When is the best time to post reels on Instagram is not only a concern for a social media influencer but anyone uploading reels. It’s because the impact of a message is aided by who says it, to whom, how, and when. With over two billion people using Instagram and over 95 million posts daily, it becomes even more critical.
Our extensive research (and experiments) over the last few weeks show that the best time to post reels on Instagram is at 11 AM on Wednesdays! And, the same time can be applied for a new post on Instagram as well.
However, that comes with lots of caveats, as what works for one social media page owner may not necessarily apply to another. In this guide, we discuss the ideal time to post on Instagram by location and niche, insights from case studies on Instagram post timing, and how to increase your chances of riding on the Instagram reels algorithm further. We have also discussed our methodologies behind findings.
What is The Best Time to Post Reels on Instagram
It’s been quite some time since Instagram introduced the reels feature to compete with TikTok. And, Instagram reels typically provide higher engagement than other forms of posts.
So, without further ado, let’s discuss the best time to post a reel on Instagram over the entire week.
Per our research, the most promising range is between 9 AM to 12 PM on Monday to Thursday.
What is the Best Time to Post On Instagram?
As much as we enjoy scrolling through reels, for many – brands and individuals alike – Instagram posts make up the primary reason to be on Instagram. Here, too, various factors affect the outcome, including your niche, the song you choose, the location of your targeted audience, the day of the week, the goal of your post, the type of post, and more.
Our observations give us the following insights about the ideal time and day to upload an Instagram post.
| Day | Best time to post |
| Monday | 10 AM -11 AM |
| Tuesday | 10 AM -1PM |
| Wednesday | 11 AM |
| Thursday | 2 PM -3 PM |
| Friday | 10-11 AM |
| Saturday | 6 AM |
| Sunday | 6 AM |
What is the Best Time to Post Stories on Instagram?
Unlike reels and regular posts that stay on your Insta feed for future viewing, Stories disappear within 24 hours and hence serve a different purpose — urgent engagement tactics. That’s why many social media experts mandate on using stories as a promotion to reels and posts.
Keeping these in mind, if you plan to post something good-looking, grand, or just goofy as stories — just go for it. Don’t bother about timing. However, if you are a business or influencer looking to use a story to push a reel, product/service, or post prefer making it live during weekdays lunch breaks, i.e., 11 am – 2 pm.
Best Time to Post on Instagram for Different Locations
Timezones affect the best time to post on Instagram. It becomes especially crucial when you post from one timezone but intend to target an audience in another one. And that’s why we decided to break down the right timing according to all the major timezones.
Here’s a quick overview of the best time to post by location on Instagram.
| Location | Best time to post |
| Africa | 6 AM, 7 AM |
| UK | 4 AM to 6 AM |
| South America | 4 AM |
| US and Canada (Central and Eastern) | 4 AM to 9 AM |
| US and Canada (Western) | 12 AM to 6 AM |
| Europe (Eastern) | 5 AM to 7 AM |
| Europe (Western) | 6 PM to 8 PM |
| Middle East and South Asia | 3 AM |
| East Asia | 11 PM to 2 AM |
Best Time to Post On Instagram for Different Niches
Instagram (apparently) understands the content you put on its platform and tries to cater it to the audience most suited for it. And, as these audience groups have different likes and app usage patterns, it makes sense to time your post based on your niche.
We thought along these lines, researched, and below, we present the best time to post by niche on Instagram.
| Niche | Best time | Best day |
| Education | 4 to 5 AM | Fridays |
| Healthcare | 8 AM to 9 AM | Mondays and Tuesdays |
| Travel and Tourism | 7 AM | Thursday |
| Media | 1 PM to 5 PM | Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday |
| Hospitality | 12 PM | Friday |
| Non-profit | 10 AM to 6 PM | Wednesday |
| Tech | 10 -11 AM | Monday |
| Restaurant and Food | 9 AM to 1 PM | Monday |
When is the Worst Time to Post on Instagram?
