Best Time to Post on Facebook: 19:00 UTC (+44.6%)

The best time to post on Facebook in this sample is 19:00 UTC: +44.6% vs each Page's own average (mean norm_er 1.45, median 1.11, n=9 posts, 7 Pages). We measured 180 posts across 15 public Facebook Pages on 2026-08-31 via GET /v1/facebook/profile/posts. That is 15:00 New York (EDT), 12:00 Los Angeles (PDT), 20:00 London (BST), 21:00 Paris (CEST). Formula: norm_er = (likes + comments) / page_mean; 1.00 = that Page's own average. Shares were null on 180/180, so shares are not in the rate.

Facebook was absent from the 30 Jun 2026 TikTok/Instagram/YouTube/Reddit study; this post fills that gap. Do not copy that study's 20:00 UTC / +52% onto Facebook.

Sprout's live Facebook page says Tue/Wed 12–8 p.m. local (volume, six-network 2B/307k, window closed 27 Feb 2026). Buffer's live page says Thursday 9 a.m. and calls 12–5 p.m. the trough (14M Facebook posts, no date window). Neither ships rate + date window + per-cell n + a formula anyone can rerun.

What is the best time to post on Facebook?

19:00 UTC. Mean norm_er 1.45, median 1.11, +44.6% vs each Page's own average, n=9 posts from 7 Pages. It is the only hour with n ≥ 8 where both the mean and the median beat 1.0.

Hours below the n ≥ 8 floor stay out of this table. Overnight and early-morning UTC slots are almost empty because these Pages rarely post then — a selection effect, not a "bad hour" finding. Thin buckets live in the limits section.

Hour (UTC)	Posts	Mean norm_er	Median	vs. Average	Pages
19:00	9	1.45	1.11	+44.6%	7
22:00	13	1.30	0.89	+30.4%	7
16:00	27	1.19	0.47	+19.4%	10
15:00	19	1.08	0.68	+8.3%	10
18:00	16	1.06	0.85	+5.9%	10
14:00	21	0.98	0.81	-1.9%	10
13:00	22	0.93	0.55	-6.7%	12
17:00	18	0.84	0.58	-16.3%	9

Grand mean norm_er is 1.0000 by construction. Grand median is 0.6364. Grand mean raw (likes + comments) is 18,925.8. That median-vs-mean gap is the whole reason this table reports both: a handful of viral posts pull the mean up, so a "peak" that only exists in the mean is usually two outliers.

Do not treat 16:00 UTC as a second peak. It has the largest n (27) and a +19.4% mean, but the median is 0.47. Two posts do the damage: Canva at 10.15× on 2026-08-13, MrBeast at 8.75× on 2026-08-23. Ask when to post on Facebook, take the hour with the most posts and a shiny mean, and 16:00 UTC is the false peak that falls out.

The honest runner-up is 22:00 UTC (+30.4% mean, median 0.89, n=13, 7 Pages). It takes the n ≥ 8 lead only in the thinnest sensitivity cut (2026 posts and drop the capture day), where 19:00 falls below n=8. Treat the headline as 19:00 UTC, with 22:00 UTC as the runner-up — not as a 14-million-post law.

19:00 UTC holds as the top eligible hour in 4 of 5 sensitivity cuts (full table in the method section). n=9 is above the floor we set before the pull, not a power calculation. 180 posts is not Buffer's 14 million.

Every timestamp is UTC; the local clocks for the headline hour are 3pm New York / 12pm Los Angeles / 8pm London / 9pm Paris. What time to post on Facebook for a Page whose audience lives in one city is still that city's clock, not a blended, "universally applicable" one.

What is the best day to post on Facebook?

Saturday. Mean norm_er 1.55, median 1.12, +55.4%, n=13 posts from 8 Pages. Saturday holds as the top eligible day in every sensitivity cut. The best days to post on Facebook in this sample are Saturday then Sunday — Sunday is the only other day with both mean and median above 1.0 (+32.9% / median 1.01, n=20).

All 180 posts, bucketed by UTC date:

Day	Posts	Mean norm_er	Median	vs. Average
Monday	52	0.86	0.43	-13.7%
Tuesday	24	0.57	0.51	-42.9%
Wednesday	29	1.05	0.70	+5.0%
Thursday	19	1.15	0.68	+15.5%
Friday	23	0.97	0.88	-3.3%
Saturday	13	1.55	1.12	+55.4%
Sunday	20	1.33	1.01	+32.9%

Do not headline Monday as bad. Capture day was Monday 2026-08-31. 30 of 52 Monday posts published that day (mean norm_er 0.59); the other 22 Mondays sit at 1.23. Drop 2026-08-31 and Monday flips to +18%. The −13.7% row is recency bias: likes and comments on same-day posts have not finished arriving.

