Publish Now vs Outstand
Outstand is one of the cleanest unified social media APIs out there, and it shaped how we think about developer experience. Publish Now is the Outstand alternative for B2C builders who want Managed OAuth in the base price, predictable subscription billing, and scheduling as the primary workflow. It is like Stripe but for social media posting, with multi-tenant baked in from day one.
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TL;DR
Outstand pioneered the unified social media API and we learned a lot from them. Publish Now is what we wished it was for B2C builders: Managed OAuth in the base price (no $69/mo add-on), one flat subscription plus credits instead of $0.01 per post, and scheduling as the primary surface. If you are bringing your own OAuth keys and your volume stays small, Outstand is genuinely a great pick.
curl -X POST https://publishnow.app/v1/posts \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-d '{
"content": "Hello from Publish Now!",
"platforms": ["x", "instagram", "youtube"],
"schedule_at": "2026-06-08T09:00:00Z"
}'The reasons people search
Managed OAuth is a $69/mo add-on layered on the $5 base, which adds 1,380% on top of the floor the second your end users start connecting their own accounts.
Per-post billing at $0.01 scales linearly with no ceiling, so finance cannot model the bill at 50,000 or 100,000 posts a month without a spreadsheet that keeps growing.
Scheduling is implicit rather than first-class. The primary surface is a posting endpoint, so queues, recurring posts, and partial-failure handling across a batch are workflows you assemble yourself.
Engagement automation (comments, DMs, follows, likes) is not on the public roadmap, so if you expect to need it next year you are looking at stitching a second vendor in later.
BYO OAuth as the default is great for a developer maintaining their own apps and rougher for a SaaS team onboarding thousands of end users on day one.
Entry price: $5/mo + $0.01 per post above 1,000
Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go, linear with volume
OAuth model: BYO keys default; Managed Keys add-on at $69/mo
Cost at 1,000 end-user accounts with Managed OAuth: $74/mo base ($5 + $69) before per-post fees
Cost at 50,000 posts/mo with Managed OAuth: ~$564/mo ($74 + 49,000 x $0.01)
Entry price: $5/mo + credits
Pricing model: Flat subscription + included credits
OAuth model: Managed OAuth included in base price
Cost at 1,000 end-user accounts with Managed OAuth: $5/mo + credits with credits included
Cost at 50,000 posts/mo with Managed OAuth: $5/mo + credits
Outstand publishes 99.92% uptime, 180ms average response, p99 under 350ms, and ships 12.8M+ posts a month for 500+ companies. Almost nobody in this category publishes numbers that specific, and the mature MCP server is the real deal.
Every row is sourced from public docs. No cherry-picking.
| Axis | Outstand | Publish Now |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $5/mo + $0.01 per post above 1,000 | $5/mo + credits |
| Outstand's floor is one of the friendliest in the category for indie devs. | ||
| Pricing model | Pay-as-you-go, linear with volume | Flat subscription + included credits |
| OAuth model | BYO keys default; Managed Keys add-on at $69/mo | Managed OAuth included in base price |
| Single biggest difference for B2C SaaS with end-user accounts. | ||
| Cost at 1,000 end-user accounts with Managed OAuth | $74/mo base ($5 + $69) before per-post fees | $5/mo + credits with credits included |
| Cost at 50,000 posts/mo with Managed OAuth | ~$564/mo ($74 + 49,000 x $0.01) | $5/mo + credits |
| Published uptime | 99.92%, 180ms avg, p99 < 350ms | 99.9% target at launch |
| Outstand wins here today. We will not claim a number we have not earned. | ||
| Production volume | 12.8M+ posts/month across 500+ companies | Pre-launch; building toward published numbers |
| Platforms supported | 10 (Bluesky, Facebook, GBP, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, X) | 3 GA (X, Instagram, YouTube) |
| Outstand wins on count today. Publish Now matches on schema shape. | ||
| MCP server (AI agents) | Yes, mature | Native MCP surface |
| Scheduling depth | Available, post-API is the primary surface | Scheduling-first workflow; queues are the primary surface |
| Engagement automation | Posting only today | Comments, DMs, follows, likes on the roadmap |
| Multi-tenant SaaS fit | Works, but Managed OAuth add-on gates the B2C use case | Built multi-tenant first; Managed OAuth in base price |
The shape of the product, not just the pitch.
