A lot goes into making a YouTube video perform well — your title, your thumbnail, when you post, and (most importantly) the quality of your content itself.

It’s a lot to think about, and figuring out what clicks for your audience takes some trial and error, but that’s where the data can help.

But thanks to our analysis of almost 2 million videos shared on YouTube (including both long-form videos and YouTube Shorts), we can offer a little more concrete guidance on at least one of those factors: the best time to post on YouTube.

As we’ll get into later on, this is not a magic bullet for content success; the factors I mentioned above have an outsized impact. But timing can still make a real difference. When you post during your audience’s active hours, your video is more likely to pick up early engagement signals (clicks, watch time, likes) that YouTube’s algorithm uses to decide whether to recommend it more widely.

Compared to all the work that goes into the rest of these processes, posting your YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts when you’re most likely to get engagement is an easy box to tick. And it could give your content the boost it deserves.

In our analysis, we measured the median engagement of 1.8 million videos shared at different times, comparing performance across every hour and day of the week. This helped us pinpoint patterns in the posting times with the highest engagement, which we recommend as the best time to post on YouTube.

Based on Buffer’s analysis, the best time to post long-form videos on YouTube is Sunday at 10 a.m. For YouTube Shorts, Friday performs best, with 4 p.m., 6 p.m., and 7 p.m. taking the top three slots.

One big change from our 2025 analysis: we found that long-form YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts have very different peak posting times. This makes sense when you think about how each format gets distributed. Long-form videos and shorts are distributed differently across YouTube, which may help explain why their peak posting times look so different in our data

Shorts, on the other hand, are continuously resurfaced by YouTube’s recommendation engine over days or even weeks, which means the initial publish time is less make-or-break. Because of these differences, we’ve separated the data this time to give you more accurate recommendations for each format.

Keep in mind, these are general recommendations. In this article, I’ll also walk you through how to figure out the best time to post on YouTube for your audience, whether you’re a marketer, an up-and-coming creator, or a full-time YouTuber.

Key takeaways

• YouTube long-form videos and YouTube Shorts have almost opposite peak times (mornings vs. evenings), so they benefit from separate posting schedules.
• Sunday at 10 a.m. is the single highest-performing time slot for long-form YouTube videos.
• YouTube Shorts peak in the evenings, especially on Fridays. The top three slots are all on Friday: 4 p.m., 6 p.m., and 7 p.m.
• The best day for long-form videos is Sunday, followed by Tuesday, and Monday.
• The best day for YouTube Shorts is Friday, followed by Saturday and then Thursday.
• For long-form videos especially, try to publish one to two hours before your audience’s peak activity window. This gives YouTube time to process, index, and start testing your video so it’s ready to be recommended right as viewers come online.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos

The best time to post long-form videos on YouTube is Sunday at 10 a.m. by a wide margin. Videos shared at that time had the highest engagement of the entire week.

Top-performing time slots for long-form videos:

• Sunday: 10 a.m. (Peak)
• Sunday: 9 a.m.
• Friday: 12 p.m.

🌞 Generally speaking, long-form videos shared during the morning hours between around 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. tended to get the highest engagement.

In the heatmap graph above, the darkest slots represent the time slots with the highest engagement, while the lighter blocks are the time slots with the lowest engagement (the upload times probably best avoided).

If you’ve read our previous analysis, you might notice something interesting: the patterns have shifted. Our last dataset pointed to late afternoon (3–5 p.m.) on weekdays as the sweet spot. This time around, mornings are where the (engagement) action is, and weekends, particularly Sundays, are outperforming midweek days by a significant margin.

The worst times to post long-form YouTube videos tend to fall during the early-to-mid afternoon on weekdays, particularly Wednesday and Thursday, where engagement dips noticeably across most time slots. Thursday at 2 p.m., for instance, had one of the lowest engagement factors of the week (0.11).

That said, every day has some decent pockets. Here’s a closer look at the best time to post long-form YouTube videos for each day of the week.

