Outstand Review 2026: Social media API and MCP server for 12 networks, priced by the post delivered rather than by account or seat: $19 a month, billed monthly, with 3,000 posts included

The full review

What Outstand is

Outstand is a social media API: one integration that a developer, a SaaS product or an AI agent calls to publish, schedule and read analytics on 12 networks. Its homepage calls it “The unified social media API for AI agents and the products around them”, and its Terms describe “an API-only social media scheduling and publishing service” that “does not include a native user interface beyond account management”. There is a web app for API keys, webhooks and billing, but the calendar your users see is the one you build; the white-label page tells agencies to budget developer time, because “this is not a no-code purchase”.

The Terms name the operator as FortyTwo Eleven Consulting AB (Org.nr 559358-1746) and put the contract under Swedish law. The scale figures are the vendor’s own and we could not check them: the facts page says “Outstand publishes more than 12.8 million posts per month.”, that more than 500 companies build on it, and that it has 99.92% measured uptime and an average API response of 180 ms (p50 120 ms, p99 under 350 ms). The homepage shows customer logos under “Teams building on Outstand”, Mozilla and Warner Music Group among them.

Outstand also says what it does not do: “Outstand does not offer social listening.”, nor brand monitoring, sentiment analysis or trend scraping, and its analytics cover posts published through Outstand. No ads endpoints appear in the docs. Three of its pages, llms.txt, pricing.md and the facts page, each say they are correct wherever another source contradicts them; the facts page puts it as “If something you read elsewhere contradicts this page, this page is correct.” That is the vendor’s claim. Where Outstand’s own pages disagree, we report both sides below rather than let one page settle it.

What the API covers

The facts page, pricing.md and the docs’ Supported Platforms table name 12 networks: X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, YouTube, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Vimeo and Reddit. Eight run on Managed Keys, Outstand’s own platform apps, included on every plan: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest and TikTok connect by OAuth, and Bluesky by an app password. The other four, X, Google Business Profile, Vimeo and Reddit, need your own app registered with the platform (BYOK), and pricing.md says any fees those platforms charge for API access “are paid by you directly to the platform”. You can also bring your own app on a Managed Keys network to put your brand on the OAuth consent screen. The homepage hero disagrees with the count: its badge says 12 platforms, but its sentence “One call posts to X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and 11 more platforms” makes 14 by our arithmetic.

The REST API lives at https://api.outstand.so and takes an API key as a Bearer token. The docs cover posting and scheduling with a scheduledAt time, media upload, post and account analytics, comments (read, publish, hide, delete, and a scheduled first comment), reposts, deleting a published post on the network itself, importing past posts and webhooks. Scheduling reaches at most 30 days ahead, per the MCP tool reference and the white-label page, which adds that “Past 30 days the API rejects the post outright rather than silently dropping it.” Post creation accepts an Idempotency-Key, and the docs say keys “are remembered for 24 hours”, so a retried request does not publish twice.

Coverage differs by network. Instagram runs on Managed Keys, and the docs say “Instagram is covered by Managed Keys - no Meta app review to pass.” Outstand publishes photos, videos, Reels, carousels of 2 to 10 items and Stories for Business or Creator accounts only, because “personal accounts cannot be used for posting via API”; the /instagram page adds that in Outstand’s own integration Meta rejects Stories for Creator accounts. LinkedIn also runs on Managed Keys, and the LinkedIn page says Outstand publishes “to LinkedIn profiles and Company Pages with one API call”; Company Page analytics need the connecting user to hold the ADMINISTRATOR role. The homepage capability grid marks Instagram for posts, scheduling, analytics, media, comments and DMs, and LinkedIn for all of these except DMs.

Three details conflict between Outstand’s pages, and we have tested neither side. The Instagram configuration docs give a cap of “100 API-published posts within a rolling 24-hour period” per account, while the /instagram page gives “50 published posts per rolling 24 hours, per Instagram account”. The same docs say “Linking to a Facebook Page is mandatory for Instagram Business/Creator API access.”, while the /instagram page says Outstand uses the Instagram Login route and that a linked Page is “Required for the Facebook Login route”. And the LinkedIn page says “Outstand does not expose polls or document posts yet”, while the LinkedIn configuration docs say “Attaching a PDF to a LinkedIn post publishes it as a native document post”.

