The Best Time To Post On Facebook In 2024

Want to know the best time to post on Facebook? You’re in luck.

In this post, you’ll learn everything you need to know to figure out when to publish your Facebook posts for maximum views and engagements.

First, I’ll explain why there are no easy answers when it comes to perfecting your Facebook posting schedule.

Then, I’ll reveal what several large-scale studies say the best times and days to post on Facebook are (and why you might want to ignore them).

And after that, I’ll cover how you can find your personal best time to post using Facebook’s analytics data or third-party tools.

Key takeaways

Generally,

There are two best times to post on Facebook according to studies:
7 AM to 3 PM from Monday to Thursday…
…and 5 PM to 1 AM from Friday to Sunday

However,

The best time to post on Facebook varies depending on factors like the day of the week, industry, and target audience.
The best way to determine your personal best time to post is through trial and error, and analyzing your own data.

Is there a universal best time to post on Facebook?

No, there isn’t a universal ‘best time to post on Facebook’ that will apply to everyone.

And the reason for that is that everyone’s target audience is unique.

Your best time to post may be completely different from mine, as your audience might be more active and likely to engage with content during different hours, on different days of the week.

So ultimately, the only way to find your personal best time to post on Facebook is through trial and error, and by combing through your data to figure out when your posts tend to perform best.

We’ll show you how to do that later.

But first, we’re going to look at what the statistics say the best time to post on Facebook is, based on the results of multiple large-scale studies.

Just keep in mind that every study has reached different conclusions about the optimal posting time, and there’s no general consensus, so it’s best to take these stats with a pinch of salt.

Nonetheless, if you’re building a Facebook audience from scratch, you might want to use them to help guide your initial posting schedule until you have plenty of your own data to work from.

What is the best time to post on Facebook (according to the data)?

There have been lots of studies that have tried to figure out the best time to post on Facebook by analyzing millions of posts.

And unfortunately, they all came to different conclusions—there’s no general consensus.

In the table below, I’ve provided an overview of the findings of each of the leading studies.

Study	Best time(s) to post on Facebook	Best day(s) to post on Facebook
SocialPilot	7-9 AM, 1-3 PM, 7-9 PM	Wednesday & Thursday
Sprout Social	8 AM – 2 PM	Monday to Thursday
Hootsuite	8 AM – 12 PM	Tuesday & Thursday
Buffer	1-3 PM	Thursdays & Fridays
CoSchedule	7 PM	Fridays
TrackMaven	5 PM – 1 AM	Saturday & Sunday
HubSpot	6-9 PM	Friday & Saturday

As you can see, there are some stark differences between them.

But what’s really interesting is that we can broadly categorize these studies into two camps:

Those that found the best time to post to Facebook is before/during work (morning/early afternoon) at the start/in the middle of the week (Monday-Thursday)
Those that found the best time to post to Facebook is after work (evening/night) towards the end of the week (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)

Sprout Social, Hootsuite, SocialPilot, and Buffer are in the former camp. CoSchedule, TrackMaven, and HubSpot are in the latter.

Our verdict: Both camps are right. Views and engagement peak several times throughout the day on Facebook, so there are multiple best times to post.

We can summarize it like this. Generally, the best time to post on Facebook is:

Either 7 AM to 3 PM from Monday to Thursday
Or 5 PM to 1 AM from Friday to Sunday

Really, it all comes down to who your target audience is and what their browsing habits are.

If you’re a B2B brand targeting marketing professionals, posting content during working hours mid-week is probably a smart move.

But if you’re an influencer and your target audience is consumers looking for fashion tips, it might be better to target them after work finishes or on the weekend, during their leisure time.

Best time to post on Facebook by day of the week

A few studies also looked at the best time to post on Facebook on specific days of the week. Here’s an overview of their findings.

