The Best Time to Post on Facebook

Facebook timing advice is usually a list of hours with no word on which audience it assumed, which makes it impossible to adapt. This guide works out the best time to post on Facebook from the largest published timing study, from where Facebook's high-value audience lives, and from why Facebook's ranking forgives a mistimed post in a way Reddit never does. The American and British Facebook audiences are both awake for only about four good hours a day, and a free day-and-hour grid on this page shows every posting slot.

The day and hour grid in your own local time

Every cell in the grid is one hour of one day. A cell's colour is how much of your chosen Facebook audience is awake at that hour, multiplied by the day-of-week engagement pattern from Sprout Social's study, so the darkest cell is the best posting slot. The grid opens on the best slot for the American audience, on your clock, read from your browser's time zone. Pick "Optimise for both" to include the British audience as well. The grid never sends your time zone or your choices anywhere.

Post Tuesday to Thursday, 12 to 3 PM US Eastern

Facebook engagement data and the waking hours of the American and British audiences both point at the same Facebook posting window.

• Sprout Social's engagement data shows midweek middays are the strongest time to post on Facebook. Sprout Social, a company that makes social media scheduling software, analysed nearly two billion engagements and found Monday to Thursday strongest on Facebook, with Tuesday and Wednesday strong from midday to 8 in the evening in each user's local time.
• Midday US Eastern is the only stretch of the day when most of both the American and the British audience are awake. 1 PM US Eastern is the single best hour, with around 78% of the American Facebook audience and 88% of the British Facebook audience active.
• Saturday and Sunday produce the lowest Facebook engagement of the week. If you must post to Facebook at a weekend, 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening local time is the usable stretch.
• Technology audiences engage several hours earlier than everyone else on Facebook.

Use Camera to Clipboard to post a photo inside the midday window

Aiming a Facebook post at 1 PM US Eastern only helps if the post is finished in time, and the unfinished part is usually the post's picture, still on a phone. Camera to Clipboard, one of my own apps, is a phone camera that puts what it photographs straight onto your computer's clipboard.

• A photo taken inside Camera to Clipboard is ready to paste on your computer the moment you take it. Camera to Clipboard sends the photo straight from the phone to the computer over your own local network, with no email, cable or upload in between.
• The midday stretch when both the American and British Facebook audiences are awake lasts only about four hours, so a photo stuck on a phone can make a post miss that stretch for the whole day.
• Camera to Clipboard can send several pictures from the phone's library at once, so the photos for a week of Facebook posts can be loaded onto the computer in one go.

Facebook is a slow burn, so the ranking forgives a late post

Facebook keeps showing a well-liked post for hours or days, and that slow ranking is why the best hour to post on Facebook is later in the day than the best hour to post on Reddit.

• Facebook has no shared queue of new posts, so a Facebook post does not compete directly with other posts published at the same hour. Reddit shows each subreddit's new posts in one shared "New" tab, while Facebook builds each person's feed individually.
• Facebook posts that hold engagement resurface for hours or days, including to people who were asleep when you posted. By contrast, Reddit's Hot ranking, which orders a subreddit's main page, pushes every post down as it ages on a scale of roughly twelve and a half hours, whatever you do.
• On Facebook, pick your posting hour for the size of your audience, not to avoid competing posts. Posting in the early morning, when few new Reddit posts compete, pays off on Reddit, but on Facebook you simply pick the hour when the most of your valuable followers are awake.

Reddit rewards you for posting when nobody else is posting. Facebook just rewards you for posting when everybody is online.

A North American user is worth three times a European one

If your goal from Facebook is app installs, sales or leads rather than a big view count, how much each Facebook viewer is worth varies enormously by region.

• In ad revenue to Meta, a North American Facebook user is worth roughly three European users and about eleven Asia-Pacific users. For full-year 2024, Meta's average revenue per user ran at roughly $233 in the United States and Canada, about $68 in Europe and around $21 in Asia-Pacific.
• The countries with the most Facebook users are not the most valuable ones, which is the trap in ranking countries by user count. India has the largest Facebook audience at roughly 582 million users against about 254 million in the United States.
• Britain is a small but valuable Facebook audience that a midday US Eastern post reaches at no extra cost. Britain is English-speaking and part of Europe, Meta's second most valuable region per user, which is the entire argument for posting at midday US Eastern rather than in the American evening.

America and Britain share only about four good hours a day

The five-hour time difference between US Eastern time and Britain sounds manageable until you compare the hours when each country's Facebook audience is awake, shown here in US Eastern time.

• Before 8 AM US Eastern, most of the American Facebook audience is not yet online. At 6 AM Eastern only about 12% of the American audience is active, even though 74% of the British audience already is.
• From 8 to 11 AM US Eastern, the American Facebook audience is still coming online. The share of the American audience awake climbs from roughly 37% to 69%, while the British share holds between 74% and 80%.
• From 12 to 4 PM US Eastern, most of both the American and the British Facebook audience is awake. Both audiences stay at roughly 76% awake or better from 12 to 4 PM Eastern.
• After 5 PM US Eastern, most of the British Facebook audience goes offline. When the American audience finally peaks around 8 PM Eastern at roughly 91% awake, only 6% of the British audience is awake.

The American evening is an excellent time to post on Facebook if your audience is only American. Posting at midday US Eastern, rather than in the American evening, is the price of reaching the British audience too.

Use Repeat Recorder to rehearse the video you post at midday

Reaching both the American and British Facebook audiences leaves about four usable hours a day, so a post has to be made before those hours start. A short video of you talking is the post most likely to be unfinished in time, because the words get rewritten between takes. Repeat Recorder, another of my own apps, records you and plays each take straight back without you touching the phone.

