How to post to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube from Claude Code in 2026: 8 ways compared

Disclosure: Enjoy is our product. We checked every option below against its maker’s own pages on November 3, 2026, and we say where another is the better pick. Enjoy’s released app posts only to YouTube, so for TikTok and Instagram today you need one of the others.

The ways to post from Claude Code, compared

Claude Code has no publishing tool of its own. You give it one by adding an MCP server from a posting service, or you have it write a script against the platforms’ own APIs. Blotato, which sells one of those servers, says so plainly: “Claude cannot publish to a social platform on its own.” These are the ways, side by side.

Way	Best for	Price, checked November 3, 2026	TikTok, Instagram, YouTube	A video on your computer	Who holds your login
Buffer	A few posts a week, free	Free for 3 channels; Essentials $5 and Team $10 a channel a month	All three	Host it yourself at a public URL	Buffer
Zernio	Three accounts for the least money	First 2 accounts free, then $6 an account a month	All three	Drop it on a browser upload page	Zernio
Upload-Post	Handing over a file, with no hosting	Free, without TikTok; Basic $24, or $16 billed yearly	All three on paid plans	Sent in the upload request	Upload-Post
Blotato	Making videos as well as posting them	Starter $29; Creator $97; Agency $499	All three	Uploaded to a presigned URL first	Blotato
Postiz	Tokens on a server you run	Free to self-host; cloud from $29	All three	postiz upload, then its URL	Your server, or Postiz on its cloud
Ayrshare	People already on its API	Premium $149; Launch $299; Business $599	All three	Presigned upload above 10 MB	Ayrshare
The platforms’ own APIs	No third party	Free	All three, TikTok after an audit	Direct from your script; Instagram also takes a public URL	You
Enjoy	YouTube from your own computer, checking each post	A monthly subscription, free for 7 days (pricing)	YouTube only	A path in your project	Your computer

Prices are per month as each maker lists them, before tax. “Login” here means the access token a platform issues, not your password. All of these sit on top of your Claude plan, which Anthropic bills separately.

Which to pick

• Free, a few posts a week: Buffer, if you can host each video at a public URL.
• Three accounts for the least money: Zernio, at $6 a month.
• Hand over a file, with no hosting: Upload-Post, from $16 a month billed yearly.
• AI-made videos in the same subscription: Blotato.
• Your tokens on your own server: Postiz, self-hosted.
• YouTube only, with no third party: a script on YouTube’s API, which got easier on November 2.
• YouTube only, with no code and the login on your computer: Enjoy.

Buffer

Best for: a few posts a week on up to three accounts, at no cost.

Buffer’s API is “available on every Buffer plan, including the Free plan,” and it posts to 11 networks, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube among them. Claude Code connects with OAuth, “No API key needed”:

claude mcp add --transport http buffer https://mcp.buffer.com/mcp

Price: Free connects up to 3 channels, with “10 scheduled posts per channel - refill anytime.” Essentials is $5 a channel a month and Team is $10.

Watch for: “the Buffer API doesn’t accept a file upload - there’s no upload endpoint.” You host each video yourself at a public URL, and Buffer warns that signed links “often work the moment you call createPost but expire before the post publishes, causing it to fail silently.”

Zernio

Best for: a handful of accounts, paid for one at a time.

Zernio, formerly Late, lists 12 platforms under Social Posting, with “Every feature included, no plans, no seats.” It connects in two commands:

claude mcp add --transport http zernio https://mcp.zernio.com/mcp
claude /mcp

Price: “2 accounts free to start, no credit card.” Accounts 3 to 10 cost $6 each a month, so TikTok, Instagram and YouTube together cost $6.

Watch for: the upload isn’t hands-off. “An AI client cannot read files on your computer, so media reaches the server through a browser upload”: you open a link, drop the file in, and tell Claude you’re done. “The link expires 30 minutes after it is generated.”

Upload-Post

Best for: sending a finished file to many networks, with nothing to host.

