Best Time to Post on Social Media in 2026 (Every Platform)

Across published studies, the best time to post on social media is weekday mornings to early afternoon in your audience's local time, roughly 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday. Each platform shifts that window a little: LinkedIn earlier, TikTok and Threads later, YouTube and Pinterest toward the weekend. The table below gives the range for every platform, then we cover why studies disagree and how to find your own best times in about 30 minutes.

Best time to post on social media: every platform#

These ranges are patterns, not laws. They combine what scheduling tools and marketing studies generally report, and they are in your audience's local time, not yours.

BroadcastPost publishes to Instagram, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit and Google Business Profile. It does not publish to Pinterest or X yet, so for those two the advice here is about timing only.

Why every study gives a different answer#

Search for this topic and you will find a dozen studies with a dozen answers. They are not wrong; they are measuring different things.

• Different customers. Each scheduling tool studies its own users. A tool popular with agencies sees different audiences than one popular with creators.
• Different metrics. Some studies measure engagement rate, some reach, some clicks. A time that is great for reach can be average for comments.
• Time zones. Some studies convert every post to the audience's local time. Others use the poster's time zone, or one fixed zone, which blurs the peaks.
• Industries. A restaurant's followers are online at different hours than a B2B software company's.
• Algorithms. Feeds are ranked, not chronological, so timing matters less than it did ten years ago. It still matters, because early engagement helps a post spread.

The practical conclusion: use the ranges above to choose a starting window, then let your own numbers take over. Your analytics beat any study, because they measure the only audience you care about.

Platform by platform#

Instagram#

Weekday mornings through early afternoon, Tuesday to Thursday, is the most consistent finding for feed posts. Reels are more forgiving, since they are shown for days through the Reels tab and Explore, so the hour matters less than for feed posts. Stories follow your followers' daily routine: commute, lunch, and after dinner. If Instagram is your main channel, the guide to the best time to post on Instagram covers feed, Reels and Stories separately.

Facebook#

Facebook business pages generally see the most engagement on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. The audience tends to check in during breaks in the day rather than late at night. Weekends are quieter for most pages, with the exception of local community groups and event pages.

TikTok#

TikTok varies more than any other platform because the For You feed can surface a video hours or days after it is posted. Studies tend to land on late morning and evenings from Tuesday to Thursday, but the spread between accounts is wide. Post at different times for two weeks and read your own analytics before settling.

LinkedIn#

LinkedIn follows the working day. Tuesday to Thursday from 8 to 11 a.m. is the classic window, when people check in before meetings start. Lunchtime is a reasonable second slot. Evenings and weekends are quiet for most business audiences.

YouTube#

YouTube is the platform where posting before the peak matters most. Viewing peaks on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings, when people have time for longer videos, and the platform needs time to process and index a new upload. Publishing a few hours ahead of your audience's peak gives the video time to be ready and to gather early views. Our guide to the best time to post on YouTube covers long-form videos and Shorts separately, because they behave differently.

Threads#

Threads is a conversation channel, so timing is about being present to reply. Mornings and evenings tend to be busiest, and a post that gets a few replies in its first hour travels further. Posting one to three times a day and answering replies matters more than hitting a precise time.

Pinterest#

Pinterest behaves like a search engine more than a social feed. Pins are discovered for weeks or months, so the exact posting time matters less than on any other platform. Studies still point to evenings and weekends, when people plan projects, meals and trips. BroadcastPost does not publish to Pinterest yet, but the timing advice in best time to post on Pinterest applies whatever tool you use.

X#

Posts on X have the shortest shelf life of any platform, so timing and frequency go together. The general weekday pattern applies: mornings to early afternoon, when people check news and industry updates. BroadcastPost does not publish to X yet; the best time to post on X guide covers how to think about it if X is part of your mix.

Google Business Profile#

Updates on your Google Business Profile appear when someone searches for your business or your category, not in a feed. That means the day and hour you post barely matter. What matters is posting regularly enough that the profile looks active and the current offer or hours are visible.

