What is the best time to post on social media?

What 2 billion interactions say about timing

The largest public study on the subject comes from Sprout Social. It analysed nearly 2 billion interactions, likes, comments, shares and clicks, across about 307,000 profiles between late November 2025 and late February 2026. One detail matters for anyone selling across borders: every hour is in local time. A 2 pm peak means 2 pm in London for a British audience and 2 pm in Berlin for a German one. You only need to convert when your audience sits in another time zone than you do.

The strongest windows per platform

The pattern is strikingly similar across platforms: the working week, and the middle of it most of all. Weekends score lowest everywhere. That is an average across hundreds of thousands of accounts, large and small, in every sector. A restaurant chasing Friday-night bookings, or a holiday rental wanting to be seen on Sunday evening as people plan their next trip, may find otherwise in its own data.

Best time to post on Instagram, by day

Instagram peaks on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Sunday scores low on average, but not for every business: for hospitality, travel and leisure, Sunday evening is often when people plan. Reels can also keep surfacing to non-followers for days after posting, so the hour of a reel matters less than that of a photo. What the algorithm rewards is in the Instagram algorithm in 2026, and which format to use in social media image sizes.

Best time to post on TikTok, and on LinkedIn

TikTok runs a little later than Instagram, Tuesday to Friday between 2 and 6 pm, and is less tied to the hour because its feed is built on interest rather than on who you follow. LinkedIn is the platform where timing matters most for business-to-business sellers, since its audience is there during working hours; the detail for B2B, with UK and continental windows side by side, is in the best time to post on LinkedIn. What LinkedIn does with your post afterwards is in the LinkedIn algorithm in 2026.

Finding your own best hour

Any average is a starting point; your own audience is what counts, and each platform shows it:

1. Instagram: Insights, under Followers, shows the most active hours and days of your followers. You need a professional account.
2. TikTok: analytics on a business or creator account show follower activity by hour.
3. LinkedIn: page analytics show interactions per update; post the same type of update at different hours for a month and compare.

Test for a month with the same kind of post at different times, and note for each when it went live and what it did. Plan it in a content calendar and after four weeks you will see a pattern; the channels and goals above it belong in a social media plan. Do not count likes alone: a post at 8 pm with fewer likes but more messages or site visits wins.

Why the hour matters less than it used to

Feeds have not shown everything in time order for years. Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn choose what to show by interest and past interactions, and keep a good post in circulation for days. The hour mostly decides how fast your first reactions come in. A strong post at an average hour beats a weak one at the perfect hour. Which platforms deserve your time is covered in how to use social media for business.