Postiz vs Publer: Which Social Media API Your Agent Gets
Postiz vs Publer: both ship a social media MCP server, but only one lets you in at the entry price. The account math and the gate, checked live.
Postiz vs Publer turns on one question that the comparison pages skip and that three AI assistants answered three different ways for me on the same afternoon. The question is whether Publer has an MCP server.
Ask ChatGPT and it says both tools have one. Ask Claude and it says Publer does not. Ask Perplexity and it says Publer does but it cannot confirm anything about Postiz. All three were searching the live web when they answered.
The correct answer is that both ship one, and that Publer’s is gated to a cohort you are unlikely to be in. That distinction is not on either pricing page, and it decides this comparison for anyone automating.
Postiz vs Publer: Which One Your Agent Can Reach
Publer is the better pick if: people are doing the posting and you are at thirteen accounts or fewer, where it costs less than the Postiz tier that fits the same accounts. Its free plan is real rather than a demo, and I find its calendar the nicer of the two to work in.
Blotato is an app I built, so weigh my read accordingly. I am keeping it out of the arithmetic below and coming back to it once the comparison is settled. If you want the flat-rate shape to hold against these two while you read, Blotato’s plans put 20 social accounts on one $29 tier.
Postiz is the better pick if: an agent is doing the posting and you want MCP access without applying for it. The public API, the CLI and the MCP server are checkmarked on all four paid tiers including the $29 Standard plan, so the cheapest paid Postiz plan is already programmable.
The Tenth Account Is Free, and the Formula Everyone Publishes Is Wrong
Publer bills per social account, and the rule its own help centre documents produces a different number from the one its checkout actually charges.
The published formula is $5 for your first account on Professional, then $4 for each additional one. Run that out to three accounts and you get $13.00, but Publer’s calculator charges $12.00. At five accounts the formula says $21.00 and the calculator says $20.00. It is a dollar either way, but it is a dollar on every invoice, and the published formula is the one most comparison pages repeat.
What is really happening is that from the third account up, Publer stops treating account one as special and bills every billable account at the flat per-account rate. On top of that, every tenth social account is free, so ten accounts costs the same as nine.
Read that screenshot carefully, because it is also where I nearly got this wrong. Publer renders a struck-through list price beside the charged price. Take the first dollar figure on the card and you will report a number nobody pays. The charged figure is the second one.
Run the Same Account Counts Through Both Rate Cards
These come from driving Publer’s own calculator at each count rather than applying its formula, and from the Postiz rate card in its docs.
One connected social account equals one Postiz channel, so the Postiz column below is the cheapest tier that actually holds that many accounts, not a flat entry price. All figures are monthly billing.
| Social accounts | Publer Professional | Publer Business | Postiz (tier that fits) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $5.00 | $10.00 | $29 Standard |
| 3 | $12.00 | $21.00 | $29 Standard |
| 5 | $20.00 | $35.00 | $29 Standard |
| 9 | $36.00 | $63.00 | $39 Team |
| 10 | $36.00 | $63.00 | $39 Team |
| 13 | $48.00 | $84.00 | $49 Pro |
| 14 | $52.00 | $91.00 | $49 Pro |
| 20 | $72.00 | $126.00 | $49 Pro |
Publer Professional stays cheaper than the Postiz tier that fits the same accounts all the way to thirteen. At fourteen accounts Publer reaches $52.00 and Postiz Pro holds at $49, and from there Postiz only widens the gap because Pro covers thirty channels for one price while Publer keeps adding $4 an account.
So on price alone there is no single winner, only a crossover, and it sits at fourteen accounts rather than at the entry tier. Publer Business is a different story, passing capacity-matched Postiz at five accounts.
What $29 Buys That $5 Does Not
The Publer number above is the honest cheaper one, and it comes with a condition that matters more than the dollars.
Publer puts API access on Business, its top self-serve tier. Its API documentation states it plainly: “BUSINESS ACCESS ONLY: The Publer API is currently available exclusively to Publer Business users.” The help centre adds a condition the pricing page never shows, which is that the API is available to “Publer’s Enterprise plan users and Business plan users in good standing.” Good standing is not defined anywhere I could find.
Postiz checkmarks “Public API, CLI and MCP” on every paid tier in its own plans documentation, starting at Standard. There is no eligibility clause attached.
