Postiz vs Instamaker — an honest comparison
Postiz is an open-source social media scheduling tool. Instamaker is a carousel generator. They do different jobs — and for many creators they're complementary rather than rivals. This page compares them fairly; every fact about Postiz below links to Postiz's own pricing page, docs, or GitHub repository.
The bottom line
Choose Postiz when
- You manage multiple accounts and platforms and want one calendar to schedule and publish.
- You want open-source, self-hostable tooling — or run a team or agency.
Choose Instamaker when
- You need the carousels themselves created: content written, slides designed, PNGs rendered.
- You want on-brand, non-repeating carousels without designing each slide.
- You want the carousel produced and distributed from one place, once publishing is switched on for your account.
Honest caveat: Postiz publishes to 34 platforms and has a deep scheduler; it doesn't generate carousels. Instamaker writes and designs the carousels for you. On distribution: Publishing and scheduling are built — OAuth connect, one carousel to many channels, per-channel scheduling — but they are not switched on for this deployment yet, so today you download the PNGs and post them yourself. Either way Postiz covers more platforms and more scheduling features; Instamaker covers more of the creation.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Instamaker | Postiz |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Carousel generator — content, design and PNG export from a niche profile. | Open-source social media scheduling tool. github.com/gitroomhq/postiz-app |
| Carousel support | Full generation pipeline — LLM writes the deck, themes style it, headless Chromium renders the PNGs. | Publishes Instagram feed posts including carousels: "Feed posts (single image, carousel, video / Reels)". docs.postiz.com |
| Platforms | Instagram-focused — square, portrait and landscape formats (portrait/landscape on paid plans). | 34 social platforms from one calendar. docs.postiz.com |
| Content creation | LLM writes every slide, the caption and hashtags — in each requested language, from your niche profile. | AI copilot on all paid plans; AI image generation (DALL-E) from the Team plan up. postiz.com/pricing |
| Multi-slide design workflow | Built-in themes (gradient + image query) and layouts, picked deterministically per topic. | Advanced Picture Editor is included on paid plans; whether it covers full multi-slide carousel design isn't documented in their public pages (check their site). |
| Scheduling & publishing | Publishing and scheduling are built — OAuth connect, one carousel to many channels, per-channel scheduling — but they are not switched on for this deployment yet, so today you download the PNGs and post them yourself. Fewer platforms and a lighter scheduler than a dedicated tool either way. | Calendar scheduling, repeated posts, post delays, cross-posting, RSS auto-post and posting sets — on all paid plans, across 34 platforms. postiz.com/pricing |
| Self-hosting | No — hosted service. | Yes — open source under AGPL-3.0; you can deploy it yourself. github.com/gitroomhq/postiz-app |
| Pricing | Free tier (3 credits/month, 1 profile, square format); paid plans from $9/mo lift those limits — see the pricing section on our homepage. | Standard US$29/mo; Team US$39/mo; Pro US$49/mo; Ultimate US$99/mo; 7-day trial, or self-host free. postiz.com/pricing |
| Team features | Single workspace per account. | No team members on the Standard plan; unlimited team members from Team up. postiz.com/pricing |
What Postiz actually offers — with sources
Postiz's prices, channel counts, trial length and plan inclusions below are quoted as captured on 16 August 2026 from the pages linked beside each one. They are Postiz's numbers, not ours, and Postiz can change them at any time — check the source link before acting on any of them.
- Postiz is open source — AGPL-3.0 licensed, with the source code public on GitHub. github.com/gitroomhq/postiz-app
- Postiz's own docs describe it as a tool to "schedule and publish to 34 social platforms from one calendar". docs.postiz.com
- Postiz supports Instagram feed posts including carousels — its provider docs list "Feed posts (single image, carousel, video / Reels)". docs.postiz.com/self-host/providers/instagram
- Postiz pricing: Standard US$29/month (5 channels), Team US$39/month (10 channels), Pro US$49/month (30 channels), Ultimate US$99/month (100 channels) — every paid plan includes unlimited posts per month. postiz.com/pricing
- Postiz offers a 7-day free trial; alternatively you can deploy the open-source version on your own infrastructure. postiz.com/pricing
- Postiz paid plans include an AI copilot; AI image generation (DALL-E) starts on the Team plan (100 images/month, 300 on Pro, 500 on Ultimate); the Standard plan has no team members, Team and above are unlimited. postiz.com/pricing
- Whether Postiz's built-in editor can design a full multi-slide carousel (not just schedule one) isn't documented in its public pages (check their site).
When to choose which
Choose Postiz
- You need one calendar across many platforms — Postiz's 34-platform reach beats any carousel tool.
- You run a team or agency: unlimited team members from the Team plan, and channel counts scale to 100 on Ultimate.
- You want open-source tooling you can self-host, or you're already producing content in other tools and only need publishing.
Choose Instamaker
- You need carousels created from nothing: topic selection, slide copy, design and PNG rendering in one run.
- You want on-brand consistency (themes) and a per-profile history that stops topics repeating week after week.
- You need the same carousel in several languages with captions in each — a single generation produces all of them.
The honest trade-off: Postiz's publishing engine is the stronger fit when your content already exists — it won't write your carousels. Instamaker's generation pipeline is the stronger fit when you need decks produced, and its own scheduling is deliberately narrow next to a dedicated tool's. A very common setup is Instamaker for creation and a scheduler like Postiz for distribution.
Sources
Need carousels to schedule? Start with the content.
Instamaker produces complete, on-brand carousels — then publish them with your scheduler of choice. See how it works.
Request early accessAlso explore: our Instagram carousel maker · TikTok carousel creator · carousel templates