At a glance: the best time to post long-form YouTube videos

Morning posting times dominate this dataset. Here are the best times for every day of the week:

• Monday: 9 a.m., 10 p.m., 7 a.m.
• Tuesday: 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 8 a.m.
• Wednesday: 7 a.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m.
• Thursday: 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 a.m.
• Friday: 12 p.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m.
• Saturday: 12 p.m., 10 a.m., 3 p.m.
• Sunday: 10 a.m., 9 a.m., 12 p.m.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Monday

The best time to post on YouTube on Monday is 9 a.m., followed by 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Videos posted on Monday mornings perform well across the board. It seems viewers enjoy kicking off their week with some YouTube content. The late-evening slot at 10 p.m. also stands out, suggesting a second window for Monday uploads.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Tuesday

The best time to publish YouTube content on Tuesday is 9 a.m., with other peak slots at 11 a.m. and 8 a.m. Tuesday is one of the best days of the week overall, and the morning window from 8 to 11 a.m. is consistently high-performing. If you can only publish once a week on a weekday, Tuesday morning is a solid bet.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Wednesday

The best time to post on YouTube on Wednesday is 7 a.m., followed by 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Wednesday is one of the weaker days overall (only Thursday scores lower), so expectations should be tempered here. However, the early morning and mid-afternoon slots still show reasonable engagement if Wednesday is part of your posting schedule.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Thursday

The best time to post on YouTube on Thursday is 5 p.m., followed by 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. Thursday is the weakest day of the week for long-form video engagement in our data, with midday and early afternoon slots dipping particularly low. If you’re posting on a Thursday, evening uploads are your best option, or consider bumping your video to Friday instead.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Friday

The best time to post on YouTube on Friday is 12 p.m., with other peak slots at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Friday is interesting; it’s the only weekday where midday outperforms morning. Friday at 12 p.m. actually had one of the highest engagement factors of the entire week (0.70), making it a standout slot. If you can’t post on a Sunday, Friday around lunchtime is a worthy alternative.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Saturday

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Saturday is 12 p.m., followed by 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday engagement is moderate and fairly consistent throughout the day, and there aren’t dramatic peaks or valleys. It’s a good day to post if your audience skews toward weekend viewers.

The best time to post long-form YouTube videos on Sunday

The best time to upload on YouTube on Sunday is 10 a.m. — and this is the top slot of the entire week. Sunday at 10 a.m. scored a 0.95 engagement factor, with 9 a.m. (0.80) and 12 p.m. (0.67) also performing well above average. Sunday mornings are, by far, the best time to post long-form YouTube videos.

If you’re not already including Sunday in your posting schedule, this data makes a decent case for it.

The best and worst days to post long-form YouTube videos

The best day of the week to post long-form YouTube videos is Sunday, followed by Tuesday and then Monday. All three are in what our analysis categorized as “strong” engagement territory.

Saturday and Friday fall into the “moderate” range — still above the neutral threshold, and perfectly fine for posting.

Wednesday and Thursday are the weakest days of the week. Both fall well below the neutral line, with Thursday scoring the lowest. If you’re choosing which days to include in your posting schedule, these are the ones to consider dropping, or at least being strategic about your posting times.

This is a notable shift from our previous data, which pointed to Wednesday through Friday as the strongest days and weekends as the weakest. The pattern has essentially reversed, with Sunday now leading the pack.

One thing worth noting: long-form videos are especially sensitive to timing. They depend on those early engagement signals to gain momentum. So if you know when your audience is most active, try publishing an hour or two before that window. This gives YouTube time to process and index your video so it’s ready to surface right when your viewers come online.

The best time to post YouTube Shorts

Here’s where things get even more interesting. YouTube Shorts have a very different engagement pattern from long-form videos; so different that we’ve broken them out into their own section for the first time.

Based on our analysis, the best time to post YouTube Shorts is Friday at 4 p.m., followed by Friday at 6 p.m. and Friday at 7 p.m. Yes, that’s three Friday slots in the top three, so Friday is the undisputed best day for shorts.

🌙 While long-form videos perform best in the mornings, YouTube Shorts engagement peaks in the evenings, generally between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. This makes sense when you think about how people consume short-form content: it’s the kind of thing you scroll through to unwind at the end of the day.

The worst times to post YouTube Shorts tend to fall during the afternoon, between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. with the exception of Friday, where the late afternoon is actually the top-performing window.

