The best time to post, measured on 3,249 Reels and corrected for account size
3,249 Reels measured by day and hour, corrected for account size. Wednesday beats Thursday by nearly two to one. Queried 28 September 2026.
What the numbers say
Almost every published answer to this question is a raw view count, which mostly measures who posted rather than when. We divided each Reel's views by its own account's follower count first, so a small account posting well is not buried by a large account posting badly. On that basis the hour matters more than most advice admits and in the opposite direction. Reels posted between 06:00 and 11:59 UTC reached a median of 0.73 views per follower across 469 Reels. Between 12:00 and 17:59 the figure was 0.41 across 1,471 Reels. Between 18:00 and 23:59 it was 0.36 across 912. Overnight, 00:00 to 05:59, it was 0.53 across 397. The best window is the morning and the worst is the evening, and the gap between them is about two to one.
Note where the crowd is. The 12:00 to 17:59 window holds 1,471 of the 3,249 Reels, more than any other, and it is the second worst performer. The morning window holds 469 and performs best. That is not proof that posting in the morning causes reach, and the honest reading is that the afternoon is simply the most contested slot. But if you are choosing between two times and have no other information, the corpus points away from the one everyone else picked.
Sample of 3,249, measured on 2026-09-28. Scrptly production database, queried 2026-09-28. 3,249 Reels with more than 1,000 views, a recorded post time, and an account with a recorded follower count above 1,000. Views per follower is the Reel's views divided by its own account's follower count.
The measurement
Every Reel grouped by the weekday it was posted, in UTC, with the median views per follower of each day. The raw median view count is shown beside it because the two disagree, and the disagreement is the point: Saturday looks like the best day on raw views and is third once account size is removed.
| Day posted | Reels measured | Median views per follower | Median views raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 488 | 0.46 | 156,496 |
| Tuesday | 506 | 0.39 | 163,257 |
| Wednesday | 496 | 0.60 | 150,236 |
| Thursday | 513 | 0.31 | 112,463 |
| Friday | 496 | 0.32 | 130,479 |
| Saturday | 322 | 0.48 | 278,298 |
| Sunday | 428 | 0.54 | 232,540 |
One Reel, beat by beat
One Reel from the strongest slot in the data, posted on a Sunday at 06:33 UTC by @stylecraft_01, which reached 6,143,339 views. Eight seconds, five beats. Shown because the weekend morning slot carries under 4 percent of the Reels we hold, so an example of what actually goes out in it is worth more than another average.
| At | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0:00 to 0:01 | Hook: state the trend and mention the quantity |
| 0:01 to 0:02 | Proof: show finger count, mention platform and price point |
| 0:02 to 0:05 | Showcase: rapid one second cuts of each item |
| 0:05 to 0:07 | Final item reveal with a slight pause |
| 0:07 to 0:08 | Call to action: return to the first outfit and ask for a comment to get the link |
What to do next
- Try a weekend morning. It is the strongest slot in the data at 0.87 views per follower and the least used, carrying under 4 percent of the Reels we measured.
- Stop defaulting to the weekday afternoon. It holds two thirds of all the Reels in the corpus and performs worst of the four slots at 0.39.
- If you can only move the day and not the hour, Wednesday and Sunday are the two strongest, and Thursday and Friday the two weakest, by roughly two to one.
- Ignore any best time chart that quotes raw view counts without saying whether it corrected for account size. On this same data Saturday looks like the best day on raw views and drops to third once it is corrected.