Planable vs Planoly (2026): Approval Workflow vs Visual Planning — and Two Opposite Ideas of Scarcity
- Planable: $33 / $49 per workspace for 4 / 10 social pages and 60 / 150 posts a month, with unlimited users on every tier.
- Planoly: about $14 / $24 / $47 a month for 1 / 2 / 6 social sets, where a set bundles one profile per network, with matching user counts.
- Planable makes people free and posts scarce. Planoly makes features free and identities scarce. Those are the two axes to check yourself against.
- A solo creator on five networks pays about $14 with Planoly. A five-person team approving posts for one brand pays $33 with Planable and cannot do it at all on Planoly Starter.
These two get compared because they occupy the same price band and both look like "a nicer calendar." They are not competing on the same axis at all. One is a collaboration product with a scheduler attached; the other is a creator product with a storefront attached.
The fastest way to tell which you need: count how many people have to see a post before it goes out. If the answer is one, one of these is roughly twice the price for machinery you will never open.
Verified pricing (both checked 4 September 2026)
| Planable | Monthly / workspace | Social pages | Posts / month | Users | Approvals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $33 | 4 | 60 | Unlimited | None / optional |
| Pro | $49 | 10 | 150 | Unlimited | + required approval |
| Enterprise | Custom | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Multi-level |
| Planoly | Annual / mo | Monthly | Social sets | Users | Add-ons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $14 | $16 | 1 | 1 | — |
| Growth | $24 | $28 | 2 | 2 | +$10/set · +$5/user |
| Pro | $47 | $55 | 6 | 6 | +$8/set · +$3/user |
Planable bills add-ons for Analytics ($12–14/workspace/month) and Social Inbox ($7.50–9). Planoly includes Link in Bio, digital-product selling and Instagram DM automation on every tier.
Two opposite answers to "what is scarce here"
Line up what each vendor decided to meter, and the products stop looking similar:
| Planable | Planoly | |
|---|---|---|
| People | Free (unlimited, all tiers) | Metered (1 / 2 / 6, +$3–5 each) |
| Posts | Metered (60 / 150 per month) | Not published |
| Identities | Metered (4 / 10 pages) | Metered as bundles (social sets) |
| Features | Metered (approvals, analytics, inbox) | Free (everything on Starter) |
Planable sells you permission to disagree in public. Planoly sells you permission to publish alone, everywhere.
Three concrete operators, priced
Solo creator, five networks, posts daily.
- Planoly Starter: one set covers all five networks. $14/month. Post volume unmetered.
- Planable Basic: five pages exceeds the 4-page allowance → Pro. And 5 × 30 = 150 posts, exactly Pro's cap. $49/month, sitting on the line.
- Planoly, by $35.
Small agency, one client, six people signing off, two networks, twelve posts a month.
- Planable Basic: 2 pages of 4, 12 posts of 60, six users free. $33/month, comfortable.
- Planoly Pro (needed for 6 users): $47/month — and it still has no required-approval workflow.
- Planable, by $14, and it is the only one that does the job at all.
Three brands, three networks each, one operator, daily posting.
- Planoly: three sets → Growth ($24) + one add-on ($10) = $34/month.
- Planable: nine pages → Pro ($49), and 9 × 30 = 270 posts against a 150 cap. Does not fit at any published tier below Enterprise.
- Planoly, decisively.
Notice that the winner changed three times and the monthly prices barely moved. Sticker price is nearly uninformative in this comparison.
The trap in each product
Planable's trap is the post cap. It is stated plainly but it is easy to read "4 social pages" as the constraint. Multiply pages by your posting frequency first: four pages posting daily is 120 posts, double Basic's allowance. The plan runs out on the fifteenth.
Planoly's trap is the word "set." A set is a bundle across networks, not an account. It is generous if you are one brand everywhere and expensive if you are many identities on one network. Eight Instagram accounts is eight sets — Pro plus two add-ons, $63 a month — while a single brand on eight different networks is one set at $14.
Both traps have the same shape, which is worth naming: the number printed largest is never the binding constraint.
Add-on versus upgrade
Planoly is the one vendor we have priced where the add-on is not automatically the cheaper move. On Growth, an extra set costs $10 against a $12 tier average — add-on wins. On Pro, an extra set costs $8 against a $7.83 average — the add-on loses, narrowly. Do the division for your own tier rather than trusting the general rule.
Planable does not publish per-page add-ons at all. Its only lever is the tier, plus the analytics and inbox add-ons, which are workspace-level.
What neither one does
Both assume the content already exists. Planable helps a group agree on it; Planoly helps one person schedule it beautifully. Neither writes it, and crucially neither writes different versions of it for different accounts.
If your situation is "nine accounts in the same niche and they cannot all post the same thing," you are not shopping for a calendar. NoobClaw addresses that end: each account in its own isolated browser profile on your own machine, under your own login, generating its own content from its own niche and persona, published on randomised human-like timing rather than one queue. Different category, different purchase — worth separating before you compare these two on price. See how matrix accounts converge on the same content.
The add-on invoices you have not counted
Both products have costs sitting outside the tier price, and they push in opposite directions.
Planable sells Analytics separately at $12–14 per workspace per month and Social Inbox at $7.50–9. A Basic workspace that needs reporting is really $45–47, not $33 — which puts it beside Pro without Pro's page and post allowances.
Planoly sells extra sets and extra users, and includes Link in Bio, digital-product selling and Instagram DM automation in the base price at every tier. Its extras are about scale; Planable's are about capability.
That difference is worth stating plainly because it inverts the usual advice: with Planoly, start on the cheapest tier and add scale when you need it. With Planable, work out your full feature requirement first, because adding capability later costs more than the tier did.
Verify before you buy
- What Planoly counts as one social set today — bundle rules are the most-revised part of any pricing page.
- Whether Planable's post cap counts drafts and failed publishes. The published number is posts per month per workspace; edge-case handling is not stated.
- Whether a "social page" and a "social profile" mean the same thing on Planable for the networks you use — some platforms expose several publishable surfaces per account.
- Both prices on the day. Ours are dated 4 September 2026, and we have watched a vendor in this category restructure inside five days.
FAQ
Which is better for a solo creator?
Planoly, in most configurations — it is cheaper, it does not meter your posting, and it ships Link in Bio and DM automation on the entry tier. Planable's whole value proposition is collaboration, which a solo operator cannot use.
Which is better for client approvals?
Planable, and it is not close. Required approval appears on Pro and multi-level approval on Enterprise; Planoly has no equivalent workflow. Unlimited users on every Planable tier means adding the client costs nothing.
Do either of them support Chinese platforms?
No. Both are Western-network only — no Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Bilibili or WeChat Channels on either.
Related: Planable vs Buffer, Planoly vs Later, and the shapes social tool pricing comes in.