Every minute hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every day. In just one hour, there are over 30,000 hours of brand-new content available!
If you are a content creator, this means that your competition is really wide. There's the need to find the best memento to share your content so it has more chances to stand out and get the proper audience’s attention.
Most Youtubers agree that the best posting time is in the afternoon, between 12 pm and 6 pm, and the best day to post is Friday as the weekend is getting closer. However, factors such as your target audience, your location, and the type of content you are sharing can influence your watch time and engagement and therefore your video performance.
Posting at the best time is just one factor in getting you in the spotlight. To succeed on YouTube you must focus on delivering high-quality videos. When to deliver them? Check our article and find the best hour for you and your channel!
The best time to upload videos on YouTube is from 12 pm to 6 pm from Monday to Friday and from 9 am to 7 pm on Saturday and Sunday. To figure out the best moment to post your videos you need to align your schedule with your audience’s free time.
During the weekdays people are often more free during lunch breaks or after the work hours or school is over. On the other hand, during the weekend people usually have more time to spare therefore the flexibility of hours.
In both cases, week and weekend, uploading your videos from 12 am to 7 am is not a good idea. Commonly people are sleeping or getting ready to start their routines so this is the worst time frame to share videos. It’s all about understanding when your audience is active the most.
The best time to post will be determined by your audience behavior throughout the week. The more your schedule aligns with your viewers free time, the more engagement your content is going to get.
On Mondays it is best to post around 2 pm and 4 pm. Moderate engagement as viewers check YouTube after lunch and work / school hours.
On Tuesdays it is best to post around 2 pm and 4 pm. Afternoons and early evenings remain the most active periods as people are getting caught in the week’s routines.
On Wednesdays it is best to post around 12 pm and 6 pm. As the week progresses, lunchtime and early evening hours gain more viewers.
On Thursdays it is best to post around 12 pm and 6 pm. Engagement starts to pick up as the weekend gets closer.
On Fridays it is best to post around 12 pm and 7 pm. Even higher engagement as people get ready for the weekend.
On Saturdays it is best to post around 9 am and 7 pm. This is the day with the highest engagement. People have more free time and tend to start watching videos earlier and staying active throughout the afternoon.
On Sundays it is best to post around 10 am - 7 pm. People spend time on the platform to relax and entertain themselves before the week starts again.
Most YouTube users either work or go to school. This explains why posting in the afternoon and evening will be the best time to go in terms of engagement. During the weekends, the peak times change a little bit due to the viewers' free time and need to entertain themselves after the week.
Your audience behavior is going to determine your peak posting hours. That's why you need to get to know your viewers and their routines to match your uploading schedule with their daily schedules.
To ensure a good engagement rate you also need to consider not only your location but also your audience's location so you'll be able to follow the different time zones if needed. Posting when most of your viewers are awake increases the chances of immediate engagement.
Your audience’s daily schedule determines your peak posting hours, so knowing their habits is key. Even though afternoon hours are often the best hours to post, your audience location, habits and interactions impact on your own peak hours.
Knowing both YouTube algorithm and your audience will help you make the best out of your content.
As a YouTuber you probably know that what matters the most on YouTube are your video views. If you want to monetize your content you know that what actually matters are the ad views and how your viewers react to the different ads displayed in your videos.
If you want to learn more about monetization on YouTube, check our guide on How Much Does YouTube Pay For 1,000 Views!
YouTube's algorithm prioritizes content that gets early engagement. So if you want to make sure the platform recommends your content or sees it as high value you must focus on delivering to your audience at the right time.
There’s a difference between when you should upload and when people actually watch videos.
The peak times are the range of hours when people are more active on the platform. While the optimal upload times are the hours when it is best to share your content having the peak times as reference.
YouTube takes some time to analyze, index and distribute your videos. So if you plan ahead and upload your content a few moments before the peak hours, chances are your video is going to be ready for viewers right in the middle of peak hours increasing your potential engagement.
During peak hours, you have better chances of a higher engagement but the competition is also higher since many creators are posting content.
Posting at the right time can help however, Watch Time, CTR, and Audience Retention are the most influential factors in YouTube’s ranking system. There are three primary factors determining that you need to keep in mind if you want to increase your content chances of appearing in YouTube’s search results, recommended feeds, and the homepage:
Posting at a time when your audience is likely to interact with your video increases its chances of being recommended.
The niche you are working in is key to defining the topics on your videos. Depending on the type of content you create, the people who are watching.
Quick note: These hours are estimated and used to give an idea based on general audience trends. To get more realistic information, you should analyze your own YouTube Analytics.
Videos in the gaming niche have peak hours in the afternoon and evening where viewers are more likely to have free time to play games as well and look for game recommendations or reviews and tips on their favorite games.
The entertainment niche shares the same afternoon-evening logic. The peak hours are from 1 pm to 9 pm. People usually go to YouTube to entertain themselves after school or work hours.
Fitness & Health is a niche a little bit different, with more hours during morning time. This is probable because many users tend to look for workouts or healthy recipes to start their day, so 6 am and 10 am are popular hours. So is 7 pm as many viewers may prefer to exercise after work/school.
The Kids Content niche works better at 8 am and from 3 pm to 7 pm, during the morning and afternoon. Mainly because kids tend to go to bed earlier so they are not consuming content at night.
Understanding your audience and when and how they consume and react to your content is going to be necessary in order to find the best time to post on YouTube for your channel.
The audience you hold and where it is based is going to be really important to determine your optimal upload time.
