Top Open Source Social Media Automation CLIs (2026)

Open source social media CLIs solve distribution for free.

You get platform posting, scheduling, and media uploads without paying for a subscription. The code is public. You can run it locally. You can fork it.

What you do not get from most of them is content generation. Here is the landscape.

1. ReelsFarm CLI

ReelsFarm CLI is open source under MIT license. The CLI and TypeScript SDK are on GitHub. You can read the code, run it locally, and build on top of it.

What makes it different from every other open source CLI is the generation capability behind it. AI avatars. Product scene compositing. TikTok slideshows. Hook generation. AI character profiles. Product asset libraries.

The CLI itself is open source. The generation infrastructure it connects to is paid. This split is honest: you can audit the client code, and you pay for the compute that generates content.

Install with `npm install -g @reelsfarm/mcp-client`. The CLI binary is `reelsfarm`. Auth with an API key. Every destructive action goes through prepare-then-confirm.

Platforms: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook.

2. Postiz CLI

Postiz CLI is fully open source. 28 platforms. OAuth2 login. JSON output. Media upload. Analytics. Automation workflows.

It is the widest platform coverage of any open source social media CLI. If you need to post to 28 platforms from a terminal, this is the tool.

Postiz does not generate content. It distributes content you already have. The web dashboard is a bonus for teams that want visual access alongside CLI access.

3. Timeline MCP

Timeline MCP is open source and runs entirely locally. It stores your content calendar in a SQLite database on your machine.

No cloud dependency. No account. No API keys for the server itself. The campaign-oriented model lets you create tracks, add posts with prompts and scheduling, and manage a content calendar from your AI agent.

Platforms: X, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube.

Timeline MCP does not generate content. It manages a content calendar. The local-first design means total control with zero recurring costs.

4. Typefully CLI

Typefully CLI is open source and focused on text platforms. X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon.

It handles drafting, thread syntax, scheduling, and media uploads. The CLI is well-designed for agent consumption with structured output. It includes an agent skill for Claude Code and Cursor.

No video. No image generation. No UGC. Text posting only. But for text platforms, it does the job cleanly.

5. Crossmind CLI

Crossmind CLI is open source and covers 15 platforms including Hacker News, Reddit, GitHub, X, Bluesky, YouTube, Medium, Substack, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

It focuses on compact, token-efficient output. The `--json` mode is designed for AI agent pipelines. Built-in safety features include dedup, jitter, and backoff to prevent accidental spam.

Crossmind posts content. It does not generate it. The token efficiency and safety features make it a thoughtful distribution tool, but it is still just a distribution tool.

6. SocialClaw

SocialClaw's `socialclaw` npm CLI, MCP server, agent skills, and Claude Code plugin are [published under the MIT license](https://github.com/ndesv21/socialclaw). Its dashboard, account connections, API, and publishing execution are hosted at getsocialclaw.com, so the public repository should not be confused with a self-hostable copy of the entire service.

The hosted service covers 11 platform families, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Pages, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Telegram, WordPress, and Pinterest. Its current MCP page lists 18 tools for accounts, media, validation, publishing, delivery inspection, analytics, usage, and health.

The CLI and MCP documentation focuses on publishing workflows. Separately, the hosted dashboard includes a native AI drafting agent and a beta generator for converting app screenshots or a screen recording into UGC-style videos and photo carousels. The dashboard-plus-CLI combination is useful for mixed teams, but its open-source client should still be evaluated together with the hosted dependency.

The Open Source Generation Gap

Every open source CLI in this list handles some part of distribution: posting, scheduling, platform formatting, or media uploads. They do it well.

ReelsFarm is the option here that exposes its specialized avatar, product-scene, slideshow, and hook generation pipeline directly through the open-source CLI. SocialClaw offers a narrower UGC generator in its hosted dashboard, not in its currently documented CLI commands or MCP tools.

AI video generation requires compute infrastructure that cannot be open sourced in a meaningful way. You can open source the client code. You cannot open source the GPU cluster that runs the models. The cost has to live somewhere.

ReelsFarm CLI splits this honestly. The CLI is open source. The generation capability is paid. You get auditable client code and you pay for the compute that creates content.

The practical comparison is therefore not simply “open source” versus “closed source.” Check which components are public, which operations require a hosted account, and whether generation is available to the agent-facing CLI or only inside a separate dashboard.