Three open source social media schedulers run on your own server, and their free versions reach very different sets of networks. Postiz declares 35 channel types in its code, X, LinkedIn, Reddit and Mastodon among them, and holds no feature back for its cloud plans, though its official Compose file starts nine containers. Mixpost is MIT-licensed and pitches itself as a Buffer alternative, but its free edition only posts to Facebook, X and Mastodon: Instagram and LinkedIn take the Pro edition, sold for $299. BrightBean Studio covers eleven networks with no paid tier at all, though not X or Reddit, and it has never shipped a numbered release.
Which networks each free version posts to
Postiz shows 14 networks in its README and claims "30+" on its website. Its integration manager declares 35 types, or 32 services if LinkedIn pages, standalone Instagram accounts and TikTok Business aren't counted separately. The list covers X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit and Google Business Profile, decentralized networks such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Lemmy, Nostr and Farcaster, chat platforms such as Telegram, Discord and Slack, and publishing platforms such as Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode and WordPress.
BrightBean Studio posts to eleven networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (profiles and pages), TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Google Business Profile and DEV.to. Instagram connects through a Facebook Page or directly, with a professional account. The request for an X connector has been open since April 16, 2026, and Reddit and Discord have open tickets of their own.
Mixpost Lite, the edition in the GitHub repository, posts to Facebook Pages, X profiles and Mastodon. The pricing page puts Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky and Google Business Profile behind Pro or Enterprise.
A developer app on every major network
Self-hosting a scheduler makes you the owner of an app on each major platform: you create it on the network's developer portal, register your instance's callback URL, then wait for the platform to review it. All three tools work this way.
Postiz needs one for X, LinkedIn, Meta, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit, and its README warns that approval can take weeks at Meta, YouTube and TikTok. Its docs spell out what happens in the meantime: until the TikTok app passes its audit, every post goes out as private, and a Facebook app still in Development mode publishes images that only its developers and testers can see. Ten channels skip the portal, among them Bluesky, Lemmy, Nostr, Medium, Dev.to and WordPress, which need at most a username or an API key. Postiz Cloud comes with pre-approved apps.
BrightBean Studio needs an app for Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Google and Pinterest. LinkedIn company pages go through an API that LinkedIn reviews; without it, a personal profile has to be reconnected by hand about every 60 days. TikTok wants a demo video before it lets the app into production. Bluesky connects with an app password, DEV.to with an API key, and Mastodon registers itself automatically, so none of the three goes through a developer portal.
Mixpost Lite needs a developer app for both Facebook and X. Its docs warn that X bills every post it reads and every post it publishes, and that a post with a link costs many times more than one without.
What the paid editions keep for themselves
Postiz publishes comparison pages against Buffer, Hootsuite, Later and some sixty other services, and keeps nothing back for paying customers: "We do not 'gate' features," its README says. A self-hosted instance has no cap on channels, posts or team members. Postiz Cloud runs the same code in four plans, from $29 a month for 5 channels with no team support to $99 for 100 channels. It brings the pre-approved apps and, depending on the plan, quotas for AI-generated images, videos and clipping minutes; a self-hosted instance uses its own OpenAI key or another provider's.
Mixpost's GitHub description calls it a Buffer alternative with "No subscriptions, no limits", and its homepage aims it at agencies, businesses and creators. The pricing page still keeps most networks for two commercial editions, each sold as a one-time purchase. Pro, at $299, unlocks the other networks and adds the posting queue, approval flows, the AI assistant, templates, the API, the MCP server and webhooks. Enterprise, at $1,199, adds white labeling and billing for your own customers. Both licences include a year of updates; after that the software keeps running but gets no updates unless you renew. Mixpost Cloud offers Pro in four plans hosted by the vendor.
BrightBean Studio's README pitches it as a free take on Sendible or SocialPilot for creators, agencies and small businesses, with no limits on seats or connected accounts. Nothing is paywalled: "No paid tier, no feature gate, no upsell." The company runs the same code as a free hosted service and says in its FAQ that it earns its money from its API products. The same FAQ leaves the door open to premium features later, while promising the core will stay free.
Postiz and BrightBean Studio are AGPL-3.0 across the whole repository: if you modify either one and offer it as a service, you must provide the modified source to its users. Mixpost Lite is MIT-licensed, so you can modify it and ship it inside a closed product without publishing your changes.
