Social media decision
PostFast
A capable developer can build a useful self-hosted scheduler (OAuth, signed uploads, scheduling worker, basic analytics) over several weeks; reproducing PostFast's full 11-platform coverage, AI-agent connectors, polished apps, and scale-tested reliability is significantly more work.
Visit website↗$12/mo
$144/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$80/mo10 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 8 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All PostFast alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Authenticate social accounts via OAuth, upload media to S3 (signed URLs), create scheduled posts (content + media + scheduledAt) and run a publisher worker that sends posts to platform APIs and records delivery/analytics.
What it still won’t have
- Out-of-the-box connectors to ChatGPT/Claude and MCP server
- Verified n8n/Zapier/Make nodes and ecosystem integrations
- Mobile apps and polished UX
- Scale-tested reliability, priority support, and multi-platform publish edge-cases handled by vendor
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 8 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted social post scheduler using Node.js (Express) + Postgres + Redis (BullMQ) + AWS S3. Implement: (1) OAuth connect endpoints for at least X and Instagram (store tokens), (2) POST /files -> return S3 signed PUT URLs, (3) POST /posts to create scheduled posts (content, media keys, socialAccountId, scheduledAt) validated and stored in Postgres, (4) a background worker that dequeues due posts and calls the corresponding platform publish API, updating post status and storing publish timestamps and any returned platformPostId, (5) simple GET /posts and GET /posts/:id/analytics endpoints. Out of scope: mobile apps, full multi-platform parity, AI-agent connectors, multi-tenant billing. Include robust error handling, retries with backoff for publishing failures, rate-limit awareness, and automated tests for API, worker, and OAuth flows.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productPostFast - Schedule Social Media Posts Across All Platforms
- official pricingPricing & Plans - Schedule to 11 Platforms from €10/mo | PostFast
- official docsAPI Documentation | PostFast
- open sourcebrightbeanxyz/brightbean-studio
- open sourcegitroomhq/postiz-app
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
