The Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2025: We Analyzed 2 Million+ Posts to Find Out

There are many factors to consider when it comes to posting on Instagram — but the one that often feels like a make-or-break decision is what time to post your content.

It's a fair concern — the last thing you want is to spend the time and resources needed to create a showstopper piece of content only to post it in a social media dead zone that results in… crickets.

Sharing Instagram Stories, reels, feed posts, and carousels at optimal times for reach and engagement is an important consideration in your social media strategy. If your content immediately makes it to your target audience's feed while they're around to engage with it, it's more likely to succeed.

That's why we combed through the reach of over 2 million Instagram posts sent through Buffer over the past year: to uncover which days and times are more likely to yield engagement (along with which post formats get the most likes, comments, and shares).

In other words, the best times to post on Instagram, backed by data.

With all that in mind, let's dig into everything you need to know about when you should be posting on Instagram — including how to figure out the best time for your audience, whether you're a marketer, creator, influencer, or casual Instagrammer.

Is there a best time to post on Instagram?

Let's get this out of the way before we begin: There's no universal best time to post on Instagram for guaranteed success — if only it were that easy.

However, our analysis showed us that there are certain days and times that tend to yield more reach than others. What was really interesting was the patterns we uncovered, too — for example, most weekdays see similar high-reach times.

So, while Instagram timing, or post recency, is not as crucial as it once was (R.I.P. chronological feed), it's still important to consider when developing your social media marketing strategy and determining when to post content.

How we calculated the best times to post on Instagram

It’s tricky to measure the overall success of all Instagram content, given that it all appears in different feeds governed by different algorithms. While engagement on social media posts has been a metric we’ve used in the past, we opted to go with reach in this year’s Instagram analysis instead.

Why did we do that? Isn't it true that the more engagement you receive, the better your post is likely to perform? Well, it depends on your definition of engagement. We felt that on Instagram, in particular, likes, comments, and public shares (the standard hallmarks of engagement) aren’t necessarily the strongest indicator of success anymore, given how highly the algorithm values ‘sends per reach’ — that’s how many users privately share a post or reel with someone via DMs.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has candidly shared that it is Instagram’s most important algorithmic signal, particularly in the reels and discover feeds.

Plus, if there is a metric you’re aiming for in terms of growing your Instagram following, reach is it. The more users you reach — particularly those who don’t already follow you — the more likely you are to grow your follower base on the platform.

Our methodology here was to look at the median reach of the post in relation to follower count. More followers = more reach, so looking at reach in isolation would also have led to skewed data. Considering reach in relation to follower count was our best bet at providing helpful advice for both growing and well-established brands and accounts.

Phew! Ready to dig into the numbers?

The best times to post on Instagram

The best time to post on Instagram is generally 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays.

After analyzing more than 2 million Instagram posts, we found that posts shared at these times tended to get the most reach.

Our theory is that Instagram users, who are largely between the ages of 18 and 34, are likely to spend time on the app in the evenings as they finish up at work. I know I’m definitely more likely to log on as the day wears on and my productivity dwindles or spend time scrolling as I relax in the evening.

According to Statista, 31.7% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 30.6% of 25 to 34-year-olds (i.e. folks with nine-to-five jobs) use the app. In other age groups, use is less than half of that cohort.

Wait — aren’t these people usually still at work at 3 p.m. on weekdays? Indeed they are. But it’s important to note that these graphs show reach, not audience active time. A high reach time at 3 p.m. doesn’t necessarily mean your followers are logging on at exactly 3 p.m. and seeing your post then. Your content will likely percolate for a few hours in various feeds, so posts shared in these slots will likely be shared just in time for the peak evening slots.

As you'll see from the heatmap graph above, Instagram post behavior is pretty predictable, depending on the day of the week. The darkest slots represent the time slots with the highest reach per follower count — indicating the best time to post on Instagram.

The light-colored to white blocks are the time slots with the lowest reach, showing the times that are best avoided.

On weekdays, reach starts to pick up in the early morning at 6 a.m., climbing from 11 a.m. (just in time for their lunch hour!) and peaking at around 3 p.m. on most days.

Weekends are pretty different. Our data shows that reach drops on Saturdays and even more so on Sunday. There are some small peaks in reach in the early evening, but they're lower than the best posting times during the weekdays.

The best time to post on Instagram on weekends is 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.