The best time to post on social media is midweek, Tuesday to Thursday, during the working day in your audience's time zone, and the worst is overnight. That is the one pattern Buffer, Sprout Social and Hootsuite all find. Below it, every network has its own hours, and on some of them the studies point in opposite directions.
The short version: start with weekdays from about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time, Tuesday to Thursday first, and avoid midnight to 7 a.m. Then use the table below for each network (each name links to its full guide), and replace it with your own numbers after two weeks of testing. Sprout Social's overall answer is Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
In this guide
- What is the best time to post on each social network?
- What is the best time of day to post on social media?
- What is the best time to post on TikTok?
- What is the best time to post on Threads?
- What is the best time to post on Pinterest?
- What about Bluesky and Mastodon?
- When should you not post on social media?
- Is the best time to post on social media a myth?
- How to find your own best time to post
- What is the 5:3:2 rule for social media?
- Schedule once, post at every network's hour
What is the best time to post on each social network?
| Network | Start here (local time) | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday to Thursday, around 9 a.m. | Midnight to 7 a.m.; Saturday | |
| Tuesday to Thursday, noon to 7 p.m.; Wednesday first | 1 to 7 a.m.; Friday and Saturday | |
| Tuesday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. | Weekends; Monday mornings | |
| X (Twitter) | Tuesday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. | Saturday; evenings |
| YouTube | Long videos: Sunday 10 a.m. and weekday mornings. Shorts: 6 to 9 p.m., Friday first | Midweek afternoons |
| TikTok | Studies disagree: test a weekday afternoon against a Sunday morning | Early mornings |
| Threads | Weekdays, 7 a.m. to noon; Tuesday to Thursday first | Saturday to Monday |
| Weekdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Weekends | |
| Bluesky and Mastodon | No published study; your audience's working hours | Their night |
Built from Buffer's 2026 studies (more than 52 million posts across networks), Sprout Social's March 2026 study (nearly 2 billion engagements on about 307,000 profiles) and Hootsuite's November 2025 study (more than 1 million posts), read on October 22, 2026. Each full guide links its sources.
What is the best time of day to post on social media?
Late morning to mid-afternoon on weekdays, roughly 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your audience's time zone. That window catches the hours people check their phones between tasks and at lunch. Two networks break the rule: YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels lean toward the evening, and long YouTube videos do best on weekend mornings.
What is the best time to post on TikTok?
The two big studies disagree, so test. Buffer's data on 7.1 million TikTok posts puts Sunday at 9 a.m. first, then Monday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m., with Saturday the best day and Wednesday the worst. Sprout Social finds the opposite on days: weekdays from about 1 to 6 p.m., with weekends and early mornings weakest. Run a Sunday morning slot against a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon slot for two weeks and keep the winner.
What is the best time to post on Threads?
Weekday mornings. Buffer's study of 2.5 million Threads posts puts Thursday at 9 a.m. first and weekdays from 7 a.m. to noon next, with Wednesday, Thursday and Tuesday the best days and Saturday, Sunday and Monday the weakest. Hootsuite's single best time is Tuesday at 8 a.m. Both point to the same habit: post before lunch, midweek.
What is the best time to post on Pinterest?
Weekdays, late morning. Sprout Social's busiest Pinterest windows run from about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday to Thursday, plus Friday from 10 to 11 a.m., with weekends weakest. Hootsuite's best time is noon on Tuesday and Friday. Pinterest works more like a search engine than a feed, so a pin can be found long after it goes up; posting regularly matters more than the hour.
What about Bluesky and Mastodon?
No large study covers them yet. Both have a feed of the people you follow in time order, so a post there is seen mostly by whoever is online in the hours after it goes out. Post during your audience's working day, look at which posts got replies and reposts, and keep those hours. Our comparison of Bluesky and Threads covers how each network's feed works.
When should you not post on social media?
Overnight in your audience's time zone, roughly midnight to 7 a.m., is the weakest window on every network the studies cover. Weekends are weak on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Threads and Pinterest; for TikTok and long YouTube videos at least one study finds weekends strong, so test them there. And skip any hour you cannot stay around for: replies in the first hour keep a post in front of people, on every network.
Is the best time to post on social media a myth?
Partly. The studies measure averages over thousands of accounts, mostly brands that pay for a scheduling tool, so no single hour is right for you. But the broad shape holds across all of them: midweek beats weekends on most networks, and posts published while your audience sleeps start with nobody to see them. Use the studies to pick where to start, then let your own results decide.
How to find your own best time to post
- Find your audience's time zone in each network's analytics: Meta Business Suite for Facebook and Instagram, YouTube Studio's Audience tab, LinkedIn's page analytics.
- Pick two slots per network from the table above, one earlier and one later.
- Alternate them for two weeks with similar posts, so only the hour changes.
- Compare engagement per person reached, not raw likes, so one popular post does not decide it.
- Keep the winners and test again each quarter.
In Skryvo the Performance page measures the best hour on each connected channel from your own published posts, and "Use best times" makes those hours the default for new posts. Until you have a few weeks of posts, start from the table.
What is the 5:3:2 rule for social media?
A content-mix rule of thumb, not a timing rule: out of every ten posts, five share useful content from others, three are your own, and two are personal or behind the scenes. It keeps a feed from turning into adverts. When to post and what to post are separate decisions; both are worth writing down in a content calendar.
Schedule once, post at every network's hour
The same news goes out at a different hour on each network, which is hard to do by hand. Write the posts in one sitting, check each against its network's character limit, and schedule them: our guides cover LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky.
Let your agent write the next one in your voice
Skryvo drafts each post in your saved voice and publishes it after your go-ahead. Free to start.
