Buffer retires its legacy REST API on Feb 1, 2027. The Buffer API alternative for builders who'd rather generate and publish than maintain a posting API.
Buffer set a hard date on a live dependency: its legacy REST API retires on February 1, 2027, and after that the old endpoints stop returning data. Buffer's developer docs point everyone to a rebuilt GraphQL API, and there's a published migration guide to walk you across. If you wired Buffer's REST endpoints into a script, an internal dashboard, or a no-code automation through Zapier, Make, or n8n, the clock is now on you to rebuild it — auth, queries, and even the media-asset format all changed (mutations using the old assets input started failing in May 2026).
This page isn't "here's a second posting API to migrate to." It's for the person holding that migration ticket who wants to ask a better question first: do I actually want to keep owning a third-party publish API at all? A REST-to-GraphQL rewrite is real engineering time that buys you exactly what you already had — a call that pushes a post you made somewhere else into a queue. It adds no content, no reach, no new capability. It's maintenance on someone else's schedule.
Buffer the app is genuinely good, and if you use it normally none of this touches you — we say as much on the [Buffer alternative](/alternatives/buffer) page and score the scheduler fairly in the [Buffer review](/reviews/buffer). This page is narrower: it's about the API dependency specifically, and whether the smarter move is to replace the whole "generate over here, then call an API to schedule over there" split with one engine that generates the content and publishes it natively — so there's no posting API to re-plumb the next time a vendor deprecates one.
Buffer's API lets code talk to a Buffer account: connect channels, push posts into the queue, set times, read a little analytics. There are two surfaces in 2026. The legacy REST API (base `api.bufferapp.com/1/`) is the one being retired on February 1, 2027 — Buffer has stopped issuing new legacy credentials, so it's closed to new builders and on a countdown for existing ones. The replacement is a GraphQL API (base `api.buffer.com`) that Buffer rebuilt and opened on every plan, including Free, with a CLI alongside it. It's a genuine modernization: Bearer-token auth for personal use or OAuth for app clients, POST-only requests, precise field selection, cursor pagination, and renamed concepts ("profiles" became "channels," "updates" became "posts"). What the API does not do is make anything. It schedules and publishes content you generated elsewhere. There's no text, image, or video generation behind it, no clip detection, no brand-voice layer — it's the last mile, exposed programmatically. Buffer positions the new GraphQL API partly for AI agents and automation platforms, which is the honest use case: it's a clean way to hand a finished post to Buffer's queue from code.
The first reason is the obvious one: you're being made to do unpaid work. A REST-to-GraphQL migration is a rewrite, not a version bump, and it lands on your timeline the way the vendor decided. If your Buffer integration is a no-code chain (a Zapier zap that formats a post and hands it to Buffer, say), that chain breaks at the cutoff and you rebuild it against a new schema for zero added value. The second is dependency track record. Buffer closed its public API to new developers years ago before rebuilding it as today's GraphQL API, so its integration layer has already changed direction once. Building on any single vendor's posting API means their deprecation cycle becomes your migration project. The third, and the real one, is that a publish API is only half the job. The reason you built the integration was to automate publishing, but you're still creating every post, image, and clip by hand somewhere upstream and feeding it in. If you're going to spend a sprint on this anyway, the higher-leverage move is to collapse the create step and the publish step into one system — and let it own its own publishing so the integration surface you maintain drops to zero.
