Buffer vs Later: Which Social Media Scheduler Truly Delivers in 2025?

Another day, another batch of posts to schedule.

If that sounds like your weekly mantra, you’re not alone. Social media managers nowadays are dealing with a lot.

There are more platforms, trends, and content formats than ever before, and the right scheduler can make all the difference.

Two of the most popular contenders in the social scheduling space are Buffer and Later. Both promise to simplify your workflow, save you time, and help you stay consistent across platforms.

But when it comes down to real-world performance, intuitive design, and feature depth, which one truly delivers?

In this blog, we’ll break down the curious case of Buffer vs Later.

And while these two platforms are often the first choices for many, it’s worth noting that tools like Social Champ are quietly raising the bar with smarter automation and more flexible pricing.

It’s giving both Buffer and Later some real competition!

Let’s get into the details and see which tool might be the best fit for your strategy this year.

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Buffer vs Later: Quick Overview of Key Differences

Here’s a quick table to draw comparison between Buffer vs Later, and both tools are already a tough competition to each other.

So why not make it tougher by adding another big name like Social Champ to the competition?

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Feature-by-Feature Breakdown: Buffer vs Later

By the comparison table above, we’re sure you got the idea that the competition between these giants is tough.

But let’s not leave it at that. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the features mentioned above to make the comparison even easier for you!

1. Social Listening

   When it comes to social listening, there’s a distinct difference between Buffer and Later. Buffer does not have any social listening features at the moment.

   That means you won’t be able to keep an eye on conversations about your brand, track mentions, or stay on top of trending topics all within the tool.

   For companies or marketers that depend a lot on audience sentiment analysis, competitor monitoring, or industry trend analysis in real time, this limitation of capability can be an important drawback.

   You would need to depend on other tools to compensate for this, which makes your workflow more fragmented.

   Later, however, has recently taken it up a notch in this department by adding social listening and competitor monitoring functionalities.

   

   This feature provides Later with a clear edge, especially for businesses which need a more comprehensive social media strategy.

   With these tools, you can not only publish and manage your content but also see what is being said about your brand, track competitor activity, and pick up on upcoming conversations that may shape the direction of your content strategy.

   Having everything in one location is a huge advantage for teams that prioritize efficiency and data-driven decision-making.

   Social Champ has social listening functionality built into it, so people can watch brand mentions, keywords, hashtags, and competitor activity in real time.

   

   This enables easy tracking of what people are saying about your brand and what is happening in your space.

   Although not as comprehensive as some freestanding listening tools, Social Champ produces a solid integrated solution that provides brands with actionable insights without having to leave the platform.

2. Social Inbox

   Buffer’s social inbox works but is relatively sparse compared to some of the other products.

   Some time ago, Buffer also purchased a tool known as Respondly (which is now Reply) to assist in managing conversations.

   Sadly, despite that integration, Buffer’s social inbox hasn’t really become a communications center that its rivals provide.

   There are not many advanced features, such as conversation prioritization or deeper integrations that streamline communication across platforms.

   Later’s social inbox is a bit more flexible and powerful.

   It enables communication on the big platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, which is a significant benefit for businesses that are present on these high-engagement platforms.

   It has been designed to make it easier to handle comments and direct messages in the same place, thereby avoiding jumping between apps.

   It is not the most developed inbox solution out there, but it’s much better than Buffer’s if the emphasis is placed on direct communication with the audience.

   The capability to remain on top of interactions on multiple platforms in an efficient manner makes Later’s inbox more desirable for teams that wish to remain responsive and connected.

   Social Champ’s social inbox is unique in having multi-platform capabilities and a focus on productivity.

   

   It allows comment, message, and review management from multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Business Profile, and LinkedIn.

   Using conversation filters, live engagement monitoring, and message tagging, Social Champ provides more organization than Buffer and just surpasses Later in depth and usability for managing high-volume engagement.

3. Publishing and Scheduling

   Buffer simplifies things with its publishing and scheduling features, both an advantage and a downside.

   Its clean queue system makes it easy to schedule posts for an assortment of networks, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others, with little hassle.

   You can schedule posts easily via its browser extension or mobile app, which is handy when planning content on the go.

   For most of its users, however, this method suffices: you set a schedule for when you’d like to publish, toss it into the queue, and Buffer does the rest.

   

   Later, conversely, emphasizes visual planning of content, and it’s not hard to see why through its scheduling capabilities.

   The drag-and-drop visual calendar is the highlight. It allows you to schedule your posts by just rearranging them on a calendar board until you’re satisfied with the sequence.

   Bulk scheduling and auto-publishing features ensure that large volumes of content are a breeze to manage.

   Equally, first-comment scheduling (particularly for Instagram) allows you to ease the addition of hashtags or additional information without cluttering the primary post.

   Social Champ mingles functionality from each universe. It has bulk uploads, repeating scheduling, queue categories, and time slots.

   

   Its publishing dashboard provides either a structured queue or calendar view, with the ability to accommodate your workflow.

4. Analytics

   Buffer provides a comprehensive suite of analytics that’s created to give you a richer view of how your content works on different platforms.

   

   You receive a performance summary that shows you the reach, engagement, and overall success of your posts, but that’s just the beginning.

   Buffer also gives you custom analytics and audience demographics, so you can drill down into the data most important to your objectives.

   A particular highlight is the support for branded reports, which can be used to customize for stakeholders or clients. This makes it perfect for agencies or teams who require professional-grade presentations.

   It also has support for custom UTM parameters, which are very helpful in analyzing campaign performance in Google Analytics or other tracking software.

   Later’s analytics, on the other hand, are rather narrow in scope.