At a glance: the best time to post YouTube Shorts

Evenings dominate for YouTube Shorts. Here are the best posting times for each day of the week:

• Sunday: 7 p.m., 8 p.m., 5 p.m.
• Monday: 8 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m.
• Tuesday: 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 7 p.m.
• Wednesday: 7 p.m., 8 p.m., 9 p.m.
• Thursday: 7 p.m., 8 p.m., 9 p.m.
• Friday: 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m.
• Saturday: 7 p.m., 11 a.m., 6 p.m.

Saturday is interesting; it’s the only day where a morning slot (11 a.m.) cracks the top three, so there may be a window for early-day shorts content on the weekend.

The best and worst days to post YouTube Shorts

The best day to post YouTube Shorts is Friday, followed by Saturday and then Thursday.

The worst days to post YouTube Shorts are Tuesday and Monday. If you’re planning a shorts-only posting schedule, prioritizing the latter half of the week (Thursday through Saturday) and keeping Friday as your anchor day is a smart approach.

Long-form vs. shorts: a quick comparison

If you’re posting both long-form videos and shorts, the key takeaway is that they need different scheduling strategies:

• Long-form videos perform best in the mornings (8a.m.–11 a.m.), with Sunday, Tuesday, and Monday as the best days.
• YouTube Shorts perform best in the evenings (6p.m.–9 p.m.), with Friday, Saturday, and Thursday as the best days.

There’s almost no overlap, which is actually good news if you’re publishing both formats. You can schedule long-form content for morning uploads and shorts for evening drops without competing with yourself.

Finding your best time to post on YouTube

As we often share on this blog, every audience is different. The times above are based on broad engagement patterns across millions of videos, but they may not be the right fit for your audience and their behavior.

So, your best time to publish on YouTube might be slightly different from what we’ve shared here. Your YouTube posting schedule, like all things in content marketing, has to be fine-tuned and figured out for your specific audience. But how do you do that?

The good news is that YouTube Analytics makes this pretty easy. Their metrics are extensive and updated in real time. Here, you’ll get a good sense of when to post videos for your target audience — if you know where to look.

Here’s a step-by-step guide.

1. Go to YouTube Studio

First up, head over to YouTube Studio. While there are several routes via your YouTube channel when logged in, it’s easiest to head straight to studio.youtube.com.

If you’re just starting, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the tool (here’s how to use YouTube Studio for newbies). In a nutshell, YouTube Studio is your channel’s control room, where you’ll go to upload your videos and shorts, keep on top of your subscribers and comments, manage monetization, and monitor your video performance.

2. Check out your YouTube analytics

Of all the native social media analytics tools, YouTube Studio is one of the best. Not only does it offer you a wealth of stats and numbers, but it also does an excellent job of helping you understand and take action from all those metrics.

To access all this good stuff, click on the Analytics tab on the left-hand side of your screen. Here, you’ll find your YouTube analytics Overview, with insights into your overall viewership, watch time, subscriber growth, engagement metrics, and more.

Visiting this space should be a regular task on your social media marketing checklist.

3. Navigate to Audience

In YouTube Studio’s Audience tab (at the top of the screen), you can dig into some fascinating info about your audience as a whole, not just your subscribers.

You’ll find insights into things like which videos are growing your audience (definitely a set of metrics to pay attention to if your goal is to grow your YouTube channel), a host of audience demographics like location, age, and gender, as well as the type of content your audience usually watches on YouTube (YouTube Shorts, Lives, or longer videos).

But when it comes to the best time to post on YouTube for you, the most helpful analytics segment is ‘When your viewers are on YouTube.’ To find this graph, scroll down a bit on the Audience tab.

Here, you’ll find a unique heat map set in your local time, indicating the specific times your audience is on YouTube. Their most active times will be in the darkest purple and the least active times in the lightest purple. These slots are a great indicator of the best time to post on YouTube for your target audience.

It’s well worth checking on these numbers regularly. The data applies to the last 28 days, so peak times may shift periodically.

Your checklist for high-performing YouTube videos and YouTube Shorts

While it might offer your channel a little boost to upload YouTube videos at the best time to post, it’s not the be-all and end-all. There are many factors to consider to give your videos the best chance of success.

