Schedule LinkedIn posts: the free composer and the BYOK workflow

You can schedule a LinkedIn post without paying anyone. LinkedIn's composer already does it. Open Start a post, write the text, use the clock icon, pick a date and time, and confirm. As of October 2026, guides that walk that screen still describe a personal-profile window of about 10 minutes to 3 months ahead, and a company Page window that starts later (often one hour) and ends at the same three-month mark. LinkedIn moves that button. Recheck the clock icon and LinkedIn Help before you treat a screenshot as current.

That free path stops at the composer. It does not write the post, it does not keep a week of drafts in one queue with one clock time, and people who post document PDFs often find the clock missing on that flow. Boykli is the other job: write the post, optionally turn it into a carousel PDF, then drop it on a personal-profile queue. Scheduling inside Boykli is not free. A paid seat is required before the app will write, create a carousel or image, publish to LinkedIn, or add anything to the queue. Logged-in visitors can still browse Radar and Algorithm with no plan.

The cheap paid seat is BYOK at $29/month. You bring an OpenRouter key for chat and images and a Google AI Studio key for Voice Agent. Boykli does not add a monthly generation cap on that seat. You pay those providers for what you use. Managed is $88/month and includes the models inside caps: 210 posts, 150 carousels, 150 images, 25 Voice Agent sessions, and 130 post refinements. Both seats use the same Schedule page.

Free composer, BYOK queue, Managed queue

Prices are the public list on boykli.com as of 25 October 2026. The native window is what current third-party walkthroughs of LinkedIn's composer describe; confirm it in the product you have open.

When the free clock is the right tool

Use LinkedIn's clock when the draft already exists and you want one post to leave at a time you choose. You are already in the feed. There is no second login, no API key, and no monthly seat. A founder posting twice a week from notes they wrote on the train does not need a queue product.

The free clock gets awkward in four ordinary cases.

1. The words are not written yet. The composer will not draft from a YouTube video, an article, a document, or a live conversation.
2. You want five posts to land on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the same local time without opening LinkedIn five times.
3. The asset is a multi-slide PDF. Boykli publishes that PDF with a caption to the connected personal profile. The native composer is a poor place to build that file.
4. You want the draft, the edit, and the slot in one place so a half-finished post is not stuck in a browser tab.

A general social calendar is the better fit when the copy is finished and the same queue has to cover other networks, a company Page, or an approval step for a team. Boykli will not do those. The shorter product description of the queue itself is LinkedIn scheduling tool. Analytics, comment tools, and lead outreach are a different purchase; the comparison that names Taplio's public prices is Taplio alternative.

The BYOK workflow, in the order the app enforces it

This is the path that matches the search "schedule LinkedIn posts" plus a bring-your-own-key seat. Skip a step and the queue API refuses the item.

1. Take a seat, then save the keys

Create an account on boykli.com and check out BYOK in Settings. Browsing Radar and Algorithm works before that. Add to Queue, Post to LinkedIn, and generation do not.

In Settings, save an OpenRouter key. That key is what chat and image calls use on BYOK. Save a Google AI Studio key only if you will use Voice Agent. Managed never uses those keys. BYOK never uses Boykli's platform keys. There is no silent switch if a key is missing or rejected. An AppSumo lifetime code, redeemed at /redeem, is a BYOK seat without a Dodo subscription. It is one code for one account. It is not a free scheduler, and an existing paid seat blocks redeem.

2. Connect the personal profile

On Schedule, the header shows Connect LinkedIn until OAuth succeeds, then LinkedIn Active. The token is the personal profile you authorize. A company Page admin role does not create a Page queue. If the session expires, the page says queued posts will not publish until you reconnect. The rows stay. Nothing goes out.

3. Save days, one time, and a timezone

Schedule opens on Queue Schedule. Posting days are toggles for Monday through Sunday. A new queue starts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Time of Day starts at 10:00. The timezone starts as the timezone of the device, and the page stores it. Click Save after you change days or the clock. The whole queue shares that one time. You cannot put Monday at 08:30 and Friday at 17:00.

Two saves matter more than the default:

• Zero days and the queue is inactive. If items are already queued, the page asks you to confirm, because turning off every day pauses auto-publish until you pick days again.
• A missing timezone blocks new items. The API tells you to open Schedule and click Save. The publisher also skips a queue that has no timezone stored.

Boykli does not look at your past impressions and suggest a slot. You pick the clock. A reading of the 2026 public datasets, and the single midweek time worth saving, is in Best time to post on LinkedIn.

4. Write something worth the slot

Create posts is where a text draft is made. Modes cover a short, medium, or long post, a YouTube video, an article link, a series, or a document. Voice Agent is a live conversation that becomes posts for that session. Radar can start a draft from an article in the feed. The ideas library holds your ideas. How that writing product was scoped is in building Boykli.

Read the draft. Edit the hook, the body, and the close. Add to Queue waits until the draft has an id. If that same post is already queued, the app asks before it adds another copy. A cover image on the draft is sent with the post when one exists. A series is Add Series to Queue: 2 to 10 parts, each with text, each up to 8,000 characters, each taking the next open slot.

