Buffer is the Publer alternative to pick when the job is still publishing. Yearly Essentials is $5 per channel on buffer.com/pricing (accessed 28 Sep 2026), MCP sits on every plan including Free at https://mcp.buffer.com/mcp, and create_post documents a shareNow mode. Later Social wins the Instagram-first calendar: yearly Starter is $18.75 for one Social Set of eight profiles, with no X in that set. Metricool bills by brand count (annual Starter cards $20 and $36). Trends MCP is not a scheduler. It is the switch when the gap is live multi-source trend data in Cursor, Starter $19/month for 1,000 requests. Stay on Publer when the paid floor is $5 for one social account and the plans JS already prices five Professional accounts at $20.
Which Publer alternative still publishes the post?
Buffer, Later, Metricool, and Publer all schedule to social networks. Trends MCP does not. A searcher typing "Publer alternatives" is usually trying to leave a per-account publisher, not to buy a trend API, so the first cut is whether the replacement has to put a post on Instagram.
Publer help 15h4yqh (updated 15 Sep 2026, re-fetched 28 Sep) still prints that floor in prose: Professional starts at $5/month for 1 social account, 1 user, 0 additional members; Business starts at $10/month on the same 1-account shape; yearly billing is a 20% discount versus monthly. Free remains 1 user, 1 workspace, 3 accounts excluding X, 10 scheduled posts per account, 25 drafts, 24-hour history. The owner does not count as an additional member. Enterprise is quote-only, with unlimited daily posting from Publer's side while networks still cap.
Buffer's markdown pricing page prices the publisher per channel. Free is $0 with up to 3 channels and 10 refillable scheduled posts per channel. Essentials starts at $6/month per channel (1-10 channels); Team starts at $12. Yearly cards on the HTML page render $5 and $10 for one channel, billed $60 and $120, labeled save 2 months. The FAQ on that same page still says annual billing is a 20% discount. Those two yearly stories do not match (2 months is 16.67%). Prices last updated November 2025, per that FAQ. Fair-use scheduling on paid plans is 5,000 posts per channel.
Later's yearly cards on later.com/pricing (28 Sep 2026) are Starter $18.75, Growth $37.50, Scale $82.50, with a banner of 3 months free | 25% off. A Social Set is one each of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Snapchat (8 profiles). Starter is 1 set, 1 user, 30 scheduled posts per profile. Posts count when scheduled, not when published. Extra sets are $11.25/month on the yearly cards; extra users $3.75. The FAQ still says extra users are $5 and that Starter is limited to 1 user. Auto Publish lists Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Threads, and Snapchat.
Metricool's USD cards (metricool.com/pricing, 28 Sep 2026) print annual Starter at $20/month and a 10-brand line at $36/month, Advanced from $53/month with 25-brand $85 and 50-brand $159. Monthly counterparts are $25, $45, Advanced from $67, then $107 and $210. The annual toggle is labeled "save up to 24%". Free is $0 for 1 brand. The Starter $20 card body also says "Manage up to 10 brands" while other copy on the same page says "up to 5". Do not flatten those brand counts.
None of those four products is Trends MCP. The Publer pricing post covers the dollar ladder. This page is the switch: who replaces Publer for which job.
What five accounts cost on Buffer vs Publer?
Five connected profiles is the first place Publer's JS unit-rate pulls away from Buffer's 1-10 channel list. Publer's visitor billing API on 28 Sep 2026 still returns Professional accounts: 4 / members: 2 and Business accounts: 7 / members: 3. The served plans-332f215a99c630a3.js does not add those rates on top of a $5 or $10 base. It replaces the whole unit rate by count: 1 account is $5 Professional / $10 Business, 2 accounts are $4.50 / $8.50 each, 3 or more are $4 / $7. Members stay $2 / $3. Tenth-free is Math.floor(0.1 * count) unless enterprise, so five accounts get no free slot.
| Five profiles, monthly math | Publisher unit | 28 Sep 2026 total |
|---|---|---|
| Publer Professional (JS 3+ rate) | $4 per account | $20 |
| Publer Business (JS 3+ rate) | $7 per account | $35 |
| Buffer Essentials 1-10 | $6 per channel | $30 |
| Buffer Team 1-10 | $12 per channel | $60 |
| Buffer Essentials yearly card | $5 per channel | $25 as $/mo ($300 billed) |
| Later yearly Starter (1 Social Set) | 8 profiles, 30 posts each | $18.75 as $/mo ($225 billed) |
A $5 + $4 extra reading of Publer Professional prices three accounts at $13. The JS prices three at $12. Help 15h4yqh no longer prints extra-account dollar bullets; it only prints the $5 / $10 floors. Anyone quoting a linear extra from an older help scrape will overpay the comparison.
Ten Professional accounts flip the other way on Buffer's volume table. Publer tenth-free gives one free slot (floor(1.0) = 1), so nine billable accounts at $4 is $36. Buffer Essentials monthly is $60 for 10 channels, $50 as yearly $/mo. Buffer stays cheaper per channel only after the 11-25 band ($4 Essentials), which Publer already hit at account 3.