| Feature | Buffer API | Kompozy | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy REST API status | Retiring Feb 1, 2027 | N/A | Buffer's legacy REST endpoints stop returning data after the cutoff; new legacy credentials are no longer issued. |
| Migration required to keep working | Yes — REST → GraphQL rewrite | No | Buffer integrations must move to the new GraphQL API. Kompozy publishes natively, so there's no posting API to migrate. |
| No-code automation without stitching | Partial (via Zapier/Make/n8n) | Yes (native autopilot) | Buffer relies on you wiring an external automation tool. Kompozy runs generation, scheduling, and publishing on a recurring autopilot in-app. |
| Content generation behind the API | No | Yes | Buffer's API only schedules content made elsewhere. Kompozy generates text, images, and video, then publishes it. |
| Developer API to call from your own code | Yes (GraphQL, every plan) | No — publishes natively | If you specifically need a programmatic publish API, Buffer provides one. Kompozy has no posting API to call because it publishes your content itself. |
| Multi-source ingest | No | Yes | Drop a transcript, link, or file into Kompozy and get a week of posts. Buffer's API starts from a finished post. |
| AI image generation | No | Yes | No image generation anywhere in Buffer. Kompozy generates platform-sized images and brand templates. |
| AI video generation | No | Yes | Buffer has none. Kompozy generates avatar video, VFX hooks, listicle/clip shorts with captions. |
| Brand voice / persona layer | No | Yes | Kompozy's Persona Brief holds tone across every output; the Buffer API carries no voice model. |
| Multi-platform publishing surface | Yes (schedule-only) | Yes | Both fan out to the major platforms; Kompozy publishes eight social platforms plus blog and email from one pipeline. |
| Free-tier API access | Yes (GraphQL on Free) | No | Buffer wins here — its new API is on every plan including Free. Kompozy is paid-only. |
| Tier | Buffer API plan | Buffer API price | Kompozy plan | Kompozy price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free / entry | Buffer Free (GraphQL API included) | $0 | Kompozy | Paid-only — Starter $99/mo, cancel anytime |
| Creator | Buffer Essentials | $6/channel × N ($5 annual) | Kompozy Starter | $99/mo (5,500 credits) |
| Team / Brand | Buffer Team | $12/channel × N ($10 annual) | Kompozy Pro | $299/mo (18,000 credits) |
| Agency | No dedicated agency SKU | Multi-channel Team pricing | Kompozy Enterprise | Custom (sales-led) |
| Programmatic access | Buffer GraphQL API | Included on all plans | Kompozy (native publishing) | No developer API |
The migration ticket in front of you is a fork in the road, not just a chore. One path is to spend the sprint rebuilding your Buffer integration against GraphQL and end up exactly where you started — a pipe that carries posts you made elsewhere into a queue. The other is to notice that the pipe itself is the liability, and remove it.
Kompozy is the second path. Instead of a publish API you call from your own generation step, it is the generation step: point it at a source — a transcript, a link, a rough note — and it produces the finished set (captioned shorts, avatar video, carousels, images, posts, a blog, a newsletter) in your Persona Brief voice, then fans it out across the eight social platforms plus blog and email from its own review-and-publish pipeline. Turn on autopilot and generation, scheduling, and publishing run on a recurring basis with no external automation tool wired in the middle. And because Kompozy publishes natively, there's no posting API for you to build or own in the first place — the integration surface you'd otherwise maintain drops to zero.
To be fair to Buffer: if all you're automating is "hand a finished post to a queue," its rebuilt GraphQL API is a clean, free-tier-included way to do that, and you should just migrate. But if you're building the content by hand upstream, maintaining a Zapier chain to feed it in, or simply tired of re-plumbing a scheduler's API every time it changes, Kompozy replaces the whole arrangement with one engine — and there's no posting API left for anyone to deprecate on you.
Not entirely — it's retiring the legacy REST API on February 1, 2027, after which those endpoints stop returning data. Buffer replaced it with a new GraphQL API (on every plan including Free, with a CLI) and publishes a REST migration guide. Only integrations built on the old REST endpoints need to move; normal app users are unaffected.
It depends on what you're automating. If you only need to push finished posts to a queue, migrating to Buffer's own GraphQL API is the least work. If you were building the content by hand and using the API just to publish it, the higher-leverage alternative is an engine like Kompozy that generates and publishes natively, so you maintain no third-party posting API at all.
If you want it to keep working past February 1, 2027, yes. The REST-to-GraphQL move is a rewrite — auth, query shape, and the media-asset input format all changed (the assets change already took effect in May 2026). It's real engineering work, which is why some teams use the deadline to reconsider whether they need a separate publish API at all.
For most content workflows, yes. Kompozy's autopilot runs generation, scheduling, and publishing on a recurring basis in-app, which removes the reason most people built a Zapier-to-Buffer chain in the first place. You stop maintaining both the automation tool and the posting API.
No. Kompozy publishes your content natively across eight social platforms plus blog and email, so there's no posting API for you to build, call, or migrate. If your specific requirement is a programmatic publish API to embed in your own product, that's a case where Buffer's GraphQL API — available on every plan including Free — is the better fit.