Ayrshare is a mature, comprehensive publishing-and-engagement API built for teams building on top of an API — comments, DMs, and mentions are first-class objects, not an afterthought. Buffer is a well-known, UI-first scheduler with over a decade of history and a genuinely useful free tier, now navigating a rocky API transition of its own: its original REST API is retiring in 2027 while its GraphQL replacement is still in public beta. These serve genuinely different audiences. Neither is us — this is a factual, sourced comparison of the two of them, so you can judge which actually fits your team.
Every figure below is sourced from ayrshare.com and buffer.com as of this writing and may change — verify current details on their sites before deciding.
| Dimension | Ayrshare | Buffer |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing & free tier | No permanently free plan — a 28-day free trial. Paid plans list from $149/mo (Premium, 1 social profile) up to $599/mo (Business, 30 profiles), with custom Enterprise pricing above that. | A genuine free plan for up to 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable). Essentials starts at $5/channel/mo billed monthly (~$4/channel/mo billed annually) for unlimited scheduled posts and advanced analytics; Team adds unlimited members and approval workflows at $10/channel/mo billed monthly (~$8/channel/mo billed annually). |
| Platform coverage | Publishes to 14+ platforms: Facebook, X, Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, Google Business Profile, Threads, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, and WhatsApp (beta). | Covers the major networks — Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and more — but nowhere near Ayrshare's long tail: no Snapchat, no WhatsApp, and no Reddit through Buffer. |
| Developer API access | Built API-first from day one — every plan is designed and billed around programmatic access, with official SDKs and no legacy migration to work around. | Buffer's original REST API stopped accepting new developer registrations in 2019 and is fully retiring February 1, 2027. Its GraphQL replacement launched May 2026 and is still in public beta, with access metered per plan (Free: 1 key / 1 app client / 3,000 requests per 30 days; Essentials: 3 / 3 / 7,500; Team: 5 / 5 / 15,000). |
| Engagement & webhooks | Real-time webhooks for posts, comments, mentions, and DMs, with a dashboard to replay events and audit requests — a genuine social-inbox surface, not just publishing. | No documented webhooks guide and no documented idempotency-key mechanism for the new GraphQL API as of this writing — publish-and-poll is the closest documented pattern. |
| White-label & multi-tenant | A branded OAuth linking page with your logo and domain starting on the Launch plan ($299/mo); full custom CSS, favicon, and footer are gated behind the separate Max Pack add-on. | Retired its dedicated Agency plan in November 2025. Agency use now runs through per-channel volume discounts on the Team plan plus a "branded reports" feature — no verified white-label custom-domain product for a customer-facing connection flow. |
| SDKs & AI-agent tooling | Official SDKs for Node, Python, Go, and a CLI, plus a native MCP server exposing roughly 27 tools covering publishing, analytics, history, comments, DMs, and profiles. | No published multi-language SDKs. The new GraphQL API ships an MCP server and CLI instead, positioned specifically for AI-tool compatibility (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor). |
You need a real social-inbox API — comments, DMs, and mentions as first-class objects with webhooks and an audit trail — and you're building your own product or workflow on top of it rather than logging into a dashboard. You're comfortable with a higher base price ($149+/mo) in exchange for a broader platform list (14+, including Snapchat, Reddit, and WhatsApp beta), four official SDK languages, and an API that isn't mid-migration.
You want a finished scheduling dashboard for a marketing or social team, not an API to build on. You want to start free (3 channels, 10 posts each) and scale with simple per-channel pricing, you don't need a programmatic comments/DMs/mentions inbox, and you're fine with Buffer's API being in transition — its legacy REST API is retiring and the GraphQL replacement is still in beta.
If neither Ayrshare's pricier engagement-first model nor Buffer's UI-first, API-in-transition approach quite matches what you need, PostGate takes a third approach: a free sandbox plan with no card required, paid plans starting at $4.00/mo, white-label environments with a verified custom domain and bring-your-own Meta/TikTok/LinkedIn app credentials per organization, signed webhooks with per-target delivery evidence, SDKs generated in six languages, and a draft-first hosted MCP server.
Read the detailed, sourced breakdowns: PostGate vs Ayrshare and PostGate vs Buffer.
Bring your own Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn app credentials per organization — quotas and approval status stay isolated to your app instead of a shared one, behind a verified custom domain. Read the environments guide.
HMAC-SHA256 signed events for post.published, post.partial, and post.failed, plus a test-delivery endpoint so you can verify your handler before going live. Read the webhooks guide.
Official SDKs for Node/TypeScript, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, and .NET. The hosted MCP server's create_post tool saves a draft unless the call explicitly sets confirm: true. Read the SDKs & MCP guide.
Start on the free sandbox plan — no card required, live in minutes.