Your audience’s time zone matters more than your own. If you are a creator in the US with a majority of US viewers you can schedule to upload your content based on your local time as all of you share a time zone. However, if you hold a large audience from a different country or time zone, you’ll need to adapt your content schedule a little bit in order to find an hour range that works for all. You need to find a balance that works best for most of your viewers.
When posting for a local audience, meaning the majority of your viewers are from the same country or region, you can stick to that time zone as a guide. For instance, if your target is the U.S. and your viewers are primarily in Eastern Time (ET), posting at 3 PM ET would be ideal.
If your viewers are spread around the world, a global audience, finding the best time to post it's going to be a little bit trickier. You won’t be able to stick to one time zone but need to find a time that aligns well with various regions. You can also experiment with different posting times to see which performs best.
Understanding where your audience is is going to help you figure out when is better to post your videos so they match with hours when most of your daily viewers are awake, boosting significantly your content visibility.
Where your audience is going to tell you a lot about your peak hours therefore your optimal posting time.
Quick note: These hours are estimated and used to give an idea based on general audience trends. To get more realistic information, you should analyze your own YouTube Analytics.
In Australia people go to YouTube really early in the morning during weekdays and then again in the afternoon. On weekends, Australians sleep in a little bit more making 10 am the peak hour in the morning.
The US has its peak hours during work breaks or after work during the week. On Saturday and Sunday the peak hours are 9 am, 2 pm and 5 pm.
In Europe a similar scenario occurs during the week, peak hours being after work hours. However, during the weekends, the morning and noon are the most effective hours to post videos.
In most countries the peak hours are post work or school activities during the week and weekends always offer a longer viewer window as people have more free time.
YouTube Analytics can help identify your peak time and optimal uploading time. To access your audience’s information and peak hours, you can go to YouTube Studio, then click on Analytics and then select the Audience option.
Once you are there, you’ll see a graphic showing “When Your Viewers Are On YouTube” a display of days of the week and different time spans with different shades of purple. The darker the shade, the more your content is being watched in that hour.
The hours are expressed in your local time zone. So just to make sure, you can also check the graph with “Top Geographies” down below to find out where your audience is located and what is their time zone.
Knowing where your main audience is it's going to help you decide when it’s best to post your content. If you share time zones, you can go with that. If there are multiple time zones in the place, you’ll need to find a posting strategy that contemplates them all.
These two graphics show information gatherers in the past 28 days. So if your channel is new or you haven't been having that many views, you are probably not going to find the one that shows when your viewers are. However, you can go back to the “Overview” and see the chart with your views in the last 48 hours.
With your real views over the past 2 days you can explore the different hours your videos have been watched and find your peak hours.
Finding the best time to share your videos is going to help you perform well initially! The more views, comments, likes and shares your video has in the first 24 to 48 hours, the more YouTube's algorithm it's going to recognize it as good content and recommend it. However, most videos on the platform have a long life, meaning they continue to be highly valuable content over time. So don't stress if your video does not perform well at the beginning, it can still perform well in the long term.
Once you know when it's the best time to post, the best thing you can do is start working on a posting schedule.
Having a schedule not only works for your viewers, as they know when to expect new content, but also shows YouTube consistency and boosts your discoverability.
Don't be afraid to experiment with different posting times and schedules until you find the one that works for you and your channel. Once you do, stick to it!
Start by sharing videos on different days and hours, according to what your analytics suggest. If the peak activity is around 6 pm on Friday, upload your video around 3 pm to increase your chances of an early engagement.
As you try new things, compare your video performances to determine what time actually worked best. Finding what time frame gives you the most amount of views in the first 24 hours can be helpful information while building your posting schedule.
Having a schedule helps you build a relationship with your viewers as they know when to expect brand new content from you. You can also promote your new upcoming videos and release dates so your viewers make sure to get on the platform to watch them. This also guarantees more views in the first 24 hours, increasing your engagement.
When posting shorts on YouTube for the first time the right way to go would be to follow the peak hours as they tell you when viewers are actively on the platform. So a great time to post shorts would be around 12 pm and 6 pm during the week and 9 am to 7 pm on weekends.
However, shorts work a little differently than regular videos as they are more likely to go viral. This is why while creating shorts you must explore different posting hours in order to find the one that works best for your content.
Posting consistently is also going to increase your chances of appearing on the viewers feed, boosting your visibility!
Different from long form videos or shorts when you consider your peak hours as a guide to upload your content a little before that time frame, when you are streaming on YouTube you need to focus only on the peak hours. There's no need to plan in advance to make sure your video is on at the right time, you just need to be streaming at that time.
As there's less preparation, all you have to do is follow the peak hours and make sure you are able to go live! You can also use the peak hours as reference when planning your future live sessions.
If you want to learn more about Live Streaming On YouTube, check our article on How Much Does YouTube Pay For Live Streaming!
Finding the best time to post on YouTube is really helpful if you want to see your channel succeed.
In order to make sure when to share your videos you need to understand and know your audience’s peak hours and therefore the best time to upload your content so you guarantee an audience is there to watch.
No matter what you do, keep consistent! Plan your videos ahead of time, let your audience know when your next video is coming up and interact with them so they comment, share and like boosting your initial engagement and therefore your video’s discoverability.
Don’t upload videos just for the sake of it. Think of a strategy! Post right before your main viewers come into the platform, engage with them and stay true to your schedule to maximize your YouTube’s success!
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