Just like the best time to post on Instagram is important, it’s equally critical to know when is not the right time for it. To state the obvious, it may cause you to water down the engagement of your reels, stories, or post despite your best efforts and investments in producing it.
According to many researchers, weekends are not the right time to post on Instagram, especially on Saturdays.
However, that does not mean you should completely eliminate Saturday from your posting times. Given your niche and target audience, it can still work if you nail the timing right. If you miss that window, it’s fine to skip a day and post later.
Sunday is also not a good time to post on Instagram because, on that day, most people prepare themselves for the upcoming week, so they will not likely come across your post. However, this research does not have a lot of data to back up this claim. As it may work differently for different people, I suggest you experiment with this one on your own.
Case Studies On The Right Time to Post on Instagram
While we did our extensive research our way, it is always better to analyze data from various studies to come to an agreeable conclusion. Since our methodologies may have something others don’t and also the other way around is plausible – to paint a broader picture, we have collected data from the most trusted resources to understand what their research says about the best time to post on Instagram.
1. SproutSocial
According to SproutSocial’s research, after analyzing data from 30,000 accounts, the best day to post on Instagram is Wednesdays and Thursdays. And the best time to post on Instagram is between 10 AM to 1 PM. In contrast, if you think about what could be the worst days to post on Instagram, SproutSocial came up with Sunday as you are likely to get low engagement compared to other days.
2. Later
Another study from Later analyzed over 35 million Instagram posts to find the best time to post on Instagram and came up with the average time between 5 AM to 6 AM. Another study from Later revealed that the worst time to post on Instagram is on Wednesday from -10 A.M to 4 PM and Thursday from 9 PM to 11 PM.
3. Influencer Marketing Hub
Influencer Marketing Hub also conducted a study and according to their data, the best day to post on Instagram is Thursday. The best time varies from one day to another. Usually, their data revealed the best time to post on Instagram is 11 AM on Wednesdays, 2–3 PM on Thursdays, and 10 AM on Fridays.
Read More Article Best Time to Post on Other Social Platforms
| Best Time To Post On LinkedIn | Best Time To Post On TikTok |
| Best Time To Post On Reddit | Best Time To Post On YouTube |
How to Tackle Posting Multiple Times on Instagram Effectively?
Coming back to our influencers, businesses or agencies comrades that treat Instagram as a 24×7 job and possibly deal with multiple accounts — We understand you can not depend on posting just once a day or a week to reach your goals and get the best reach. You must capitalize on multiple best times to get the best outcome on Instagram.
Even if you try test all the best times to post on Instagram, as mentioned above, there will come a time when you will feel exhausted and think about whether this posting on the best time trick works or not. Things from there can get complicated and overwhelming. That’s when you should invest in an Instagram scheduling tool.
By utilizing an Instagram scheduling tool, you can streamline your content management, scheduling, and audience engagement efficiently as it comes with the features that enable you to:
- Schedule and send multiple Instagram posts in advance.
- Suggests the best post times per historic data of your audience.
- Recommends captions, hashtags, and even mentions per the post context.
- Engage with followers directly from the scheduling tool for multiple pages.
Some of the most popular Instagram Tools and their features include:
Later
A comprehensive social media marketing tool that focuses on visuals Later is preferred for Instagram account management for its features like scheduling, media library, and comment handling. It can even let you schedule your stories.
Later also lets you manage other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Hootsuite
Wildly popular among professional Instagrammers, Hootsuite not only allows you to schedule your posts but also monitor keywords. Its Social Streams enable you to keep tabs on all accounts in a go without checking individually.
If you have multiple teams or looking to collaborate with other Instagrammers, the Hootsuite dashboard is great.
SocialPilot
Packed with essentials and unique features, SocialPilot is one of the top Instagram content management tools. You can add multiple accounts, schedule bulk posts, track engagements, and boost those leads — all from this single platform.
Instagram Audience Persona
So far, we’ve been talking about what’s the best time basis for our experiment and reference to other research. But one who’s just starting out and keeping an open mind in terms of content creation may wonder what kind of audience is there on Instagram. Knowing this can also help pro insta creators strategize their posts better.