That is the actual fork. Publer’s entry price is a sixth of Postiz’s, and the REST API sits one paid tier above it with an eligibility clause attached. The MCP server is not simply higher up the ladder, as the next section explains.
Both Ship an MCP Server, and Only One Will Let You In
Here is where every comparison page I checked, including the one ranking first for this query, simply stops.
Publer runs an MCP server. Its help centre carries four articles on it, one for setup and one each for connecting Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. You generate an API key under Settings, AI and Automations, MCP, and Publer hands you a personal MCP server URL to paste into your client.
The catch is in the vendor’s own first sentence: “Publer’s MCP is now available in BETA with our top ambassadors and Enterprise customers.” Publer’s public roadmap lists the MCP server under “Live and gathering feedback,” which is a live beta open to a restricted cohort. So it exists, it works, and paying for Business does not get you in.
Postiz publishes its MCP endpoint at mcp.postiz.com/mcp-oauth-dynamic on its own MCP page, and the server answers an unauthenticated request with a 401 rather than a 404, which is what a live auth-gated endpoint looks like. Its documentation lists thirteen tools covering account listing, scheduling, post updates, image and video generation, and video clipping.
This is also why endpoint probing misleads people here. Checking mcp.publer.com returns a 404 and Publer’s developer docs never mention MCP at all, because the server is minted per user behind a login and the MCP documentation lives in the help centre instead. A probe at a guessed hostname can only tell you that nothing answers at that address. It cannot tell you no server exists, and treating those as the same thing is how the claim “Publer has no MCP” ended up on so many pages.
Where Each Vendor Contradicts Its Own Page
Both of these are live right now, and both are worth knowing before you trust a number off either site.
Publer’s card is not contradicting itself so much as hiding the ball. It renders a struck-through list price that ignores the every-tenth-free rule directly beside the charged price that applies it, so the same card shows two numbers for one plan. Read the first and you overstate your bill by a tenth.
Postiz’s pricing page says “unlimited posts” on its plan cards while its own FAQ markup on that same page describes a 400 posts per month ceiling on Standard. Its plans documentation separately lists 20 AI image credits on Standard and then marks the image generator as not included on that tier, two rows apart.
I am not going to resolve either of those for you, because the vendors have not resolved them themselves. Check your own account before you plan capacity around either figure.
The Agent Gate Is the Whole Decision
Strip out the pricing and the comparison collapses into one question: is a human or a program going to be doing the work.
If a human is doing it, Publer of these two is cheaper at every account count up to thirteen. If a program is doing it, Publer’s cheapest programmable tier is $10 a month with an eligibility clause on the REST API, and its MCP server is gated to a cohort you are probably not in. Postiz’s cheapest tier is programmable on signup.
Publer’s own homepage makes the same point from the other side. It sells a calendar you work in, and it sells it well.
Postiz makes no secret of which side it is on. Its homepage headline is about AI agents and it names the clients directly.
Postiz vs Publer: Side by Side
| Postiz | Publer | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per tier, channels included | Per social account |
| Cheapest paid tier | $29 (Standard, 5 channels) | $5.00 (Professional, 1 account) |
| Free plan | No, 7-day trial | Yes, 3 accounts, excludes X |
| Public REST API | All four paid tiers | Business and Enterprise, good standing required |
| MCP server | Public endpoint, all paid tiers | Beta, top ambassadors and Enterprise only |
| Documented MCP tools | 13 | Not published |
| Self-hosting | Yes, open source | No |
| Volume discount | None, tiers include channels | Every 10th account free |
| Daily posting caps | Not published per network | Published per network, per tier |
Choose Publer When Nobody Is Automating Anything
- You are one person or a small team posting by hand, and the calendar is where you live
- You are at thirteen social accounts or fewer, where Publer of these two costs less at every count
- You want a free tier that is usable rather than a demo, and you do not need X on it
- You want breadth of networks, including Google Business Profile, WordPress, Mastodon and Telegram
- You care about published daily posting caps, which Publer documents per network and per tier
Choose Postiz When the Agent Holds the Key
- An agent, a script or a CLI is doing the scheduling, not a person
- You want MCP access on signup rather than an application to a beta cohort
- You want to read the source or self-host it, which Postiz allows and Publer does not
- You are past fourteen accounts, where Postiz Pro covers thirty channels for less than Publer charges
- You want an MCP server you can connect today without qualifying for a beta
Where Blotato Sits Against Both
Blotato is the third answer to the same question, and it is only the right one under conditions I should state plainly rather than imply.