A carousel is a separate page. The model designs the slides and the file is a PDF. Designs include Neo-Brutalist as the default. Square 1080 or portrait 1080×1350, 2 to 8 slides. The brand kit (colors, profile, handle, logo) lives on that page. Add to Queue asks for a document title and a caption. The title is required. The practical teardown of the three ways to start a deck is LinkedIn carousel generator. On Managed, that PDF counts toward 150 carousel generations. On BYOK it counts toward your provider bill, not a Boykli cap.

5. Read the calendar before you walk away

After the queue settings exist, Schedule shows a drag-and-drop calendar. Posts ahead counts items still waiting. Scheduled through is the last slot. Each new item takes the next open weekday slot from today forward, at the saved time, in the saved timezone. Drag to change order. Remove an item if you do not want it. A failed row can be sent back to queued so the next pass retries that slot.

The publisher runs on a schedule inside Boykli. It takes the earliest queued item whose slot time has arrived. It skips the user when LinkedIn is not usable, when no weekday is selected, when the timezone was never saved, or when the account no longer has a generatable plan. A cancellation that still has current_period_end in the future still has access. on_hold and an expired cancel do not, and due posts are skipped until a plan exists again. One profile publishes one due item at a time. How that single authorized publish differs from a browser tool that posts, comments, or connects for you, and what LinkedIn has actually said about limited reach, is in Automated LinkedIn posting. Whether a post that leaves on a clock gets fewer impressions than one you publish by hand is the subject of scheduled LinkedIn posts and reach.

You still publish immediately with Post to LinkedIn when the slot you want is "now." The queue is for the days you are not at the keyboard.

A week on BYOK, with the numbers in the open

Suppose the queue is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 09:15 in America/New_York, and today is Sunday. You write three posts and one carousel on Sunday and add them in that order. They take Monday 09:15, Wednesday 09:15, Friday 09:15, and the following Monday 09:15. Reorder the carousel to the top before Monday and it takes Monday. The text posts shift later. You do not type four dates.

Generation cost sits outside the $29. A week of four Grok or Claude drafts plus one carousel is a small OpenRouter bill for most people, and a large one if you regenerate all day. Managed at $88 replaces that meter with the caps above. If you already know you will blow past 210 posts or 150 carousels, BYOK is the seat that does not cut you off inside Boykli. If you do not want to hold provider keys or watch a provider invoice, Managed is the seat that hides that.

Neither price buys a second network, a company Page, a scheduled first comment, or a chart of impressions. LinkedIn's own post view still shows impressions and engagement for posts it still retains. That is the free analytics you already have. Boykli's Algorithm page is a plain-language read of LinkedIn's public notes. It does not rank your queue.

What fails in practice

The item never leaves. Open Schedule. If the header is Reconnect LinkedIn, the token is dead and the queue is parked. If every day toggle is off, auto-publish is paused. If Scheduled through is blank, nothing is queued or the settings were never saved.

The time looks wrong. The slot is the saved timezone, not the timezone of the laptop you opened later. Change timezone, click Save, and read Scheduled through again before you assume the publisher is late.

Add to Queue errors with no schedule. The API requires a queue row, at least one weekday, a stored timezone, a connected LinkedIn account, and a generatable plan. Fix the one it names. A missing carousel id means the deck was not saved; create it again. A missing document title blocks the carousel queue on purpose.

The same draft is already queued. You get a confirm. Forcing it adds another slot. It does not edit the first one in place.

A provider error on BYOK. Writing fails before a queue exists. The seat is active and the key is the thing to check. Scheduling a post that already exists does not call the model again.

FAQ

Can I schedule LinkedIn posts for free?

Yes, in LinkedIn. Use the clock in the composer on the profile or Page you are posting as, inside the window LinkedIn currently allows. Boykli does not add a free scheduling plan on top of that. Radar and Algorithm are browsable without a seat. The queue is not.

Is the BYOK workflow free because I bring keys?

No. BYOK is $29/month for the software. OpenRouter and Google AI Studio bill you separately. "No Boykli monthly generation cap" means Boykli does not stop you at 210 posts. It does not mean the providers are free, and it does not remove the seat price.

Do I need both keys to schedule?

You need the seat and a connected personal profile to queue a draft that already exists. OpenRouter is required when BYOK is the thing writing or making images. Google AI Studio is required for Voice Agent on BYOK. A text post you already generated can be queued without another model call.

Can each post have its own time?

No. Days, one time of day, and one timezone define every slot. Order in the queue decides which item gets which date. If you need Thursday at 07:00 and Thursday at 19:00, use LinkedIn's clock for those two posts, or post one of them immediately.

Will it post to my company Page?

No. OAuth is the personal profile you connect. Page posts stay in LinkedIn's composer or in a tool built for Pages.

What if I cancel?

Access continues until current_period_end if that date is still in the future. After that, and while a payment is on_hold, the publisher skips due posts. The rows are not a promise that LinkedIn will receive them without a generatable plan.

Does a carousel count as a scheduled post?

Yes. It occupies one slot and goes out as the PDF plus the caption. Build the file first. The queue does not design slides at publish time beyond rendering the PDF you already created.