Yearly Publer is three stories at once. Help 15h4yqh and hshrth (updated 17 Sep 2026) say 20%. The pricing UI label is 2 months free, or 3 months free when the additional_yearly_discount cookie is set. The JS formula is {12: additional_yearly_discount ? 0.25 : 0.20}. Help hshrth bonus line is 16%; the JS 6-month key is still .17. Do not collapse those percents into one "annual discount".
Does Later replace Publer if X is in the mix?
Later does not list X in a Social Set. Publer Free also excludes X; paid Professional and Business include it, with help 15h4yqh calling out Twitter / X Enterprise API cost as the reason Free cannot connect it. Buffer's channel list on the pricing page includes X. A creator leaving Publer because X is expensive on a 1-account Business floor ($10) can land on Buffer Essentials at $6 monthly per channel. That same creator cannot treat Later Starter's $18.75 as a like-for-like eight-network bundle if one of the eight needed profiles is X.
The Social Set is the other mismatch. Later Starter's 8 profiles look cheaper than five Publer Professional accounts at $20 until the post cap shows up. Starter allows 30 scheduled posts per profile per month. Publer Professional help 1srlp9n (re-fetched 28 Sep 2026) allows unlimited scheduling inside rolling 24-hour UTC caps. Those caps are per network, not a single 24/36 number. Rate-limits.md (28 Sep) prints Facebook posts and Reels at 12 / 24 / 36 per day per profile on Free / Professional / Business, Pinterest the same 12 / 24 / 36, Instagram posts and Reels at 15 / 20 / 25, X at 25 / 50 / 100, LinkedIn profiles at 10 / 12 / 14, YouTube at 5 / 10 / 15. The pricing-grid 24 / 36 pair matches Facebook and Pinterest, not Instagram or X.
Later Growth yearly is $37.50 for 2 sets (16 profiles) and 180 posts per profile. That is the first Later tier with internal and external approvals on the pricing cards. Publer Business help 1c57hsq (28 Sep) starts at $10/month for 1 account and adds approval workflows, analytics, recycling, API for customers in good standing, and MCP for eligible customers, with a 14-day trial. Professional is a 7-day trial. Buffer Team is the approval tier, from $12 per channel monthly.
Metricool is the brand-count exit, not the profile-count exit. Annual $20 versus Publer's $20 for five JS-priced Professional accounts is a coincidence of totals, not of units. One Metricool brand can hold several networks; Publer bills each Page, profile, or channel. The X add-on on Metricool still prints $10/month per connected account on the same 28 Sep pricing HTML.
Which tools ship a public MCP URL?
Buffer publishes a host. Publer generates one behind a login. Trends MCP publishes two hosts. Later's pricing page on this run lists no MCP.
Buffer's MCP marketing page (buffer.com/mcp, 28 Sep 2026) states MCP access is included on every plan, including Free. The docs host is https://mcp.buffer.com/mcp. Generic clients send Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY. Cursor's own guide (developers.buffer.com/guides/integrations/cursor.md, 28 Sep 2026) uses OAuth with no API key:
"buffer": {
"url": "https://mcp.buffer.com/mcp"
}
mcp.md names 20 tools. List calls use first default 20, max 100, and share GraphQL windows: 15-minute 100 on every plan, 24-hour 250 / 250 / 500, 30-day 3,000 / 7,500 / 15,000. create_post mode values are addToQueue (default), shareNow, shareNext, and customScheduled. The marketing FAQ still says drafts/scheduled and that the human is always last. Those two shareNow stories do not match. A 429 carries Retry-After.
Publer's feature grid in plans-332f215a99c630a3.js sets MCP false on Professional and true on Business, linking help 14orlq0. That article (updated 14 Aug 2026, re-fetched 28 Sep) calls the server beta for Top Ambassadors and Enterprise customers. The keep-in-mind line repeats Enterprise only. There is no public MCP URL. Settings → AI & Automations → MCP generates a URL after an API key. Help 15h4yqh and 1c57hsq say MCP for eligible customers, not "every Business seat". Do not treat the grid checkmark as a public endpoint.
REST is a separate gate. Overview.md (28 Sep) limits the API to Business and Enterprise, base URL https://app.publer.com/api/v1, auth method "Bearer-API Token", rate limit 100 requests / 2-minute fixed window per user. Quickstart curls use Authorization: Bearer-API YOUR_API_KEY against /api/v1/workspaces, /accounts, POST /api/v1/posts/schedule (bulk up to 500 posts on Professional help), then poll /api/v1/job_status/{job_id}. The same overview's getting-started curl uses Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN (no -API) against https://app.publer.com/api/v1/me. Users.md documents GET /api/v1/users/me with Bearer-API. https://publer.com/docs/authentication returned HTTP 404 on 28 Sep 2026; the live path is /docs/getting-started/authentication.md. 429 body: Rate limit exceeded. Retry later. Headers: X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset.
Metricool's Claude setup page (accessed 28 Sep 2026) prints https://ai.metricool.com/mcp and "Over 20 tools." That is a hosted URL. Plan gating for MCP versus REST was not re-verified beyond that page on this run.
