Best Time to Post on Threads: 6 Studies Compared

The best time to post on Threads is a weekday morning, roughly 8 to 11 a.m. in your audience's local time. Tuesday through Thursday are the strongest days, and the weekend is the weakest. Across six published studies, 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. are the only hours that four of the six share.

Threads timing data is newer and thinner than data for X or Instagram. Threads launched in July 2023. Two of the six sources below do not publish a Threads-specific sample size, and two do not say which time zone they use. Read every published hour as a first guess to check on your own account. This guide compares the studies, explains how the Threads feed picks posts, and gives you a four-week test that uses Threads Insights.

What is the best time to post on Threads?

The best time to post on Threads is Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday between about 8 and 11 a.m. in your followers' time zone. Buffer's analysis of 2.5 million Threads posts ranks Thursday at 9 a.m. first, followed by Wednesday at 12 p.m. and Wednesday at 9 a.m. It finds weekday mornings from 6 to 11 a.m. strongest overall. Hootsuite's top slot is Tuesday at 8 a.m. Later recommends 9 to 11 a.m. from Tuesday to Thursday, and Postpone recommends 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.

Four of the six studies include 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., and no other hour gets more than three. The day picture is clearer: Tuesday and Wednesday are each named a best day by four studies, and Saturday and Sunday are each named a weakest day by four. Start with a weekday morning slot, then test it against a later one on your own account.

What six studies say about the best time to post on Threads

The studies use different samples, metrics, and time zones. The table shows what each source published, as reviewed on October 5, 2026. Sprout Social, a common source for other networks, does not publish Threads timings in its 2026 report.

For the chart, I counted each hour a study's window covers, excluding the end hour, so Buffer's 6–11 a.m. counts for 6 through 10 a.m. Hootsuite's and SocialPilot's single weekday times count as one hour each.

Where the studies agree

• Mornings lead. Every source except Social Champ recommends at least one weekday slot between 8 and 11 a.m.
• Midweek wins. Every source that ranks days puts Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday on top.
• Weekends trail. Buffer, SocialPilot, Postpone, and Social Champ all rank the weekend lowest. Postpone reports up to 40% more engagement on weekdays than on weekends.

Where they disagree

The studies disagree most about evenings: Later recommends 6–8 p.m., while Buffer finds 6–11 p.m. underperforms every day. Social Champ is the outlier: its best slots fall between 3 and 6 a.m., with no time zone stated, and it lists 9–10 p.m. as a second-best slot on some days while calling 6–11 p.m. the weakest period. Use it for its day ranking, not its hours.

What is the best day to post on Threads?

Tuesday and Wednesday are the most reliable days to post on Threads. Each is named a best day by four of the six studies, and Thursday by three. Buffer ranks Wednesday first overall, followed by Thursday and Tuesday, and its single best slot is Thursday at 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday are the days to avoid: four studies rank each among the weakest, and Postpone reports up to 40% more engagement on weekdays than on weekends. Buffer also notes that Monday underperforms the other weekdays. Put your most important post on Tuesday or Wednesday morning and keep weekends for tests.

How I counted: Hootsuite counts as naming Tuesday because its top slot falls on that day. Social Champ, which is unreliable on hours, is counted for its day ranking only. Without it, Tuesday and Wednesday each have three studies and Thursday two.

How does Threads decide who sees your post?

Threads has two main feeds. According to Meta's Threads feed explainer, the default feed blends posts from accounts you follow with recommended content, ranked by an AI system that predicts what you are likely to engage with. The Following feed shows only accounts you follow, in reverse chronological order, with no recommendations.

The explainer also lists the signals behind each prediction, and several measure activity on a post's replies over the past hour and past six hours. A conversation that starts soon after you post is visible to the ranking system while it is fresh. That is the strongest reason timing matters on Threads: post when your followers are awake and you can reply.

Three other features shape reach:

• Topics. Meta reported in March 2025 that posts with a tagged topic generally receive more views than posts without one. The Threads API documentation allows only one topic tag per post.
• Instagram and Facebook suggestions. If your profile is public, Meta may suggest your Threads posts on Instagram or Facebook. Those viewers do not follow you on Threads, so their activity may not match your followers' hours.
• Fediverse sharing. If you turn on sharing to the fediverse, people on other servers, such as Mastodon, can follow you, see your posts, and interact with them. Meta still labels this a beta available only in some regions.

Threads vs. X: what changes for timing

The structure will feel familiar if you come from X, which also has a recommendation-driven For you timeline and a Following timeline. The guide to the best time to post on Twitter (X) finds the study overlap at 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, a little later than on Threads. The bigger difference is reach from outside the network: Threads posts can be suggested on Instagram and Facebook. If much of your Threads audience came from Instagram, compare your slots with the best time to post on Instagram too.

Why do Threads timing studies disagree?

Three of the reasons apply to any network's timing research. The fourth is specific to Threads: a young feed that Meta keeps changing.