Outstand defaults to bring-your-own OAuth keys, with a Managed Keys add-on at $69/mo on top of a $5 base. Publish Now includes Managed OAuth in every plan, so your end users click 'Connect X' and it just works without a 1,380% add-on uplift.
Outstand bills $5/mo for the first 1,000 posts and $0.01 per post after that. Publish Now is a flat plan with included credits sized to your workload up front, so finance gets a number it can plan against instead of a linear ramp.
Outstand's primary surface is a posting endpoint. Publish Now treats scheduling as the workflow: queues, recurring posts, optimal-time hints, retries with backoff, and partial-failure handling across a multi-platform batch are all first-class.
Outstand stays focused on publishing today. Publish Now's roadmap brings comments, DMs, follows, and likes onto the same JSON schema and the same MCP surface that powers posting, so you do not have to stitch a second vendor in later.
Publish Now is built so onboarding more end-user accounts does not change the shape of your bill. Managed OAuth, scheduling, and credits are designed around one Publish Now tenant fanning out to many connected social identities.
Same hand-it-JSON ergonomics Outstand pioneered: one payload, per-platform variants expressed as overrides on the same body. We learned from them here and aim for parity on shape so a switch is mostly a wrapper swap.
Run the same scale-up against both and you stop second-guessing the bill.
| Scale | Outstand | Publish Now | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo dev posting daily (~30 posts/mo) | $5/mo (well under the 1,000-post floor) | $5/mo + credits | Outstand wins at the hobbyist floor |
| Indie product, 800 posts/mo, BYO OAuth | $5/mo (still under the included floor) | $5/mo + credits | Outstand wins when you control your own OAuth apps |
| B2C SaaS, 1,000 end-user accounts, Managed OAuth needed | $74/mo base ($5 + $69 Managed Keys) before per-post fees | $5/mo + credits with Managed OAuth included | No $69/mo add-on gate |
| B2C SaaS, 1,000 users, 50,000 posts/mo, Managed OAuth | ~$564/mo ($74 + 49,000 x $0.01) | $5/mo + credits | Predictable bill that does not scale linearly with volume |
| High-volume publisher, 100,000 posts/mo, Managed OAuth | ~$1,064/mo ($74 + 99,000 x $0.01) | $5/mo + credits | Cost ceiling instead of a linear ramp |
You are comfortable with BYO OAuth keys and already maintain your own developer apps on X, Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn. The Managed Keys add-on is overhead you do not need.
You need a published uptime number today. Outstand's 99.92% uptime, 180ms average, and p99 under 350ms are documented and earned in production at 12.8M+ posts a month.
You want a pay-as-you-go bill that stays tiny when your volume is tiny. At well under 1,000 posts a month, $5 plus the occasional penny is hard to beat.
You are building a B2C SaaS where end users connect their own social accounts, and you want Managed OAuth in the base price instead of behind a $69/mo add-on.
You want predictable monthly billing as volume grows. A flat plan with included credits is easier to model than $0.01 per post when posting volume swings month to month.
You expect to use engagement automation (comments, DMs, follows, likes) within the next six to twelve months and would rather not stitch a second vendor in later.
Switching from Outstand
We admire Outstand and we built our JSON shape to be close to theirs on purpose, so swapping is mostly a wrapper change rather than a rewrite. Most teams we have talked to are productive on the new endpoint in an afternoon.
Email yo@publishnow.app and the founder is on it. We have spent enough time inside Outstand's docs to know exactly what you are holding, and we will tell you honestly if your use case is better served staying where you are.