Yes, I know that these guides can be overly specific, and that there are nuances for every brand and industry. But best times to post overviews can assist in your planning, by giving you some additional considerations for your own experiments which could help to improve response to your social media updates.
On this, Sprout Social has published its latest “best times to post” guide, based on insights gleaned from its user base (30k business users), and when they’re posts see the most engagement in each app.
And again, while there are variances by business, these notes could give you some more guidance for your own tests, in order to find the right time to post for your business.
First off, on Facebook. According to Sprout’s research, Mondays through Sundays in the morning are the best times to post for optimal response on The Social Network.
As you can see in this chart, Facebook users seem predominantly active between 9am and 12pm, and primarily on weekdays. My guess would be that people are checking in on Facebook on their morning commute, to ensure that they don’t miss any birthday or family member announcements, and that could make this the best time to catch people when they’re active.
Of course, Facebook’s news feed algorithm is going to show people what they want to see anyway, which renders posting time less valuable to some degree. But again, this data is based on when Sprout users saw the most engagement with their updates, and if you’re developing your own posting strategy, these notes could give you some additional food for thought.
Instagram, however, sees different usage patterns:
As you can see, the best times to post on Instagram are Mondays through Thursdays between 10am and 3pm.
I would argue that the substance of your post is more important on primarily visual apps, but again, if you were looking to get your content to a more receptive audience, based on data, these would be the best times.
LinkedIn company pages, meanwhile, should also be looking to post after 10am.
Tuesday to Thursday, from 10am to around 1pm, seems like the sweet spot for optimal LinkedIn business updates.
Timing may be less relevant on Pinterest, given the way in which displays content to users based on interest. But even so, Sprout users have found that they see the most response to posts between 1pm and 2pm, pretty much every day.
I don’t have any confident guesses as to why 1pm would be the time to go for on Pinterest. Maybe people are looking for inspiration during lunch?
TikTok, meanwhile, sees the most activity on Wednesdays between 2pm and 5pm.
As you can see, the post-5pm time slot also seems to see more response in the app.
Finally, the best times to post on X are Tuesdays through Thursdays from 9am to 2pm.
Users are tapping into X during the day, to keep up with the latest news, and that makes these more receptive times for updates.
Again, algorithmic amplification can impact reach, and there are various other factors that will define your actual post performance. But based on a pretty large data pool, these are the times that many brands are seeing the most engagement, which could be worth factoring into your approach.
You can check out Sprout’s full best times to post report for 2025 (which also includes YouTube) here.
