Best Time to Post on Social Media? Check Your Own Data
Facts checked on October 17, 2026
There is no single best time to post on social media. None of the eight networks below gives one on its help pages: the “post on Tuesday at 9am” figures come from studies that scheduling companies run on their own customers’ accounts. The best time is when your own followers are online, and four of these networks show you that in their own analytics.
According to each network’s help pages, read on October 17, 2026, Instagram, Threads, Facebook and YouTube have a report of when your audience is online. LinkedIn, Pinterest and X document none, and TikTok’s help pages could not be read that day, so for those four you find your time with a short test (see how to test your own best time).
Where each network shows when your followers are online#
| Network | Report of when your audience is online | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Yes: “Times they’re most active” | Insights, under Total followers | |
| TikTok | Not confirmed (help pages could not be read) | Not confirmed |
| Not documented | Not documented | |
| Yes: “when your audience is on Facebook” | Page Insights | |
| YouTube | Yes: “When your viewers are on YouTube” | YouTube Studio, Analytics, Audience |
| Not documented | Not documented | |
| Threads | Yes: “Most active times” | Insights, Audience tab |
| X | Not documented | Not documented |
“Not documented” means the network’s help pages do not describe such a report. If your app shows one anyway, use it.
Best time to post on Instagram#
Instagram shows it under your follower insights. Its help page lists, among the Total followers insights, “Times they’re most active on Instagram”. Two conditions: you need at least 100 followers, and the account has to be public. A personal account can see insights too, as long as it is public.
On a computer, go to instagram.com, select Dashboard in the left menu, then Insights under For professionals (on a personal account, Your dashboard). In the app, open your insights and tap an insight to see its detail. Insights reach back up to 90 days.
Postnavo is launching with Instagram scheduling for professional accounts, built to publish your feed posts, carousels, Reels and Stories at the times this report points to.
Best time to post on TikTok#
We could not confirm what TikTok’s analytics show. On October 17, 2026, TikTok’s help article on analytics would not open, so this post gives no menu path for TikTok rather than one from memory.
If your TikTok analytics show a chart of when your followers are active, start from it. If not, use the test at the end of this post and compare the views each video gets in its first day.
Best time to post on LinkedIn#
LinkedIn’s help pages on Page analytics describe no report of when followers are online. Follower analytics breaks down who follows your Page “using Location, Seniority, Job function, Industry, and Company size data”, not when they are on LinkedIn.
Two things still help. Location tells you which time zone most of your followers live in, a sensible place to start. And content analytics gives you the results to compare: go to your Page admin view, click Analytics in the left menu, then Content. The post list shows the date each post went out and its impressions, “the number of times your post was shown on LinkedIn”.
Best time to post on Facebook#
Facebook’s help page says Page Insights let you “see when your audience is on Facebook”. It does not name the chart, so look through Insights for it.
To open them, log in, click your profile photo in the top right, click See all profiles and switch into your Page. Then click Professional dashboard and Insights in the left menu; your followers are under Audience. Meta notes that the Professional dashboard now shows as Creator Dashboard or Business Dashboard. Age, gender and location appear once there is data for 100 or more people.
Best time to post on YouTube#
YouTube Studio has a report called “When your viewers are on YouTube”. Sign in to YouTube Studio, select Analytics in the left menu, then Audience in the top menu.
YouTube’s help page says the report “shows you when your viewers are online across YouTube in the last 28 days”, and suggests it for timing a Premiere or a live stream. Note the “across YouTube”: it shows when your viewers are on YouTube at all, not only when they watch your channel.
Best time to post on Pinterest#
Pinterest’s help pages describe no report of when your audience is on Pinterest. Audience insights break your audience down “by age, gender, location and device”, which at least tells you their main time zone.
To compare times, open Pinterest Analytics: click the menu icon at the top left, then Overview under Analytics. It counts impressions, “the number of times your Pins or ads were on screen”, along with saves and clicks for each Pin, over the date range you choose.
Best time to post on Threads#
Threads has a report called Most active times. On a computer, go to threads.com, click Insights in the left menu and open the Audience tab.
Meta’s help page says the times “represent when most of your viewers or followers were active on Threads”. They are shown in your current time zone and worked out from the last 30 days.
Postnavo is launching with Threads scheduling for posts and multi-post threads, so a post can wait for that hour without you.
Best time to post on X#
X documents no report of when your followers are online. Its Post Activity Dashboard shows, for each post, “the number of impressions, engagements, and its earned engagement rate”, for the last 28 days unless you change the dates.
You can download the dashboard’s data as a spreadsheet (a CSV file). X says its times are in UTC, Greenwich time, so convert them to your own time zone before you compare one hour with another.
How to test your own best time#
Where a network has no report, or to check what a report suggests, run a short test in the network’s own analytics:
- Pick three or four time slots. Take them from the network’s activity report if it has one, or from the working hours in your followers’ main time zone.
- Rotate your posts across the slots for two to four weeks. Keep the rest the same: the same kind of post, similar length, no paid boost.
- Write down each post’s views or impressions a day after it went out. Use the same measure every time, from the network’s analytics.
- Compare the slots. Keep the one that does best and test one new slot against it next month.
A few posts per slot is a small sample, and one post that takes off can tilt the result. Read the outcome as a hint, run the test again, and check again every few months, since followers change.
A scheduler makes this test easy to keep up: you set the slots once and the posts go out at those times whether you are online or not. Postnavo is built for that. A queue will hold your best times as recurring time slots, and the posts you add will go into them.