Later vs Planoly: Prices, Grid Planners and Limits Compared

Later and Planoly are both visual planners built around the Instagram grid, and both now schedule to eight networks from one calendar. Planoly is the cheaper of the two and puts no cap on posts: Planoly's pricing page lists Starter at $16 a month billed monthly, or $14 billed annually. Later Starter is $25 a month, or $18.75 billed yearly, on Later's pricing page, and it stops at 30 scheduled posts per profile a month.

Later earns the higher price in three places. It publishes to Snapchat, it keeps up to 2 years of analytics with hashtag and competitor data on the higher plans, and from Growth it has an inbox for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok plus an approval workflow. Planoly answers with a storefront in your link in bio, grid placeholders, six users on its top plan and an Instagram inbox on every paid plan.

So pick Planoly if you are one person or a small team that arranges a grid by eye, posts a lot and wants to sell from the bio link. Pick Later if reports, approvals, a Facebook and TikTok inbox or Snapchat are part of the job. The table below sorts the common cases.

One note on who is writing: we make Spreadcast, which does a different job from both. It designs each post from an app's App Store listing and publishes it. It has its own section further down, and it stays out of the head to head tables. Every fact about Later and Planoly on this page comes from their own pages, opened on October 13 and 14, 2026.

Both tools sell the same unit under the same name. A social set is one profile on each supported network, grouped as one brand. On Later that means eight profiles: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and Snapchat. On Planoly it is also eight: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and X, although X only gets reminders. Planoly's app and help center use the word workspace for the same thing, and each workspace holds one channel per network.

The limit that separates the two is posts. Later counts posts per profile per month, counts them when you schedule them, and counts saved drafts and Instagram Stories too. Later's post count guide says the count resets on the 1st of each month at 12:00 AM UTC. Starter gives each profile 30, Growth 180, and only Scale is unlimited. Every paid Planoly plan has unlimited posts, so the plans differ only in how many brands and people they hold.

Add ons start on the middle plan with both vendors. Later sells an extra social set for $15 a month and an extra user for $5 on Growth and Scale, or $11.25 and $3.75 on yearly billing. Planoly sells an extra set for $10 and an extra user for $5 on Growth, and for $8 and $3 on Pro, and it lists the same add on prices under both billing switches. Neither Starter plan can add a set or a seat. Planoly's paid plan guide names one more add on for Growth and Pro, a Content Marketplace subscription that opens editable Canva templates.

AI credits are a Later concept only. One hundred extra credits cost $5 a month. Later's pages disagree on who can buy them: the pricing page says extra credits are not available on Starter, while Later's credits guide offers them on current paid plans. Plans bought inside Later's iOS app cannot take any add on, according to the plan reference.

Both free plans still exist, and both vendors have moved them out of sight. Later's pricing page shows three paid plans, each with a 14 day trial, and no free column. The free plan lives in the help center. Later's plan guide lists Free beside Starter, Growth and Scale and describes it as a plan for creators who schedule a limited number of posts. The plan reference gives the numbers: 12 posts per profile a month, 1 social set, 1 user, no Instagram carousels or Stories, no Facebook Reels, no AI credits and no platform analytics. The visual planner and a Link in Bio page with Later branding are included, and the calendar shows only 2 weeks back and 2 weeks ahead.

Planoly's pages describe its free plan in two ways. The pricing page FAQ says the free plan is available in the Planoly mobile app and includes 10 uploads a month. Planoly's free plan guide, updated on September 4, 2026, says any account without a paid subscription is on it: 1 workspace, 1 user and 10 posts a month for each workspace. Planoly does not sell it, and it does not appear in the plan picker. You are on it before you subscribe and you return to it when a subscription ends.

The two count differently. Later allows 12 posts on each profile, so a free set with Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest connected has 36 posts a month across the three. Planoly allows 10 posts for the whole workspace, and a placeholder or a duplicated draft uses one of them. Both counters reset on the 1st of the month, UTC.

What the free plans leave out also differs. Planoly's free plan keeps grid planning, scheduling and reminders, and locks the media library, the AI caption writer, stock media, Canva, analytics, best time to post and comments. Later's free plan keeps the media library with small file limits (5 MB a photo, 25 MB a video) and locks carousels, Stories, first comments, hashtag suggestions and best time to post. For a free grid planner with more room, Later's is the larger of the two. For a paid plan without a post cap, Planoly's is the cheaper.

