The best time to post on Facebook, according to the two largest studies
Meta publishes nothing about a best posting hour. What exists is research by scheduling companies, measuring the posts their own customers sent.
| Study | Sample | Published | Headline answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer | 14 million Facebook posts | February 26, 2026 | Thursday 9 a.m., mornings generally |
| Sprout Social | Nearly 2 billion engagements, roughly 307,000 profiles | 2026 analysis | Tuesday and Wednesday, 12 to 8 p.m. |
Those two answers do not overlap by a single hour on most days. That is not a detail to smooth over, it is the finding.
Both tables, side by side
Times are local to your audience.
| Day | Buffer | Sprout Social |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 9 p.m., then 10 p.m. and 7 p.m. | 12 to 1 p.m. |
| Tuesday | 8 a.m., then 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. | 12 to 8 p.m. |
| Wednesday | 8 a.m., then 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. | 12 to 8 p.m. |
| Thursday | 9 a.m., then 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. | 12 to 2 p.m., and again at 8 p.m. |
| Friday | 8 a.m., then 7 a.m. and 6 a.m. | Midday |
| Saturday | 10 p.m., then 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. | Worst, with Sunday |
| Sunday | 10 a.m., then 9 a.m. and 8 a.m. | Worst, with Saturday |
Buffer's single best slot of the entire week is Thursday 9 a.m. Its best day overall is Wednesday, with Thursday close behind.
Day by day, with both answers
Monday. Buffer's peak is 9 p.m., and it notes Monday ranks among the lower performing days. Sprout says 12 to 1 p.m., reasoning that people are catching up on email all morning. Both agree Monday is not your strongest day.
Tuesday. Buffer says 8 a.m., with 7 p.m. second. Sprout says 12 to 8 p.m. Their second choice and Sprout's window overlap in the evening, which makes 7 p.m. the compromise slot.
Wednesday. Buffer's best day overall, peaking at 8 a.m. with 9 a.m. behind it. Sprout gives the same day an eight hour block from 12 to 8 p.m. Buffer's third choice, 6 p.m., sits inside it.
Thursday. Buffer's strongest slot of the week, 9 a.m., flanked by 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sprout says 12 to 2 p.m. and again at 8 p.m. Nothing overlaps, and this is the day where copying the wrong table costs you most.
Friday. Buffer says 8 a.m., with 7 a.m. and 6 a.m. behind it. Sprout says midday and notes engagement drops as people mentally check out. Both treat Friday as a holding day.
Saturday. Buffer names 10 p.m. but calls Saturday one of the least optimal days. Sprout puts it among the worst two days of the week. Agreement, for once.
Sunday. Buffer says 10 a.m., with 9 a.m. and 8 a.m. behind, and rates Sunday the third best day overall while still well behind midweek. Sprout puts it among the worst.
The contradiction
Buffer's data says posting in the morning between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekdays performs well, and that performance drops through the afternoon, making 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. generally the worst times to post.
Sprout's entire recommendation for its two best days is 12 to 8 p.m.
In other words, one study's prime window is the other study's worst block. Both read enormous samples. Both are describing a real pattern in their own population of accounts, and neither one is describing yours.
Why two honest studies disagree this hard
- Different customers. Buffer skews toward small businesses and creators. Sprout's sample comes from 30,000 paying organizations. Their audiences behave differently.
- Different measures. One ranks median engagement rate per post. The other counts engagements in total.
- Page type. A local business page, a media page and a community group have different daily rhythms, and both samples mix them.
- Different periods. February and later in the year are not the same season of behavior.
- Mixed time zones. Global samples reported on one clock.
Finding your own window on your own page
Facebook gives page owners the activity of the people who already follow the page, which is the number that settles this.
- Open Meta Business Suite, or the Insights section of your page.
- Find the audience or followers view, where activity by hour and day is reported.
- Write down the two hours that stay high across several days.
- Open your best performing posts of the last 90 days and note what hour each went out.
- Where both lists agree, that is your first test slot.
Your own numbers settle what the two studies cannot, because they describe the people who follow your page rather than someone else's customers. Scheduling the slot you choose is done in Business Suite, as set out for Instagram in how to schedule Instagram posts; the same screen covers a Facebook Page.
Pages, groups and reels do not share a schedule
| Where you post | Who sees it | How much timing matters |
|---|---|---|
| Page post | Followers first, plus suggestions. | Most. A known audience with a routine. |
| Group post | Group members, often with notifications. | Less. Members come back to the group on their own schedule. |
| Facebook reel | Mostly people who do not follow you. | Least. Reels keep being served for weeks. |
| Story | Existing followers, for 24 hours. | Most of all, because it expires. |
Every table on this page describes page posts. Applying a page posting time to a reel is optimizing a number that does not move.