Messages, comments and webhooks

Direct messages go through a separate Conversations API. pricing.md bills DMs sent through it “(currently Instagram Direct Messages, Facebook Page messages in Messenger, and X Direct Messages)”, and the Conversations overview says “Messaging supports Instagram, Facebook Pages and X.” The facts page, the webhooks docs and the homepage grid list the same three. A changelog entry of November 2, 2026, “X Direct Messages Arrive in the Conversations API”, dates X’s addition. Messaging is not requested by default on any of the three networks, so an account has to be connected with its messaging scope. The docs say that on Instagram and Facebook “Direct Messages work on both Managed Keys and your own Meta app (BYOK)”. X has no managed app, so X DMs run on your own X app with Outstand’s webhook URL registered on it. LinkedIn DMs are not offered.

The facts page and llms.txt describe the Conversations API as seven operations, but the docs also document adding and removing a reaction on a message (POST and DELETE /v1/conversations/{id}/messages/{messageId}/reactions), which the changelog dates to October 25, 2026. DM conversations are billed per conversation, not per message, as the pricing section below sets out.

Webhooks are set up in the dashboard and are signed with HMAC-SHA256 when you add a signing secret, which is optional. The webhooks page lists 10 events: post.published, post.error, account.token_expired, import.completed, import.failed, conversation.started, message.received, message.sent, message.failed and comment.received; the facts page and the Conversations docs also name message.read. comment.received covers Instagram comments, Facebook Page comments, Threads replies and X replies, not LinkedIn. Failed deliveries are retried up to 5 times with exponential backoff, with a 30-second timeout per attempt.

Pricing: posts, not accounts

Outstand’s /pricing address returned a 404 when we read it on November 6, 2026. The prices sit in the homepage pricing section, which has a live calculator, and in a markdown file, pricing.md, that Outstand’s llms.txt points to. pricing.md, last updated October 31, 2026, says there are “Two self-serve plans, both billed monthly.”, prices everything in USD and offers no annual price: “No per-seat pricing, no setup fee, no annual contract. Monthly, cancel any time.” Neither plan card is labelled popular or recommended.

Pay as you go costs $19 a month and includes 3,000 posts. Posts 3,001 to 10,000 cost $0.007 each and posts above 10,000 cost $0.005 each, in marginal bands, so each band is charged only at its own rate. Business costs “$129/month per organization, which includes 50,000 posts”, then $0.005 a post at one flat rate. Included posts do not roll over between months. Outstand’s pages differ on what “month” means here. pricing.md says “All amounts are per calendar month unless stated otherwise.”, while the homepage gives Business “50,000 posts per billing month”, the Terms count the bands in “a billing period” and the get_account_usage MCP tool reads “current billing-period post usage”, a period pricing.md says may not line up with the calendar month. pricing.md says Pay as you go is the cheaper plan up to 22,200 posts a month and Business above that, and Enterprise pricing is custom.

The billing unit is “one post delivered to one connected account”. A post sent to 3 accounts counts as 3, and pending, published and failed deliveries all count; drafts are not billed, retries are not counted twice, and imported posts count. Replies, reposts, media uploads, analytics reads and every other API or MCP call are not billed. Connected accounts and team seats cost nothing on either plan: “Connected social accounts are unlimited and free on every plan.” On Business the organization starts with 1,000 account slots, which support raises for free on request.

The homepage’s Live cost calculator opens at Pay as you go, 3,000 posts a month and 10 connected accounts, which it shows at $0.00, for a monthly total of $19.00, and it notes that estimates exclude tax. Beside it, Outstand compares itself with competitors it does not name: per-profile pricing at 10 accounts at $60.00 a month (about $6 an account), and a “Typical fixed plan at this volume: $99/mo.” Those are the vendor’s own, unsourced figures, and we do not rely on them.

Billing runs on Stripe, by card. pricing.md says “The monthly plan fee is charged up front for the period; metered posts and DM conversations are charged in arrears at the end of it.” The Terms put it as “Billing occurs monthly based on actual usage during the billing period.”, with payment due within 7 days of the invoice date. If payment is not received within 7 days of the invoice date, the Terms let Outstand suspend or restrict access, charge late fees of 1.5% per month (or the maximum allowed by law) on overdue amounts, and terminate the account after 30 days of non-payment. The two can be read together but are worded differently, so we give both. The Terms also say “All fees are non-refundable except where required by law or at our sole discretion.”

Two meters sit outside the post count. DM conversations: Pay as you go includes 500 per billing period, then $0.025 each, and Business includes 10,000, then $0.015 each. Video re-encoding is opt-in per post (processMedia: true) and costs $0.05 per 10-second block of output video; the docs say “There is no included allowance on any plan - every block is billed from the first one.”, with billing from October 21, 2026. Neither pricing.md nor the homepage pricing section mentions that charge, and pricing.md lists “Media storage and uploads” among the things not charged extra. Inspecting and validating video stays free, and a video that already fits Outstand’s output profile is neither encoded nor billed.

