Buffer’s API is open for building

Buffer’s API is here, meaning you can now connect Buffer to the tools you already use to create new, more powerful workflows. Our new public API lets you publish, schedule, and manage your social presence from wherever you’re already working, be it a no-code automation tool, your own environment, or an AI agent acting on your behalf.

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

The Buffer API is available on every Buffer plan, including Free.

→ To get started quickly, take a look around API settings in your Buffer account or find out more in our Developer portal

Buffer’s API allows anyone to create social workflows

Over the years, our goal has been to ensure that Buffer is a flexible tool for everyone who uses it and that it connects well with other tools. Instead of interoperating with other tools on a case-by-case basis, an API means that any Buffer user can connect Buffer to the tool they use.

We’ve already seen the power of the API from Buffer customers who have used 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 assigns each channel to its country and department and generates posting reports without him having to do anything. What once required hours of manual spreadsheet work now runs itself.

Shivani Shah tries to stay consistent with her LinkedIn content. That’s why she created a complete LinkedIn content library and analyzer using Lovable, taking into account posts from 2023. Both were created entirely through conversations with AI.

Ben Campbell, a marketer and self-proclaimed “advanced Vibe coder,” has developed two companion apps on top of the Buffer API: PostIQ for authoring, thread splitting, and content scheduling, and Receipts for creator approval workflows. And there are many more examples.

Here’s how to get started

How you get started depends on what you want to do. Here you can find more information depending on whether you are connecting Buffer to an AI agent, another app, or a developer who wants to build on Buffer.

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

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

This means you can tell your AI agent, “Schedule three posts to promote this week’s blog,” and it will actually do it. In addition to generating text that you copy and paste into Buffer, you also create the posts, select 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 that feed directly into my Buffer content backlog. This workflow helped me grow my LinkedIn followers from 5,000 to over 13,000 and one of my Instagram accounts from 0 to over 10,000.

Check out how my colleague Mike uses Claude and Buffer for his setup:

If you need help connecting, check out Tami’s step-by-step guide to turning a rough idea into a planned post without leaving the chat. How to post on social media by Claude →

Connect Buffer to thousands of apps without writing code

An API adds a level of customization that means it’s likely to be possible anywhere you want Buffer as part of your workflow, be it connecting to a newsletter, a blog, or somewhere else entirely. We’ve heard: “I want my newsletter to automatically queue a buffer post when it sends” and “I want my Notion content calendar to fill the schedule for me.” It used to require someone on your team to create these workflows, but now they’re just a few clicks away.

We’ve worked with IFTTT, Make, Zapier, and others to make sure you can connect Buffer to the apps you already use from day one.

“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 and CEO, IFTTT

Browse all available integrations at buffer.com/integrations

Developers can now build on Buffer

If you write code for 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 design the response to fit your UI without having to juggle endpoints.

Here’s more from our API Tech Lead and People Engineer at Buffer, Joe Birch:

“Everything is controlled by a strongly typed GraphQL schema. Every field has a defined type and form, so you always know what you’re sending and what you’re getting back. Your editor can autocomplete queries and detect errors before you run them. And you can request exactly the fields you need instead of parsing unwanted payloads.

This also allows us to generate the developer experience around it for free: a fully documented reference that stays in sync with the API, a changelog that is updated as the schema evolves, and an interactive playground where you can explore types, autocomplete queries, and run them against your own account without having to write a line of code. When you build a client, you can also point a code generator to the schema and get fully typed bindings in the language you use.

We have been using GraphQL to control our internal API for some time and are working on making the same API available to the public. What you build is subject to the same testing, monitoring and infrastructure as our own apps. The public API is not a separate stack that we manage on the side.”

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

OAuth is fully managed, eliminating the need to invent your own authentication pattern to build third-party integrations on Buffer.

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

Show us what you’re building

We are so excited to see what you create. Tag us on any social media posts when you share a new tool or workflow, or join our Discord community to ask for help or build with other community members.

Have fun building!