1. Different metrics. Buffer ranks by median engagement (likes, replies, and reposts). Postpone measures engagement rates. Others do not say exactly what they measured.
2. Different customers. Each dataset reflects the people who use that tool. A tool popular with B2B marketers will find office-hour peaks.
3. Different time zones. Buffer normalizes results to local time, and Hootsuite normalizes across 118 countries. SocialPilot uses Eastern Time, and Later and Social Champ do not say. A 9 a.m. ET slot is 6 a.m. on the US West Coast.
4. A young network. Threads has had less time to build stable patterns, and its feed keeps changing. Meta added Dear Algo in February 2026, letting people ask for more or less of a topic for three days. Studies a year apart may describe different products.

On Threads, the reply count is the clearest signal of whether a post worked, and the wording drives replies more than the clock does. If your posts are not getting replies, work on writing better social media hooks before you move your schedule.

How do you find your own best time to post on Threads?

The six studies pool other people's accounts, so the only reliable answer for yours comes from a controlled test. Threads Insights is free, built into the app, and enough for it.

What Threads Insights shows

Threads Insights has three sections: Views, Interactions, and Followers. According to Threads' July 2025 update, Interactions break down into likes, replies, reposts, and quotes over the past 7, 14, 30, or 90 days. Views list their sources, including home, search, Instagram, and Facebook, and Followers show demographics and top locations. Tap a post, then "View activity," for its own numbers. Meta has not described a chart of when followers are online, so you infer timing from results.

1. Pick three test slots

Choose three times in your audience's time zone: one early morning, one late morning, and one afternoon. A default based on the studies is 8 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 p.m. on Tuesday through Thursday. Keep the slots fixed for four weeks.

2. Rotate posts fairly

Publish comparable posts in each slot. If your questions always go out at 8 a.m. and your links at 3 p.m., you are testing formats, not times. Rotate formats and topics across the slots, and aim for at least four posts per slot.

3. Score each post against your median

Record each post's views at the same age, such as 48 hours after publishing. Then calculate a timing index:

Timing index = post views ÷ your median views per post

An index of 1.00 is your normal. An index of 1.20 means the post reached 20% more people than usual. Average the index for each slot. If conversation matters more than reach, repeat the calculation with replies.

These numbers are an example of the calculation, not data from a real account.

4. Keep the winner, or move on

Adopt a slot when it leads the runner-up by 20% or more across several posts. In the example, 8 a.m. misses that bar, so keep testing it against 11 a.m. If all slots land within a few percent of each other, timing is not your constraint. Pick the slot you can staff for replies and focus on the content.

Time zones: post for your audience's clock

Every recommendation here uses your audience's local time. Threads Insights lists your followers' top cities and countries, so schedule for where most of them live.

The United States and Europe change their clocks on different dates. Recheck cross-region slots in March and in late October or early November.

A starter posting schedule for Threads

For a schedule you can use this week, start with three posts in the study overlap, then run the four-week test before changing anything.

Block 30 to 60 minutes after each post for replies. For a fuller weekly system with capacity planning, read how to build a consistent social media posting schedule. To see how Threads fits with your other networks, the best time to post on social media hub compares all of them.

Common Threads timing mistakes

• Posting at a "best time" and walking away. Early replies are a large part of why timing matters on Threads.
• Copying a study's time zone. SocialPilot's hours are Eastern Time, and Social Champ does not state a time zone.
• Ignoring Instagram and Facebook views. Check where a post's views came from before blaming the slot.
• Trusting one viral post. Use the median, not the average, so one outlier does not pick your slot.

Schedule Threads posts at your test times with PostQuest

A scheduler keeps a timing test honest by publishing at the same times every week. PostQuest is a social media scheduler I build for founders, creators, and small teams, and it publishes to Threads alongside nine other networks.

For a Threads test, the useful parts are:

• A calendar for fixed slots. Schedule text, link, photo, video, and carousel posts (2 to 20 items) for the same three times each week.
• Pre-publish checks. Before a post is scheduled, PostQuest checks the 500-character limit, the one-topic-tag rule, and media rules such as JPEG or PNG images up to 8 MB and MP4 or MOV video up to five minutes. The Threads specs page lists the full requirements.
• Per-post analytics. PostQuest syncs views, likes, replies, and reposts and quotes for each Threads post it publishes, with the publish time. Paid plans keep at least six months of history, which covers a four-week test and a quarterly retest.
• AI assistant drafts. Through the PostQuest MCP server for Claude, you can ask your assistant to group recent Threads posts by posting hour. AI-created posts stay drafts until you approve them.

PostQuest does not suggest best times. If you want a tool to recommend slots, Buffer can fill your Threads queue with its recommended posting times, and Hootsuite's Perch suggests personalized times when you compose a post. You can compare PostQuest with Buffer or review the current PostQuest plans. The seven-day trial lets you set up your slots, but a four-week test needs a paid plan or Threads Insights.