Is Meta Business Suite free? Cost, Planner and limits

Yes, Meta Business Suite is free to use: Meta lists no plan, price or subscription for it, and it manages your Facebook Page and Instagram account in one place. Scheduling posts and stories in its Planner costs nothing, and the only money involved is any ads you decide to run.

What this means for you

If your business posts to a Facebook Page and an Instagram account, you don't need to pay for a scheduler. You write a post once, choose the Page, the Instagram account or both, and pick a time. Meta's tool won't post anywhere outside Facebook and Instagram, and it has a few limits worth knowing before you plan a month around it.

The details

What Meta Business Suite costs

Meta's page for the suite lists no plans, no prices and no subscription. You can open it from your Page's menu and start using it. Money only comes in through two things that sit next to it:

• Ads. The suite lets you create ads alongside your posts. Ads are paid advertising, a separate cost from the tool, and you choose whether to run any.
• Meta One, for the Instagram app. Meta sells a subscription called Meta One. Its help pages say that scheduling stories in the Instagram app, and scheduling posts, reels and carousels up to 365 days ahead, need a Meta One plan (Advanced, Expert or Max). Those are Instagram app features. Business Suite schedules stories on its own, with no plan named on Meta's pages.

So the answer to "how much does Meta Business Suite cost" is nothing, unless you buy ads or a Meta One plan for the Instagram app.

What the Meta Business Suite Planner does

The Planner is Business Suite's calendar. On desktop, you click Create post, add your text and media, turn on Set date and time and pick a slot. In the mobile app, you create a post or story and choose Schedule for later. Either way, you can send it to a Facebook Page, an Instagram account or both.

Everything you schedule appears in the Planner, in a Week or a Month view. Click a post, then Options, and you can edit it, duplicate it, reschedule it, move it back to drafts (which cancels the scheduled time) or delete it. Business Suite may also show an Active times panel that suggests when your audience is online.

Step by step: how to schedule Facebook posts and how to schedule Instagram posts.

Meta Business Suite limits

Two of these catch people out. First, Facebook's scheduling help covers Pages through Business Suite and says nothing about scheduling on a personal profile, so don't count on it there. Second, other guides quote 29, 30 or 75 days for Instagram content in Business Suite. We couldn't find any of those numbers on Meta's own pages, so treat the Instagram window as unknown until Meta states it.

Business Suite or the Instagram app?

The Instagram app now schedules posts, reels and carousels up to 30 days ahead for free, for eligible public accounts. If Instagram is your only account, that may be all you need. Meta lists four things that don't work with scheduled content in the app: product tags, collaborative posts, paid partnership labels and fundraisers. Publish those by hand.

Business Suite is the better choice when the same post goes to your Facebook Page and to Instagram, when you want stories scheduled without a Meta One plan, or when you want one calendar for both accounts. The Instagram hub and the Facebook hub list the image and video sizes Meta documents for each format.

When a third-party scheduler makes sense

Business Suite stops at Meta's apps. If you also post to X, LinkedIn, TikTok or YouTube, you need a separate tool, and some have free plans that include Facebook and Instagram:

• Buffer: any 3 channels from its 11 networks, 10 scheduled posts per channel, 1 user.
• Zoho Social: 1 brand with 6 channels, including 1 Facebook Page, 1 Instagram account, 1 X account and LinkedIn.
• Publer: 3 social accounts (X is not one of them), 10 scheduled posts per account.

Each tool page shows the date we last checked its pricing page. These free plans cap scheduled posts, while Meta's pages state no post cap for Business Suite, so if you post daily to Facebook and Instagram only, start with Meta's tool. The Meta Business Suite tool page sets it beside these and other schedulers.

What to do next

• Business owners: If Facebook and Instagram are your only networks, use Meta Business Suite. It's free, and the Planner shows your week at a glance.
• Marketers and agencies: Meta's pages list no per-seat price for Business Suite, but each person who schedules needs Facebook access or Task access to the Page. Sort out access before you hand over the calendar.
• Developers: Nothing new. Third-party tools schedule through Meta's APIs, which have their own windows; the Facebook and Instagram hubs link the API changelog for both.