Definition: A social media API is a set of official endpoints a network (or a scheduling tool) offers so software can publish posts, upload media and read analytics on an account without anyone using the app by hand.
Also called: social media publishing API, platform API, Graph API
Updated October 11, 2026
The account owner signs in once through the network’s official authorisation screen (OAuth) and grants specific permissions, such as “publish content” or “read insights”. The software then receives a token and sends requests on the account’s behalf. It never sees the password, and the owner can revoke access at any time from the network’s settings.
Each network has its own API with its own formats, permissions, review process and rate limits. A unified API, offered by a scheduling tool, sits on top of them: you send one request with a version per platform, and the tool handles each network’s rules, media processing and retries.
Every platform caps how much you can do through its API. For example, per Meta’s Instagram content publishing documentation, Instagram accounts are limited to 100 API-published posts in a rolling 24-hour period, and a carousel counts as one post (as of October 2026). APIs also expose fewer formats than the apps in some cases, so check what each endpoint supports before you build a workflow on it.
An ecommerce team’s product system adds a new item, then calls a scheduler’s REST API once with an Instagram caption, a LinkedIn post and a Pinterest Pin. The scheduler stores all three on its calendar and publishes each through that network’s official API at the chosen time.
A social media scheduler is software that lets you write posts in advance and publishes them automatically to your social accounts at the times you choose.
An MCP server is a service that exposes an app’s actions as tools that AI assistants can call, using the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).
An AI agent is an AI model that can take actions through connected tools, such as creating a draft, uploading an image or scheduling a post, to complete a goal you give it, rather than only replying with text.
Bulk scheduling is loading many social media posts into a scheduling tool at once, usually from a spreadsheet or CSV file, with each post’s text, date and time, instead of scheduling them one by one.
Write once, tailor each version yourself or with optional AI, and schedule to 6 networks from one calendar.