So, let’s take a step back and analyze Instagram’s demography.
Instagram Users by Age
| Age Range | Share of Users |
| 13-17 years | 8.5% |
| 18-24 years | 30.1% |
| 25-34 years | 31.5% |
| 35-44 years | 16.1% |
| 45-54 years | 8% |
| 55-64 years | 3.6% |
| 65 years and up | 2.1% |
Instagram Users by Gender
| Gender | %age of Users |
| Male | 50.7% |
| Female | 49.3% |
Instagram Users by Region
| Regions | %age of Users |
| Urbanites | 45% |
| Sub-urbanites | 41% |
| Rural Residents | 25% |
Going Beyond Right Timing to Post on Instagram for Your Business
Handling a personal account, a meme page, an influencer’s page, and a business page on Instagram are different ball games. Arguably, it’s in the case of a business account where the investment, efforts, and image are at the highest stakes. So, while finding the right post time on Instagram becomes even more crucial for brands, it’s not enough.
Hence, presenting some essential tips that will help reinforce your best-timed posts, reels, and stories on Instagram.
Leverage Instagram Professional Dashboard
Instagram provides a powerful dashboard full of post performance and audience insights; however, only to a professional account (creator or business) and that too on mobile apps.
To access the Instagram professional dashboard: Log into your Instagram app → Go to your own Instagram profile → Tap View professional dashboard on the top.
What all you’ll get:
- Access insights about your audience, activity, and performance.
- View geographic location, gender, age, and other demographic data.
- Identify the times when your audience is most engaged and active.
In addition to these, the dashboard also acts as a resource directory of premium posts and ads by businesses/creators in your niche. It’s an immense help for ideation, hacks, and staying on top of the trends.
Focus on Engagement
Sometimes even if you follow the best practices, you won’t get the desired post-performance. To avoid such scenarios, focus on creating engaging content and engaging with your audience:
- Create content on trending topics
- Include a complementary caption and relevant hashtags
- Ask a question or suggest an action in the post or your caption
- Provide valuable tips, tricks, or hacks so that people would want to save the post
Track the best time manually
If the analytics feature is not working for you, another way is to see which is the best time manually.
You can do so by uploading posts at different times and creating a spreadsheet with the data. For example, if you posted at 9 PM on a Monday, write the data on your spreadsheet followed by other days. And after a week, check which post got the maximum engagement, which type of content you posted, what engagement it received, and how long it took to go live.
Additionally, you can refer to several free guides by Instagram itself for the best practices; it can be found by scrolling down your own dashboard.
Suggested Reading on Instagram Insights and Management
Over to You: What Instagram Post Timing is Best for You
There you go with all the information one needs to make an informed decision on when to post reels on instagram — plus regular posts and stories as well. We recommend you take a cue from these suggestions to run your own experiment and see what suits you the best. Also, feel free to explore as many social media tools as you can to get the right one.
With that, we hope you go viral! And when you do, don’t forget to mention this guide or us 🙂
Have any queries or suggestions, leave them in the comment section for our social media experts to answer.
FAQs
It totally depends on the timezone you’re in. I have created a time chart for every day of the week, along with the best time to post. You can check that out in the post and post accordingly to engage with your audience.
The worst time for you to post on Instagram is after 2 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Because this is the time when people go out with their friends and family, they spend less time on their phones during this time.
Yes, you can post on Instagram at night. You can post around 2-4 am on Tuesdays and 4-6 AM on Fridays. Apart from these timings, you should not post anything on Instagram if you want to reach your target audience.
It totally depends on the quality of your content. If the quality is good and the content clicks with your audience, you can post as many times as you want.
There is no limit on posting on Instagram, but I suggest you prefer quality over quantity because that is the only way to increase your audience.
In the above section, we have mentioned the timings for all the days of the week. To see the best time to post reels on Instagram today, just take a look at the above table.
