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You know the opening scene in the Lion King where Rafiki, in firm warrior I pose, presents Simba to the kingdom?
The best time to post on Instagram is sort of like that. Except every marketing blog thinks it’s Rafiki. And Simba [aka the data] is like “I’m not so sure about this…”
So when is the best time to post on Instagram? There are approximately 39587 answers to this across the web. So who is right, who is wrong, and who just copied and pasted someone else’s data? Read on to find out:
Asking when the best time is to post on Instagram is like asking how much Google Ads cost. There are too many factors to give a definitive answer and it’s a moving target. It all depends on:
So the answer is yes, but that it’s different for every account. Even still, benchmark data can give you a solid starting point, and after slogging through the jungle of posts out there on this question, I came out with two core sources with up-to-date data: Later and Sprout Social. And make no mistake—each of these resources emphasizes the importance of identifying your own best time (we’ll get to that later).
Of course, this chart is the gazillion foot view, because we’ve got best times to post by day of the week, region of the US, vertical, and more. So put your helmet on to contain the blast that is your brain exploding.
This post includes conclusions drawn by Later, Sprout Social, ExpertVoice, Hootsuite, Planoly, Statusbrew, and Influencer Marketing Hub. I was surprised to find that Hootsuite, Buffer, and Coschedule did not have benchmark data on this.
Later’s report from August 2021 is based on a study of 35M posts, excluding Reels and IGTV.
When I first saw these times, I thought it was a mistake. They’re super early! What’s the deal?
Later says that for most businesses their Instagram marketing strategy is to post when their audiences are most active (9am-1pm), but this is when competition is highest. So if you post prior to that, you are likely to get more engagement, which will lead the algorithm to favor your post and give you a headstart in ranking. In addition, you make it more likely that you’ll show up in your followers’ Feeds on their first scroll of the day.
Here is Later’s day-by-day breakdown:
Day Best time Second best time
Sprout Social’s best times to post on Instagram come from a study on over 20,000 of its users’ accounts. Its findings are opposite Later’s, as it takes the traditional approach of posting while engagement is high.
It’s interesting to see that engagement in the evening starts to trail off earlier and earlier as we go from Monday to Sunday and that engagement starts earliest on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Here’s Sprout Social’s day-by-day breakdown:
Day Best time Second best time
ExpertVoice provides slightly different times but are more closely aligned with Later’s data. It doesn’t cite a source, other than an image sourced from “Latergramme,” which became Later back in 2016, so I’m not sure how accurate this information is.
Day Best time to post on Instagram
Hootsuite doesn’t have any recent information based on data studies, but it says that overall, the best time to post on Instagram is 11am on Wednesday. It takes the same approach as Sprout Social—to post when engagement is highest. It also shares the times that work best for its own Instagram audience: 8am-12pm and 4pm-5pm—which translates to wake up and lunchtime on the west coast, and the start of and end of the workday on the east coast.
Sprout Social also shares the best times to post on Instagram for eight different verticals:
Vertical Best time Second best time Best day Worst day
The variation among industries in this chart alone, and its differences with respect to the overall data shows you that the best time to post on Instagram for your specific business really is something you have to find out for yourself.
Using data from its app users, including likes, comments, saves, and followers, Planoly came up with ideal times to post to Instagram based on time zone. The implication here is that lifestyles vary geographically. I believe it! Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make the answer to this question even more complicated…
Planoly’s day-by-day breakdown:
Day PST MST/CST EST
Statusbrew had numbers on the best time to post to Instagram, but it just repurposed SproutSocial’s data and at times inaccurately. It does, however, share best times to post to IGTV and Instagram Live—for what it’s worth.
Day Best time to post to IGTV
The best time to run an Instagram Live is Monday-Friday, 12pm or 7-9pm. Check out our tips on how to run an incredible Instagram Live session.
Influencer Marketing Hub provides the best time to post Reels based on a study of over 100,000 global Instagram post and engagement rates.
Here’s Influencer Marketing Hub’s day-by-day breakdown:
Day Best time to Post to Reels
Chances are, you’re looking to find the answer to this question because you are looking to get the most engagement from your posts. So in this section I’ll provide some tips on how to identify ideal posting times for your account as well as how to improve engagement with your posts.
So maybe you want to target lunchtime for your audience. But lunchtime where? In California? Boston? Instagram’s native analytics platform (Insights) can help you with this, since it shows you:
With this information, you can see in which time zone your audience is most active and post accordingly (Planoly’s data would be useful here). Age range may also help in ballparking wake-up, idle, and bed times.
Insights are only available for business accounts. Learn how to set one up here.
Buyer personas are fictional characters that represent your customers as human beings—their lifestyle, occupation, hobbies, family, education level, interests, and more. This is essential for identifying the best times to post on Instagram. For example, maybe lunchtime isn’t the best time to post for your audience if they’re more likely to eat with others or work out on their lunch break. And evening is probably not best for parents who are busy with putting their kids to bed. More questions to consider:
This information can help you to identify the best content to publish and when.
There are a number of social media management platforms out there that offer more analytics than Insights, and even allow you to schedule your Instagram posts. These include Later, Buffer, HubSpot, SproutSocial, Autogrammer, Schedugram, and Tailwind. Some even have a feature that suggests posting times, like Hootsuite:
On June 8, 2021, Instagram published an update explaining its algorithm works. It gathers together all of the recent posts shared by the people that person follows and then ranks them according to thousands of signals, including:
So if you want to show up in the Instagram Feed, recency pales in comparison to engagement. The post says “In Feed, the five interactions we look at most closely are how likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post, comment on it, like it, save it, and tap on the profile photo.”
Which leads to the next suggestion.
Clearly, we can see that it’s not about posting at the best time, but about creating the best posts. This increases your engagement signal strength over time which wins you algorithmic favor. Here are some ways to optimize for those five interactions mentioned above:
To get them to:
Focus on creating engaging and interesting content first, then optimize by posting at the right time. Posting the right content at the “wrong” time is much better than posting the wrong content at the exact right time. For more Instagram marketing tips and (lots more awesome) post ideas, head to Local Social Media Lab—it’s a gold mine!
When you have attractive, useful, emotionally engaging content that aligns with your audience’s goals, pain points, lifestyle, and values!
Just kidding…kind of.
Only you can find out the best time to post on Instagram for your account specifically, but I think the more important question to ask yourself first is: How important is it to know? If Instagram is a small part of your social media marketing strategy and you’re mainly just using it for brand awareness, you can probably just go with the traditional ballpark ranges (late morning, early afternoon) for your posts. If you rely heavily on social media to meet your marketing goals, you may want to try out Later’s approach of early posting, and get into the research, testing, and tools.
But the most important question to answer is: What are the best posts I can create for my followers? I know that’s not simple. But luckily the information and other posts linked to in this post will equip you to find this out and execute.
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