Short answer: the best time to post on TikTok in 2026 is Sunday morning around 9 am and weekday evenings around 10 pm, in your audience's local time. The best day is the weekend: Saturday in Buffer's study of 7.1 million posts, Sunday for views in Adobe Express's study. Those are also the slots almost nobody uses. In a random sample of 5,000 TikToks published through FeedHive, fewer than 2% went out in the 10 pm hour, and Saturdays and Sundays each got roughly a quarter fewer TikToks than an average weekday. Most TikToks go out between 9 am and 9 pm on weekdays, and Buffer measured its lowest engagement right in the middle of that stretch, from noon to 5 pm.
One caveat changes how you should use any best-time table: the large studies disagree with each other. Sprout Social's 2026 data says to post Tuesday to Thursday afternoons and avoid weekends altogether. Below we line up what each study measured, the one slot they agree on, what our own data shows about when TikToks actually go out, and a four-week test to find the best time for your account.
The best time to post on TikTok at a glance
- Best time: Sunday at 9 am (Buffer's top slot of the week; Adobe Express found Sunday at 8 am got the most views).
- Best weekday time: 10 pm. It is in Buffer's top three on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
- Best day: Saturday (Buffer), Sunday (Adobe Express, for views), or Tuesday to Thursday (Sprout Social). Two of three studies favor the weekend.
- The one slot the two biggest studies agree on: Thursday at 1 pm.
- Least crowded: weekends, early mornings (6 to 9 am) and late evenings (after 9 pm). In our data these get the smallest share of scheduled TikToks.
- Weakest windows: weekday afternoons, noon to 5 pm, in Buffer's data. Adobe found 3 am, 7 am and 2 pm got the fewest views.
Best time to post on TikTok today, day by day
Find today's row. Buffer lists its best time first and the runners-up after it. Sprout gives a window. All times are local to your audience.
| Day | Buffer (7.1M posts) | Sprout Social (307K profiles) | Strong and least crowded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 1 pm, then 11 am, 8 am | 3 to 5 pm | 8 am |
| Tuesday | 6 am, then 10 pm, 7 am | 2 to 6 pm | 10 pm |
| Wednesday | 10 pm, then 6 am, 9 pm | 1 to 8 pm | 10 pm |
| Thursday | 1 pm, then 10 pm, 6 am | 1 to 5 pm | 10 pm (1 pm is the one slot both studies share) |
| Friday | 6 pm, then 10 pm, 8 pm | 3 to 5 pm | 10 pm |
| Saturday | 5 pm, then 4 pm, 3 pm (best day overall) | Avoid posting | 5 pm |
| Sunday | 9 am, then 1 pm, 12 pm (best slot of the week) | Avoid posting (worst day) | 9 am |
Sources: Buffer, Best Time to Post on TikTok in 2026 and Sprout Social, Best times to post on TikTok in 2026, both checked October 2026. "Strong and least crowded" is our pick: of Buffer's top three slots for each day, the one that falls in the time-of-day window with the fewest scheduled TikToks in our data (see the charts below).
Look at the two middle columns side by side and you will notice something odd. Across the whole week, the two biggest studies overlap on a single hour: Thursday at 1 pm. Everything else is a disagreement, and the weekend is a flat contradiction.
Why the big TikTok studies disagree
They measure different things, on different people.
| Study | What it measured | Whose posts | Verdict on weekends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buffer (2026) | Median engagement rate per post, 7.1 million TikTok videos, carousels, photos and text posts | Creators, small businesses and marketers using Buffer | Saturday is the best day; Sunday 9 am the best slot |
| Sprout Social (2026) | Nearly 2 billion engagements, November 27, 2025 to February 27, 2026 | 307,000 profiles managed by 30,000 Sprout Social customers | Avoid; Sunday is the worst day |
| Adobe Express (2024) | Average likes, views, comments, shares and saves of 21,289 TikToks | 160 content creators | Weekend posts got the most likes; Sunday the most views |
The difference that matters most is per post versus in total. Buffer and Adobe ask how a typical post does when it goes out at a given time. Sprout counts engagements, and a total count goes up wherever more posts are published, so it can partly reflect when its customers' brand accounts are working. One likely reason weekday afternoons look strong in Sprout's data is simply that that is when brands post. Sprout's numbers also cover late November to late February only.
If you are trying to decide when your next video should go out, the per-post question is the one you care about. That is why we lean on Buffer and Adobe for the starting slots above, and keep Thursday at 1 pm as the one time all sides support. Sources: Adobe Express, The best times to post on TikTok (October 2024), plus the Buffer and Sprout pages linked above.
When TikToks actually get posted: what our data shows
Every study above looks at engagement. None of them shows you the other half of the picture: how crowded each slot is. Because TikToks are published through FeedHive, we can see when people actually post them. We took a random sample of 5,000 TikTok posts published through FeedHive between July 13 and October 18, 2026, converted every publish time to the account's own time zone, and weighted each account equally. (Method details below.)
- The day is crowded from 9 am to 9 pm. Each three-hour window in that span holds about a fifth of all TikToks, and together they hold more than 80%. The single busiest hours were 3 pm and 6 pm, each with about 9%. Adobe found the same 6 pm peak among the creators it studied, with nearly one in ten TikToks posted at that hour.
- The edges are nearly empty. Only about 8% of TikToks go out between 6 and 9 am, and about 6% between 9 pm and midnight. The 10 pm hour, which appears in Buffer's top three on four weekdays, carried less than 2%. So did 6 am, Buffer's best Tuesday slot.
- US-based accounts show the same shape. Looking only at accounts set to a US time zone, late evening is even quieter and the midday windows slightly busier.