Upload-Post covers 22 networks, and its upload API “publishes a video to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X and 9 more platforms in one multipart request.” Its MCP server has 50 tools, is open source under MIT, and “works with any Upload-Post plan, including the free tier”:

claude mcp add --transport http upload-post \
  https://mcp.upload-post.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: ApiKey YOUR_API_KEY"

Price: Free gives “10 uploads a month, 2 profiles and full API access,” with “TikTok is not included on Free.” Basic is $24 a month, or $16 billed yearly, for 5 profiles and unlimited uploads.

Watch for: daily caps per account: 50 Instagram posts, 15 TikTok and 30 YouTube in a rolling 24 hours. Its MCP page says “the server stores nothing,” which is about your API key. For your accounts, “Upload-Post handles the OAuth exchange and token storage.”

Blotato

Best for: creators who want AI-made videos and images in the same subscription.

Blotato publishes to nine platforms, and “You log in once per network and Blotato holds the authentication,” so you skip the platforms’ developer apps. After connecting your accounts, run /mcp in Claude Code and sign in through your browser:

claude mcp add --transport http blotato https://mcp.blotato.com/mcp

Price: Starter is $29 a month for 20 accounts and 1,250 AI credits, Creator is $97 for 40, and Agency is $499 for 100. Its 7-day trial won’t do here: “API and MCP access is not included in the free trial,” and “Generating a key during a trial ends the trial and starts billing.”

Watch for: its tools “do not accept local file paths. Media must be a publicly accessible URL,” so Claude uploads a file to a presigned URL first. For new accounts, “Your TikTok account must be warmed up for at least 4 weeks before connecting it,” and “Starter permits 3 distinct TikTok posting destinations per rolling 24 hours.”

Postiz

Best for: keeping your tokens on a server you run, or a hosted calendar with 34 platforms.

Postiz is open source under AGPL-3.0, and on your own server, its README says, “data never leaves your environment.” Claude Code connects with an API key, and “On a self-hosted instance, swap the host”:

claude mcp add postiz --transport http \
  --url https://mcp.postiz.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer your-api-key"

Its command line handles local files: postiz upload <file-path> returns a URL to use in the post.

Price: Self-hosting is “Free forever (AGPL-3.0); you pay only for your own infra.” The cloud starts at $29 a month, or $23 billed yearly, for 5 channels, with the MCP server on every plan.

Watch for: on your own server, “You create your own developer apps on each platform and go through their approval (Meta, YouTube, TikTok can take weeks).” You also run “the app plus Postgres, Redis and Temporal,” and Postiz says “Self-hosting is a secondary option; the hosted platform is where the agent features ship first.”

Ayrshare

Best for: teams already using its API who want Claude Code to reach it.

Ayrshare’s MCP server has 33 tools. It takes a key in a header, and you restart Claude Code after adding it:

claude mcp add --transport http ayrshare https://api.ayrshare.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Files above 10 MB go through a presigned URL, with a “Maximum file upload size 5 GB.”

Price: Premium is $149 a month for one profile, Launch is $299 for up to 10, and Business is $599 for 30. “Every plan includes unlimited API calls and unlimited posts.”

Watch for: it’s priced for businesses, more than one person posting their own videos needs. “Premium, Business, and Enterprise are billed at signup (no free trial)”; only Launch has one, for 28 days. And its docs note that “TikTok limits the API video publishing to 6 videos per minute with an upper limit of 15 videos per day.”

The platforms’ own APIs

Best for: developers who want no third party and will do the setup. Claude Code can write the script, and the tokens stay with you.

• YouTube is now the easy one. On November 2, 2026, YouTube said uploads from unverified API projects “are no longer restricted to private viewing mode,” reversing a 2020 policy. Uploads have their own quota: “100 calls per day.”
• TikTok takes an audit. “All content posted by unaudited clients will be restricted to private viewing mode.” Your app also has to follow its guidelines, such as “Users must manually select the privacy status from a dropdown and there should be no default value.”
• Instagram takes professional accounts only. It publishes to “Instagram professional accounts.” Unless you open a resumable upload session for a video, “the media must be hosted on a publicly accessible server at the time of the attempt.” Accounts “are limited to 100 API-published posts within a 24-hour moving period.”