   Though they do cover the major social networks, Instagram, X, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Threads, the information is generally designed for these networks with less customization or detail.

   Later analytics are wonderful if your main concern is monitoring performance metrics such as engagement, follower gain, and post reach on visual and social-first platforms.

   For users that require platform-specific and quick insights, Later’s analytics are fine. But for those that need improved reporting tools, Buffer stands at a better position.

   Social Champ takes its users in between. It provides white-labeled, downloadable reports and visual insights on various platforms.

   

   Although its analytics lack the depth that Buffer’s analytics provide when it comes to customization, it provides more visualized details and comparisons than Later.

5. AI Tools

   Buffer has gone a step further in integrating AI into its platform. Its AI assistant is designed to help users refine, repurpose, and optimize content across different platforms.

   This means you can take an existing post, adjust its tone or style, and quickly adapt it for another channel without starting from scratch.

   What’s particularly appealing is that Buffer provides unlimited credits for its AI assistant, making it ideal for users who create and schedule content in large volumes.

   Later’s AI offering is currently more focused and limited in scope. Its main AI tool is a caption writer, which can generate ideas and craft compelling captions for your posts.

   This is useful for creators who often find themselves stuck trying to come up with fresh, engaging captions, especially for platforms like Instagram, where the caption can make a big difference.

   However, Later doesn’t yet offer the broader AI content-refinement features that Buffer does, so its AI tools are less versatile.

   Social Champ has rolled out a broader set of AI tools including content suggestions, a caption generator, AI Imaginator for visual creation, and best time to post recommendations.

6. Team Collaboration

   Buffer’s method of team collaboration is simple and practical, suitable for businesses as well as agencies that require a structured system of handling multiple individuals.

   Its premium plans support functionality such as team member access with permission to choose role rights, so everyone gets an appropriate amount of control over the content.

   For instance, a manager might approve pieces of content before they are posted online, whereas junior members can handle writing content.

   Buffer also includes post approvals and exportable reporting, which is an excellent method of disseminating updates or results to clients or stakeholders without having to provide them with direct platform access.

   Later also provides a good set of collaboration tools but edges ever so slightly towards visual and workflow-centric collaboration.

   Tools such as shared calendars enable the entire team to see the content plan at a glance.

   Equally, assigned posts and access groups assist with sharing responsibilities obviously, allowing easier control over big campaigns or multiple accounts.

   Later also includes approval workflows, yet these exist on the higher plans, which makes them better suited to larger teams or businesses that need organizational review procedures.

   Social Champ offers multi-level access roles, approval of posts, internal notes, and audit trails. It’s structured workflow makes it perfect for agencies and big teams.

7. Best Time to Post

   Buffer makes matters quite straightforward when it comes to determining the optimal posting time.

   It provides default slots that you can configure based on your desired schedule, and its smart suggestions can automate optimizing these slots from your previous posting activities.

   Although this is helpful and simple to keep track of, it doesn’t delve too deep into sophisticated analytics or audience behavior metrics.

   Effectively, Buffer ensures that you remain consistent but may require you to complement it with additional analytics software or use your own testing if you need very data-specific knowledge of peak engagement times.

   Later, on the other hand, does one better with its integrated “Best Time to Post” feature.

   

   Rather than simply applying static time slots, Later includes data-driven suggestions that review your audience’s behavior patterns to indicate when your content is most probable to do well.

   This aspect is particularly beneficial for sites such as Instagram, where the timing might have an extensive impact on engagement rates.

   By taking advantage of this knowledge, you’ll be able to not only post consistently, but strategically at optimal times to ensure your posts are seen.

   Social Champ provides you with platform-level activity and engagement-oriented smart posting suggestions.

   

   It also features performance overviews related to time intervals, allowing you to make changes in your strategy using data-driven evidence.

8. Link in Bio

   Buffer provides people with an easy yet efficient method to get the most out of their social media bios. It has a free “link in bio” option through which you can build up to three landing pages without having to spend a dime.

   This comes in useful specifically for creators and small businesses that wish to drive traffic to various places, such as a website, blog article, or store, without having to use a third-party tool.

   Although Buffer’s link-in-bio feature is simple and lacks the number of customization options available from certain dedicated link tools.

   Later’s Linkin.bio feature goes one step further with a more refined, customizable strategy.

   With Later, you’re able to create branded landing pages that not only are professional in appearance but also connect with analytics to track clicks and performance.

   Customization features in Linkin.bio help create a consistent brand look, important on visually-oriented platforms like Instagram.

   Where Buffer is simplicity-driven, Later’s link-in-bio product is more of a full-featured business tool for those who want to optimize conversions and track results.

   Social Champ’s link-in-bio tool has simple customization, clickable CTAs, and analytics reporting.

   It is more customizable than Buffer’s version and more user-friendly than most third-party applications.

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Pricing and Plans Compared: Buffer vs Later

Pricing is an essential factor when choosing a social media management tool, so here’s a breakdown of Buffer and Later’s pricing:

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Final Verdict: Which Tool Should You Choose?

Between Buffer and Later, the decision depends on how you like to work and what you’re willing to spend.

Buffer keeps things straightforward with easy scheduling, AI tools, and analytics at a price that’s hard to beat. It’s ideal if you just want a reliable tool without extra frills or a steep monthly bill.

Later feels more polished for creators who live on Instagram, TikTok, or other visual-first platforms.

Features like Link in Bio and advanced analytics are designed for that audience, but the higher price tag makes sense only if those extras are a priority for you.

If you’re looking for an affordable all-rounder, Buffer is the smarter pick. If visuals and creator-focused features are what you value most, Later will likely suit you better.

And if you want another option that blends affordability with features, you can always try Social Champ.

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