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Free social media API: what's actually free, platform by platform

"Free social media API" usually means one of two different things: the underlying platform's own developer API being free to call, or a third-party unified layer offering a free tier on top of it. They're not the same question, and the honest answer is platform-by-platform.

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6 min read

Free social media API access, platform by platform#

PlatformIs the developer API itself free?
Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads)Free to register and call within rate limits; app review is required for permissions beyond your own assets.
X (Twitter)Free tier exists but is heavily rate-limited; higher write volume requires a paid API tier.
LinkedInFree for Marketing/Community Management Partner Program members; general developer access requires partner approval.
TikTokThe Content Posting API is free to register for; access is gated behind app review and platform terms.
YouTube Data APIFree within a daily quota: 10,000 units/day by default for most calls, plus a separate default bucket of 100 video uploads (videos.insert) a day per project, per Google's quota page.
PinterestFree developer registration and API access within documented rate limits.
Telegram (Bot API)Free — no registration fee, generous default rate limits.
Bluesky (AT Protocol)Free and open — the protocol itself has no gatekeeping fee.

"Free" here means no fee to register and call within documented limits — app review, rate limits, and terms of use still apply everywhere.

What a unified layer adds — and what it costs#

Even where every underlying platform API is free, building and maintaining ten separate integrations (OAuth per platform, rate-limit handling per platform, media transcoding per platform's requirements, webhook parsing per platform) is real, ongoing engineering cost. A unified API like SkedCast's doesn't make the underlying platforms cheaper — it replaces that integration cost with one subscription and one contract.

SkedCast itself has a free trial rather than a permanently free API tier — see the pricing page for current plans. If your use case is genuinely a single platform with light volume, calling that platform's own free API directly may be the simpler and cheaper option; a unified layer earns its cost once you're maintaining more than one or two platform integrations, or once you need scheduling, approvals, and analytics on top of raw posting.

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FAQ

Is there a truly free way to post to multiple platforms programmatically?
Each underlying platform's own API is free to register for and call within its documented rate limits, so a developer willing to build and maintain a separate integration per platform can do it without platform fees. Most teams find that engineering cost outweighs a subscription once they're past one or two platforms.
Does SkedCast charge extra for API/MCP access on top of the subscription?
API and MCP access is a plan entitlement (apiAccess / mcpAccess) rather than a metered add-on — see the pricing page for which plans include it.
Is a social media API key free to get?
Generating a SkedCast API key is free on any plan, including the free trial — there's no separate fee for the key itself, since API access is a plan entitlement rather than a metered add-on.
Is there an all-in-one social media API that aggregates every platform?
Yes — that's what a unified social media API (also called a social media API aggregator) does: one POST /v1/posts call fans out to every connected platform instead of building a separate integration per network. See the unified API guide for how per-platform differences are handled.

Ready to broadcast everywhere?

Sign up free — no credit card. You land on the Free plan, and you can start a one-time 7-day Studio trial from your workspace whenever you are ready. Connect your first accounts, import a batch, and watch one post fan out across every platform.

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