Price: Free, apart from your time and any hosting.

Watch for: you maintain it: token refreshes, each platform’s media rules, and changes like YouTube’s this week.

Enjoy

Best for: posting to YouTube from your own computer, with Claude Code writing the details and you checking each one.

Enjoy is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that runs Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code, and local models through OpenCode, on the plans you already have. Connect your channel once, then ask for what you want in a conversation. The agent writes the title, description and tags, and a card appears. “Nothing goes to YouTube until you check the draft and select Post. Enjoy then uploads the video from your computer.”

The video is just a file in your project, so there’s nothing to host. Your channel’s login is “saved only on this computer,” and it doesn’t reach Enjoy’s servers. A vertical video up to three minutes posts as a Short, and a public video can go up at a time you choose.

Price: Enjoy is one monthly subscription, and the first seven days are free, with a card to start. It includes your phone and any browser and your other computers, and each teammate you invite needs a subscription of their own. See pricing.

Watch for: the released app posts only to YouTube. We’ve built TikTok and Instagram Reels, and they aren’t in it yet. When they arrive, their sign-ins, and TikTok’s daily token renewals, will pass through Enjoy’s server, because TikTok and Meta keep an app’s secret off the desktop. The server is built not to store or log them, and the login stays on your computer. It can’t post unattended: “Agents can’t post on their own. Every post waits on its card for you.” It’s Claude Code inside Enjoy, not the one in your terminal, and “Posting to YouTube isn’t in the web app or the iPhone app.” It has no API, isn’t open source, and is a monthly subscription on top of your AI plans once the free week ends. Scheduled workflows run only while your computer is awake with Enjoy open.

Who holds your login

A hosted service holds the access token that lets it post for you, which is how it can publish while your laptop is shut. That also makes it a target. In October 2013, attackers got into Buffer’s database through its hosting provider and were able to “steal some of our Facebook and Twitter access tokens from our users,” then sent spam from those accounts. They didn’t get passwords, and Buffer then “added encryption of OAuth access tokens.”

That was 13 years ago, and it isn’t a reason to avoid these services. Some document their safeguards: Ayrshare says “All social networks keys are stored in a secure secret manager vault,” and Zernio says “OAuth tokens and stored messages are encrypted at rest.”

Keeping the login yourself moves the risk rather than removing it. A script’s token, or Enjoy’s credential file, is only as safe as your computer, and your computer has to be on when the upload runs.

Should Claude Code post without asking?

Once Claude Code has a posting tool, a mistake or a malicious instruction hidden in a page it reads can reach your followers. Buffer’s docs are direct: “create_post can publish immediately,” so “Leave the approval prompts on.” Blotato says “Keep API keys out of shared project configuration.”

TikTok has its own view: “The users of API Clients must have full awareness and control of what is being posted to their TikTok accounts.” Check how a service handles that before you run it unattended. Blotato’s TikTok fields ask for “a privacy setting, and 6 boolean declarations,” and to set them “from the user’s intended privacy, interaction, brand, and AI-content choices.”

When to stay with posting by hand

If you post a few times a week and want to watch each video before it goes out anyway, posting in each platform’s own app costs nothing, needs no connection, and leaves no token anywhere new.

Connect Claude Code when it’s already making or editing the videos and uploading is what’s slowing you down, when captions, tags and thumbnails for many posts are the real work, or when you run enough accounts that opening each app takes longer than the posting.

How we compared

We read each maker’s pricing, docs and MCP pages on November 3, 2026, and every one is linked below. We quote their own words for the limits, and where a page doesn’t say how a service stores tokens, we say only who holds them. We didn’t publish test posts through these services, so we say nothing about how reliable they are. What we say about Enjoy comes from its help pages and code, and most comparison pages in this category are written by a vendor, as this one is. These rules and prices change often, so we recheck this guide against its sources at least once a month, and the date at the foot of the page says when we last did.