Buffer doesn't price in flat named tiers the way Ayrshare or Hootsuite do — it charges per connected channel, on top of a plan rate, and the per-channel rate drops in volume above 10 channels. PostGate prices per workspace, with a profile allowance bundled into each plan. That means the answer to "who's cheaper" genuinely changes depending on how many profiles you're connecting — and at the low end, Buffer's free plan is arguably the better deal. Here's the honest math at 1, 3, 10, and 50 profiles, with live PostGate prices pulled from our own database.
Buffer figures below were checked directly against buffer.com/pricing as of this writing: a real free plan for up to 3 channels (10 scheduled posts per channel, refillable, 1 user, 30-day analytics history), an Essentials plan at $5/channel/mo billed monthly ($4/channel/mo billed annually) with unlimited scheduled posts and advanced analytics, and a Team plan at $10/channel/mo billed monthly ($8/channel/mo billed annually) adding unlimited team members and approval workflows. Buffer's own pricing page confirms channels above 10 cost less per channel but does not publish the exact discounted rate at higher volumes, so figures below past 10 channels use Buffer's confirmed, undiscounted per-channel rate as an honest ceiling — the real number at high volume is likely lower, and unverified past what Buffer discloses. PostGate figures below are queried live from our own pricing database at request time.
| Profiles needed | PostGate | Buffer | Who's cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 profile | Free sandbox plan at $0/mo (testing only, not live production). For one live production profile: $4.00/mo (Solo plan). | $0/mo — Buffer's free plan supports real, live production posting on up to 3 channels, not just a sandbox. | Buffer — its free plan is genuinely production-ready. PostGate's free tier is sandbox-only, so a single live profile costs $4.00/mo on PostGate versus $0 on Buffer. |
| 3 profiles | Free sandbox covers 3 profiles for testing, but PostGate's cheapest paid plan that covers 3 live profiles is $19.00/mo (Launch plan, up to 10 profiles included) — there's no PostGate tier sized just for 3. | $0/mo on the free plan (basic analytics, 10 posts/channel), or $15/mo billed monthly ($12/mo billed annually) on Essentials for unlimited posts and advanced analytics. | Buffer — even paid Essentials at $15/mo undercuts PostGate's $19.00/mo plan at this exact count, and Buffer's free tier is a real $0 option most teams outgrow before PostGate becomes competitive. |
| 10 profiles | $19.00/mo (Launch plan, up to 10 profiles included) | Essentials: $50/mo billed monthly ($40/mo annually). Team: $100/mo billed monthly ($80/mo annually). | PostGate — by a wide margin. This is roughly the crossover point where PostGate's bundled profile allowance starts beating Buffer's linear per-channel pricing. |
| 50 profiles | $89.00/mo (Build plan, up to 50 profiles included) | At least $200/mo on Essentials (annual, undiscounted rate) — the real price is lower once Buffer's unpublished volume discount above 10 channels applies, but that exact rate isn't disclosed on buffer.com. | Likely PostGate, using Buffer's own confirmed, undiscounted numbers as the honest ceiling. Buffer's discount would need to land under roughly $1.80/channel to beat $89.00/mo flat — possible, but not a number we can verify from Buffer's own pricing page. |
| 50+ profiles | $89.00/mo covers up to 50 profiles — that's our highest listed self-serve plan today. Need more? Talk to us — we don't currently list a self-serve tier above this. | Buffer keeps scaling on the same per-channel formula, with deeper (unpublished) discounts at higher volume. | Honestly: past PostGate's 50-profile ceiling, we can't make a confident claim either way — Buffer's deep-volume rate isn't public, and PostGate doesn't currently list a self-serve tier that far up. |
If what you need is a genuinely free way to post live to up to 3 channels today, Buffer's free plan does that. PostGate's free plan is a sandbox for testing and integration work, not a production posting tier — for live posting you're into a paid plan starting at $4.00/mo.
Buffer's per-channel pricing scales smoothly with exactly how many accounts you connect; PostGate's bundled tiers mean you sometimes pay for headroom you don't use yet (like the 3-profile case above, where the next PostGate tier covers up to 10). Feature bundling — analytics depth, team seats, approval workflows — also differs by tier on both sides. See the fuller feature-by-feature breakdown at /compare/buffer.
Buffer's numbers here were checked against buffer.com/pricing as of this writing; the exact per-channel rate above 10 channels isn't published, so our high-volume figures use the confirmed, undiscounted rate as an honest ceiling rather than guessing at a discount. PostGate's numbers are pulled live at request time from our own pricing database, shown on /pricing. Both can change without notice — verify current pricing on each vendor's own page before deciding.
This page is about price. For teams evaluating PostGate as infrastructure rather than a scheduling UI, PostGate also includes white-label environments with a custom domain, signed webhooks for post.published/post.partial/post.failed, generated SDKs in six languages, a stable Idempotency-Key contract with 72-hour retry safety, multi-tenant profile groups, and a hosted MCP server. None of that is the focus here — see the full Buffer comparison for the feature-by-feature breakdown.
Start on the free sandbox plan — no card required. Paid plans start at $4.00/mo.
