Best Time to Post on Facebook: We Analyzed 1 Million Posts

When it comes to social media platforms, Facebook is as crowded as they come. The social network currently has a staggering 3 billion active users — so almost a third of the world population has a Facebook account they use regularly.

Crowded as it may be, it’s still a powerful social media marketing platform for businesses and creators — if you have the right social media strategy in place.

Part of that content strategy involves figuring out the best time to post on Facebook for maximum engagement.

When it comes to the Facebook algorithm, engagement — reactions, comments, shares, and the like — is a strong signal that your content is valuable and that more people will enjoy having it in their Facebook news feeds.

The higher your engagement, the higher your reach tends to be — and the greater your chance of achieving your social media goals, whether that means driving traffic to your website, making a sale, or simply gaining a new follower.

So, how do you pinpoint the best time to post on Facebook for your audience, especially if you’re just starting out?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

The Buffer brainiacs (read: our brilliant data scientist, Julian Winternheimer) have poured over the performance of more than 1 million Facebook posts sent via Buffer by businesses, creators, and influencers in the past year to pinpoint the best time to post on Facebook, the best day to post on Facebook, plus the best-performing content on Facebook.

In short, expect plenty of helpful recommendations backed by our own data to help you optimize your posting schedule to give your social media content the best chance of success.

Ready to jump in?

Is there a best time to post on Facebook?

Let’s start with a caveat: There’s no magic, universal best time to post on Facebook, during which your content is guaranteed to go viral (if only it were that easy).

The best time to post on Facebook — or any social media platform — always depends on your audience — I’ll dig into how you can figure that out below.

That said, our data analysis has picked up some definitive links between posting times and high engagement rates, which could be a great starting point if you’re new to Facebook.

My advice is to use these times as a springboard for experimentation. Luckily, you have plenty of high-engagement times on Facebook to choose from as part of your digital marketing strategy.

The best times to post on Facebook

According to Buffer data, the best time to post on Facebook is 5 a.m. on Monday. Our analysis showed that the early bird really does catch the worm engagement, with posts shared in the early morning getting the highest media engagement of the entire week.

Morning posting times tend to perform the best — we pinpointed other hotspot times on Tuesday at 5 a.m. and Thursday at 7 a.m., which rank in second and third place in our best time to post list respectively.

🌅 Overall posting in the early morning, between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays get solid engagement, as you'll see from the heatmap graph below.

The darkest slots represent the time slots with the highest engagement rates and, we extrapolate, the best time to post on Facebook. The light to white blocks are the time slots with the lowest engagement — times that are perhaps left out of your posting schedule.

Posting times tend to stay strong through the mid-morning until around midday (with a slight peak around lunch breaks) when they start to drop down towards the evening

It's helpful to consider these posting times in the context of general audience behavior as part of your overall posting strategy — which is why I always tend to turn to demographics.

The largest demographic of Facebook users is aged 25-34 (closely followed by ages 35-44). This suggests that users are more likely to check their Facebook News Feeds before they start their workday, as soon as they wake up in the morning, making it the best time to post.

A fascinating report by the Pew Research Center found that an overwhelming majority (93%) say keeping up with friends and family is a reason why they use Facebook. By comparison, the primary use case for other social media platforms like Instagram (86%) and TikTok (95%) is entertainment.

With this in mind, it makes sense that the first social media platform users check in the morning is Facebook, where they’ll likely find the latest updates from loved ones — a higher priority than a mindless scroll through, say, some Instagram Reels.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean 5 a.m. is when people are seeing your Facebook posts. It's likely the content needs time to percolate on the news feed, and your fans and followers will find it there when they log on to the platform at a more reasonable hour.

Weekend behavior is similar, though don't expect maximum engagement on Saturday and Sunday. Post performance is significantly lower when the workweek is over (more on this below).

The best time to post on Facebook at a glance

• Monday: 5 a.m. 🥇
• Tuesday: 5 a.m. 🥈
• Wednesday: 5 a.m.
• Thursday: 7 a.m.