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Best time to post Reels on Instagram and on TikTok (2026 studies)

What Sprout Social, Buffer, Hootsuite and Later found about the best time to post Reels and TikToks in 2026, why they disagree, and how to find your own time.

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Two frames of a Vidova day-in-my-life reel: coffee at 7:00 am in grey, and city lights at 9:00 pm

The short answer

There is no single best time to post Reels or TikToks. The 2026 studies agree that weekdays beat weekends on Instagram and disagree on the hour: Sprout Social finds Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, Buffer finds Thursday at 9 am, Later finds 3 to 6 am. For TikTok, Sprout Social picks weekday afternoons and Buffer picks Sunday at 9 am. Start there, then use the most active times in your own analytics.

Key takeaways

  • Weekday afternoons are the safest start on both apps. Sprout Social found weekends weakest on Instagram and on TikTok.
  • The studies disagree on the hour because they measure different accounts, years and metrics.
  • Your own most active times in Instagram Insights and TikTok Studio beat any study. Test two time slots for two weeks.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram, day by day

Find today in the table. Both studies give the times in your audience's local time zone, so you do not need to convert them.

Best times to post on Instagram by day, from Sprout Social (March 2026) and Hootsuite (July 2026), checked October 2026
DaySprout SocialHootsuite
Monday2 to 4 pm3 to 9 pm
Tuesday1 to 7 pm5 to 8 am and 3 to 7 pm
Wednesday12 to 9 pm, plus a peak around 11 pm5 pm
Thursday12 to 2 pm4 to 5 pm
FridayNo clear peakAround 4 pm
SaturdayLowest day of the week11 am and around 5 pm
SundayWeak day12 to 3 pm

Buffer's 2026 Instagram data names three single slots instead: Thursday at 9 am, Wednesday at 12 pm and Wednesday at 6 pm. It ranks Wednesday as the best day and Friday and Saturday as the weakest. Later's study points somewhere else: 5 am overall, and posts between 3 and 6 am did better than average on every day.

For Reels in particular, Sprout Social says the best times match its overall windows: “Our data indicates that the algorithm prioritizes user activity times over content format.” Later's Reels data put the best time at midnight, with Monday the best day.

Best time to post on TikTok, day by day

Best times to post on TikTok by day, from Sprout Social (March 2026) and Buffer (September 2026), checked October 2026
DaySprout SocialBuffer
Monday3 to 5 pm1 pm, its second-best slot of the week
Tuesday2 to 6 pmNot in its top slots
Wednesday1 to 8 pmA quieter day
Thursday1 to 5 pmLower engagement
Friday3 to 5 pmNot in its top slots
SaturdayNo best timesThe strongest day overall
SundayNo best times, the weakest day9 am, its best slot, and 1 pm

The two studies point in opposite directions on weekends. Sprout Social says Tuesday to Thursday between 2 and 6 pm is best and advises against weekends. Buffer found Saturday to be TikTok's strongest day and Sunday at 9 am its single best slot. When two large studies disagree this much, your own audience data decides.

Why the studies disagree

Each study measures something different. The table shows what each one counted.

What each posting time study measured, from the studies' own pages (checked October 2026)
StudyDataWhat it measured
Sprout Social, March 2026About 2 billion engagements on 307,000 profiles of Sprout Social customers, 27 November 2025 to 27 February 2026, across six networksPeak engagement windows
Buffer, Instagram, September 20269.6 million Instagram posts from Buffer users, January 2024 to December 2025Median engagement rate: likes, comments, shares and saves divided by followers
Buffer, TikTok, September 20267.1 million TikTok posts from Buffer usersMedian engagement rate
Hootsuite, July 2026Over 1 million posts from businesses in 118 countriesEngagement
Later, April 2026Over 6 million Instagram posts and over 975,000 Reels, January to October 2024Engagement rate
  • Different accounts. Each study uses the customers of one social media tool. Agencies, shops and solo creators have different audiences.
  • Different metrics. Buffer divides engagement by followers. A quiet hour with fewer posts can win on that measure even when fewer people are online.
  • Different years. Later's data is from 2024. Sprout Social's is from the winter of 2025 to 2026.
  • All formats together. Buffer pooled every post type on Instagram, so its slots are not specific to Reels.

The way Reels are shown also matters. Instagram says it first shows a reel to a small group of people who do not follow you, then shows the best performers to wider and wider groups. A reel can keep finding viewers for days, so the first hour is only the start of its life.

How to find your best time in Instagram Insights

Instagram shows when your own followers are online. Meta's help page on Instagram insights lists the times your followers are most active under Total followers, for public accounts with at least 100 followers.

  1. Make sure your account is public. Meta says public accounts get free insights.
  2. Open your profile and go to your insights.
  3. Tap Total followers. It needs at least 100 followers.
  4. Scroll to the times your followers are most active.
  5. Write down the two busiest hours on the days you can post.

This chart shows when followers are online. Reels also reach many people who do not follow you, so use it as a starting point and test it.

How to find your best time in TikTok Studio

  1. In the TikTok app, go to your profile, tap the menu, select TikTok Studio, find Analytics and tap View all. On the web, open the Analytics tab in TikTok Studio.
  2. Open Viewers. Most active times shows when your viewers were active on TikTok in the last 7 days.
  3. Open Followers to see when your followers are active, by hour and by day.

These steps come from TikTok's Creator Academy guide to analytics. Two details from TikTok's help page matter here. Follower activity shows in your local time zone, while the rest of your analytics is in UTC. Analytics can take 1 to 2 days to update, so judge a post after two days.

Test two time slots for two weeks

A study gives you a place to start. A small test shows what works for your account. Keep everything the same except the time.

  1. Pick two slots on the same weekday: one from your own most active times and one from the tables above.
  2. Make four videos of the same kind and length, such as four 15-second product clips.
  3. Post two in slot A and two in slot B over two weeks.
  4. After 7 days, compare the views and shares of each post in its insights.
  5. Keep the better slot, and test it against a new one next month.

Four posts are too few for statistics, but they replace a guess with your own numbers. If the two slots come out close, the time matters less than the video, and you can post when it suits you.

Have the videos ready before the slot

The best time helps only when a finished video is ready at that time. Make the week's videos in one sitting. In Vidova, you attach your clips and describe the cuts, and an AI agent edits them on a real timeline. It previews frames and runs a quality check before it hands each one over. You export the MP4 files and post them from Instagram and TikTok.

Example brief
Make three 15-second vertical videos from these clips for this week. Each one opens on a different shot: the squeegee on the glass, the spray, and the clean glass at sunset. Keep all text inside the area Reels and TikTok leave clear. Make them 1080 × 1920.

You can start free. Paid plans start at $19 a month, remove the watermark and export up to 4K at 60 fps.

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