November 25, 2025
Last update
11.25.2025
15 MIN.
Your followers are online right now. Are you posting? Discover the best times to post on Instagram by day, industry, and format (backed by 2025 data) and finally nail your posting strategy.
Sophie Gonçalves
When is the best time to post on Instagram? This is a question that doesn’t let many Instagrammers sleep at night. Literally!
And indeed, it’s a tough one. Finding your best time to post on Instagram promises to increase reach and engagement of your posts, which is oh so important in the days of the Instagram algorithm for your Instagram content strategy.
There are tons of articles online that give you all kinds of advice on when to post! Some tell you that you should do it on Wednesdays at 3pm. Others tell you that you should actually avoid posting at 3pm and opt to post between 8-9am instead. Then there are others that swear you’ll get the best engagement if only you post from 12-1pm.
Confusing, right?
The truth is, there's no universal "golden hour" that works for everyone, but there are data-backed patterns that can dramatically boost your Instagram reach and engagement. This guide consolidates insights from industry leaders to help you find what actually works for your audience and YOUR perfect time to post on Instagram.
If you post when your audience isn't online, you've already lost the battle! Here's why timing is everything:
Instagram's algorithm now prioritizes "sends per reach" (how often people share or DM your content to a friend).
This is now the most critical signal, surpassing initial likes and comments. When you post at your audience's peak activity time, you increase the likelihood of those valuable shares and direct messages within the first few minutes.
Your first 15–20 minutes are still critical. If your Instagram content gets engagement quickly, Instagram recognizes it as valuable and distributes it to more people. However, this only works if your audience is actually online to see it.
Posting at the right time can boost your reach by 2–3x, which means more followers, more website clicks, and more potential customers discovering your brand.
Based on analysis of millions of posts, here's what the data consensus shows about when to post on Instagram.
Monday mornings are prime time as users check their feeds while waking up and over coffee. Lunch hour engagement picks up as people take breaks. Evening (5–7 PM) captures the post-work scroll.
Tuesday is often considered the best day of the week for engagement across platforms. Morning and lunchtime remain strong, with early evening still performing well.
Wednesday sees sustained engagement throughout the afternoon. Evening (6–9 PM) performs slightly better than other weekdays.
Thursday maintains strong morning and lunchtime performance, with a secondary peak at 8 PM when users wind down.
Friday sees two distinct peaks: morning (7–8 AM) and evening (8–9 PM) as users look forward to the weekend. Lunchtime and afternoon slots (2–4 PM) also perform well.
Weekend engagement differs significantly. Saturday sees good morning performance and extended daytime engagement (9 AM–3 PM) as people enjoy leisure time.
Sunday evening (6–9 PM) is when people wind down and prepare for the week. Early morning (4–5 AM) captures a small but engaged audience of insomniacs and shift workers.
Reels are Instagram's priority format. They need different timing than static posts.
Best times to post Reels:
Why Reels timing differs: Reels rely more on algorithmic distribution (less dependent on immediate engagement) because Instagram actively pushes them into the Explore page. However, posting when your audience is active still helps with initial signals that determine Explore distribution.
Best days for Reels: Tuesday–Thursday consistently outperform Monday, Friday, and weekends.
Stories follow a different pattern because they disappear after 24 hours and benefit from consistent posting rather than perfect timing.
Best times:
Why Stories are different: Stories don't rely on algorithmic reach. Followers who haven't muted you will see them in their tray. The "best time" for Stories is when you want immediate engagement, since Stories promote urgency (they disappear in 24 hours).
Best practice: Post Stories 2–3 times daily, including at least one during peak hours.
Timing varies significantly by industry. If your audience has specific behaviors, these benchmarks may be more relevant than generic timing.
People browse fashion during work breaks and wind-down time. Sunday evening sees elevated engagement as people plan their weekly looks.
Fitness content performs best when it aligns with workout windows—early morning and evening.
Food content thrives around meal times. Friday sees elevated engagement as people plan weekend meals.
Travel content performs well during work breaks (daydreaming) and evening planning sessions.
Healthcare content is consumed during work hours and early evening when people research conditions or medications.
Restaurant content is consumed when people are hungry or planning meals, obvious but crucial timing.
Educational content works when students and parents are present—after school and evening hours.
B2B SaaS content is consumed during work hours when people are thinking about business problems.
Retail shopping is a leisure activity, people engage when they have browsing time.
Just as important as knowing when to post is knowing when not to post on Instagram:
Don't waste your best content at 3 AM hoping the algorithm will carry it. Timing matters.
The best time to post on Instagram is highly individual, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It depends on you, on your business, and on your audience, which is always case by case.
To find the most optimal posting time takes research. And, ironically, also time. Luckily, we’re going to show you exactly how to do that!