Older figures still circulate. Outstand’s facts page marks “$5/month for 1,000 posts, or $0.01 per post” as outdated, and the changelog for October 31, 2026 says the Unlimited Posting add-on was retired, with existing customers keeping their current billing arrangement.

What 10 accounts cost

Worked examples from the published prices, per month on monthly billing, before tax, video processing and DMs beyond the allowance. Our roundup’s setup is an Instagram account and a LinkedIn account for each of 5 brands, 10 accounts in all, and both networks run on Managed Keys. One post sent to all 10 accounts is 10 billable posts. Posting once a day to every account for 30 days is 300 posts, and the bill is $19.00; the 3,000 included posts allow 300 deliveries per account a month on average, so each brand could post 10 times a day to both its accounts for 30 days and the bill would still be $19.00.

Above the allowance, by the published rates: 5,000 posts cost $33.00 ($19 + 2,000 × $0.007), 10,000 cost $68.00 ($19 + 7,000 × $0.007), 12,000 cost $78.00 ($19 + $49 + 2,000 × $0.005, the facts page’s own example) and 25,000 cost $143.00, by which point Business at $129 is cheaper. On Business, 100,000 posts cost $379.00 ($129 + 50,000 × $0.005). With no annual plan, twelve months of Pay as you go within the allowance cost $228.

Two extras, by our arithmetic from the docs: 600 DM conversations in one billing period on Pay as you go add $2.50 (100 × $0.025), and a 25-second 4K video that needs a re-encode is 3 blocks, $0.15, which is the docs’ own example. If the 5 brands are clients you serve through your own product, the Terms count that as reselling, which needs Business at $129 a month or written permission, as the next section explains.

Reselling and white-label

Reselling is where the choice of plan bites. pricing.md says of Pay as you go that “Reselling Outstand under your own brand requires written permission on this plan.” The Terms say “An active Business subscription expressly permits reselling the Service to your clients, including within your own products or agency services.”, and their acceptable-use list rules out reselling “without an active Business subscription or separate written permission”. So an agency, or a SaaS product whose clients connect their own accounts, may need Business at $129 a month or written permission. By our reading of the Terms, a company posting for its own brands is not reselling.

The white-label page leads with “$19 /mo base · 3,000 posts included · unlimited client accounts”, while its own FAQ says Outstand’s Business plan permits reselling and “other plans require written permission”. White-labelling itself works by bringing your own OAuth app on any network, so your agency’s name appears on the consent screen, and the page says the credentials stay yours, so leaving Outstand does not force clients to reconnect. For the client-facing interface, the page offers open-source components, and the docs list a React component library, @outstand-so/ui.

Account free, API paid: no free plan or trial

Outstand has no free plan. pricing.md says “Outstand is not free and has no permanently free tier.” and calls the $19 Pay as you go plan the entry point. The Getting Started docs say “Creating an account is free, no credit card is required and no invoices or other usage based billing is incurred.”, but an account cannot use the API on its own: the authentication docs say a valid key bound to an organization without an active subscription receives 402 Payment Required, and “Only the active subscription status grants API access.” The statuses that get 402 include trialing, past_due, unpaid, incomplete and canceled.

The two statements can be read together, a free account and a paid API, but they are worded against each other, so we report both. The Terms add a third wording that cuts the other way: “Charges may be incurred immediately for new accounts as well as at regular intervals during your subscription.” We found no free trial and no free credits on the pages we read. A smaller inconsistency sits on the Current usage docs page, which says the endpoint returns 402 if the organization has no active subscription and, in another place, “returns 404 if no subscription is found”.

MCP server and agent tools

The hosted MCP server at https://mcp.outstand.so/mcp exposes 28 tools: 10 for posts, 6 for social accounts, 5 for media, 6 for network configuration and 1 for usage. You connect by one-click OAuth, choosing which organization to grant, or with an API key sent as a Bearer token; the docs name ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Windsurf among the clients. The facts page says the server has been live since March 2026, and pricing.md says it costs the same as the REST API, with no AI or MCP surcharge. None of the 28 tools covers conversations or DMs, so an agent that answers messages has to call the REST API.

Outstand also publishes an official Claude Code plugin marketplace, open source under the MIT licence, and a React component library, @outstand-so/ui. We searched the full documentation file (docs/llms-full.txt) and found no server-side Python or JavaScript SDK: the only packages it tells you to install are @outstand-so/ui and mcp-remote, which the MCP setup uses for API-key connections. Outstand publishes llms.txt, the machine-readable pricing.md, the full docs as one text file and a dated changelog, whose newest entry was dated November 5, 2026 when we read it.