Reddit#

Reddit engagement depends on when a particular subreddit is awake, which depends on where its members live. There is little reliable general data. Open your target subreddit, sort by top posts this month, and look at the times they were submitted. Then post in that window, following the subreddit's rules on self-promotion.

Adjusting for the type of post#

Not every post needs the peak window.

• Offers and launches: post at the top of your best window, when the most people are online, and follow up with a Story or a second post later the same day.
• Evergreen tips and how-tos: any decent weekday slot works, because saves and shares keep them circulating.
• Reels, TikToks and Shorts: less time-sensitive, since recommendation feeds serve them for days. Consistency matters more than the hour.
• Community and reply-driven posts on Threads or Reddit: post when you can stay for 30 minutes to answer, even if that is not the statistical peak.
• Announcements about hours or closures: post early in the day, before people plan their trip.

How to find your own best time in 30 minutes#

You do not need a data background for this. You need 90 days of posts and a spreadsheet.

1. Export your posts with reach. In BroadcastPost, the analytics page exports a CSV; the native insights on each platform also work. Include the publish date and time, and reach for each post.
2. Add two columns: day of the week and hour of the day, taken from the publish time. Most spreadsheets have a function for each.
3. Use reach, not likes. Reach tells you how many accounts saw the post, which is what timing affects. Likes depend more on the content.
4. Average reach by day, then by hour. A pivot table takes two minutes; sorting and eyeballing works too.
5. Look for windows, not single hours. Two or three windows that beat your average, each with at least five posts behind them, are a result. One great post at 6 a.m. is not.
6. Test for four weeks. Alternate your top windows and compare. Then set your posting schedule and re-check every quarter, because audiences drift.

If you post fewer than three times a week, you may not have enough data yet. Post in the study-based windows above for a couple of months, then run the exercise.

Let your scheduler do the math#

The exercise above is exactly what BroadcastPost's "Suggest from my results" does automatically. It looks at your own past posts, finds the days and times that performed best for each account, and proposes a posting schedule from them. When you compose a post, best-time chips suggest times built from the same analytics, and Add to Queue drops the post into the next free slot in that schedule without you picking a time at all.

That turns the best-time question from a monthly research project into a one-time setup. You can try BroadcastPost free and let it build the schedule from your first few weeks of posts. If you want the full walkthrough of queues and schedules, how to schedule social media posts covers it from the first connected account.

Time zones and audiences in more than one place#

Every range in this guide is in your audience's local time. If your followers are spread across several time zones, three approaches work:

• Post for your biggest cluster. Check the audience location breakdown in your platform's insights and schedule for that zone.
• Split the difference. A 10 a.m. Eastern post lands at 7 a.m. Pacific and 3 p.m. in London. Late morning Eastern is a common compromise for US and UK audiences.
• Post twice. For a launch or an offer, schedule one post for each major zone with a different image or angle, rather than the identical post twice.

Set the time zone in your scheduler to match the audience, not your laptop, and check it once when the clocks change.

Timing is not everything: frequency and consistency#

Posting at the perfect hour once a fortnight does less than posting at a decent hour three times a week. The most useful defaults for a small team:

Pick the smallest cadence you can keep for 90 days. Then use the best-time windows to decide where in the week those posts go. Consistency trains both the algorithm and your audience to expect you.

Key takeaways#

• Start with weekday mornings to early afternoon, Tuesday to Thursday, in your audience's local time; shift earlier for LinkedIn and later for TikTok, Threads and weekend platforms like YouTube and Pinterest.
• Studies disagree because they measure different audiences, metrics and time zones; use them only to pick a starting window.
• Your own analytics beat any study: export 90 days, group by day and hour, and look for windows with several posts behind them.
• A scheduler with best-time suggestions built from your results, like BroadcastPost, turns this into a one-time setup.
• Consistency beats precision; a cadence you can keep for 90 days matters more than the perfect minute.