Both tools use AI for words only. Neither designs the image. Later has a Caption Writer and an Ideas tool that draw on one pool of credits: 5 a month on Starter, 50 on Growth, 100 on Scale and none on Free. Later's credits guide charges 1 credit for a caption and 1 credit for three ideas, and the pool resets on the 1st of each month. The plan reference adds that the Caption Writer generates in English only and that Ideas is a beta feature on desktop.

Planoly has the same two tools and no credit count. The AI Caption Writer takes a short brief and an audience, returns three options, and lets you shorten, lengthen or rephrase the one you pick. You choose a voice from Basic, Professional, Witty, Casual, Bold or one you describe yourself. The Idea Generator returns three ideas at a time, each with a topic, a concept and a hook, and turns any of them into a grid placeholder. It works on the web only and allows ten regenerations in a session. Both need a paid plan, and a trial counts.

Planoly has also added a connector for outside assistants. Its AI assistant page describes linking Planoly to Claude or ChatGPT so that a chat can draft posts, schedule them and pull Instagram analytics, and it labels the feature an early alpha that is not enabled for every account. Later's pages describe no equivalent.

Stronger on AI: Planoly for volume, since five captions a month on Later Starter run out in a week of posting. Later's Caption Writer has one edge on paper: Later's AI tools page says it learns your brand's tone from your past posts.

Later has tools for collecting other people's content, and they are split by plan. The plan reference lists searching Instagram by profile and by hashtag on paid plans, collecting posts you are mentioned in from Growth, and a contributor link that lets outsiders submit media from Growth. Planoly covers part of this in one screen. Planoly's Discover guide describes searching Instagram posts by hashtag and looking up business accounts by username, then pulling those posts into drafts with a credit to the creator. Instagram limits hashtag searches to 30 a week in both tools.

Influencer marketing is where the two companies stop being comparable. Later Social, the scheduler on this page, is one of several Later products. Later's about page gives the history: a company named Splashscore was founded in 2014 and became Mavrck in 2015, Mavrck acquired Later in 2022, the two united under the Later name in 2024, and Later acquired the affiliate network Mavely in 2025. The same page lists four lines of business: influencer marketing, social media management, social listening and creator commerce.

For a brand, that means Later's influencer marketing platform is a separate purchase with creator discovery, rate guidance and campaign reporting, and no public price on the page. For a creator, it means the scheduler doubles as a doorway to paid work. Later's creator page describes affiliate links and brand campaigns that are free to join, and the plan reference says you can apply to brand campaigns from every Later Social plan, Free included, with a media kit on paid plans.

Planoly lists no influencer marketplace and no brand campaign network. Its answer to earning money is the Creator Store: you sell your own products to your own audience. Stronger here: Later for brands that hire creators and creators who want brand deals. Planoly for creators who would sooner sell their own work.

Planoly's about page says it launched in 2016 as the first visual Instagram planner, and counts 8 million creators, entrepreneurs and brands among its users. Its press list on the same page names the acquisition of a product called Snipfeed. Planoly's terms of use cover the Snipfeed site as well, and name the company behind both as Planogram, LLC, based in Austin, Texas.

Later is part of a larger group. Its about page describes the merger with Mavrck and the purchase of Mavely set out above, and presents the scheduler, now called Later Social, as one product beside influencer marketing and creator commerce. Later's own Planoly comparison says over 7 million people use Later.

A caution about that last page: it is marked as last updated in April 2025, and it still states that Planoly cannot auto publish TikTok videos or post to Facebook and LinkedIn. Planoly's current help center documents auto posting to all three. Vendor comparison pages age quickly, which is why this one gives a date for everything. Neither company publishes revenue or paying customer numbers on the pages we read, so none are given here.

Is Planoly worth it is the question people type more than any other about the tool, and the answer turns on three numbers: how often you post, whether you sell from your bio link, and whether the free plan already covers you.

Posting volume first. Planoly Starter costs $16 a month billed monthly with no post cap, so a profile that posts every day pays roughly 53 cents a post across a 30 day month, and less on yearly billing. Later Starter costs more and stops at 30 posts on each profile, Stories and drafts included. If you post daily with Stories on top, Planoly is the cheaper way to schedule all of it.

Selling is the second number. The Creator Store comes with every core plan at no extra cost, per Planoly's help center FAQ, and Planoly's pricing page describes selling services, downloads and bookings from it with zero transaction fees. A creator who sells one template a month through the bio link has already covered the plan.

The free plan is the third. Ten posts a month for the whole workspace, with grid planning and scheduling, is enough for someone who posts twice a week to Instagram only. Below that volume a paid plan buys the media library, AI captions and analytics, not more posting.

