Best Social Media Posting and Scheduling APIs of 2024
A list of the 6 best social media scheduling tools that offer APIs for posting, scheduling and analytics.
Throughout the years, our team has dedicated countless hours to researching, writing, and sharing insights across a wide range of topics, such as API programming, the social media landscape, and social network integrations. One particular article has risen to the top: Our discussion of the best social media APIs for posting and scheduling has become an important resource for many readers—from innovative AI content platforms and Content Management Systems (CMS) to dynamic agencies and companies eager to automate their social media efforts.
As we move into 2024, we recognize the importance of staying current and providing the most accurate, actionable information to our readers. With this in mind, we’re updating the list of the best social media posting and scheduling API to provide more in-depth analysis so you can discover the right solution for your business.
Why Use a Social Media API?
If you want to manually post and schedule social media to networks like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube, there are some excellent web-based posting tools out there. However, if you run an app or SaaS platform, say for example an AI content generation app, your users typically want a simple process to post to social media networks without having to download the content and do it manually. This sharing can be part of a workflow or an automatic process, but the point is you want to make sharing simple and easy for your users without them leaving your platform.
A unified API for social media makes it possible to programmatically publish from your backend system, allowing you to control the content, posting schedule, management, and reposting on behalf of your users.
There are two ways to integrate with the networks:
- Direct API connection with each social network, such as the Facebook Graph API or YouTube API. This often requires an arduous approval process at each network and continuous maintenance, but most networks do not charge for standard access – X/Twitter and Reddit being the exceptions.
- 3rd party social media APIs. While integration is easier and they handle maintenance, there typically is a monthly charge.
Here are some 3rd party social media scheduling tools with API endpoints, in alphabetical order.
List of the Top Social Media APIs
1. Ayrshare API
Tagline: Easy to integrate Social Media APIs allow you to manage all your users’ social accounts right from your product. Publish posts, get advanced analytics, and manage comments. Great for SaaS business, CMS, DAM, and Agencies.
API Documentation: link
Pricing: Free to $149/mo for Premium or the Business Plan if you have multiple users on your platform. Free plan offers 10 social networks and 20 posts a month.
The Good: In our humble opinion, Ayrshare is the best social media api around if you’re looking for an all-in-one social API … I mean it is our product after all! We’re the only API-first social media scheduling tool, so everything we build is about fast and seamless integration with your backend system. That is why we offer numerous SDK packages, coding examples, and comprehensive documentation. The API offers posting, scheduling, analytics, comment management, YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels and stories publishing, AI tools, and more.
There are 10 different social network integrations: Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business Profile, Reddit, Telegram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
The Bad: The dashboard is meant for managing your users and offers lots of developer tools, such as the JSON of every request/response, webhook setup, code examples, and API keys. If you’re looking to spend your day manually posting in a desktop GUI, there are better choices than Ayrshare. In fact, we wrote and article Why You Shouldn’t Use Ayrshare.
2. Buffer API
Tagline: Tell your brand’s story and grow your audience with a publishing, analytics, and engagement platform you can trust.
API Documentation: link – no new developer accounts since 2019
Pricing: $6 per social channel. Free plan offers 3 social accounts and 10 posts/mo per social channel.
The Good: We love Buffer! It was the first tool we used before developing Ayrshare, and it is a popular social media platform. Buffer’s dashboard is perfectly simple and really a model for all other apps for scheduling and posting content on various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The Buffer API is clear and has all the features needed to schedule posts, with some cool features such as reorder and shuffle future posts.
The Bad: Simple – Buffer shutdown new developer access to the API. Unless you already have a developer account, you’re out of luck.
3. Hootsuite API
Tagline: Easily manage all your social media and get results with Hootsuite.
API Documentation: link
Pricing: $99 to $739 or more a month. The Hootsuite free plan was removed on March 31, 2023.
The Good: Hootsuite is probably the most popular social media scheduling tool around, and has a great reputation and feature set. They offer a powerful social media management platform that supports scheduling and posting on popular platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The Hootsuite API is well documented and straight-forward. And if you’re looking to manually post, they have one of the best GUIs around.
The Bad: The Hootsuite API has not been updated in over 5 years and they are lacking many newer integrations, such as TikTok, YouTub, and Instagram and Facebook Reels and Stories. Also, Hootsuite has been raising prices and has removed the free tier. However, of the few available 3rd party social media APIs, the Hootsuite API is one of the top ones to consider.
4. HubSpot API
Tagline: Marketing, sales, and service software that helps your business grow without compromise. Because “good for the business” should also mean “good for the customer.”
API Documentation: link
Pricing: $50 to $3,200 a month
The Good: HubSpot is a great platform for marketing and they also have an API integration for social posting.
The Bad: Unfortunately, it looks like HubSpot deprecated their API. We found the API to be a bit confusing without a clear way to choose a network, such as Twitter or Instagram, to publish the post. However, if you’re already a HubSpot customer, you should first check out their API offering.
5. SocialOomph API
Tagline: Boost your productivity with advanced post scheduling tools.
API Documentation: link
Pricing: $20 to $83 a month
The Good: SocialOomph takes a unique approach where each user sets up their open webhook and provides that to the platform. The platform then calls the webhook to post to that user’s account.
The Bad: The use of webhooks is very technical and might be a lot for the average customer/user to understand and setup.
6. Social Flow API
Tagline: We help publishers extract more revenue from their best content on social platforms.
API Documentation: Not publicly available
Pricing: Unknown
The Good: SocialFlow is focused on publishing and advertising for the media industry. It is used by many publishers such as The New York Times, National Geographic Channel, and Fast Company.
The Bad: Because SocialFlow keeps a tight lipped on pricing and their API, you’ll need to contact them directly.
These social APIs are some of the best options available for integrating social media functionalities into custom applications, AI platforms, and CRMs. By leveraging these APIs you can offer amazing social capabilities, whether posting, getting analytics, or managing comments, for your users.
Do you know of other Social Media APIs that we should include? If so, via chat. And if you just need more help on integrating social media APIs, here are a few great articles:
