Short answer: the best time to post on LinkedIn in 2026 is 10 am to 2 pm on a weekday, in your audience's local time, and the best days are Monday and Sunday. In a random sample of 8,000 LinkedIn posts published through FeedHive, Monday posts got about 10% more impressions than the same account's typical post and Sunday posts about 12% more. Thursday was the weakest day (11% below typical), and 4 to 6 pm was the weakest time of day (13% below). The window most people crowd into, weekdays from 8 am to 5 pm, performed exactly average.
That puts us at odds with the two studies most people quote. Buffer names Wednesday at 4 pm as the strongest slot of the week and calls Monday one of the weakest days. Sprout Social says to post Tuesday to Thursday around midday and to avoid weekends. Below we show our numbers, why they differ from the big studies, how the answer changes for a personal profile versus a company page, and a simple test to find the best time for your own account.
The best time to post on LinkedIn at a glance
- Best time: 10 am to 2 pm on weekdays (about 4% to 9% more impressions than typical in our data). On a company page, 6 to 8 am also did well.
- Best day: Monday among weekdays (+10%), and Sunday overall (+12%, with about 13% more reactions, comments and reposts).
- Worst day: Thursday (-11%). Friday and Wednesday were also slightly below typical.
- Worst time: 4 to 6 pm (-13%). This is the window Buffer ranks highest.
- The crowded default: 72% of the posts in our sample went out on weekdays between 8 am and 5 pm, and they performed no better than average.
- Bigger than the clock: posts of 800 to 1,500 characters got about 12% more impressions than the same account's typical post, a bigger lift than posting on the best weekday.
Best time to post on LinkedIn today, day by day
Find today's row. Our column shows how posts published on that day did compared with the same account's typical post. Buffer gives its best single time for each day, Sprout Social gives a window. All times are local to your audience.
| Day | FeedHive data (impressions vs typical) | Buffer best time | Sprout Social best window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | +10% (best weekday) | 10 pm, then 5 pm, 9 pm | 1 to 2 pm |
| Tuesday | +7% | 4 pm, then 5 pm, 10 pm | 11 am to 5 pm |
| Wednesday | -3% | 4 pm, then 3 pm, 5 pm (Buffer's best day) | 11 am to 4 pm |
| Thursday | -11% (weakest day) | 5 pm, then 7 pm | 11 am and 1 to 5 pm |
| Friday | -5% | 3 pm, then 4 pm, 5 pm | 11 am and 1 to 2 pm |
| Saturday | -4% | 9 am | Avoid posting |
| Sunday | +12% (best day) | 10 pm | Avoid posting |
Sources: FeedHive analysis of a random sample of 8,000 LinkedIn posts published through FeedHive, July 13 to October 16, 2026 (method below). Buffer, Best Time to Post on LinkedIn in 2026 (4.8 million posts) and Sprout Social, Best times to post on LinkedIn in 2026 (nearly 2 billion engagements across 307,000 profiles, all networks), both checked October 2026.
Our practical pick for any weekday: publish between 10 am and 2 pm, and keep your most important post of the week for Monday or Sunday. If you have to post on a Thursday, it still works; it just starts from a slightly lower baseline.
Why our answer differs from Buffer and Sprout Social
The big studies and our data are answering slightly different questions.
Sprout Social analyzed when engagement happens across hundreds of thousands of profiles, which tells you when professionals are most active on LinkedIn. Buffer ranked time slots by the engagement that posts published in them received across its 4.8 million posts. Both are useful, but both pool every account together. A slot can look strong because of who tends to post at that time, not because posting then helps.
We asked something narrower: when the same account posts at different times, which of its posts get more impressions? Every post is compared with that account's own typical post, and every account counts equally. That cancels out the difference between a large company page and a founder with a few hundred followers, and it measures what you actually control, which is when you hit publish.
There is also a crowding effect worth knowing about. Most posts go out in a narrow band of the working week: in our sample, a third of all LinkedIn posts went out between 8 and 10 am, and only about one in nine went out on a weekend. Sunday, the day the big studies tell you to skip, was the day posts did best. One plausible reason is that fewer posts compete for the same feed space when everyone else is following the same advice.