Trends MCP is the trend-data MCP, not a publisher. llms.txt (Last updated 2026-09-28) documents two hosts: https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp with a Bearer API key for Cursor, VS Code, Claude Desktop, and Claude Code, and the www host /mcp path for Claude.ai Connectors (OAuth only). Cursor JSON on llms.txt:
"trends-mcp": {
"url": "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp",
"transport": "http",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" }
}
The homepage copy-config on 28 Sep still omits transport: "http" and the Bearer prefix (the key sits in Authorization alone). Full Cursor setup lives on the MCP server for Cursor page. Three tools: get_time_series, get_growth, get_top_trends. None of them schedule a Publer post.
When is Trends MCP the Publer alternative?
Trends MCP wins when the reason for leaving Publer is "the agent cannot see what is moving on Google, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, and YouTube from one key," not "the calendar will not publish at 10:00." Publer Explore, Later Future Insights (Scale), and Buffer Insights are in-product analytics on connected channels. They are not a multi-source trend API.
Public Trends MCP pricing on 28 Sep 2026 still disagrees with itself across surfaces. llms.txt and pricing.md list Free $0 / 100 requests, Starter $19 / 1,000, Pro $49 / 5,000, Business $199 / 25,000, annual saves 20%. HTML yearly cards print Starter $16/mo billed $192, Pro $39/mo billed $468, Business $159/mo billed $1,910, under a heading that says 2 months free. $19 × 0.8 = $15.20, not $16. $49 × 12 × 0.8 = $470.40, not $468. $199 × 12 × 0.8 = $1,910.40 versus $159 × 12 = $1,908 versus the card $1,910. Trial FAQ: card collected, not charged until day 8. Yearly cards: "$192/year after day 7". HTML FAQ: one successful API or MCP call = one request. llms.txt: MCP get_top_trends costs 1 credit per 10 requested rows (max 10 credits per call); REST is 1 request per call. Source counts on the same day: HTML pricing heading 30+; homepage hero 35+ and FAQ 40+; pricing FAQ 40+; /data-sources "36 sources", then "Fifteen keyword + twenty-one live", then Keyword sources 16 including python and Live feeds 24, then "83 data sources". HTML pricing also prints LIVE 12,888,328 API calls served. Do not flatten those counts.
A team that needs both jobs keeps a publisher and adds Trends MCP. Buffer Free already includes MCP for the calendar; Trends MCP Starter at $19 adds the social media trends API the calendar never had. Publer Business MCP, when the seat is actually eligible, still publishes through Publer.
Buffer's own pricing is the per-channel deep dive. This page exists so the searcher does not buy the wrong unit: accounts, channels, Social Sets, brands, or API requests.
FAQ
Is Buffer cheaper than Publer for a single Instagram account?
On one profile, Publer Professional's $5 floor beats Buffer Essentials monthly $6 and matches the yearly Essentials card at $5 as $/mo. Buffer Free covers three channels at $0 with 10 refillable scheduled posts each, which Publer Free also approximates (3 accounts, no X, 10 scheduled posts). The crossover is account 3 on Publer's JS ($4) versus Buffer's $6 list through channel 10.
Can Later replace Publer for an agency with client X accounts?
Not as a like-for-like network list. Later's Social Set on 28 Sep 2026 is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Snapchat. Publer paid plans and Buffer both include X. Later Starter also caps Starter at 1 user and 30 scheduled posts per profile.
Does Publer MCP work in Cursor the way Buffer MCP does?
Buffer hands Cursor a public URL on every plan. Publer help 14orlq0 generates a URL after an API key, in beta for Top Ambassadors and Enterprise, while the pricing grid checks MCP on Business. Cursor JSON for Trends MCP uses https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp plus transport: "http" on llms.txt; that server reads trend feeds, it does not call POST /api/v1/posts/schedule.
Should a creator switch to Trends MCP instead of Publer?
Only if the missing piece is live trend data across search, social, commerce, and developer feeds. Trends MCP will not recycle a Facebook post or sit in a visual Instagram grid. Keep Publer, Buffer, Later, or Metricool for publishing; add Trends MCP when the agent needs get_growth and get_top_trends.
Where do the Publer extra-account dollars live if help only shows $5 and $10?
In plans-332f215a99c630a3.js and the visitor billing API, fetched 28 Sep 2026. 1 / 2 / 3+ accounts bill $5 / $4.50 / $4 on Professional and $10 / $8.50 / $7 on Business. Help 15h4yqh dropped the extra-account bullets on 15 Sep 2026 and now prints floors only.
Sources (all accessed 28 Sep 2026): publer.com/pricing plus plans-332f215a99c630a3.js and GET app.publer.com/api/v1/billing/subscription?visitor=true; help 15h4yqh, 1c57hsq, 1srlp9n, hshrth, 14orlq0; overview.md, quickstart.md, authentication.md, rate-limits.md, users.md; buffer.com/pricing.md, buffer.com/mcp, mcp.md; later.com/pricing; metricool.com/pricing; Trends MCP HTML /pricing, pricing.md, llms.txt Last updated 2026-09-28, homepage, /data-sources.