Planoly and Postiz are social media schedulers aimed at different buyers. Planoly is a polished, Instagram-first visual planner — its grid preview and Story scheduling are unmatched for creators who live on Instagram and Pinterest, starting at $13/month. Postiz is an open-source scheduler with 19+ platform connections that you can self-host for free or use on their cloud; it has 31,000+ GitHub stars and active development. Planoly wins on visual Instagram workflow and ease of use; Postiz wins on platform breadth, team collaboration at scale, and zero licensing cost if you self-host.
Quick comparison
| Feature | Planoly | Postiz |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free plan | Free plan |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| G2 rating | Not listed | Not listed |
| Best for | Instagram and Pinterest creators who need a visual grid planner and polished scheduling UX and are willing to pay $13/month for it | marketing teams or developers who want multi-platform scheduling across 19+ networks, open-source freedom, and the option to self-host for free |
| Starting price | $13/month Solo plan; limited free plan available | Free to self-host (open-source); cloud plans start around $29/month |
| Free plan | Yes — limited posts and one social profile | Yes — self-host for free with no license cost |
| Open source | No | Yes — MIT licensed, 31,500+ GitHub stars |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Supported platforms | Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, LinkedIn | 19+ platforms including all major networks plus Bluesky, Mastodon, and more |
| Visual Instagram grid preview | Yes — core differentiator | No |
| Team collaboration | Limited on lower plans; multi-user on higher tiers | Built-in team workspace with approvals |
| AI content generation | Basic captions on some plans | Yes — AI post generation built in |
| Best for | Instagram-first visual planners | Multi-platform teams wanting open-source control |
Visual Instagram planning
Planoly's visual grid planner is its defining feature and genuinely best-in-class for Instagram-focused creators. You drag and drop posts into position, see exactly how your profile grid will look before publishing, and rearrange content to match the aesthetic you're building. Story scheduling with sticker and hashtag placement, Instagram Reels support, and a media library organized for visual browsing round out an experience built specifically for how Instagram creators think about content. Postiz does not offer a visual grid preview — you schedule posts in a calendar view, which works well for multi-platform coordination but loses the Instagram-specific spatial planning that Planoly's audience values. For a creator whose primary output is a visually cohesive Instagram feed, the difference is significant enough to justify Planoly's price. If Instagram is one channel among many and grid aesthetics aren't a priority, Planoly's advantage shrinks to irrelevant.
Platform breadth and multi-channel scheduling
Postiz supports 19+ social platforms as of mid-2026: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and more. That breadth is its most direct competitive advantage over Planoly, which covers six to eight of the major platforms. For marketing teams managing presence across newer or niche networks — Bluesky, Mastodon, or Threads — Postiz often removes the need for a second tool. Planoly's coverage is sufficient for the most common commercial use cases (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok) but teams trying to maintain presence on emerging platforms will hit gaps. The scheduling workflow in Postiz is calendar-centric and works identically across all platforms, which is more efficient for teams publishing dozens of posts per week across multiple brands than switching between platform-specific views. Planoly's UX shines on Instagram but becomes less differentiated as you move to platforms where grid aesthetics don't apply.
Team collaboration and approval workflows
Postiz includes team workspaces with post assignment, approval workflows, and role-based permissions as core features — available even on self-hosted deployments where there's no license cost. Multiple team members can draft, review, and approve posts before they go live, with a clear audit trail of who approved what. This makes Postiz genuinely viable for marketing agencies managing multiple client accounts or in-house teams with content review requirements. Planoly offers multi-user access but the collaboration depth is thinner on lower plans, and the approval workflow is not as structured. Solo creators and small creator businesses don't need an approval workflow and won't miss it; agencies and brand marketing teams with compliance review requirements will find Postiz's collaboration model more aligned with how they actually operate. The self-hosting option also means an agency can run Postiz for unlimited team members without per-seat licensing, which matters for teams larger than four or five people.
Ease of use and onboarding
Planoly is designed for creators, not developers, and the onboarding reflects it. Connect your Instagram account, start dragging media into the grid, and you're scheduling posts in minutes. The interface is polished, mobile-friendly, and requires no technical knowledge to operate. Postiz's cloud version is similarly approachable for non-technical users, but the self-hosted path — which is the free path — requires Docker, a server environment, and basic devops familiarity. If you're comparing Planoly to Postiz cloud, the onboarding gap is modest. If you're comparing Planoly to self-hosted Postiz, the operational overhead is real: you handle upgrades, backups, and server maintenance. For creators and small businesses without technical staff, the Planoly-to-Postiz-cloud comparison makes more sense, but it narrows Postiz's pricing advantage significantly. Teams with a developer on staff can absorb the self-hosting complexity; teams without one should factor in the operational cost honestly.
