous compared to most schedulers. Self-hosting is free in licensing terms and not free in any other term.
This post breaks down what each Postiz plan costs, what the channel counts actually get you, where the AI limits sit, and the break-even math on self-hosting. One thing Postiz does that is worth naming: the API ships on every cloud tier, including the $29 entry plan, and the same product is available as AGPL source you can run yourself.
Postiz Pricing at a Glance
Standard: $29/mo, 5 channels, unlimited posts, 3 AI videos per month, no AI images, no team members.
Team: $39/mo, 10 channels, unlimited posts, 100 AI images and 10 AI videos per month, unlimited team members.
Pro: $49/mo, 30 channels, 300 AI images and 30 AI videos per month.
Ultimate: $99/mo, 100 channels, 500 AI images and 60 AI videos per month.
Free trial: 7 days.
Self-hosted: free under AGPL, on your own infrastructure.
The quirk that matters: unlimited posts on every tier, including Standard. What scales with price is channels and AI generation, not posting volume.
How Postiz’s Per-Tier Channel Pricing Actually Works
A channel in Postiz is one connected social account. Unlike per-channel tools that multiply a rate by your account count, Postiz sells fixed blocks: you buy a tier and get its channel allowance, whether you use all of it or not.
That makes the pricing curve lumpy rather than linear. You pay nothing extra for channels 6 through 10 once you are on Team, but channel 11 costs you a $10 jump to Pro, and channel 31 costs a $50 jump to Ultimate.
| Channels you need | Cheapest tier | Monthly cost | Cost per channel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | Standard | $29 | $5.80 at 5 |
| 6 to 10 | Team | $39 | $3.90 at 10 |
| 11 to 30 | Pro | $49 | $1.63 at 30 |
| 31 to 100 | Ultimate | $99 | $0.99 at 100 |
The efficiency improves sharply as you fill a tier. At 5 channels you pay $5.80 per channel. At 30 you pay $1.63. The worst value in the lineup is sitting just past a boundary, like running 6 channels on Team at $6.50 each or 31 channels on Ultimate at $3.19 each.
Postiz shows a monthly and yearly toggle on its pricing page, and yearly billing is offered at a discount. The annual figures render only after you switch the toggle, so check them against your own account before budgeting.
Postiz Standard Plan
Standard is $29 a month for 5 channels with unlimited posts. You get the advanced picture editor, AI copilot, custom integrations, API access, webhooks, post comments, repeated posts, post delays, cross posting, analytics, calendar views, RSS auto-post, posting sets, and signatures.
Two limits define this tier. There is no team support, so Standard is a single-operator plan. And there are no AI images at all, with AI video capped at 3 per month.
For a solo creator running five accounts who writes their own copy and brings their own visuals, Standard is a lot of product for $29. If you expected the AI to make your images, this is the tier where that expectation breaks.
Postiz Team Plan
Team is $39 a month for 10 channels and adds unlimited team members, which is the real reason to move up rather than the channel count. AI images arrive here at 100 per month, and AI videos go to 10.
The $10 step from Standard to Team is the best value move in the lineup. You double your channels, unlock collaboration, and go from zero AI images to 100.
Postiz Pro and Ultimate Plans
Pro at $49 a month covers 30 channels with 300 AI images and 30 AI videos. Ultimate at $99 covers 100 channels with 500 AI images and 60 AI videos.
Both tiers carry the same feature set as Team. You are buying capacity, not capability. That is a clean model, and it means an agency on Pro is not missing features that a solo user on Standard has.
- 5 channels: $29/mo on Standard
- 10 channels: $39/mo on Team
- 30 channels: $49/mo on Pro
- 100 channels: $99/mo on Ultimate
The Real Cost of Self-Hosting Postiz Instead
This is the section the cloud pricing page cannot write, and it is the one that decides the question for most people.
Postiz is AGPL licensed, so you can deploy it on your own server at no licensing cost. The software is free. Running it is not. The figures below are my own estimate rather than published numbers, since hosting cost depends on your provider and your traffic, but this is a realistic monthly picture for a small self-hosted deployment:
| Line item | Realistic monthly cost |
|---|---|
| VPS with enough RAM to run the stack | $12 to $40 |
| Managed Postgres, or self-managed on the same box | $0 to $20 |
| Object storage for media | $1 to $5 |
| Domain and TLS | about $1, TLS free via Let’s Encrypt |
| Your time on updates, migrations, and outages | the actual cost |
Infrastructure alone lands somewhere around $15 to $65 a month, which already overlaps the $29 Standard tier. The line item that decides it is the last one. Postiz ships updates frequently, and social platform APIs change without asking permission. When a platform rotates an auth requirement, a hosted plan means someone else fixes it before you notice, and self-hosting means your posting queue is down until you do.
The honest break-even: self-hosting wins on cost if you already run infrastructure, are comfortable with Docker and Postgres, and value control or data residency enough to own the maintenance. It loses if your time is worth more than about an hour a month, because one debugging session a month at any professional rate exceeds the price of the Standard tier.
There is also a licensing dimension worth understanding before you build a business on it. AGPL obligations attach when you provide modified versions of the software to users over a network, which matters if you plan to run Postiz as part of a commercial service rather than for your own accounts. Read the AGPL terms properly, or talk to a lawyer, before you build a client offering on top of a modified deployment.
What Postiz’s AI Actually Does
Postiz includes an AI copilot on every tier for writing and editing posts. The generation limits are where the tiers separate.
What it does well:
- Drafting and rewriting post copy inside the composer.
