The best time and day to post on 8 platforms — sourced from Buffer, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, SocialPilot, and RecurPost, with the places the studies disagree shown as honest ranges instead of made-up single answers.
Best time to post by platform (your local time): Instagram weekday evenings 6–11pm (best days Wed/Thu); TikTok evenings 6–11pm (best day Sat per Buffer, Tue–Fri per Sprout); LinkedIn weekdays 3–8pm (best day Wed); YouTube 2–4pm published 2–3 hours before peak (Wed–Fri); Facebook Tue–Thu mornings 6–11am; X Tue–Thu mornings ~9am; Pinterest 9am–3pm plus 8–10pm; Threads weekday mornings 6–11am. These are starting points from millions of analyzed posts — your own audience analytics override them.
Every “best time to post” chart online presents a single confident answer. The honest version has two caveats. First, the major studies disagree on several platforms — TikTok’s best day, Facebook’s best time of day, and whether Pinterest weekends are the best or worst slots are all open questions where Buffer, Sprout, and others give opposite answers. We show those as ranges below rather than pick a winner.
Second, and more important: timing is a secondary lever. Buffer’s 2026 engagement report (52M+ posts) found the biggest gap in the data isn’t between good timing and bad timing — it’s between posting and not posting. Replying to your own comments moved engagement more than timing did: +42% on Threads, +30% on LinkedIn, +21% on Instagram. Get consistent cadence and reply-engagement right first (see the companion Platform Cadence Index), then optimize the hour.
Each row is a study-sourced starting point in your audience’s local time. Where the major studies disagree, the disagreement is stated explicitly. Click a platform to jump to the reasoning and sources.
| Platform | Best time | Best days |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram (Feed + Reels) | Weekday evenings 6–11pm; plus Thursday mornings 7–9am | Wednesday and Thursday |
| TikTok | Evenings 6–11pm; Buffer’s single best slot is Sunday 9am | Disagreement: Saturday (Buffer) vs Tuesday–Friday afternoons (Sprout / Hootsuite) |
| Weekday late-afternoon 3–8pm (top slots Wed 4pm, Fri 3–4pm) | Wednesday (Buffer); Tuesday (Sprout) | |
| YouTube (long-form + Shorts) | Long-form 2–4pm local (Wed/Thu/Fri); Shorts 12–2pm or 6–7pm. Publish 2–3 hours BEFORE peak viewing. | Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (Sunday mornings also strong) |
| Disagreement: mornings 6–11am (Buffer) vs midday–evening 12–8pm (Sprout). Buffer’s single best slot is Thursday 9am. | Wednesday and Thursday (Buffer); Monday–Thursday (Sprout) | |
| X (Twitter) | Midweek mornings; Buffer’s peak slot is Tuesday 9am | Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday |
| Daytime 9am–3pm with an evening surge 8–10pm | Disagreement: weekends rate among the BEST (RecurPost) vs among the WORST (Sprout) | |
| Threads | Weekday mornings 6–11am; Buffer’s peak slot is Thursday 9am | Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday |
Best days: Wednesday and Thursday
Why this window: Buffer’s analysis of 9.6M posts found evening hours (6–11pm local) consistently outperformed every other slot, with Thursday morning the lone exception. Sprout centers a wider midday-to-evening window (Tue 1–7pm, Wed 12–9pm). Reels follow the same evening-entertainment curve. Post in the early-evening wind-down when scroll sessions are longest.
Worst times: 1–5am any day; Friday and Saturday are depressed across all slots
Sources: Buffer (9.6M Instagram posts, 200,000+ accounts) and Sprout Social agree on Wed/Thu as the best days.
Best days: Disagreement: Saturday (Buffer) vs Tuesday–Friday afternoons (Sprout / Hootsuite)
Why this window: This is the platform where the studies disagree most. Buffer’s 7.1M-post dataset rates Saturday the best day with evenings beating afternoons, and flags Wed/Thu as weak — while Sprout and Hootsuite favor Tue–Fri afternoon windows. Treat both as valid starting hypotheses and let your own audience analytics break the tie. The robust cross-study signal: evenings beat midday.