What each tool needs to run
Read from the repositories and documentation on 7 October 2026.
| Tool | Licence | What you run | Networks in the free version | Paid offer | Latest release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postiz | AGPL-3.0 | nine containers, including PostgreSQL, Redis and Temporal; at least 2 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM | 35 channel types, including X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Reddit | Postiz Cloud, $29 to $99 a month, no feature held back | v2.25.0, 2 Oct 2026 |
| Mixpost, Lite edition | MIT | PHP 8.3 per the docs, 8.2 per composer.json; MySQL or MariaDB, Redis 6.2 or later, Supervisor and a cron job | Facebook Pages, X, Mastodon | Pro at $299, Enterprise at $1,199, one-time | 2.6.0, 16 Mar 2026 |
| BrightBean Studio | AGPL-3.0 | five containers, including PostgreSQL 16 and Caddy, no Redis; image built from source; 512 MB for the app | eleven, including Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and Bluesky; no X or Reddit | none; free hosted version | none: updates come from main |
Postiz runs the most services. Its official Compose file starts Postiz, PostgreSQL 17 and Redis 7.2, then the Temporal stack, mandatory since v2.12.0 in January 2026: the Temporal server, its own PostgreSQL 16 database, Elasticsearch 7.17, the admin tools and the web UI. The ninth container is Spotlight, a Sentry debugging tool. The docs set a floor of 2 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM, enough for one user under light load, recommend 4 vCPU, 8 GB and 50 GB of disk, and expect HTTPS in production, since Postiz sets secure cookies.
Mixpost installs with Docker, by hand, or as a Composer package inside an existing Laravel app. For the last two routes, the server requirements page in its docs, shared by Lite, Pro and Enterprise, asks for PHP 8.3.0 or later, while Lite's composer.json still accepts PHP 8.2. The same page requires MySQL or MariaDB, Redis 6.2 or later, Supervisor to keep the Horizon worker alive, a cron entry every minute and a 512 MB PHP memory limit. It also says Redis and Supervisor are mandatory even for a single user, because every post goes out through the queue. The Docker setup starts MySQL 8.0 and Redis next to the app.
BrightBean Studio does without Redis: background jobs run on django-background-tasks, and PostgreSQL 16 or later is its only data service. Its production Compose file runs the app under Gunicorn, the publishing worker, PostgreSQL, Caddy for HTTPS and a migration container. No image is published, so the Compose file builds one from source, and a request for a prebuilt image has been open since June 2026. The README sizes the shipped command for 512 MB, with a Gunicorn worker taking close to 200 MB, and asks for the same headroom for the publishing worker, which downloads videos to disk.
Access control needs a look as well. Postiz's Compose file leaves sign-up open, with DISABLE_REGISTRATION set to false; set to true, it lets one account register and then closes the page. BrightBean Studio has no setting to close its sign-up page, a request open since April 2026, and TOTP two-factor login is still on its roadmap. Mixpost Lite's code has no user management and no workspaces.
Where the projects stand
Postiz shipped 28 releases between v2.12.0 on January 14, 2026 and v2.25.0 on October 2, and its main branch took 389 commits in thirty days, merges included. One developer accounts for 1,699 commits, more than the next three combined. v2.24.0, released on September 22, fixed two vulnerabilities and urged an immediate upgrade. That release and v2.25.0 both change the database schema, which the official image applies on startup, and the repository's Compose file pulls the latest image.
Mixpost Lite hasn't had a commit since 2.6.0 on March 16, 2026, which added support for pay-as-you-go billing on the X API. Since June 2025, its releases have mostly tracked Facebook and X API changes. Three fixes from outside contributors, opened in September and October 2026, are waiting to be merged, as is a pull request adding Pixelfed that has been open since November 2025. The install repositories for Pro and Enterprise, meanwhile, moved to versions 7 and 8 of those editions in September 2026.
BrightBean Studio's repository dates from March 25, 2026 and has no releases or tags, even though the website FAQ mentions release notes on GitHub: updating means pulling main and rebuilding the image. One developer authored 573 of the 607 commits. Activity dropped to 5 commits in July 2026 and climbed back to 76 in September; the latest landed on September 30. The interface is English-only.