- Generating images once you are on Team or above, from 100 per month up to 500 on Ultimate.
- Short AI video, from 3 per month on Standard up to 60 on Ultimate.
Where it stops:
- Standard gets no AI images at all, which is easy to miss when comparing the tiers on price.
- Video counts are low enough that AI video reads as a feature to try rather than a pipeline to build a content operation on. At 3 per month on Standard, or even 30 on Pro, you are not running a daily short-form schedule from it.
If AI generation volume is the point of the purchase rather than a bonus, compare the monthly image and video allowances against what you actually publish before picking a tier. My roundup of AI content repurposing tools covers how the dedicated generation tools price the same job.
What’s Not Included in Any Postiz Plan
- AI images on Standard. The entry tier has none. This is the single most common surprise in the lineup.
- Team members on Standard. Collaboration starts at Team.
- Published annual pricing. The yearly rates render only behind the billing toggle, so you cannot compare annual cost across tiers from the page as loaded.
None of these are flaws so much as tier boundaries. Unlimited posts and API access sit on every plan, including the $29 entry tier, which is where the tier limits stop mattering for most workflows.
When Postiz Pricing Makes Sense (and When It Doesn’t)
When it makes sense:
- You want an open source product and value the option to leave with your deployment intact.
- You run 6 to 30 channels, where Team and Pro are among the best per-channel values available.
- You already operate infrastructure, making the self-hosted path genuinely cheap for you.
- Posting volume is high but AI generation needs are low, since unlimited posts sit on every tier.
When it starts to bite:
- You need AI images on the entry tier, which Standard does not include.
- You sit just past a tier boundary, like 6 channels or 31 channels, where you pay for a block you barely use.
- You want AI video at production volume rather than a monthly allowance.
- You want the open source price without the operational work, which is the trade the cloud tiers exist to sell you.
This is a category-fit question, not a quality one. Postiz is built for people who want to own their stack and will pay for hosting only as a convenience.
Postiz Pricing vs Common Alternatives
| Tool | Cheapest paid tier | What you get at entry tier |
|---|---|---|
| Postiz Standard | $29/mo | 5 channels, unlimited posts, API, 3 AI videos, no AI images |
| Buffer Essentials | $5/channel/mo annual | 1 channel base, unlimited posts, AI text assistant |
| Zernio | $6/account/mo after 2 free | Per-account billing, no tiers, every feature on every account |
| Blotato Starter | $29/mo flat | 20 accounts, 1,250 AI credits, unlimited AI writing, AI image and video generation, n8n and Make official nodes |
At 5 channels Postiz and Blotato cost the same $29, and the difference is what fills it: Postiz gives you an open source product you could self-host later, Blotato gives you 20 accounts and AI image and video generation at the entry tier. At 30 channels Postiz Pro at $49 is hard to beat on raw channel count. Zernio’s per-account model is cheaper below 10 accounts and more expensive above 20.
Full disclosure on that Blotato row: I work with Blotato as a creator and tester, so weigh it accordingly.
Sabrina’s Take on Postiz Pricing in 2026
What I respect about Postiz’s pricing is that it does not punish you for posting. Unlimited posts on a $29 tier is rare, and shipping the API on every plan instead of gating it behind an enterprise conversation is the right call for anyone wiring a scheduler into an agent or automation.
The consideration worth sitting with is that Postiz’s cloud pricing competes against its own free version, and most people underestimate what that free version costs them. If you have run a Postgres migration at 11pm, you know the number. If you have not, the $29 tier is the cheaper answer even when the invoice says otherwise.
The decision path I would follow: run the 7-day trial on the cloud tier that matches your channel count. If you find yourself wanting to self-host by day 5 for reasons other than price, do it. If price is the only reason, price the infrastructure and your own hours honestly first. Blotato is worth a look if AI image and video generation at the entry tier is what you actually need, and Buffer and Zernio are fair fits depending on your channel count.
Postiz Pricing FAQs
Is Postiz free?
Postiz is free to self-host under the AGPL license. The cloud version has a 7-day free trial rather than a permanent free tier, so the free path is running it on your own infrastructure. Budget $15 to $65 a month for hosting plus your own maintenance time.
How much does Postiz cost per month?
Cloud pricing is $29 for Standard with 5 channels, $39 for Team with 10, $49 for Pro with 30, and $99 for Ultimate with 100. Every tier includes unlimited posts and API access. Yearly billing is available at a discount behind the toggle on the pricing page.
Does Postiz Standard include AI images?
No. Standard includes the AI copilot for writing and 3 AI videos per month, but no AI image generation. Images start on the Team tier at 100 per month, rising to 300 on Pro and 500 on Ultimate.
What’s the difference between Standard and Team?
Team costs $10 more and adds five extra channels, unlimited team members, 100 AI images per month, and raises AI video from 3 to 10. Standard has no team support, so any collaboration requirement pushes you to Team regardless of channel count.
Is self-hosting Postiz actually cheaper?
On infrastructure alone, roughly $15 to $65 a month against $29 for Standard, so the margin is thin before your time counts. It is genuinely cheaper if you already run servers and are comfortable maintaining the stack. Once you price an hour a month of debugging at a professional rate, the hosted tier usually wins.
Is Postiz cheaper than Buffer?
It depends on channel count. Buffer’s Essentials is $5 per channel per month on annual billing, so 5 channels is about $25 against Postiz’s $29. At 10 channels Buffer runs about $50 against Postiz Team at $39, and the gap widens in Postiz’s favor as channels grow. See my Postiz vs Buffer comparison for the full head to head.