The best time to post on Facebook for each day of the week, according to several leading studies:

	CoSchedule	SocialPilot	Hootsuite
Monday	8 AM	6 AM – 4 PM	6 AM – 4 PM
Tuesday	9 AM	7 AM – 4 PM	7 AM – 4 PM
Wednesday	9 AM	7 AM – 4 PM	7 AM – 4 PM
Thursday	9 AM	6 AM – 4 PM	6 AM – 4 PM
Friday	9 AM	7 AM – 4 PM	7 AM – 4 PM
Saturday	9 AM	8 AM – 3 PM	10 AM – 3 PM
Sunday	8 AM	11 AM – 4 PM	11 AM – 4 PM

As you can see, peak times tend to stay pretty consistent throughout the week, regardless of the study you look at.

The exception seems to be on the weekends when the best time to post starts a little later in the morning (according to 2 of the 3 studies). People often tend to sleep in on a Saturday/Sunday, so this makes a lot of sense.

Best times to post on Facebook by niche

The best time to post on Facebook also seems to vary depending on what niche/industry you’re in.

Two studies have tried to identify the best times to post for each industry, one by CoSchedule and one by Sprout Social. Here’s an overview of what they found.

The best times to post on Facebook by niche (per CoSchedule):

B2C – 9-11 AM, 12-2 PM & 4-6 PM
B2B – 9 AM & 3-5 PM
Software – 9 AM, 3 PM, & 5 PM
Healthcare – 6-8 AM, 9 AM, & 11-1 PM
Media – 7 AM, 11 AM, & 6 PM
Higher Education – 8 AM, 12 PM, & 3 PM

The best times to post on Facebook by niche (per Sprout Social):

Consumer Goods – 7 PM on Mondays
Healthcare – 9 AM-12 PM & 1-8 PM on Mondays & Tuesdays
Hospitality – 10 AM – 9 PM from Monday to Thursday
Media – 6 AM – 3 PM from Monday to Wednesday
Nonprofit – 10 AM – 4 PM on Tuesdays
Restaurants – 11 AM on Mondays and Wednesdays
Education – 8 AM – 1 PM from Monday to Wednesday
Travel & Tourism – 9 AM – 3 PM on Mondays & Tuesdays

How to find your best time to post on Facebook

As I mentioned earlier, you can’t rely on statistics alone to find your best time to post as they don’t apply universally to every Facebook account.

Eventually, you’ll need to determine your own optimal posting schedule for your specific audience.

Here are some tips to help you do that.

Use a social media scheduling tool

The easiest way to find your personal optimal posting time on Facebook is to use a social media scheduling tool like Sendible that can automatically figure it out for you.

When you schedule a post on Sendible, you have the option to click Set optimal time.

Sendible will then schedule it at the perfect time, based on your posting history over the last 30 days and when your previous posts have received the most engagement.

Pretty cool, right?

That’s not the only benefit either. Using a scheduling tool also helps you stay organized. You won’t have to remember to log in to Facebook and publish posts every week manually—you can just set them and forget them months in advance in your scheduler.

Plus, most scheduling tools support multiple social media platforms, so you can manage your entire social media strategy in one place.

View your Facebook Insights Audience report

If you’d prefer to work out your optimal posting times for yourself, the best way to go about it is to look at Facebook Insights.

First, you’ll need to sign up for Meta Business Suite.

Log in, and click the three horizontal lines in the top right of the sidebar to open up the menu. Then, click Insights.

View your Facebook Insights Audience report

Next, click the Audience tab, and scroll down to where it says Top towns/cities.

View your Facebook Insights Audience report - Top towns

Here, you should be able to see a breakdown of where the bulk of your Facebook audience is located.

This is important, as you’ll want to make sure you’re posting content at peak times in your audience’s local time zone.

For example, let’s say half of your Facebook audience lives on the west coast of the US (PST time zone) and the other half lives on the east coast (EST).

Now let’s imagine that you’ve worked out that your best time to post generally is 1-2 PM, as you want to reach people during their lunch break.

Well, the problem is that when it’s 1 PM for your audience in the west coast, it’s already 4 PM for your audience in the east coast.