Blotato is flat-rate. Starter is $29 a month for 20 social accounts across 9 platforms, with the REST API and a hosted MCP server at mcp.blotato.com/mcp exposing 36 documented tools. Against Publer the curve decides it, and Publer Professional is cheaper than our $29 up to seven accounts, which I would not pretend otherwise. Against Postiz the entry price is the same $29 and our list stops at 9 platforms where theirs runs past thirty, so if you need Mastodon, Discord or Reddit we are the wrong answer.
Three limits of ours that matter more than the price if they apply to you. Comments, messaging and DM automation cover Instagram and Facebook only, so if your engagement work lives on LinkedIn or X, that surface is not there. Analytics reaches 8 of our 9 platforms and LinkedIn is the one it does not. And our 7-day trial excludes the API, so generating a key starts the paid subscription immediately, which makes an agent build a purchase rather than a test.
If you need thirty networks or you want to read the source, Postiz is the better fit of the three and this section does not change that. If you want the full account-by-account breakdown of Publer’s rate card on its own, I priced it separately in Publer pricing, and the Postiz pricing post does the same for the self-hosting math.
Check the Gate Before You Check the Price
The reason I wrote this is that the cheap answer and the reachable answer are different answers here, and every page I found led with the cheap one.
Publer at $5.00 is the cheaper of these two for a person with a calendar and thirteen accounts or fewer. That same $5.00 buys no official REST API and no MCP access, because the API is on the $10.00 tier with an eligibility clause and the MCP server is behind a beta invitation. Postiz at $29 costs more on day one and is programmable on day one.
So price the tier that actually unlocks what you are building, not the tier on the front of the pricing page. Cost still matters. It just stops being the first question once you find out one of these doors does not open.
Postiz vs Publer FAQs
Does Publer have an MCP server?
Yes, but access is restricted. Publer’s help centre documents an MCP server with setup guides for Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, and states it is “available in BETA with our top ambassadors and Enterprise customers.” Publer’s roadmap lists it under “Live and gathering feedback.” Because Publer mints a personal server URL per user, there is no universal endpoint to probe, and mcp.publer.com returns a 404. Pages claiming Publer has no MCP server are reading that 404 as an answer to a question it cannot answer.
Does Postiz include the API on its cheapest plan?
Yes. Postiz’s plans documentation marks “Public API, CLI and MCP” as included on all four paid tiers, starting with Standard at $29 a month for 5 channels. There is no separate API add-on and no eligibility condition. Its MCP endpoint is published on its own MCP page and returns a 401 to unauthenticated requests, which means it is live and auth-gated.
Is Publer cheaper than Postiz?
Up to thirteen social accounts, yes. Publer Professional charges $12.00 at three accounts and $20.00 at five, against $29 for the Postiz Standard plan that holds five channels. Because one account is one Postiz channel, six accounts already moves you to Team at $39. The crossover lands at fourteen accounts, where Publer reaches $52.00 and Postiz Pro holds at $49.
Which tier of Publer do I need for the API?
Business, at $10.00 a month for your first account. Publer’s API documentation states the API is for Business users only, and its help centre adds that access covers “Publer’s Enterprise plan users and Business plan users in good standing,” a condition that appears nowhere on the pricing page and is never defined. Note the MCP beta is a separate and narrower cohort, so Business unlocks the REST API but not necessarily MCP.
How many MCP tools does Postiz expose?
Thirteen, counted from the tool table in its MCP documentation. They cover listing connected accounts and groups, fetching platform posting rules, scheduling and publishing posts, listing and updating scheduled posts, generating images and videos, and turning long videos into captioned clips. Publer does not publish a tool count for its MCP server.
Can Publer’s API connect social accounts for me?
No. Publer’s Accounts endpoint is read-only, so every social account is connected by hand in the dashboard before an agent can post to it. That is worth planning around if you expected to onboard accounts programmatically, because it puts a manual step in front of any automated setup regardless of which tier you are on.