The worst eligible day on the raw table is Tuesday −42.9% (n=24, median 0.51). That one is not a capture-day artifact.

Weekday × hour is almost empty. Only two cells hit n ≥ 8, and both sit below average: Monday 17:00 UTC at −77.0% (n=8, capture-day contaminated) and Wednesday 13:00 UTC at −9.0% (n=8). There is no honest "best hour on Saturday" or "best hour on Monday" in this grid. Saturday as a day is usable. A Saturday hour is not.

What time works on Tuesday?

Tuesday is the weakest eligible day (−42.9%, n=24, median 0.51). Capture day was Monday, so this is not recency. No Tuesday × hour cell reached n ≥ 8. Treat Tuesday as weak in this sample; do not invent a Tuesday clock time.

What time works on Thursday?

Thursday's mean is +15.5% (n=19) but the median is 0.68 — mean above 1, median not. No Thursday hour hit n ≥ 8. Buffer's live page currently names Thursday 9 a.m. as the single best slot; this sample cannot confirm or deny that hour.

What time works on Friday?

Friday scored −3.3% (n=23, median 0.88). Buffer's 26 January 2024 thread called Friday the best Facebook day, with engagement from 9 a.m. through 4 p.m.. This 2026-08-31 sample does not. No Friday hour reached n ≥ 8.

When is the worst time to post on Facebook?

Among hours with enough posts to score, the worst time to post on Facebook is 17:00 UTC: −16.3% (mean 0.84, median 0.58, n=18, 9 Pages). Next-worst eligible: 13:00 UTC −6.7% (n=22), then 14:00 UTC −1.9% (n=21). Converted from the 19:00 clocks, 17:00 UTC is 13:00 New York / 10:00 Los Angeles / 18:00 London / 19:00 Paris.

Empty overnight buckets are not "worst." Hours with n < 8 are selection effects: these Pages almost never publish then. Monday is not the worst day; Tuesday is.

The vendor pages that rank for this query cannot agree, and they are not measuring the same thing:

Source	Headline window	Metric	Sample / window	Timezone
This study	Worst eligible hour 17:00 UTC (−16.3%); afternoons are mixed (16:00 mean is outliers)	per-page norm_er (likes+comments)	180 Facebook posts / 15 Pages / 2026-08-31	UTC, conversions given
Sprout	Tue/Wed 12–8 p.m. local is the best block; weekends worst; FAQ worst 4–7 a.m.	engagement volume	~2B engagements / 307k profiles across 6 networks; Facebook-only N never broken out; 27 Nov 2025–27 Feb 2026	"local time"
Buffer	Afternoons 12–5 p.m. are the worst on most days; best slot Thu 9 a.m.; best day Wednesday	"engagement rates" (formula unstated)	14M Facebook posts sent via Buffer; no date window	"universally applicable" black box
Hootsuite	"early morning" local	unspecified	Facebook-specific claim via Mar 2025 X replies	local TZ, not EST

Sprout's winning afternoon block is Buffer's trough. That is not a rounding error. Sprout counts raw engagement volume across six networks and never breaks out Facebook. Buffer talks about "engagement rates" without publishing the formula, using posts sent via Buffer, with timezone handled by what the page itself calls "mathematical magic." Hootsuite's Facebook claim is local early morning, not EST. Averaging those clocks produces a number nobody measured.

Ignite Visibility is the only ranker with a "why studies disagree" heading, and that heading never compares the live studies. The table above is the comparison. Do not import TikTok's 24-hour distribution window onto Facebook Feed; that quote is TikTok-only.

What should a Facebook posting schedule look like?

Here is a Facebook posting schedule you can actually run — from this sample only. Facebook posting times below are the 19:00 UTC conversion plus the day table — not a per-weekday hour grid, because that grid does not exist at n ≥ 8.

• Post: 19:00 UTC (15:00 EDT / 12:00 PDT / 20:00 BST / 21:00 CEST). Runner-up 22:00 UTC.
• Day to prefer: Saturday; Sunday second (both mean and median > 1).
• Day to treat as weak in this sample: Tuesday (−42.9%).
• Hour to avoid among eligible cells: 17:00 UTC (13:00 EDT / 10:00 PDT / 18:00 BST / 19:00 CEST).
• Do not: skip Monday on the strength of the −13.7% row; treat 16:00 UTC as a peak; claim a Wednesday or Monday hour.

When is the best time to post on Facebook for business?

19:00 UTC — this sample is 15 public brand Pages (Nike, Starbucks, NASA, Netflix, Shopify, Buffer, Hootsuite, and the rest of the list in the method), not personal profiles. The windows describe when these business Pages over-performed their own average. Mega-page bias is real: MrBeast's page mean raw is 187,670 vs Buffer's 4. Per-page normalization stops follower count from drowning the hour; it does not create a local-SMB sample.