• Repeat Recorder plays each take back on its own and then starts recording again, so you can run the same thirty seconds ten times without picking the phone up.
• Settling a video's wording before you film it is what lets the Facebook post be scheduled ahead rather than published live.
• In Repeat Recorder, takes worth keeping go into favourites and into folders you name yourself, which you can reorder by dragging.

Everyone misreads the largest timing study by ignoring local time

Most published Facebook timing tables trace back to the same handful of studies, and one detail of the biggest study, by Sprout Social, changes how you should apply its posting times.

• Sprout Social's timing study covers nearly two billion engagements across 307,000 social media profiles on six networks, Facebook among them. Sprout Social gathered those engagements between November 2025 and February 2026.
• In Sprout Social's data, Facebook engagement peaks at noon on Monday and stays high across a wide band of hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday and Wednesday are strong from 12 through to 8 PM, but Sunday is low at every hour.
• Sprout Social's Facebook posting times are in each user's local time, not one global clock. In Sprout Social's tables, "12 PM" means "noon wherever your followers are", not noon in New York.
• Use Sprout Social's local times as they are for a single-country Facebook audience, and US Eastern time for an audience split between America and Britain. A Facebook page whose audience is split between America and Britain cannot post at local noon for both, and midday US Eastern sits inside both the American local-time peak and the British early-evening peak.

Your industry moves the window by several hours

In Sprout Social's Facebook data, the best posting hours differ more between industries than between days of the week, so if your industry is listed here, its hours should beat the average for all of Facebook.

• Technology and software brands should post on Facebook from 7 to 11 AM on weekdays. For an app or a developer tool the general advice to post at midday is too late, and the 7 to 11 AM window also overlaps the British afternoon.
• Food and beverage brands should post on Facebook from 10 AM to 3 PM, and Tuesday and Friday are their strongest days. For food and beverage brands, Friday is an exception to the usual drop in Facebook engagement late in the week.
• Healthcare organisations should post on Facebook from 10 AM to 1 PM, Monday to Wednesday.
• Financial services brands should post on Facebook from 9 to 10 AM and again from 3 to 6 PM on weekdays. A financial services page posting once a day should pick one of those two windows.
• Every other industry should fall back to 12 to 3 PM US Eastern, Tuesday to Thursday, then measure its own Facebook page.

Reddit and Facebook need two opposite posting strategies

Copying your Reddit schedule onto Facebook, or the reverse, quietly costs you reach.

The first hour matters on Facebook, just less than on Reddit

Facebook forgiving a mistimed post is not the same as Facebook ignoring timing, because early engagement still decides how far a post travels.

• Facebook treats engagement in a post's first minutes as evidence that the post deserves a wider audience. Facebook then shows the post to more of your followers, then to friends of the people who engaged with it.
• Comments and shares outweigh reactions on Facebook. Posting when your most active followers are awake is worth more than posting when the largest number of followers are technically online.
• Reply quickly to comments on a Facebook post and Facebook keeps showing that post to more people. Answering comments in the first hour extends how long Facebook keeps showing the post.
• A Facebook posting schedule you can keep up beats a perfectly timed schedule you cannot. A post at a slightly worse hour that you are around to reply to comments on beats a perfectly timed post you publish and abandon.

Use Camera to Clipboard to answer a comment with a photo

Replying to comments inside the first hour keeps Facebook showing a post, and the reply that settles a commenter's question is often a picture sitting on your phone while the comment box is open on your computer. Camera to Clipboard, one of my own apps, gets that picture from the phone to the computer in one step.

• Answering comments in the first hour extends how long Facebook keeps showing a post, and a photograph answers some commenters' questions in a single reply.
• A photo taken in Camera to Clipboard lands on your computer's clipboard immediately, which is where the comment box already is. Any box on your computer that accepts a pasted picture accepts the photo, and nothing has to be saved, found or attached first.
• Pictures already sitting in the phone's library can be sent to the computer's clipboard too, one at a time or several at once.

Your own Insights beat every published average

Every published Facebook posting time, including the ones on this page, is only a starting guess. Facebook's own Insights show the best posting times for your own followers for free.

• On your Facebook page, open Professional Dashboard, then Insights, then your audience. Facebook reports the times your own followers are actually online, in your own time zone.
• Read the geography tab in your Facebook page's Insights before choosing which country's clock to post by. A Facebook page whose audience is 70% British should ignore US Eastern posting times entirely and post at 5 to 9 PM UK time.
• Compare your best-performing Facebook posts by the hour you published them. If your best Facebook posts cluster at one hour, that hour is worth more than any published benchmark.
• Test the same kind of Facebook post at two different hours across several weeks, changing nothing but the hour.
• Recheck your best Facebook posting time every three months, because the countries your followers live in shift over time. Daylight saving also shifts the usual five-hour US and UK gap to four or six for a few weeks each spring and autumn.

Conclusion: the best time to post on Facebook, in one glance

• Post to Facebook on Tuesday to Thursday between 12 and 3 PM US Eastern, which is 5 to 8 PM in Britain. 1 PM Eastern is the single best hour, and Saturday and Sunday are the weakest days of the week.
• Facebook has no queue of new posts to beat, so Facebook forgives a late post in a way Reddit never does. On Facebook only how many of your followers are awake decides how many people see your post, so never pick a quiet hour with fewer followers awake.
• Read your own Facebook Insights before adopting any hour on this page, starting with the geography tab. A Facebook page whose audience is 70% British should ignore US Eastern posting times entirely and post at 5 to 9 PM UK time.