Postiz vs Blotato (2026): One Ceiling vs Two — and the Second One Is the Surprise
- Postiz limits one thing: channels. $29/5, $39/10, $49/30, $99/100, with API and webhooks on every tier.
- Blotato limits two things: social accounts (20 on Starter $29, 40 on Creator $97) and monthly AI credits (1,250 / 5,000 / 28,000).
- The second ceiling is the one that bites. Having accounts left but no credits left is a real state, and it stops your generation mid-month.
- On raw per-account math Blotato Starter is $1.45/account and Postiz Pro is $1.63 — but only one of those numbers survives if you actually use the AI.
These two get compared because they land near the same price and both promise to handle a pile of accounts. They fail in completely different ways, and knowing which failure you can live with is the whole decision.
The compressed version: Postiz can only run out of one thing. Blotato can run out of two.
What each one is built to be
Postiz is an open-source scheduler (AGPL-3.0, roughly 35.3k GitHub stars) with a cloud plan on top. Its distinguishing claim, stated in its own docs, is that "there is no difference between the hosted version and the self-hosted version" — no crippled community edition. It has an AI copilot, but generation is not what its pricing is organised around.
Blotato is an AI content and distribution engine. Generation is the product; pricing is organised around credits, with a social-account cap layered on top. It leans on platform APIs and slots into automation stacks like n8n and Make.
Postiz prices the pipe. Blotato prices the water. If you only ever pour a little, the pipe is the expensive part — and vice versa.
Pricing, with the units made explicit
Checked against each vendor's own pricing page (Blotato re-verified 22 August 2026, Postiz 30 August 2026). Prices change; confirm before buying.
| Postiz | Blotato | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | $29 — 5 channels | $29 Starter — 20 social accounts, 1,250 AI credits/mo |
| Mid | $39 — 10 channels · $49 — 30 channels | $97 Creator — 40 accounts, 5,000 credits/mo |
| Top | $99 — 100 channels | $499 Agency — 28,000 credits/mo |
| Hard limits | Channels only | Accounts AND monthly credits |
| API + webhooks | Every tier | API-dependent by design; integrates with n8n / Make |
| Self-host | Yes, no licence fee | No |
| Free tier | None (7-day trial) | None |
The per-account column nobody prints
(The full cross-vendor version of this table, with every price we verified this month, lives in our cheapest-scheduler league table.)
Almost every comparison of these tools stops at the hero price. Divide instead, and the ordering shifts:
- Blotato Starter — $29 ÷ 20 accounts = $1.45 per account/month
- Postiz Pro — $49 ÷ 30 channels = $1.63
- Blotato Creator — $97 ÷ 40 accounts = $2.43
- Postiz Team — $39 ÷ 10 = $3.90
- Postiz Standard — $29 ÷ 5 = $5.80
On that column Blotato Starter wins. And that number is the most misleading one on this page, which is exactly why it deserves the next section.
Why the cheap number does not survive contact with usage
Twenty accounts on Blotato Starter comes with 1,250 AI credits per month. Generation spends credits. So the honest question is not "how many accounts do I get" but "how many pieces of generated content per account per month does that buy?"
Divide 1,250 credits across 20 accounts and you are budgeting a small allowance per account — and generating an image or a video costs more than generating a caption. The predictable outcome, and the one that shows up in complaints about credit-metered tools generally, is this: you still have accounts connected, and you cannot generate anything until the reset.
Postiz cannot put you in that state, because it does not meter generation as the primary resource. It can put you in a different one — you run out of channels and have to move up a tier — but that failure is visible at purchase time, not on the 19th of the month.
Pick the failure you can see coming. A ceiling you hit at checkout is cheaper than a ceiling you hit mid-campaign.
The self-hosting asterisk on Postiz
Postiz's free path is real: AGPL licence, no fee, deploys to AWS, Azure, GCP, Railway, Hetzner or Coolify. But the cost moves rather than disappearing. Self-hosting means you obtain the platform developer credentials yourself — Meta app review plus business verification (target accounts must be Professional), TikTok's content posting API review, X API access, LinkedIn's publishing scope.
"The software is free" and "the capability is free" are two separate sentences, and only the first is usually said out loud. Full breakdown: what self-hosted Postiz really costs.
Which failure mode fits you
- You write your own content and just need it distributed. Postiz. You would be paying Blotato for the half of the product you are not using.
- Generation is the bottleneck and you post a moderate volume. Blotato — but price it by credits, not by accounts. Estimate pieces per account per month first.
- You need API access on a small budget. Postiz ships API and webhooks on the $29 tier, which is unusual in this price band.
- You already run n8n or Make. Blotato is designed to slot in there. If you are weighing that specific setup, see where n8n social automation stops.
What both of them leave on the table
Blotato generates content; Postiz distributes it. Neither one gives each account its own identity, and neither behaves on-platform like a person rather than a queue.
That distinction matters once you pass roughly a dozen accounts. Generating twenty captions from one prompt and delivering them on a synchronised schedule produces twenty accounts that look like one operator — which is the pattern platforms detect most easily. NoobClaw takes the opposite approach: each account runs in its own isolated browser profile under your own login, generates content from its own niche and persona, and acts on randomised human-like timing rather than a shared queue. It is one approach among several, and it is not an AI image factory — but if "all my accounts sound the same" is your actual complaint, no scheduler and no credit pack fixes it.
FAQ
Which is cheaper, Postiz or Blotato?
Per connected account at entry level, Blotato Starter ($1.45) edges Postiz Pro ($1.63). Per unit of actual output it depends entirely on your generation volume, because Blotato meters that separately and Postiz does not.
Can I self-host Blotato?
No. Blotato is hosted only. Self-hosting is available on the Postiz side, with the developer-credential caveat above.
What happens when Blotato credits run out?
Generation stops until the monthly reset or you upgrade — your connected accounts stay connected. Model this before you buy: pieces per account × accounts × cost per piece type, then compare to the tier's monthly credit allowance.
Do this before you subscribe
Write down two numbers: how many accounts you will actually connect, and how many generated pieces per account per month you actually need.
If the second number is small, buy the pipe. If it is large, buy the water — and price it by the water, not by the accounts. The hero price on either site will not tell you which one you are.