The Best Time to Post on Social Media in 2025: Times for Every Major Platform

We pored over millions of posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn to pinpoint when the best-performing content was published.

Apr 9, 2025 - 10:09

The Best Time to Post on Social Media in 2025: Times for Every Major Platform

At Buffer, we recently embarked on an ambitious project: uncovering the best time to post on social media in 2025 — across all major platforms.

We pored over millions of posts, reels, TikToks, shorts, videos, and more to pinpoint when the best-performing content was published.

We analyzed the data here in one of two ways: To predict the best time to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X, we looked at the timeslots with the highest median social media engagement on each platform. To predict the best times to post on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, we looked at median reach and video views.

In both cases, we found some clear patterns — and can make some clear recommendations on the best time to post on social media. Specific timeslots see more engagement or views than others, which is an important consideration in your social media marketing strategy.

Use these times as a starting point to give your content the best possible chance of success.

Before we get into this, an important caveat: sharing your social media posts at the ‘right’ time is not the secret sauce for content success.

(If there were a secret sauce, it would be consistency. But more on that in a sec.)

There are thousands of signals that determine content performance all each of the social media platform’s multiple algorithms — engagement, watch time, user preferences, location… Post recency is likely just one small part of a pretty complex puzzle.

Still, if you feel like you're hitting all the right notes with your content and want to give your social media strategy a helpful little boost, it’s worth testing the best time to post on social media for your platform of choice.

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This is where a social media management tool like Buffer really shines. Experiment by scheduling posts at the recommended times and tracking post performance to see what works best for your target audience.

Jump to a section:

Is there an overall best time to post on social media?

There is no single best time to post on social media that applies to all social media platforms. Why? They’re all used for different reasons, by very different users.

For example, unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn is used for professional networking and thrives during working hours. TikTok is more focused on entertainment — so videos and carousels there are more likely to get views after hours. Posts on X tend to get more engagement on Tuesdays, while Fridays are the best days for Instagram.

As you’ll see from all our graphs, there’s not much overlap, especially across all major social media platforms.

So, while we can't be as specific as we can on a per-platform basis, we can make broad recommendations that are largely common sense. For example, social media posts shared on weekends tend to get less reach and engagement, as does content posted in the middle of the night.

With all that in mind, you’re far better off with a digital marketing plan and social media calendar with a unique posting schedule for each platform. Let’s get into our recommendations for all of them.