Posting times by audience, not by industry
These are hypotheses to test against your own follower activity, not rules.
| Who you sell to | Likely window | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Office workers | Early morning, lunch, and after 8 p.m. | Mid morning meetings. |
| Shift workers and trades | Very early, and late evening. | The afternoon block, which is their working day. |
| Parents of young children | After bedtime, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. | Late afternoon. |
| Retired customers | Mid morning, which is quiet for everyone else. | Late evening. |
| Local buyers | The hour before the decision. | Times far from the moment of purchase. |
Notice the retired row. It is the one audience for whom Buffer's morning answer is probably right and Sprout's afternoon answer probably is not.
What these studies mean by engagement on Facebook
Both studies rank hours by engagement, and the word hides a decision. A reaction, a comment, a share and a link click are not the same act, and a page that wants sales cares about them very differently.
| Signal | What it costs the reader | What it means to a business |
|---|---|---|
| A reaction | One tap. | Little on its own, though it feeds the ranking. |
| A comment | A sentence and some attention. | A conversation you can answer. |
| A share | Putting their name on your content. | Your post shown to their friends, who have never seen the page. |
| A link click | Leaving Facebook. | The one that shows intent. |
| A message | Writing to you directly. | Usually the closest thing to a sale. |
An hour that wins on reactions can lose on link clicks. When you run your own test, decide first which of these rows you are optimizing for, because the best hour is different for each.
Cross posting, and why the same content needs two times
Plenty of businesses publish the same content to Facebook and Instagram at once, through Meta Business Suite or a scheduling tool. It saves an hour a week and costs performance on at least one of the two.
The audiences differ in habit, and the published studies put Facebook and Instagram peaks in different parts of the day, as a comparison with the best time to post on Instagram shows. Sending one post to both at 8 a.m. optimizes for whichever platform you happened to have in mind.
The workable compromise is to write once and schedule twice, at each platform's own tested slot. The extra work is two minutes, not an hour. How the two accounts are joined for cross posting is in how to link Facebook to Instagram.
Testing a posting time so the result means something
| Rule | In practice |
|---|---|
| One variable | Same format and topic. Only the hour changes. |
| Enough posts | At least five per slot before concluding anything. |
| Rotate the slots | Cycle four windows so one good week does not decide it. |
| Judge at 30 days | Not at 24 hours. |
| Use medians | One post that travelled will move any average. |
What moves Facebook reach more than the clock
- Comments and shares, which bring the post to people the page never reached.
- Posting something people want to answer, rather than something to scroll past.
- Replying in the first hour, which is the part of timing you actually control.
- Not disappearing for three weeks, so the people who follow the page keep seeing it.
- Putting budget behind the posts that already worked, instead of hoping for organic reach, which is how paid social starts.
A schedule a business can keep
- Read your own follower activity first.
- Pick one morning slot and one evening slot, since the studies disagree, and let your own page decide between them.
- Hold both for eight weeks before changing anything.
- Keep Saturday light. It is the one day both studies agree about.
- Be there for the first hour to answer comments.
- Review on medians at 30 days, then change one thing.
The same comparison for short video is in the best time to post on TikTok, and for long video in the best time to post on YouTube. That test is a normal part of social media management, and the free social media audit checks whether your page's problem is the hour or the gap between posts.
How we will test this
Not run yetEverything above comes from the published sources listed below, and nothing here is presented as something we measured. Our own test on live accounts has not been run yet.
This is the test we will run: we run the morning against the afternoon on our own page: the same format in four slots over eight weeks, judged on median reach at 30 days, alongside what the page's own follower activity screen reports each week.
Platforms change behavior without announcing it, so once the first test is run we repeat it every quarter, and this section will say when it was run and on which devices and app versions.
Sources
Read on September 23, 2026.
- Buffer, Best time to post on Facebook, 14 million posts, February 26, 2026
- Sprout Social, Best times to post on Facebook, 2 billion engagements, 2026
- Meta Business Help Center, Create and manage posts in Meta Business Suite on desktop
Questions people ask next
What is the best time to post on Facebook?+
It depends which study you trust. Buffer's 14 million posts point to Thursday 9 a.m. and weekday mornings, while Sprout Social's data recommends Tuesday and Wednesday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Are mornings or afternoons better on Facebook?+
Buffer found mornings from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. strongest and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. generally the worst. Sprout's recommendation is the afternoon. Your own follower activity is the tiebreaker.
What is the best day to post on Facebook?+
Buffer says Wednesday, with Thursday close behind. Sprout says Monday through Thursday. Both agree the weekend is weakest.
What is the worst day to post on Facebook?+
Saturday. It is the one day both studies agree on.
Does Facebook publish a best posting time?+
No. Every number in circulation comes from scheduling companies measuring their own customers' posts.
Where do I see when my followers are online?+
In Meta Business Suite or your page's Insights, in the audience or followers view, which reports activity by hour and day.
Does posting time matter for Facebook reels?+
Much less. Reels mostly reach people who do not follow the page and keep being served for weeks after publishing.
Does posting time matter in a group?+
Less than on a page. Members return to a group on their own schedule, often through notifications rather than the feed.
How long should I test a posting time?+
At least five posts per slot across eight weeks, compared on medians at 30 days.
Does posting time deserve this much attention?+
No. It deserves one eight week test, then a fixed slot. Comments, shares and consistency move a page further than the hour ever will.