Buffer and Sprout also disagree with each other. Buffer's best windows are 3 to 8 pm, while Sprout's cluster around 11 am to 5 pm on Tuesday to Thursday, and Buffer rates Monday as one of the weakest days while Sprout includes it among the good ones. If two studies with millions of data points cannot agree, a single universal best time probably does not exist. Treat any table, ours included, as a starting point for your own test.
What our data shows
The best day to post on LinkedIn
The week has a clear shape. Monday and Tuesday start strong, Wednesday is roughly average, and Thursday and Friday sag. Thursday was the weakest day in both of the independent samples we drew, and Monday was the strongest weekday in both.
Sunday stands out. Only about 5% of posts go out on a Sunday, yet those posts got about 12% more impressions than the same account's typical post, and about 13% more reactions, comments and reposts. Saturday was close to average. So the common advice to avoid weekends entirely did not hold up in our data. Weekend posts were not penalized, and Sunday was a small advantage.
The best time of day to post on LinkedIn
Three things stand out:
- 8 to 10 am is the most crowded and only average. A third of all posts go out in these two hours. They did slightly worse than typical in our main sample and right at typical in the second one.
- 10 am to 2 pm is the reliable sweet spot. Late morning and lunchtime came out above typical in both samples. This is also where Sprout's midday window sits.
- 4 to 6 pm was the weakest window, 13% below typical, and 20% below in our second sample. That is the opposite of Buffer's finding that late afternoon is now the peak.
Evenings are less settled. Posts published between 6 and 10 pm did well in our main sample, but few posts go out then and the second sample showed a smaller lift. For a personal profile, early evening is worth testing (see below). We would not move your whole schedule there.
Personal profile vs company page
We ran the same analysis separately for personal profiles and company pages. The weekly pattern holds for both: Monday is the best weekday and Thursday is weak. The time of day differs.
| Personal profile | Company page | |
|---|---|---|
| Best weekday | Monday (+12%) | Monday (+9%) |
| Weakest day | Thursday (-13%) | Thursday and Friday (-10% to -11%) |
| Weekend | No penalty, slightly above typical | Sunday +20% |
| Best time of day | 2 to 4 pm (+19%); 6 to 8 pm also strong but with fewer posts | 6 to 8 am (+19%), then 10 am to noon (+12%) |
| Weakest time of day | 4 to 6 pm (-8%) | 4 to 6 pm (-18%) |
Source: FeedHive analysis of a random sample of 8,000 LinkedIn posts published through FeedHive, July 13 to October 16, 2026. Figures are impressions compared with the same profile's or page's typical post. Each row held in a second, independent random sample.
The page pattern makes sense if you think about who sees page posts: followers checking their feed before work and over coffee on a Sunday. Personal posts travel further through your network's comments and reactions, and they did best in the early afternoon. One more page-specific result: text-only page posts got about 50% more impressions than the same page's image posts, though not more reactions or comments. If a page update does not need an image, it may travel further without one.
What moves impressions as much as timing: post length
Almost half of the posts in our sample were 300 to 800 characters long, a few short paragraphs. Posts of 800 to 1,500 characters got about 12% more impressions than the same account's typical post, and the result held in the second sample (+11%). On company pages the lift was about 20%.
That is a slightly bigger lift than posting on a Monday. In practice, a fuller post that actually says something can make up for a less-than-ideal slot. Fix the post first, then the timing.
How to find your own best time to post on LinkedIn
Averages describe thousands of accounts. Your audience might be in a different time zone, a different industry, or simply have different habits. A four-week test will tell you more than any study.
- Pick two slots to compare. Start with your current habit and one challenger from this guide, for example your usual 9 am against 11 am, or your usual Thursday post against a Monday.
- Alternate them for four weeks. Keep everything else as similar as you can: the same kind of post, a similar length, the same number of posts per week.
- Compare impressions after a few days. LinkedIn posts keep collecting impressions for a while, so wait at least three days before you judge a post. Our data only used snapshots taken three or more days after publishing.
- Compare each post with your own typical post, not with someone else's numbers. Look at the median, not the single best post, because one viral post can hide a weak pattern.