So as a compromise, you might decide to start sharing posts at 11 AM PST instead. That way, you’ll catch your west coast audience just before lunchtime, and your east coast audience at late lunch (2 PM).

Look at your historical data

Elsewhere on Facebook Insights, you can access the Content report.

Here, you’ll see an overview of all the posts you’ve shared on Facebook, alongside performance metrics like reach, likes and reactions, comments, etc.

Sort your posts by the performance metric that’s most important to use (i.e. reach) to instantly see your best-performing posts.

Then, look at the dates they were published on and see if you can spot any trends. For example, you might find that most of your top posts were published on a Monday around mid-day. If that’s the case, then Monday at mid-day might be your optimal posting time.

Of course, for this to work, you’ll need plenty of historical posting data to look at, which brings us to the final tip…

Experiment with different posting schedules

In order to find your perfect posting time on Facebook, you’ll need to do some trial and error.

After all, if you’ve never shared a post at 1 AM on a Saturday, how do you know it isn’t a good time to post?

On the other hand, consistency is important too. If you’re constantly sharing Facebook posts at different times/days, your followers won’t know when to expect the next one, which could hurt your engagement.

So what can you do? I’d recommend applying the 80/20 rule.

80% of the posts you share on your Facebook page should go out at the same times/days every week (the times you currently think are your best times to post based on the data you have) for consistent engagement.

The other 20% of your Facebook posts should be published at different times/days for trial and error purposes.

After a while, you’ll have tried lots of different times, and you can go back and look at your historical data in Facebook Insights’ Content report to see which times have generated the best reach and engagement.

Bonus tip: You can get access to even deeper insights if you use a dedicated social media analytics and reporting tool.

Frequently asked questions

Before we wrap up, here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about when to post on Facebook.

Yes. It’s important to try to post on Facebook when your target audience is most active. This will help to make sure your post reaches as many people as possible when it first goes live.

And that’s important, because the more people your post reaches off the bat, the more opportunities you’ll have to get people to engage (like, comment, share, etc.).

And remember: Facebook’s algorithm looks at your post’s engagement to determine its visibility. The more engagements you get in those first few hours, the greater the chance that Facebook will serve it up to more people, and the greater the chance that it will go viral.

The best time to post Facebook Reels is the same as any other type of Facebook post: Whenever your target audience is most active and likely to engage.

That time will be different for every brand/creator. As a starting point, I’d suggest posting your Reels anywhere from 9 AM – 7 PM in your audience’s local time. Then, look at your analytics to see which times/days perform best and go from there.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t publish its usage data, so it’s anyone’s guess when most people use the social media platform.

You can, however, use Facebook Insights to find out when your specific target audience is most active.

Again, it depends on your target audience, as well as the type of Facebook posts you plan on creating.

Weekends are good if you want to catch people when they have plenty of free time. For example, if you’re sharing a live stream or a long-form video, it’s a good idea to post it on the weekend so that your viewers will have time to sit down and watch it.

On the other hand, weekdays are good if you’re targeting people at work or on their commute. For example, if you’re a B2B brand, or you’re posting short-form Reels that people might scroll through while they’re on the train. You get the idea.

There’s no one-size-fits-all ‘worst time’ to post on Facebook.

Generally, it’s best to avoid late-night hours (1 AM – 5 AM) as fewer people tend to be on Facebook at that time. But even then, you might find your posts perform surprisingly well as there’s less competition at that time too.

Ultimately, you’ll have to look at your own data and see which of your previous posts flopped, and what time/day you shared them on, to determine when the worst time to post is.

Sources

Final thoughts

That concludes our guide to the best time to post on Facebook.

Overall, the best time to post on Facebook overall seems to be around X to X PM.

However, there’s a lot of conflicting data out there, and you’ll get different answers depending on which study you look at—so take the statistics with a pinch of salt.

It’s a much better idea to determine the optimal posting schedule for your specific audience based on your own data. Or you can just let a scheduler tool like Sendible work it out for you.

Related reading:

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