The week tells the same story. Wednesday to Friday are the busiest days. Saturday and Sunday each get roughly a quarter fewer TikToks than an average weekday. Adobe saw the same dip: midweek was the busiest time to post and the weekend the quietest.
Put that next to the engagement studies and a pattern shows up. Buffer's and Adobe's best slots (weekend mornings, weekend afternoons, 10 pm on weekdays, 6 am) are the slots that get the fewest scheduled TikToks. The busiest stretch, weekday daytime, is where Buffer measured its lowest engagement. We cannot prove from our data that the empty slots perform better because they are empty: we do not collect TikTok performance data, so this chart measures when TikToks are posted, not how they do. But if you are choosing between two equally plausible times, the one fewer accounts are competing in is the better bet to test first.
Two in three TikToks also go to Instagram or YouTube
About two thirds of the TikToks in our sample were published from the same post to Instagram, YouTube or both, and about a third went to all three. In practice, the "best time to post on TikTok" is often also the best time for a Reel or a Short.
The good news is that the strongest slots line up. On Instagram, where FeedHive does measure performance, our Instagram study, based on a random sample of 10,000 Instagram posts, found that posts published between 6 and 9 pm reached about 15% more people than the same account's typical post, and Sunday posts about 11% more. Weekend and evening slots are a reasonable shared default for a TikTok, Reel and Short going out together. If one platform clearly drives your results, time the post for that one.
Most accounts post at the same two hours
The typical account in our sample published more than half of its TikToks in just two hours of the day. Consistency is useful, but it also means most accounts never find out whether another time would work better, because they never post anywhere else. That is the gap the test below closes.
How to find your own best time to post on TikTok
Studies give you a starting point. Your audience's habits decide the rest. This four-week test takes about ten minutes of setup.
- Check when your viewers are online. Open TikTok Studio, go to Analytics and look at the Viewers or Followers tab. TikTok says this view shows the activity times of your viewers. Note the two or three hours that light up most, in the time zone the app shows.
- Pick three test slots. One evening slot (for example 9 or 10 pm on a weekday), one weekend morning (Sunday around 9 am) and your current usual time as the control. If your viewer data points elsewhere, swap one slot for your viewers' peak hour.
- Rotate them for four weeks. Post the same kind of content in each slot so you are testing time, not topic. Three posts a week, one per slot, is enough.
- Compare against your own typical post. For each video, note its views after 48 hours, then compare it with the median of your recent videos rather than with your best-ever post. That is the same normalization we use in our own studies: it stops one viral outlier from deciding the result.
- Keep the winner, then test again. Move most posts to the slot that beat your median most often, keep one rotating test slot, and repeat every few months. Audiences shift with seasons and school terms.
Two things matter more than the clock. TikTok's own help center says that for most users, interactions such as watch time weigh more heavily in For You recommendations than information like time zone and day (How TikTok recommends content, checked October 2026). So a strong hook and the right length, covered in our guide to the best TikTok video length, will move your numbers more than any time slot. Timing gives a good video a fair start.
How to post at the best time without being online
The best slots in the studies (Sunday at 9 am, 10 pm on a weeknight) are exactly the times you probably do not want to be at your desk. Scheduling solves that. With FeedHive for TikTok you plan and schedule TikToks from the same calendar as your other channels and cross-post the same video to Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts. Recurring posting slots let you set your test slots once so every video lands on schedule for the full four weeks. You can start with a free trial.
How we measured this
We drew a random sample of 5,000 TikTok posts published through FeedHive between July 13 and October 18, 2026. Each publish time was converted to the time zone set in the account's FeedHive settings. To stop a handful of very active accounts from dominating, every account was weighted equally, and accounts with fewer than three posts in the sample were left out. A second, independent random sample and the full set of qualifying posts produced the same picture, with every time window within a few percentage points. All figures are shares of posts, not engagement. No individual account or post is identifiable from these results. Third-party figures come from the Buffer, Sprout Social and Adobe Express studies linked above, checked October 20, 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What time are you most likely to go viral on TikTok?
No time guarantees a viral video; TikTok weighs how people interact with a video more heavily than when it was posted. The strongest slots in the studies are Sunday at 9 am (Buffer's best time of the week) and Sunday at 8 am (most views in Adobe's data). Weekday evenings around 10 pm are a good second option.
What is the peak hour for TikTok?
For engagement per post, evenings. Buffer found engagement generally peaks between 6 and 11 pm. For posting volume, the peak is mid-afternoon to early evening: in our data, 3 pm and 6 pm were the busiest hours to publish, and Adobe found nearly one in ten TikToks go out at 6 pm.
What time should you not post on TikTok?
Buffer measured the lowest engagement on weekday afternoons, noon to 5 pm, and Adobe found 3 am, 7 am and 2 pm got the fewest views. Those weekday afternoon hours are also the most crowded in our data. Sprout Social is the outlier and recommends avoiding weekends.
What is the best day to post on TikTok?
Saturday in Buffer's study, followed by Monday and Sunday. Adobe found Sunday got the most views. Sprout Social picks Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Since weekends get roughly a quarter fewer TikToks than weekdays in our data, they are worth testing first.
What is the best time to post on TikTok on Saturday and Sunday?
Saturday at 5 pm, then 4 pm and 3 pm. Sunday at 9 am, then 1 pm and noon. Both are from Buffer's 2026 data.
Which time zone should I use?
Your audience's. If most of your viewers are in one country, use their local time. If they are spread out, check the activity times in TikTok Studio and schedule for the largest group. Buffer says its recommended times are adjusted to apply across time zones without conversion; Sprout lists its times in local time.
Does posting time matter on TikTok?
Some, but less than the content. TikTok's help center lists time zone and day among the signals for the For You feed and says interactions such as watch time generally weigh more. Posting when your viewers are active gives a video its best chance to collect those early interactions.
