Social Magnum vs Buffer: Flat Price or Per Channel (2026)

Buffer and Social Magnum both schedule posts across the big social networks, both have a free plan, and both let a small team work from one calendar. The two products still make opposite bets on the thing you feel every month: Buffer prices per channel, Social Magnum prices flat.

Two opposite pricing models#

Buffer’s pricing is built on the channel: one Instagram profile, one Facebook Page, one TikTok account each count as one channel, and the paid plans charge for every one of them. Essentials is $5 per channel per month billed yearly, Team is $10 per channel per month billed yearly with unlimited team members. The free plan covers 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts sitting in the queue per channel.

Social Magnum’s pricing is flat. Starter is $24 a month for 10 social accounts and 2 people. Business is $59 for 30 accounts and 6 people. Agency is $119 for 70 accounts and 10 people. Yearly billing drops those to $19, $47 and $95. The free plan covers 2 accounts and 15 posts a month, forever, and every paid plan carries a 14-day money-back guarantee.

What ten accounts actually cost#

The models only separate once you count your accounts. A creator with an Instagram and a TikTok barely notices the difference. An agency with ten client accounts lives in it.

Buffer’s figures are its yearly-billing rates ($5 and $10 per channel per month) multiplied out; monthly billing runs higher. Social Magnum’s figures are the flat monthly price, and its yearly rates are lower still. Neither column hides a setup fee. The one asymmetry worth naming in Buffer’s favour: at exactly one or two channels, Buffer Essentials is $5 to $10 and undercuts every flat-priced tool on the market.

Feature by feature#

Two rows in that table deserve the honesty said out loud. If your work depends on X, LinkedIn or a Google Business Profile, Buffer covers them and Social Magnum simply does not, and no other row changes that. And Buffer’s free plan allows one more account than ours, if 10 queued posts per channel is enough for your cadence.

Where Buffer wins#

• Network breadth. Eleven channels including X, LinkedIn and Google Business Profile, plus the Start Page link-in-bio. That is the widest reason to choose it.
• Tiny setups. At one or two channels, $5 to $10 a month is close to unbeatable, and the free plan covers three channels.
• Track record. Buffer has scheduled posts since 2010, publishes its revenue openly, and is about the safest default in the category. Nobody was ever fired for picking it.

Where Social Magnum wins#

• Flat pricing at scale. Ten accounts cost $24, not $50. Thirty cost $59, not $150. The gap widens with every account you add.
• More product per dollar. AI captions and image generation, post approvals, a unified inbox with auto-replies, CSV and RSS scheduling are all in the $24 plan. On Buffer, approvals need the Team tier and an inbox is not part of the product.
• Newer networks treated as first-class. Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon publish alongside the big four, with per-network settings rather than a lowest-common denominator composer.

The agent difference#

Both products can be driven by software, but differently. Buffer exposes a classic REST API with request caps per plan (3,000 a month free, more on paid). Social Magnum ships an MCP server with 26 documented tools, which means an AI agent like Claude, ChatGPT or Codex connects with OAuth and schedules, replies and reads analytics conversationally, with approval gates and pacing limits on our side of the wall. If your workflow in 2026 includes telling an assistant “draft next week and queue it”, that connection is the difference between an integration project and a login.

Which one to pick#

More comparisons in this series: Social Magnum vs Hootsuite, the best Buffer alternatives and the best Hootsuite alternatives.