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Best time to post on Instagram
For anyone posting to an Instagram audience that lives somewhere other than they do. Pick where your followers are, read each window in their local time and in yours, and treat the table as a first schedule to test. Your own Insights replace it once your account has 100 followers.
| Day | Audience local time | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 11am to 1pm | Often reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Quietest | |
| Tuesday | 9am to 1pm | Most reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Wednesday | 9am to 1pm | Most reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Thursday | 9am to 1pm | Most reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Friday | 9am to 12pm | Often reported |
| Saturday | 10am to 12pm | Quietest |
| Sunday | 10am to 1pm | Quietest |
Treat this as a starting hypothesis, not a finding
Instagram does not publish engagement by hour. Every table like this one, including this one, is assembled from third-party studies of public posts, and those studies disagree with each other by several hours. What they agree on is the shape: weekday late morning is busier than weekend afternoon.
Your own Instagram Insights beats every global average here, because it describes your followers rather than everyone's. Use these windows to pick a first schedule, then replace them with what your own account tells you after a few weeks.
Times convert using your browser's timezone database, so daylight saving is handled for the current date. A window near a clock change can move by an hour on the day itself.
Where these windows come from
Instagram publishes no engagement-by-hour figures for the platform. The windows in the table are the shape that recurs across third-party analyses of public posts: weekday late morning is the most consistent finding, weekday evenings are a second peak, and weekends are quieter. They are two to four hours wide because the studies disagree with each other by hours, and a narrower window would claim a precision nobody has.
So read the table as a starting schedule, not a finding about your account. It is a reasonable first guess for a new account and a poor substitute for the active-hours chart Instagram gives you once you have 100 followers.
Converting a window: a worked example
Say most of your followers are in New York and the table shows Tuesday 9am to 1pm, the strongest weekday window. That is 9am to 1pm New York time. Here is where it lands for a founder working from somewhere else, once the US is on standard time from 1 November 2026:
| You are in | Tuesday 9am to 1pm in New York is | Note |
|---|---|---|
| London | 2pm to 6pm, Tuesday | Five hours ahead for most of the year |
| Berlin | 3pm to 7pm, Tuesday | Six hours ahead for most of the year |
| Bengaluru | 7:30pm to 11:30pm, Tuesday | Ten and a half hours ahead in winter, nine and a half in summer |
| Singapore | 10pm Tuesday to 2am Wednesday | The window crosses midnight, so schedule it rather than staying up |
Reels, feed posts and Stories reach people in different ways
Instagram is several feeds with different rules, and the hour matters most where the audience is your followers. In “Instagram Ranking Explained” (Adam Mosseri, May 31, 2023), Feed mixes recent posts from accounts you follow with recommendations, and lists when a post was shared among its ranking signals. Stories show only accounts you follow, ordered by how often you view and engage with each one.
Reels work differently. Instagram says the majority of what someone sees in Reels comes from accounts they do not follow, chosen by what the Reel is and how people respond to it. Most of a Reel's audience is not waiting for you to post, which makes the hour a smaller lever for a Reel than for a photo, a carousel or a Story.
So be strict about timing for Stories and for feed posts aimed at your followers. A Story lasts 24 hours, and one posted while your audience is asleep spends a third of its life unseen.
Where Instagram shows your followers' active hours
Instagram's Help Center lists “Times they're most active” among the follower insights a professional account gets once it has at least 100 followers, next to follower growth, top locations and age range. Open the professional dashboard from the top of your profile and look under your total followers. A personal account does not get the chart, so switch to a creator or business account first.
Above 100 followers, that chart describes the people who follow you, which no global table can. Check its top locations too: if a third of your followers turn out to be in a second country, the timezone question changes before the hour does.
Finding your own Instagram window in four weeks
- Week one: post feed posts and Stories inside the strongest window from the table, in your audience's time, on your normal days. Log the time, format, accounts reached and the follower share of that reach for each post.
- Week two: same days, but move each post about three hours earlier or later. Use feed posts and Stories, where follower timing decides the first audience; a Reel mixes in the recommendation system and muddies the test.
- Week three: keep the better hour and swap the days, a Tuesday for a Saturday, to see whether the day matters more than the hour.
- Week four: rerun the best combination. A window that wins twice becomes your default; one that wins once was probably the post.
Judge by follower reach rather than likes. Insights reports each post's accounts reached split between followers and non-followers as an estimate, and a better hour should lift the follower share; non-follower reach says more about the post than the time. The full version of this test, for every platform, is in the guide to the best time to post on social media.
Questions about Instagram posting times
Is there one best time to post on Instagram?
No single hour holds for every account. The pattern most third-party studies share is weekday late morning in the audience's timezone, which is why Tuesday to Thursday 9am to 1pm is marked as the strongest window above. Your own followers' active hours, shown in Insights at 100 followers, are the better answer.
Do the times in the table use my timezone or my followers'?
Your followers'. Every window is in the audience's local time, and the converter shows the same window in your timezone once the page detects it. Posting at 9am where you sit only works if your followers sit there too.
Does posting time matter for Reels?
Less than for feed posts and Stories. Instagram says most of what people see in Reels comes from accounts they do not follow, so a Reel's audience is chosen by the recommendation system rather than by who is online when you post. Use the windows mainly for Stories and follower-facing feed posts.
What if my followers are split across two continents?
Pick the timezone with the largest share, which Insights shows under top locations, and post in its window. A time halfway between New York and London tends to land outside both audiences' busy hours. If the split is close to even, alternate days between the two windows and compare follower reach.
Why can't I see when my followers are most active?
The chart needs a professional account with at least 100 followers. A personal account never shows it, and a new professional account shows it once it crosses 100. Until then, the table on this page is a fair starting point.
Related tools
TikTok's windows run later into weekend evenings, and the For You feed changes what the hour decides.
Compare test weeks by engagement on reach rather than raw likes, so a bigger audience does not hide a weaker hour.
Size the post for the slot: 4:5 for the feed, 9:16 for Reels and Stories.