Buffer's API is Open for Building

Buffer's API is here, which means you can now connect Buffer to the tools you already use to build new, more powerful workflows. Our new public API lets you publish, schedule, and manage your social presence from wherever you already work, whether that's a no-code automation tool, your own environment, or an AI agent acting on your behalf.

The API features an MCP and a CLI and ultimately opens the door to more members from our community building tools and apps on top of Buffer. Opening up Buffer has a huge potential impact for our customers and community members, and we couldn't be more excited to see what you build.

Buffer's API is available on every Buffer plan, including Free.

→ To get started quickly, check out API settings within your Buffer account or learn more in our Developer portal

Buffer's API means anyone can build social workflows

We've been intentional over the years to ensure that Buffer is a flexible tool for anyone using it and that it's well-connected to other tools. Rather than partnering with other tools on a case-by-case basis, an API means that any Buffer user can connect Buffer to whichever tool they are using.

We've already seen the power of the API from Buffer customers who have been using it in our beta program. Marin Nedelev coordinates marketing for 77 social media channels in ten languages. He built an automated weekly reporting system that maps every channel to its country and department and generates posting reports without him touching a thing. What used to take hours of manual spreadsheet work now runs on its own.

Shivani Shah is trying to stay consistent with her LinkedIn content, so she built a full LinkedIn content library and analyzer using Lovable, pulling in posts going back to 2023. Both were built entirely through conversation with AI.

Ben Campbell, a marketer and self-described "advanced vibe-coder," built two companion apps on top of Buffer's API: PostIQ for drafting, thread splitting, and content planning, and Receipts for creator approval workflows. And there are many more examples.

How to get started

How you get started depends on what you are trying to do. Here's more information depending on whether you're connecting Buffer to an AI agent, connecting to another app, or a developer looking to build on top of Buffer.

Connect Buffer to AI tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more

Buffer's API includes an MCP server, a standard that lets AI tools interact with apps the same way a person would. Tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor can securely connect to your Buffer account to draft posts, schedule them, and manage your queue directly.

That means you can tell your AI agent, "Schedule three posts promoting this week's blog," and it will actually do it. Not just generate text you copy-paste into Buffer, but create the posts, pick the channels, set the times, and queue them.

I use Buffer’s MCP and Claude to plan and research content ideas for my personal accounts, which flow directly into my Buffer content backlog. This workflow has helped me grow my LinkedIn from 5K to over 13K followers, and one of my Instagram accounts from 0 to over 10K.

Check out how my colleague Mike uses Claude and Buffer for his set-up:

If you need help getting it all connected, check out Tami's step-by-step guide to turning a rough idea into a scheduled post without leaving the chat. How to Post to Social Media from Claude →

Connect Buffer to thousands of apps without writing code

An API adds a level of customization that means that anywhere that you want Buffer as a part of your workflow, whether it's connecting to a newsletter, a blog, or somewhere else entirely, it's probably possible. We've heard "I want my newsletter to automatically queue a Buffer post when it sends," and "I want my Notion content calendar to populate the schedule for me." Those workflows used to require someone on your team to build them, but now they're a few clicks away.

We've worked with IFTTT, Make, Zapier, and more to make sure that on day one, you can wire Buffer into the apps you already use.

"Buffer has been one of the most popular services on IFTTT for over a decade. Our community has connected it to everything from RSS feeds and blogs to YouTube channels, Google Sheets, and now AI services like ChatGPT and Claude. The new API opens the door to more flexible and powerful automations than ever before. We're excited to see what IFTTT users and Buffer developers build next."

— Linden Tibbets, Founder & CEO, IFTTT

Browse all available integrations at buffer.com/integrations

Developers can build on Buffer now

If you're writing code against Buffer, the new API is a pretty big upgrade. It's GraphQL, so you ask for what you need and get only that back, and you can shape the response to match your UI without juggling endpoints.

Here's more from our API tech lead and Staff Engineer at Buffer, Joe Birch:

"Everything is driven by a strongly-typed GraphQL schema. Every field has a defined type and shape, so you always know what you're sending and what you'll get back. Your editor can autocomplete queries and catch mistakes before you run them. And you can ask for exactly the fields you need rather than parsing through payloads you didn't want.

It's also what lets us generate the developer experience around it for free: a fully documented reference that stays in sync with the API, a changelog that updates as the schema evolves, and an interactive playground where you can explore types, autocomplete queries, and run them against your own account without writing a line of code. If you're building a client, you can also point a code generator at the schema and get fully typed bindings in whatever language you're using.

We've been using GraphQL to drive our internal API for some time, and we've been working to expose the same API to the public. What you build is covered by the same tests, monitoring, and infrastructure as our own apps. The public API isn't a separate stack we maintain on the side."

We've also released a CLI alongside our API, which treats Buffer the way you treat the rest of your stack: something you can script, version-control, and automate. If you've ever wanted to post an announcement to Buffer as part of a deployment script, that's now a one-liner.

OAuth is fully managed, so building third-party integrations on top of Buffer no longer requires you to invent your own auth pattern.

Full developer docs and more at developers.buffer.com/

Show us what you're building

We're so excited to see what you create. Tag us in any social posts if you're sharing a new tool or workflow, or jump into our Discord community to ask for help or build alongside other community members.

Happy building!