Compare / Buffer, Inc.
Rutba vs Buffer
The one small teams actually enjoy using: a clean queue, a generous free tier, and no features nobody asked for.
Checked 6 September 2026Buffer — pricing and features ↗
What Buffer is
A scheduling tool built around a per-channel queue: write a post, pick the channels, and it goes out on the schedule each channel keeps. Plus an ideas board, a simple landing page, browser extensions, mobile apps and light analytics. Priced per channel with a free tier, which is unusual in this category and much of why people like it.
Who it genuinely suits
- Solo founders, creators and small teams who post regularly and analyse rarely
- Anyone who wants to start free and pay only as they add channels
- Teams who found the enterprise tools heavier than the job
- People who value the product being pleasant more than being complete
Where they win
What Buffer does better than us.
Every comparison page on this site has this section and none of them is empty. If it were, you would be right to discount the rest of the page.
A free tier and per-channel pricing
Three channels free, and paying for a fourth costs the price of one channel. Our entry tier is a monthly subscription for three channels, which is a worse answer for somebody posting to two.
Networks that already work
The same advantage Hootsuite has and for the same reason: reviews already passed. Our catalogue publishes what is open and what is gated, and a gated network is genuinely unavailable rather than merely unmentioned.
Mobile apps and browser extensions
Queue something from a phone or from the page you are reading. Ours is a web console; the API is there but a browser extension is not.
It is a nicer product
Buffer has spent fifteen years on the details of one job. That is worth saying plainly rather than pretending the difference is only features.
Where we win
What Rutba does that this does not.
Argued from how the products are built rather than from a feature list, because feature lists are the part of a comparison that goes stale first.
Approvals below the enterprise tier
A sign-off step before anything goes live, without moving to a plan built for agencies. For a charity, a school or a regulated firm, that is the feature that decides it.
An API that is the product's own
Buffer's public API is not what Buffer runs on. Ours is, so anything the console can do a script can do, in the same call, on the same day the feature ships.
Agent tools, not just an API
The publishing surface is available to an assistant as MCP tools, acting as the person who asked rather than as a shared integration account.
It does not have to be a separate account
Buy it on its own if social is all you want — it has its own sign-up, deliberately — or on the account that already carries your CRM and your invoices, on one bill.
And the one that is not a feature
Buffer, Inc. will not build what you ask for. We will.
That is not a criticism of them — a vendor at their scale has to weigh your request against every other customer it touches, and schedule it behind a roadmap set a year out. Your request is a rounding error in their planning, honestly so. We are small, and the people building the product are the people you talk to: what helps everyone goes into the product at no extra charge, what is specific to you is quoted as the work it is, and when the answer is no you get the reason.
Side by side
The same six questions the hub asks of everyone.
| Question | Rutba | Buffer |
|---|---|---|
| Runs the businessCRM, stock, orders, production and the ledger, from one vendor | Included | Not covered |
| Runs the dayMail, files, documents, chat and meetings, included rather than licensed separately | Included | Not covered |
| One set of recordsDo the modules share the records, or integrate copies of them | Included | Not covered |
| Buy it yourselfCan you subscribe and start without a partner or a sales cycle | Included | Included |
| Parts sold separatelyCan you take one piece without committing to the platform | Included | Included |
| Run it yourselfIs there a path to your own hardware | Partly | Not covered |
On price: We do not reproduce Buffer, Inc.’s prices here. A list price is published and fair to quote, and it is stale within a quarter — which would make this page quietly wrong in a way you could not see. Read today’s number from them, and ours is on our pricing page in full, tier by tier.
Moving
What leaving Buffer actually involves.
The question that decides this is not whether you should move but whether you can. This is the honest version, including the parts that do not come across.
- 1
Buffer exports scheduled posts; the queue rhythm does not carry across and is worth rebuilding rather than recreating.
- 2
If you are on the free tier and posting to three channels, we do not have an answer that is cheaper. Stay.
- 3
Approvals are the usual reason to move, so check that is actually what you need before you do.
No customer has done this yet. The steps above describe the mechanism — what exports, what imports, what has to be rebuilt — rather than a migration we have run. When one has been run, this section will say whose it was.
Our actual recommendation
Buffer is the right answer for a small team posting to a few channels who want to start free and be left alone. Consider us when you need sign-off before publishing, when something else should be able to publish through the same surface the console uses, or when this should sit on the account that already runs the rest of the business.
If you did move
The products this comparison is about.
With their real availability labels, which apply inside a comparison exactly as they do everywhere else on this site.
Head to head
Buffer against the others.
You are comparing Buffer to something, and it may well not be us. These are written to the same standard as this page — sourced, dated, and naming where each product wins.
Buffer vs Hootsuite
Buffer vs Hootsuite
The shortlist almost every small team ends up with: the tool that does one job pleasantly, and the tool that does five jobs adequately.
Buffer vs Ayrshare
Ayrshare vs Buffer
An API with barely a console, and a console with an API beside it. The same job, approached from opposite ends.
Weighing this against Buffer?
Tell us what you run and how you use it. We will be specific about what would improve, what would get worse, and whether the move is worth it at all.