PostLake vs Postiz
Postiz is a genuine calendar product: open source, a board you drag posts around on, RSS, an in-app copilot, and an MCP server so an agent can drive that board. PostLake is the other shape. The agent fills the week over a hosted MCP server. You review it on a calendar. Nothing ships until you say so. There is no instance to host.
Get started free →No card for the free tier · 20 credits a month · full MCP access
Last updated August 2026 · figures from each product's own pricing page
| PostLake | Postiz | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Hosted API + MCP. Calendar for review | Open-source calendar app, API included |
| Who fills the week | The agent, first-class | A person in the UI, or an agent driving the UI |
| Human approval | Drafts. Nothing publishes until you say yes | Drafts inside the calendar app |
| Timezone scheduling | IANA zone on scheduledAt, survives DST | Yes, in the calendar |
| Edit / cancel / reschedule | PATCH and DELETE until it fires | Yes, in the calendar |
| You run servers | No | Yes if self-hosting; cloud from $29/mo |
| MCP for agents | Hosted, OAuth, no key in chat | Yes. API key in the MCP URL on cloud |
| Free tier (no card) | Yes, 20 credits/mo | Self-host free. Cloud starts paid |
| Connected accounts | Unlimited on every plan | 5 channels on the $29 cloud plan |
| Per-agent guardrails | Yes | Not offered |
| Best for | Agent-driven calendars, no infra | Owning the calendar app itself |
This is the loop people actually want when they search for a Postiz alternative for agents. It does not need Docker, a copilot inside a calendar UI, or a second vendor.
OAuth stays in the PostLake dashboard. The agent never holds raw Instagram or X tokens. It authorises over OAuth so the key is not pasted into chat.
create_post with scheduledAt, timezone, and draft: true. Validate first (free). Per-network captions via textOverrides. Media uploaded once.
Open the dashboard month view. Read the queue. PATCH to move a slot, DELETE to pull one. Or leave it as a draft until you publish_draft.
get_analytics returns the same metric names on every network. Feed that into the next draft batch. The calendar gets smarter without a second product.
The instruction that works: "Draft 5 posts for this week from the changelog, adapt length per platform, schedule them 24 hours out as drafts, and do not publish until I approve." Walkthrough: agent content calendar · calendar use case · human approval.
Point Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT at the hosted MCP. Ask it to turn a changelog into five posts, adapt length per network, and queue them 24 hours out as drafts. That is the calendar. You did not install Postiz to get it.
Send draft: true. The post sits in state draft, costs nothing, and never touches a network. Publish it from the dashboard or with publish_draft. Fail-closed, the way an approval gate should be.
The dashboard has a month view of the queue. Edit, cancel, or reschedule before fire time. The calendar is how a person checks the agent's work, not a second product you have to run.
The same contract that scheduled the posts returns normalised numbers. The agent can see what worked and fill the following week accordingly. A calendar app that only schedules is half the loop.
We'd rather be honest than oversell. Postiz is the better choice when:
Cloud Postiz starts at $29/month for 5 channels. Self-hosting is free of licence fees and costs you a server, a database, and a developer app on every network. PostLake is hosted, unlimited accounts, free to start.
| Scenario: an agent filling a week of posts | PostLake | Postiz |
|---|---|---|
| First week of agent scheduling | Free tier, no card | Cloud from $29/mo, or you host it |
| Connected accounts | Unlimited | 5 on the $29 plan |
| Platform apps | Managed for you | Yours, if you self-host |
| Approval before publish | Drafts on every plan | Drafts in the calendar app |
| Ongoing | Nothing to maintain | Updates, uptime, key rotation if self-hosted |
If you enjoy running a calendar product, Postiz is strong software and self-hosting is free of licence fees. If the agent is the one filling the week, hosting Postiz is extra infrastructure you do not need. (Verify current figures on Postiz's pricing page before relying on them, August 2026.)
If you are moving off a self-hosted instance, or off Postiz cloud because the agent is doing the posting:
If an agent is filling the week: yes. Schedule with timezone, keep posts as drafts until you approve, review the queue on the dashboard calendar, edit or cancel before it fires. If a person wants to live in a drag-and-drop calendar with RSS and in-app image generation, Postiz is still the better calendar app.
No. That is the whole point of this page. Connect the hosted MCP, ask the agent to draft and schedule the week, review it in the dashboard. Postiz self-hosting is the right answer only when you want to own the calendar app itself.
The MCP server and agent skills are public on GitHub. The hosted API is not, and self-hosting is not something we offer. If running it yourself is a requirement, Postiz is the honest recommendation.
PostLake, on current shape, if the agent is the product. Agents authorise over OAuth so no key is pasted into a chat or stuffed into a URL, you can cap what each agent may do, drafts are fail-closed, and analytics come back in the same contract. Postiz's MCP is built to drive its calendar UI, including image and video generation inside that app.
Nothing in licence fees, and real time in setup and upkeep. The larger cost is usually the platform approvals: with a self-hosted instance you register and maintain your own developer app on every network.
All comparisons · Later alternative · PostPeer alternative · Late alternative · Markdown
One API and MCP server for every major network. Free to start.
Get started free →