Free publishing tool
Best time to post on TikTok
For creators and founders choosing when to publish a TikTok for viewers in another timezone. Filter by day, pick where your audience is, and read the windows in their time and yours. On TikTok the hour decides who sees a video first, not who sees it in the end, so treat every window here as a test slot.
Showing all 12 windows.
| Day | Audience local time | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 10am to 12pm | Often reported |
| Tuesday | 9am to 12pm | Most reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Wednesday | 9am to 12pm | Most reported |
| Thursday | 9am to 1pm | Most reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Friday | 10am to 1pm | Often reported |
| 5pm to 7pm | Quietest | |
| Saturday | 11am to 1pm | Often reported |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported | |
| Sunday | 10am to 12pm | Quietest |
| 7pm to 9pm | Often reported |
Treat this as a starting hypothesis, not a finding
TikTok does not publish engagement by hour. Every table like this one, including this one, is assembled from third-party studies that sample public posts, and those studies disagree with each other by several hours. The shape they share is weekday mid-morning to early afternoon with a second peak in the evening, and, unlike Instagram, weekend evenings are reported as reasonable because TikTok is a leisure feed.
Timing also matters less here than on a follower feed. The For You page shows a new video to a test batch of people who do not follow you and widens or stops based on how that batch responds, so the first few hours after posting matter more than the hour on the clock. A strong video posted at a quiet time still gets its test; a weak one posted at the peak still fails it.
TikTok Studio → Analytics → Followers → Most active times describes your audience rather than everyone's. Use these windows to pick a first schedule, then replace them with what that chart 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 the TikTok windows come from
TikTok publishes no platform-wide engagement-by-hour data. The table above is the shape that recurs across third-party studies of public videos: weekday mid-morning into early afternoon is the most consistent window, weekday evenings are a second peak, and weekend evenings show up as usable in a way they rarely do for Instagram or LinkedIn. TikTok is a leisure feed, and Saturday night is leisure.
The studies disagree by hours, so each window is two to four hours wide and labelled by how often it is reported rather than given a single magic minute. None of it is drawn from your account. It is a starting schedule for an account with no data, and the Most active times chart in TikTok Studio replaces it.
Reading a weekend window from another timezone
Weekend evening windows are where timezone conversion catches people out, because a few hours of difference can move the post to another day. Take Saturday 7pm to 9pm for an audience in London, with the UK on winter time:
| You are in | Saturday 7pm to 9pm in London is | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 2pm to 4pm, Saturday | 3pm to 5pm until the US changes its clocks on 1 November |
| Bengaluru | 12:30am to 2:30am, Sunday | Schedule it ahead; it lands after midnight your time |
| Singapore | 3am to 5am, Sunday | Schedule it ahead and check the date as well as the hour |
| Sydney | 6am to 8am, Sunday | Australia is on summer time, eleven hours ahead of London |
Timing matters less on TikTok than people think, and differently
On a follower feed, the hour you post decides who scrolls past it. On TikTok most views come from the For You feed, which shows a new video to a small batch of people, watches how they respond, and widens or stops from there. The hour does not decide who eventually sees the video. It decides who is awake for the first batch.
TikTok's own explanation, “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou” on its newsroom, says follower count is not a direct factor in what gets recommended, and that a strong signal such as watching a longer video to the end carries more weight than a weak one. Completion and rewatches carry a video after the first batch; the clock does not.
That reframes what a posting window is for. You are choosing the audience for a test, so you want the hours when the people most likely to watch to the end are on the app.
Where TikTok Studio shows when your viewers are active
Open TikTok Studio from your profile, go to Analytics, then the Followers tab, and scroll to Most active times. TikTok's Creator Academy describes it as when your viewers were most active on TikTok over the last 7 days, broken down by hour and by day.
Seven days is a short window. A holiday week, or one video that reached far outside your usual audience, can move the peak by hours, so read the chart on two or three separate weeks before you move your schedule.
Testing a posting time on TikTok
- Choose one window from the table and post at least three videos in it over two weeks. One video tells you about that video, and on TikTok the spread between videos is wide.
- Keep the hook style, length and topic as steady as you can while the hour is what changes.
- For each video, note average watch time and the share of viewers who finished it. Likes follow reach, and on TikTok reach follows completion.
- Open each video's traffic sources. A slot that only adds views from the Following feed has changed very little, because For You is where most views come from.
- Move to a second window for the next two weeks and compare the medians, not the single best video.
Questions about TikTok posting times
What is the best time to post on TikTok on a Sunday?
The table marks Sunday 7pm to 9pm in your audience's timezone as often reported and Sunday 10am to noon as the quieter option. Sunday evening is one of the places TikTok differs most from Instagram, whose table on this site marks weekends as the quietest days.
Does the time I post matter on TikTok?
It matters for the first test batch, not for the final reach. TikTok shows a new video to a small group, then widens or stops depending on how they watch. Posting when your likely viewers are awake gives that first group a fair chance; it cannot rescue a video people swipe away from.
How long should I test a TikTok posting time?
Two weeks and at least three videos per slot. TikTok's own active-times chart covers only the last 7 days, and single videos vary so much that one result is mostly noise. Compare the median watch time per slot rather than the best video in each.
Why did my Most active times chart change from last week?
It describes only the last 7 days of your viewers. A video that travelled to a new region, a holiday or a school break can move the peak by hours. Read it across two or three weeks and act on the hours that keep appearing.
Should I post when my followers are online or when everyone is?
When the people most likely to finish the video are online. For a small account that usually means your followers' timezone, because they are the only viewers you have data on, and TikTok Studio's Most active times chart describes exactly them. A global peak is a guess about everyone else.
Related tools
Instagram's windows for the same audience, where Stories and follower feeds make the hour matter more.
Keep the hook steady while you test the hour, using one of six fill-in hook structures.
Time a script at speaking pace so the video length stays constant across your test slots.