If you have a business Instagram account, you can use the analytics feature to better understand your audience. Instagram Insights will offer you a clear demographic of your followers, including gender, age, and location.
Finding out your audience’s location is very important because the majority of the time, your audience will be from different places. And even when your audience is predominantly from one country, they might still be situated in different time zones.
Go to your Instagram Insights → Audience section. Check:
If your audience spans multiple time zones (e.g., San Francisco and New York), you already face a 3-hour gap. Consider posting during overlapping windows (e.g., 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT).
Example: If 40% of your followers are in California and 35% are in New York, posting at 11 AM ET (8 AM PT) captures both coasts during their morning/mid-morning window.
This data is very useful in discovering the exact times the majority of your audience is most active, so you can share your post when they are online.
After you have identified where your followers are located, find out your audience's Instagram most active times.
How quickly you get engagement on your post determines its lifetime value. In other words, if you post at a time when your followers are online, you give your content an opportunity to be seen (and liked)!
Posting at the “peak online” time is pretty much hacking the Instagram algorithm.
What to look for: The colors/density in the grid—darker colors = more active followers.
This is your primary data source: ignore industry averages and trust this data. If your followers are most active at 3 AM on Tuesdays (possible for night shift workers), that's your signal.
If you need a more exact hour-by-hour breakdown, you can also consult Iconosquare. With our social media analytics features, you can see when the followers are online most (the most colored boxes) and when hardly anyone is online (the least colored spaces). You can find it in Analytics tab, in the Reach section.
What you want is simple: pick the hours when most of your followers are online and post on those specific hours.
Once you’ve published enough content, analytics can compare your posting habits with your most successful content and let you know if you’re hitting the sweet spot and publishing at the time that’s best for you.
On Instagram, review your Insights → Posts and sort by:
On Iconosquare, you’ll be able to see this data in the Best Time to Post chart in the Engagement section.
The blue-colored circles represent your optimal posting times. And the smaller blue circles represent less optimal, but still effective times to post.
You can filter your results by engagement, likes, and reach, and select a data range on our date picker. The very best times are starred. For this case, that’s Wednesdays at 5pm.
It might take a few weeks for enough data to accumulate, but be patient! You can use this information in the future to help you choose the best days to share your content on Instagram to ensure you’re going to get the attention (and traffic) you deserve!
Above, we have seen the best time to post on Instagram depending on the industry. But the results are based on averages from a large amount of data. It is best practice identifying your immediate competitors and monitor when they post, plus which of their posts receive the most engagement.
Tracking your competitors' posting habits can provide valuable insights into their content strategy and help you optimize your own.
Unfortunately, Instagram Analytics doesn’t have a feature in its business tools for monitoring other accounts. Here are some tips on how to track and analyze your competitors' Instagram posting habits manually:
1. Start by understanding their posting frequency to help you determine if you are under or over-posting. How often do they post? Daily? Weekly?
2. Then, you can analyze their posting timing: What times of day do they post? Are there specific days when their engagement is higher? This can inform your own posting schedule.
3. Finally, analyze what type of content (Reels, Stories, Videos, Carousels, Photos) they post and which ones have received the most engagement, which types of content get the most likes, comments, shares, and views.
You can follow these 3 steps manually by sifting through each competitor on Instagram with our social media competitive analysis template.
![Social Media Competitive Analysis Template Track competitors across platforms, analyze their content, posting habits, and engagement, and identify real opportunities to stand out.{{ include_custom_fonts({"Gilroy":["Audacieux","Moyen","Semi-gras"]}) }}](https://hubspot-no-cache-eu1-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/cta/default/143669362/interactive-262911768818.png)
... Or, you can keep an eye on all your competitors at once, effortlessly, thanks to Iconosquare's social listening feature! Our comparison chart gives you all the information you need, including the day and time they post most on Instagram.
It's up to you to try it out!
Once you've identified your audience's active hours, test different times within that window.
Example testing sequence (if audience is most active 9 AM–12 PM):
Then analyze which hour got the best engagement. After 4 weeks, you have data showing whether 9 AM or 12 PM performs better for your specific audience.
Pro tip: Keep other variables constant: post similar content types (or identical content) at different times. If you post a Reel at 9 AM and a carousel at 12 PM, you won't know if the time or content type drove the difference.
To save time, you’re probably already generating Instagram captions and scheduling your Instagram posts for direct publishing. Well done. That means you’re sharing content consistently. What you can do now is to make sure you’re sharing it consistently at the right time.
Iconosquare’s Scheduler is a quick way to schedule your Instagram content. Once you’ve posted enough of it, the Scheduler will indicate the most optimal time to post your media on Instagram with a little yellow star. 🌟
The yellow stars show you some of your best times to post. These are based on your top 5 best times to post (based on engagement) over the period of the last 3 months. So the more different timings you experiment with, the more accurate the suggestions will be!