- Keep the winner, test the next challenger. Once a slot wins two rounds, make it your default and test a new one, such as Sunday or early morning.
You can do this in LinkedIn's own analytics. For a company page, the Analytics tab shows post-level impressions and engagement. For a personal profile, open the analytics on each post. If you publish through FeedHive, FeedHive Analytics lets you compare views and engagement across your posts in one place, which makes the four-week comparison quicker.
How to post at the best time without being online
Sunday morning and 6 am on a weekday are good slots, and they are also times you probably do not want to be at your laptop. That is what scheduling is for. With FeedHive you can plan and schedule LinkedIn posts for both personal profiles and company pages, including text, video, multi-image posts and polls. Set up recurring posting slots once, for example Monday at 11 am and Sunday at 8 am, and every post you add to the queue lands in a tested window.
If you also post on other networks, the best time is different on each. Our own data for Instagram points to evenings and Sundays, covered in the best time to post on Instagram, and how to schedule Facebook posts walks through scheduling on Facebook. Plans and the free trial are on the pricing page.
How we measured this
We drew a random sample of 8,000 LinkedIn posts published through FeedHive between July 13 and October 16, 2026, covering both personal profiles and company pages. For each post we used the latest impressions figure LinkedIn reported, taken at least three days after publishing. Publish times were converted to the time zone set in the account's FeedHive settings, so every time in this guide is local time.
Each post was compared with its own account's typical post (the geometric mean of that account's impressions), and every account was weighted equally, so large accounts cannot dominate the results. Accounts with fewer than eight posts in the sample or very low typical impressions were left out, as were posts for which LinkedIn reported no impression data (this includes company-page video and multi-image posts, where LinkedIn's statistics did not return impressions). Time windows with too few posts are not reported or are marked as less certain in the charts. We repeated the whole analysis on a second, independent random sample, and we only report day, time and length findings that pointed the same way in both. No individual account or post is identifiable from these results. Third-party figures come from the Buffer and Sprout Social studies linked above, checked October 23, 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best day to post on LinkedIn?
In our data, Monday is the best weekday (+10% impressions compared with the same account's typical post) and Sunday is the best day overall (+12%). Thursday was the weakest. Buffer names Wednesday as the best day and Sprout Social recommends Tuesday to Thursday, so test Monday against your current day before you commit.
Is it a good time to post on LinkedIn right now?
If it is a weekday between 10 am and 2 pm in your audience's time zone, yes. If it is between 4 and 6 pm, our data suggests waiting until the next morning or scheduling the post. On a Sunday, any daytime slot is a reasonable choice.
What is the LinkedIn golden hour?
The golden hour is the idea that the first hour after you publish decides how far a post travels, because early reactions and comments signal that the post is worth showing to more people. LinkedIn has not confirmed a fixed window, as Buffer also notes. The practical takeaway still holds: post at a time when you can reply to comments soon after, which is another reason to schedule posts rather than publish at random moments.
Should you post on LinkedIn on weekends?
Yes, if you have something worth posting. Sprout Social says to avoid weekends, but in our data Sunday posts got about 12% more impressions than the same account's typical post, and Saturday posts were close to average. Only about one in nine posts goes out on a weekend, so there is less competition for attention.
Which time zone should I use?
Your audience's. All the times in this guide are in the poster's local time, which works when most of your audience is in your region. If most of your followers are in another region, use their local time instead. FeedHive schedules posts in the time zone you set for your workspace.
Is the best time different for a company page and a personal profile?
Yes. In our data, company pages did best early in the morning (6 to 8 am) and on Sundays, while personal profiles did best in the early afternoon (2 to 4 pm). Both had their best weekday on Monday and their weakest window at 4 to 6 pm.
Does the time you post on LinkedIn actually matter?
It matters, but less than most guides suggest. In our data, the best day (Sunday) and the worst day (Thursday) were about 20 percentage points apart on impressions, while most weekdays sat within 10% of typical. Writing a fuller post of 800 to 1,500 characters added about 12%, as much as picking the best day. Get both right, but do not hold back a good post just to wait for the perfect slot.
