Best Times to Post on Threads: What the Data Shows

The most detailed public analysis we know of comes from Buffer, the social media scheduling company. In February 2026 it published results from 2.5 million Threads posts sent through its tool, measuring median engagement (likes, replies and reposts) by day and hour, in each account's local time.

The study is large, but it has limits worth knowing. Every post came from Buffer users, who skew towards businesses, marketers and creators who schedule in advance. Buffer does not publish the account mix or the exact period, and it does not explain how it adjusted times to make them comparable across time zones. Buffer itself calls timing a bonus rather than a must.

Other vendors publish their own "best times" for Threads, and they disagree with each other: some recommend evenings, which Buffer's data rates as the weakest window. Most of them do not disclose a sample or method. Treat any single list, including this one, as a starting hypothesis.

Meta does not publish a best time to post on Threads. Its creator guidance instead tells you to look at how your own posts perform on different days of the week in Insights, and to post at least two to five times a week. That second point matters more than the hour: consistency gives you enough posts to compare at all.

Pick two slots: one from the data above (a weekday morning) and one that fits your audience's routine, for example lunchtime if your readers are office workers in one time zone. Post comparable content in both slots for three weeks. Comparable means similar topic, similar format, similar length.

After three weeks, compare the median replies and views per post for each slot, not the single best post. If one slot is clearly ahead, keep it and test a new challenger against it. If the difference is small, timing is not your bottleneck and your effort is better spent on the posts themselves.

Remember your audience's time zone, not yours. If you are in Berlin and most of your readers are on the US East Coast, their 9 a.m. is your 3 p.m.

Threads has had a built-in scheduler since January 2025: in the composer you choose Schedule, pick a date and time, and the post waits in your drafts until it goes live. Third-party tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, Later and Metricool can also publish to Threads.

Scheduling solves the posting time, not the replying. If your audience's best slot is 9 a.m. in New York and you are asleep then, a scheduled post will go out on time and its first replies will wait for hours. Choose slots you can actually follow up on.