Limits and reliability

Outstand gives three accounts of its rate limits. The homepage says “Hit the API as fast as you want. We queue, throttle, retry. You never see a 429.” The authentication docs say limits are dynamic, “there is no single published number to code against”, and a request over the limit “is rejected with 429 Too Many Requests”. The Terms publish “20-500 requests per minute per account, dynamically adjusted based on usage” and 50,000 requests a day per account. The docs advise reading the X-RateLimit headers on each response rather than hard-coding a number.

Platform limits still apply underneath. Instagram’s cap per account per rolling 24 hours is 100 in the docs and 50 on the /instagram page, as above. The LinkedIn docs say “LinkedIn does not publish fixed numeric posting caps for the Posts API.”, and LinkedIn’s own throttles return 429. On managed-key TikTok, Direct Post runs through one TikTok client shared by every Outstand organization, so TikTok’s 24-hour cap on distinct creators “is a shared pool”; the docs’ ways around it are posting to the creator’s inbox as a draft (MEDIA_UPLOAD), using your own TikTok app, or waiting for the window to roll over. The Create post reference says managed-key YouTube uploads “are admitted at execution time from a shared paced daily pool”, which your own app bypasses.

The SLA statements conflict as well. The white-label page lists “SLAs for availability & support.” beside the $19 plan, pricing.md shows “Uptime SLA” as None on both self-serve plans and points to Enterprise for a contractual SLA, and the Terms say their 99.9% uptime goal “is a target and not a guarantee”. The 99.92% measured uptime on the homepage and the facts page is the vendor’s own figure.

Security, compliance and data location

Outstand says “SOC 2 certification is in progress. Outstand is not yet SOC 2 certified.” Its Data Processing Agreement for GDPR takes effect automatically when you accept the Terms, and covers transfers outside the EEA with the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or another valid mechanism. The DPA says “Our primary database, task scheduling and product analytics are hosted in the European Economic Area (EEA).”: PlanetScale in Frankfurt, Google Cloud in St. Ghislain, Belgium, and PostHog EU Cloud in Frankfurt. Its list of subprocessors, dated September 15, 2026, also names Cloudflare (hosting, edge network, media storage and logs; a US-based company on a global edge network), Stripe (United States and European Union) and Loops (United States). Traffic is encrypted with TLS, and the database and media storage are encrypted at rest by the infrastructure providers.

Two statements about stored data conflict. The white-label page says “we never store your clients’ social credentials”, while the privacy policy says “We store encrypted OAuth tokens and access credentials for your connected social media accounts”, and the DPA lists access tokens among the data held in PlanetScale. The privacy policy also says post content is “Processed and delivered immediately, not stored permanently after delivery”, while the DPA lists posts and schedules in the primary database and the API imports past posts. If either point matters to your security review, ask Outstand in writing.

Who Outstand fits, and who should look elsewhere

Outstand fits developers and SaaS teams that connect many accounts but post at modest volume, because accounts and seats cost nothing and the first 3,000 deliveries a month are in the $19 fee; builders who want an AI agent to publish through a hosted MCP server; and agencies or platforms ready to pay $129 a month on Business to resell it under their own brand. Its published formula and worked examples make the bill straightforward to forecast from post volume.

It is the wrong buy if you want a scheduler your team can use without code: the Terms describe an API-only service, and the scheduling apps in our Social Media Management niche, such as Buffer, are made for that job. It also fits poorly if you need to test the API before paying, since there is no free plan or trial; if you need LinkedIn DMs, social listening or ads; if your procurement needs SOC 2 or an SLA on a self-serve plan; or if you would rather not register your own apps for X, Google Business Profile, Vimeo or Reddit. Heavy posting to many accounts changes the sums, because every delivery counts.

The catches

We could read no third-party score. Trustpilot’s profile for outstand.so loaded on November 6, 2026 through Trustpilot’s search page, after the profile address itself returned HTTP 403 to us, and showed an unclaimed profile with 0 reviews and the line “This company hasn’t received any reviews yet.” Its contact details list Somalia, which is Trustpilot’s data and does not match the Swedish company named in Outstand’s Terms. G2 returned HTTP 403 to every request we made, so we do not know whether a G2 listing exists.

Outstand’s own pages disagree on rate limits, the SLA, whether social credentials are stored, the Instagram daily cap, the platform count, LinkedIn document posts, the Facebook Page requirement for Instagram, the number of Conversations operations and whether post content is stored. Beyond those, the video-processing charge is missing from both pricing pages, every delivery counts toward the bill (failed ones included), reselling needs Business or written permission, and there is no free plan or trial. Confirm the limits your product depends on in the docs and in your own usage figures (GET /v1/account/usage) before you build on it.

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Frequently asked questions