The blue people show you when your followers are the most active.
It can be very useful if you’re, for example, located in Europe, while your main audience is in the US (like in our own case), you can still make sure your content gets seen despite the difference in time zones. Because let’s face it: being asleep while your audience is awake is, well… not ideal. 😅 So it’s great there’s now a way to get around this!
Myth 1: "There's one universal best time"
Reality: No. Your audience's location, industry, and behavior are unique. A best time for fashion brands (noon) won't work for fitness brands (6 AM).
Myth 2: "Posting time only matters for the first 15 minutes"
Reality: While the first 15 minutes are crucial, Instagram now prioritizes long-term engagement (saves, shares, DMs) over immediate likes. A post from 8 hours ago can still go viral if it gets shared frequently.
Myth 3: "Weekends are always bad"
Reality: Weekends are lower engagement overall, but certain industries (retail, fashion, restaurants) see strong weekend evening performance. Weekend posts just need to compete with less overall content, so they actually have less competition.
Myth 4: "You should post multiple times per day at different times"
Reality: Post quality > post frequency. Posting once at the right time beats posting 5 times at random times. However, for Stories, 2–3 daily posts are standard practice.
Myth 5: "If you miss the best time, your post is doomed"
Reality: Posting at a suboptimal time reduces immediate reach by 20–30%, but great content still performs. Algorithm changes and audience growth matter more than posting 1 hour earlier or later.
Less so, but it still matters. Ads reach your target audience regardless of time, but organic reach from engagement still requires followers to see it naturally first. Post during peak times to maximize that organic boost, which amplifies ad performance.
For feed posts: 1 high-quality post per day is ideal (posting 3+ times dilutes reach per post). For Stories: 2–3 times daily is standard. For Reels: 2–3 per week, always at peak times.
No. Reels peak 8 AM–12 PM and 6–9 PM. Feed posts peak 11 AM–2 PM and 5–7 PM. If you're posting once daily, prioritize Reels (they get better algorithmic reach).
Tuesday–Thursday are universally strongest. Monday sees good morning engagement but drops off midday. Friday evening is strong. Weekends are weakest overall.
Not directly, but longer captions work better when followers have time to read (mid-day, evening). Short captions work for quick morning scrolls.
Use Insights → Total Followers → Most Active Times. If you've been posting at 7 PM and seeing good engagement, your followers' "Most Active Times" heat map should show dense coloring at 7 PM. This confirms you're posting at the right time.
Check your Audience section in Insights. If they're spread across 20+ countries with overlapping time zones, pick the time that captures 40%+ of your audience. You can't please everyone across all zones simultaneously.
Always trust your data. Your actual followers' behavior is more valuable than industry trends. If your audience (fitness brand followers in retirement communities) is most active at 3 PM, post then—even if fitness industry data says 6 AM.
There is no magic posting time that works for everyone. What works for a fashion brand won't work for a B2B SaaS company. What works for your account in January won't work in July.
But what does work is data-driven decision making. By understanding your audience's location, analyzing your own top-performing content, and running intentional tests, you'll discover your unique best times—and that's when your reach multiplies.
Start with this guide's recommendations, trust your Instagram Insights, and commit to 4–6 weeks of consistent testing. The engagement boost you'll see is worth the investment.
Ready to find your best time? Go to your Insights right now, check your followers' active hours, and schedule your next post accordingly. You might see results immediately—or it might take a few weeks. Either way, you're now posting strategically instead of guessing.
Your Instagram success is waiting. Now go post at the right time. 📱✨
![Iconosquare is free for 14 days! With Iconosquare, take your social media in another level. Experience the easiest-to-use platform on the market for free ��{{ include_custom_fonts({"Gilroy":["Audacieux","Moyen","Semi-gras"]}) }}](https://hubspot-no-cache-eu1-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/cta/default/143669362/interactive-258640909509.png)
Sophie Gonçalves specializes in content writing, particularly SEO copywriting. After more than 3 years' agency experience, she joined Iconosquare in 2024 as Content Manager.
Is your Instagram Business account well-optimized? Run a quick audit courtesy of Iconosquare.
Run my audit
Every week, Emily interviews top brands, renowned influencers, and hidden agencies with one goal in mind: to understand what happens backstage of their social media strategies.
Listen to esm2
Get your hands on our free, downloadable 2025 Social Media Calendar with over 450 trending dates, all preloaded and ready to use.
Read about how other business, agencies and entrepreneurs were able to level up their social media game with the help of powerful analytics and expert strategies.
Need a hand using the multiple features Iconosquare has to offer? Wondering how you can use them to maximize your perfromance on social media? Check out our tutorials on YouTube.
Find out in a minute using our audit.