Planoly is not worth it if you need approvals or client sign off, competitor or hashtag analytics, Snapchat, or posts that publish by themselves on X, since none of those are in its documentation. It is also the wrong purchase if the real problem is that nothing gets made. A planner arranges posts you already have. For an app, Spreadcast makes them, as the section on it below explains.

The 14 day trial is the honest test. A trial counts as an active subscription in Planoly, so every paid feature works, and you can change plans during it. Connect your real accounts, schedule a week of posts and check that they publish before the first charge.

Yes, Planoly is a real company with a long record. It launched in 2016, it is run by Planogram, LLC in Austin, Texas, and the section above covers its ownership and user numbers. The more useful safety questions are how it reaches your accounts and what it keeps.

Planoly connects through each network's own sign in. Planoly's guide to connecting a channel has you choose Link Account and follow the network's sign in steps, or choose a reminder only channel that never touches your account at all. You do not hand Planoly your Instagram password. To cut access later, Unlink Account turns a channel back into a reminder only one, per Planoly's workspace guide.

On data, Planoly's privacy policy says the content and engagement data it receives from linked networks is used only to provide the service and is not shared with third parties, and it links to each network's security settings so you can revoke access there. The same policy says the website uses advertising cookies and pixels, and offers a Deny choice that keeps only the necessary cookies.

The one real trap is billing. Planoly's account deletion guide warns that a subscription bought through the App Store must be cancelled in your Apple account first. If Apple cannot be reached, deletion can go through anyway, and Apple keeps charging an account that no longer exists. Deleting Planoly removes your workspaces and scheduled posts and leaves everything already published on your social accounts.

Later works the same way on the connection side. Later's Instagram scheduling guide describes connecting a business or creator profile as authorizing Later to schedule on your behalf, again without sharing a password.

Later and Planoly have one thing in common that no plan changes. You make each post, and then you arrange it. The grid, the calendar and the placeholders all wait for a photo, a video or a design from you. For a creator or a shop, that is the right order, because the content is the business.

An app team is in a different spot. The news is already written down in public: a new version with release notes, a fresh 5 star review, a rating milestone. What is missing is the hour to turn it into a post. Spreadcast does that step. You paste your App Store link once at the start page, and it checks the public listing every day. When something happens, Spreadcast designs a 1080 by 1350 post from your icon, screenshots and colors, writes a caption for each network and publishes it to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, plus YouTube for video posts, after one tap of approval or on full autopilot.

The free plan comes first: it drafts every post for 1 app, ready to download, with a small Spreadcast mark. Pro is $29 a month flat, with design, captions and publishing to 8 networks included. Of those eight, Later and Planoly each reach six, with no Bluesky and no Telegram. On price, Pro is $4 more than Later Starter billed monthly ($29 minus $25) and $13 more than Planoly Starter ($29 minus $16). The $25 and the $16 buy a planner for posts you make yourself. The $29 includes the posts.

For several apps the sum changes. Spreadcast Studio is $79 a month for 5 apps and 3 seats, and each app keeps its own brand. Five brands on Later cost $95 a month on Growth with three extra sets ($50 plus 3 times $15), which is $16 more than Studio. Planoly Pro at $55 is $24 less than Studio, for six empty calendars and six seats.

Here is what Spreadcast is and is not. It has no grid planner and no link in bio page. It makes still image posts, so it does not schedule Reels, Stories or TikTok videos. It has no inbox and it does not post to X. It reads App Store listings, and Google Play is next on the list and not available yet. Stay with Later or Planoly if you are a creator, run a shop, plan a grid by eye or post video. Many app teams will want both kinds of tool: a planner for founder photos and clips, and Spreadcast for the update, review and milestone posts that would otherwise never get made. The guide on how to promote an app on Instagram covers the rest of that plan, and the Instagram post generator and Pinterest Pin generator pages show how the posts are built.

Everything here was read on the two vendors' own sites on October 13 and 14, 2026: both pricing pages with each billing switch clicked, both plan comparison tables, about 40 articles in Planoly's help center and about 20 in Later's, and the product pages for link in bio, AI and influencer marketing. Later's help center refuses automated requests, so those articles were opened in a browser and read there. Store ratings and update dates come from the United States App Store and Google Play listings on October 14.

We did not run paid accounts on either tool for this page, so nothing here is a hands on speed or reliability test. Statements about what a feature does are the vendor's own description of it. Where a vendor's pages disagree, we say so and name both pages.

Three things could not be verified and are left out: ratings from review sites, which we could not load and check; how many paying customers either company has; and the price of Later's influencer marketing platform, which is not public. Prices and limits change often with both vendors. Check the pricing pages linked above before you buy, and read the Later comparison and the Later alternatives roundup for the wider field.