Worst times: Afternoons 12–5pm (Buffer); before 7am on weekends (Hootsuite)
Sources: Buffer (7.1M posts) vs Hootsuite (1M+ posts, 118 countries) vs Sprout Social — cite the range, not a single answer.
Best days: Wednesday (Buffer); Tuesday (Sprout)
Why this window: Buffer’s 2026 read of 4.8M posts is a shift from the old "post at 9am on a workday" advice — engagement now extends into the evening (3–8pm), while Sprout still centers the 11am–5pm workday window. The bigger lever on LinkedIn is format, not time: Buffer found carousel (document) posts generate up to 596% more engagement than text-only posts.
Worst times: Midnight–5am; Monday and Tuesday have the lowest weekly engagement (Buffer)
Sources: Buffer (4.8M LinkedIn posts) and Sprout Social.
Best days: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (Sunday mornings also strong)
Why this window: YouTube is unique: you publish ahead of peak so the algorithm can index and A/B-test the video before traffic arrives. SocialPilot’s analysis of 301,000+ videos found shifting the upload window by a few hours can move first-24-hour views by 20–40% for channels with an established audience.
Worst times: Before 9am weekdays, after 10pm any day, Sunday evenings (Shorts)
Sources: SocialPilot (301,000+ videos, 27,000+ channels) and Sprout Social. No Buffer study exists for YouTube — weaker-sourced than the Buffer platforms.
Best days: Wednesday and Thursday (Buffer); Monday–Thursday (Sprout)
Why this window: Buffer’s 14M-post dataset puts Facebook’s peak in the morning (6–11am); Sprout’s window runs later into the afternoon and evening. Both agree mid-week beats weekends decisively. Start with a Tue–Thu morning slot and test an afternoon slot against it.
Worst times: Saturday (worst day), afternoons 12–5pm, weekends generally (Buffer)
Sources: Buffer (14M Facebook posts) and Sprout Social.
Best days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Why this window: X has the strongest cross-study agreement of any platform: Buffer (8.7M tweets), Sprout, and Hootsuite all converge on midweek mornings. The chronological-weighted feed rewards posting when the most users are actively scrolling, which on X is the Tue–Thu 9am–noon window.
Worst times: Evenings 6–11pm; Friday and Saturday
Sources: Buffer (8.7M tweets), Sprout Social, Hootsuite — rare full agreement.
Best days: Disagreement: weekends rate among the BEST (RecurPost) vs among the WORST (Sprout)
Why this window: Pinterest distribution is search-and-board-graph based, not feed-recency based, so timing matters less than on feed platforms — a pin keeps surfacing in search for weeks. The studies flatly disagree on weekends: RecurPost’s 2M-post dataset rates Sunday/Monday highest, Sprout lists weekends as worst. Test both against your own repin data.
Worst times: 1–6am (audience asleep); after 11pm
Sources: RecurPost (2M posts, Jun 2025–Jan 2026) and Sprout Social. No Buffer study for Pinterest — weakest-sourced platform here.
Best days: Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday
Why this window: Threads inverts the Instagram curve despite sharing Meta’s graph — mornings win, evenings lose. From 2.5M Threads posts, Buffer found that replying to your own comments boosts engagement by 42%, outweighing timing as a lever. Post in the morning, then stay in the replies.
Worst times: Evenings 6–11pm; Saturday is the worst day, then Sunday/Monday
Sources: Buffer (2.5M Threads posts).
Recommendations are pulled from the largest published timing studies available as of 2026-06-02, in priority order by sample size and independence:
Where studies disagree, both are cited and the conflict is stated. YouTube and Pinterest lack a Buffer-scale study and rely on SocialPilot and RecurPost respectively — treat those two as the weakest-sourced. Every time is your audience’s local time, not a fixed timezone. These ranges shift as platforms tune their algorithms; this index is versioned for 2026 and re-audited quarterly.
Pick the study-backed window for your platform, schedule there for two weeks, then read your own analytics and adjust — your audience’s active hours beat any global average. The compounding win isn’t the perfect hour; it’s posting consistently at a good-enough hour and staying in the replies. Kompozy schedules each repurposed output into its platform-native window automatically, so you set the cadence once and the timing follows.
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