Best time to post on social media

Each study publishes its best hours for each day. Every hour a study names adds one to that hour on the map, so a dark hour is one that several studies name, and a pale one is named by none. A range such as "1 to 5 PM" counts the hours that start inside it: 1, 2, 3 and 4 PM. Nothing is weighted or smoothed, and the exact wording of every study sits under the map, so you can check any hour yourself.

The top three slots are the darkest run of hours on the three strongest days. When two days tie, the one holding a study's own top-three hour wins, then the longer run.

The studies do not measure the same thing. Sprout Social counts when people engaged. Buffer, Hootsuite and Later look at the hour a post went out and how it did. Later's Instagram data is from 2024; the rest is from 2025 and 2026. Use the study buttons to see each one alone.

On Instagram, 4 studies name 61 different hours of the week between them. No hour is named by all 4, and only one is named by 3. TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook and X look the same: no hour has all three studies behind it. A single "best time" is a summary of one dataset, not a law.

What does repeat: weekday late mornings to afternoons on LinkedIn and X, evenings on Instagram, and quiet weekends almost everywhere. Start there, then let your own numbers decide.

Your audience's. Every study reports local time: Sprout Social says a 9 AM peak means 9 AM in Los Angeles, London and Sydney alike, and Buffer, Hootsuite and Later normalize the same way. So if your followers are in New York and you are in London, the map's 12 PM is usually your 5 PM.

Set both zones above and switch to My clock. The conversion uses the real dates of the coming week, so a week where one country has changed its clocks and the other has not comes out right.

Averages from millions of posts are a starting point. Your followers are the answer. Here is where each app shows them, as described in Buffer's guides:

• Instagram: on a professional account, open Professional dashboard under your bio, then follower active times. On the web: Dashboard, Insights, Account, then Followers.
• TikTok: open TikTok Studio from your profile, tap View all on Analytics, open the Followers tab and scroll to Most active times. It covers the past week.
• YouTube:in YouTube Studio, open Analytics, then the Audience tab, and scroll to "When your viewers are on YouTube". It covers the last 28 days, in your local time.
• LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Threads and Pinterest:we could not confirm a simple follower-hours chart in these apps. Keep a log of when each post goes out, then compare results after a month. LinkedIn's own analytics only show a post's age ("3h", "2d"), not the hour it went out.

Post a little before your followers' busiest hour, so the post is there when they arrive.

Beevi's scheduler starts from three weekly slots for each of Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, read in your business's time zone, then fits them to the posting days and hours you set and to what is already booked. Other platforms start from a general weekday list. Here is how those starting slots line up with the studies above: 4 of 9 are named by at least one.

Your own posting hours and calendar always win over the starting slots, and you can move any suggested time.