Analytics and reporting
Planoly's analytics are polished and Instagram-focused: reach, impressions, engagement rate, best time to post, and follower growth trends presented in clean visual dashboards. For an Instagram creator or small brand monitoring content performance, it's genuinely useful without requiring any configuration. Postiz's analytics are more basic in the current release — post performance summaries per platform, engagement counts, and scheduled post history — but lack the depth of audience demographic data and trend overlays that Planoly provides for Instagram. This gap reflects the different product priorities: Planoly is optimizing for Instagram insight depth; Postiz is optimizing for cross-platform scheduling breadth. If performance analytics are a key part of your weekly workflow — not just a dashboard you glance at quarterly — Planoly's reporting is meaningfully more useful for Instagram-specific measurement. For teams whose primary analytics tool is a dedicated product like Sprout Social or a BI tool pulling raw data via API, Postiz's lighter analytics don't matter.
Pricing and total cost
Self-hosted Postiz costs nothing for the license — you pay only for your hosting infrastructure, which for a small team on a basic VPS runs $5 to $20 per month. That is a compelling cost structure for bootstrapped teams, agencies with many client accounts, and developers who prioritize data ownership. Postiz cloud plans start around $29/month for individuals and go higher for teams — still competitive with Planoly's $13/month Solo plan when you factor in feature breadth. Planoly's pricing scales with social profiles and team seats: the Solo plan covers one workspace; growing teams move to $26/month and up. For a team of three managing five brand accounts, Postiz's team pricing or self-hosted option will typically be cheaper than the equivalent Planoly tier. For a solo creator managing one or two Instagram accounts, Planoly's $13/month is affordable and the feature fit is better. The break-even point depends on team size and platform count — model your specific situation rather than relying on sticker price alone.
Pricing deep-dive
Planoly
- Free: limited to 1 social profile and 30 posts/month.
- Solo: $13/month — 1 user, 2 social profiles, unlimited media uploads.
- Duo: $20/month — 2 users, 6 social profiles.
- Growth: $26/month — 3 users, 9 social profiles, analytics.
- Annual billing saves approximately 20% across all plans.
Postiz
- Self-hosted: free forever — MIT open-source license, host on your own infrastructure.
- Cloud Individual: ~$29/month for 1 user, all platforms.
- Cloud Team: ~$69/month for up to 5 users with approval workflows.
- Cloud Agency: custom pricing for unlimited workspaces.
- GitHub: gitroomhq/postiz-app — 31,500+ stars as of June 2026.
Pricing verdict: For a solo Instagram creator, Planoly at $13/month is well-priced for what it delivers. For teams, developers, or agencies managing multiple brands, Postiz self-hosted is the lowest-cost option available — effectively free beyond infrastructure. Postiz cloud is competitive with Planoly for teams and includes more platform coverage. Always verify current plan pricing on each vendor's website before committing; Postiz's pricing has evolved as the product has grown.
How to switch from Planoly to Postiz
What real users say
Planoly: Planoly users consistently praise the Instagram grid planning experience as the best available — it's the reason most of them chose the product. Common complaints center on pricing increases over time, limited features on the entry plan, and the feeling that non-Instagram platforms feel like afterthoughts in the UX.
Postiz: Postiz users in the open-source community praise the platform breadth, active development pace, and the fact that self-hosting eliminates per-seat costs. Common feedback centers on the learning curve for self-hosting, occasional stability issues in the self-hosted release, and the absence of Instagram grid planning.
Sources: Synthesized from Product Hunt reviews, GitHub issues and discussions, G2 reviews, and Reddit communities for social media managers as of mid-2026.
Final verdict
Choose Planoly if...
- Choose Planoly if Instagram is your primary or only platform and visual grid planning is a weekly part of your content workflow.
- Choose Planoly if you want a polished, no-setup-required tool and $13/month is a reasonable cost for saving time on Instagram content planning.
- Choose Planoly if Instagram analytics — reach, impressions, best-time-to-post data — are central to how you measure content performance.
Choose Postiz if...
- Choose Postiz if you manage presence on more than six platforms and need a single scheduler that covers all of them including newer networks like Bluesky or Mastodon.
- Choose Postiz if you have developer resources and want to self-host for free — eliminating licensing cost entirely while keeping full data ownership.
- Choose Postiz if you're an agency or team needing structured approval workflows and multi-workspace management without per-seat pricing blowing up your budget.
Consider neither if: Consider Buffer if you want a middle ground — multi-platform support with a polished UI and a generous free plan. Consider Later if you want Instagram-specific visual planning with stronger link-in-bio features. Consider Hootsuite if your team needs enterprise-scale team management and reporting.