Best time to post Reels: the averages, and why the Reels window is softer than it looks

Thursday at 9 a.m. tops Buffer’s study of 9.6 million Instagram posts

No slot in Buffer’s Instagram study beat Thursday at 9 a.m. on median engagement rate; Wednesday at 12 p.m. and Wednesday at 6 p.m. came next. Buffer defines engagement rate as (likes + comments + shares + saves) ÷ followers × 100. Reach was not measured.

Times were normalised across time zones. The 9.6 million posts were sent through Buffer, part of a study of more than 52 million posts covering January 2024 to December 2025.

Five of the seven first slots sit between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. The two exceptions are Wednesday and Thursday, the days Buffer ranks highest, which open with midday and morning. Saturday’s 9 p.m. sits inside the window on one of Buffer’s two weakest days.

Cross-posters should not copy one schedule to both apps. Buffer’s separate study of 7.1 million TikTok posts ranked Saturday as the strongest day and Sunday at 9 a.m. as the top slot; the TikTok posting-time guide covers that data and the Follower activity chart that goes with it.

Is the evening really the best time to post Reels?

Buffer’s Reels advice is the evening, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., with Wednesday and Thursday strongest. In the same article Buffer says the advice comes from all post types analysed together, not from Reels alone, and it suggests testing morning and midday slots too.

The metric opens a second gap. Engagement rate divides interactions by follower count, so it scales a post to the account’s size and never asks how many people saw it. Instagram can recommend a public account’s Reels to people who do not follow it, in Explore and in Reels. Buffer never counted those viewers.

So the evening window is a guess about Reels drawn from mixed data, worth one week of testing and no more trust than that. The table backs the doubt: of Buffer’s top three slots, only Wednesday at 6 p.m. falls inside the window.

How do you find the best time to post Reels for your account?

The test sets the evening window against a morning or midday slot on your own account, with three Reels a week on the same three days. Only the hour changes.

1. Week 1: post on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday inside Buffer’s evening window, at 7 p.m.
2. Week 2: post on the same days at 12 p.m., the hour of Buffer’s second-ranked slot. A 9 a.m. slot works the same way if mornings suit your audience.
3. Every Reel: at 72 hours old, note its reach, likes and sends, then work out likes per 100 reach and sends per 100 reach.

Social Media Today reported that Adam Mosseri named those two numbers, beside watch time, in January 2025. Likes count slightly more with followers and sends slightly more with non-followers. The formula is sends ÷ reach × 100, and the same for likes.

Keep the format fixed across all six Reels: the same length, the same kind of opening, the same type of subject. Run each one through the Reels pre-posting checklist first, so a watermark or muted audio cannot decide the test. The 72-hour mark matches the window Instagram uses to judge a trial reel for automatic sharing.

Keep trial reels out of the six. A Reel shared with the Trial toggle on skips followers’ Feed and Reels tab, so its numbers come mostly from non-followers and would skew a week. The guide to Instagram trial reels explains why a trial’s numbers compare only with other trials.

Week 2 wins the worked example on sends

Here is the test scored on sends per 100 reach. A Reel that reaches 1,000 accounts and collects 14 sends scores 14 ÷ 1,000 × 100 = 1.4.

• Week 1, 7 p.m.: 1.4, 2.1 and 1.8. In order: 1.4, 1.8, 2.1. Median 1.8.
• Week 2, 12 p.m.: 2.6, 1.2 and 2.4. In order: 1.2, 2.4, 2.6. Median 2.4.

Week 2 wins. Its median is 2.4 against 1.8, a gap of 0.6 sends per 100 reach. Mosseri said sends weigh slightly more with non-followers, so for Reels meant to reach past the follower list, 12 p.m. is the slot to keep.

The median also stops one Reel from deciding the result. Week 2’s 1.2 is the weakest number of either week, and the week still wins, because 1.2 sits at the bottom of its order and the middle value is 2.4.

Run the same median on likes per 100 reach. If likes favour 7 p.m. while sends favour 12 p.m., the split fits Mosseri’s description, with likes leaning on followers and sends on non-followers. For a Reel meant to travel, go with sends.

No posting hour can rescue a Reel’s first 3 seconds

Watch time is one of the three signals Mosseri named, and no hour earns it for a Reel whose opening loses people. In Go Viral, the Hook Score grades a clip’s first 3 seconds from 0 to 100. Import the clip or paste the Reel’s link before you schedule it.

The Engagement Heat Map in the same analysis marks drop-offs, replays and retention trends, so a weak second can be recut before 12 p.m. comes round. The clock comes second.

If Reels stall at every slot across both weeks, look upstream of the hour. The guide to Reels that get no views covers Account Status, reposted footage and the other causes that sit before timing.