For more guidance on this, check out our guide to getting more subscribers on YouTube. Here’s a quick cheat sheet to get you started:

1. Optimize your channel: Make sure you have unique, high-quality channel art (a profile picture, banner image, and video watermark), write a comprehensive channel description, and create a video spotlight or trailer for your channel.
2. Get to grips with the YouTube algorithm: The YouTube algorithm determines how your YouTube content is ranked in the platform’s various feeds. It weighs specific signals (like views, watch time, engagement, and more) to pinpoint how valuable your video content is and who to show it to. Here’s our guide to the YouTube algorithm and the YouTube Shorts algorithm to walk you through it.
3. Tap into YouTube SEO: Like traditional SEO, YouTube SEO starts with understanding what your audience is searching for and making it clear what your content is about. Conduct keyword research with a search engine optimization (SEO) tool, and make sure you use those keywords in your channel description, video title, and video description.
4. Create thumbnails that stop the scroll: YouTube thumbnails can make or break the success of your YouTube video. YouTube thumbnails that feature faces and emotions, use bright colors, and include branding or text generally perform better
5. Deliver value upfront: There’s no point in uploading videos at the best time to post on YouTube if your audience is going to close the video within a few seconds. You’ve caught their attention, now make sure you hold it. Ditch long, winding intros and start delivering on your video’s promise from the get-go to capture viewers’ attention.
6. Use pattern interrupts: Talking-head videos get real boring, real fast. Keep your viewers engaged with subtle edits that keep things interesting — think text, transitions, b-roll footage, animations, stickers, and more.
7. Start a series: Give your audience a reason to keep coming back to your channel. Build successful videos out into a series, and, if it makes sense for your audience, deliver the next installment at regular intervals (use this ‘best time to post on YouTube’ guide to create your posting schedule if you’re not sure when will work best).
8. Don’t sleep on YouTube Shorts: With billions of views daily, YouTube’s answer to TikTok and Instagram Reels can be a brilliant way to draw in new subscribers. Here are 15+ YouTube Shorts Ideas For Your Next Video to get you started.
9. Post consistently: Whether it’s a video or a short, keep your YouTube channel as active as possible with a consistent posting schedule. A social media content calendar is a must-have to help you maintain your chosen cadence of quality content creation.
10. Engage with your audience: Replying to and liking viewer comments is table stakes. Go the extra mile and screenshot their comments to feature in videos, encourage discussion by asking questions in your scripts, and moderate your comments to keep your community safe and healthy. You could even ask them when they’re most likely to watch videos, to help you pinpoint your best time to post on YouTube.
11. Keep going: YouTube success is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t expect virality with your first video. And don’t expect leveraging the best time to post on YouTube to do all the work for you. Take the pressure off and know that your content and video quality are improving with each upload. Stick with it, pay attention to content performance, and subscribers will come.

FAQ about the best time to post on YouTube

What is the best time to post on YouTube?

Based on Buffer’s analysis of 1.8 million YouTube videos, the best time to post long-form YouTube videos is Sunday at 10 a.m. YouTube Shorts perform best on Friday, with 4 p.m., 6 p.m., and 7 p.m. taking the top three time slots.

What is the best time to post YouTube Shorts?

The best time to post YouTube Shorts is Friday at 4 p.m., followed by 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. More broadly, Shorts tend to perform best in the evenings, particularly toward the end of the week.

What is the best day to post on YouTube?

Sunday is the best day to post long-form YouTube videos, followed by Tuesday and Monday. For YouTube Shorts, Friday is the strongest day, followed by Saturday and Thursday.

Does posting time matter on YouTube?

Posting time can matter, but it’s only one factor in your video’s performance. Publishing when your audience is active may help you reach viewers at a useful time, while factors like your topic, title, thumbnail, and how well your content holds viewers’ attention are more important to long-term performance.

Should I post on YouTube before my audience is most active?

It can be worth testing posts shortly before your audience is most active, but there’s no universal lead time that works for every channel. Your YouTube Analytics can show you when your viewers are typically on YouTube. You can use those activity patterns alongside Buffer’s broader posting-time data to test different publishing times and find what works best for your channel.

How do I find my best time to post on YouTube?

To find your best time to post on YouTube, open YouTube Studio and go to Analytics → Audience. Look for the When your viewers are on YouTube report, which shows when your viewers have been active on YouTube over the past 28 days. Use this data alongside your own video performance to test and refine your posting schedule.

More YouTube resources

https://buffer.com/resources/best-time-to-post-on-youtube/