LinkedIn Company Pages vs personal profiles behave differently enough to need the LinkedIn posting-time analysis. This Facebook pull did not measure cadence, so there is no 1–2×/day vs 3–5×/week claim here.

How did we measure this — and can you reproduce it?

Question. What is the best hour (UTC) and weekday to post on Facebook, measured as per-page-normalized engagement?

Formula (written before the pull):

1. raw_engagement = likes + comments + shares (null = 0 only if at least one field is present; all-three-null dropped).
2. page_mean = mean(raw_engagement) per Page.
3. norm_er = raw_engagement / page_mean.
4. Bucket by published_at → hour UTC and weekday.
5. Headline = highest mean norm_er among buckets with n ≥ 8; median reported beside the mean.

That is the same per-account normalization used in the 2026 engagement-rate benchmarks. Shares were null on 180/180 kept posts, so raw engagement is likes + comments on every row. Do not quote this as a shares-inclusive rate.

Reels. /v1/facebook/profile/reels was not the primary metric (rounded views, null likes/comments/shares). Reels that appeared on the Page feed via /profile/posts were kept when they carried likes/comments: 65 reels / 115 non-reel. Mean norm_er reels = 0.78; non-reel = 1.13. That is a composition note, not a timing split. No Reels-only hour.

Sample. 15 primary Pages × 4 cursor pages × 3 posts/page = 180. Facebook serves this feed in slices of 3 (pagination.page_size = 3 on every successful call). Every primary returned 12 kept posts. No backups. Failed Pages: none. We did not sample personal profiles.

Pages: MrBeast, Nike, National Geographic, BBC News, NASA, Netflix, Red Bull, Buffer, Hootsuite, Canva, Duolingo, Starbucks, Spotify, Adobe, Shopify. Pulled 2026-08-31.

Endpoint. GET /v1/facebook/profile/posts on host https://www.socialcrawl.dev, header x-api-key. Credit check: GET /v1/credits/balance.

curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/facebook/profile/posts?url=https://www.facebook.com/nike" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

  # next slice
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/facebook/profile/posts?url=https://www.facebook.com/nike&cursor=NEXT_CURSOR" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

Spend. 60 credits (1 probe + 59 harvest; 1 of 60 harvest calls was a cache hit — MrBeast page 1). Harvest-window balance 153,237 → 153,178. Endpoint cost 1 credit/call; cache hits billed 0.

Any developer with a SocialCrawl key reruns the same 4-slice walk, takes published_at + engagement.likes|comments|shares from the unified envelope, drops all-null engagement, divides by Page mean, and buckets by UTC hour/weekday. 180 posts / 15 Pages cost 60 credits on 2026-08-31. The SocialCrawl API is the instrument; norm_er is ours.

Sensitivity (same 180 posts; page means recomputed inside each subset — not a second harvest):

Cut	Posts	Pages	Best eligible hour	Best eligible day
All (headline)	180	15	19:00 UTC, +44.6% (n=9, median 1.11)	Saturday +55.4% (n=13)
2026 only	130	11	19:00 UTC, +54.8% (n=8, median 1.59)	Saturday +84.1% (n=9)
Drop capture day	150	14	19:00 UTC, +39.8% (n=8, median 1.20)	Saturday +24.0% (n=13)
2026 and drop capture day	100	10	22:00 UTC, +29.3% (n=8, median 0.82)	Saturday +38.6% (n=9)
Drop Buffer + Hootsuite	156	13	19:00 UTC, +39.9% (n=8, median 1.07)	Saturday +55.4% (n=13)

Where these numbers hit their limits

1. Capture-day recency (Monday 2026-08-31). 30 of 52 Monday posts are same-day; mean norm_er 0.59 vs 1.23 for the other 22. The −13.7% Monday row is not a rule. Drop today and Monday flips to +18%.
2. All timestamps are UTC. The study cannot split timezone effects. 19:00 UTC = 15:00 EDT / 12:00 PDT / 20:00 BST / 21:00 CEST.
3. Facebook serves 3 posts per page. This sample is 4 slices × 15 Pages = 180, not a randomized year of content.
4. The feed is not a clean "latest 12." Year mix: 2026=130, 2025=11, 2024=12, 2021=10, 2017=10, plus a handful of 2018–2023. Netflix's entire 12-post window is 2017–2021-era; Shopify's 12 are all pre-2025; Spotify contributes 9 pre-2025. A 2017 Netflix post has had years to accumulate likes. The 2026-only cut still puts 19:00 UTC on top.
5. Mega-page bias + already-optimized schedulers. Per-page norm_er stops raw follower count drowning the hour. It does not create a mid-tier local-business sample. MrBeast's page mean raw is 187,670 vs Buffer's 4.
6. Selection bias. We measured when these Pages happen to post. Empty overnight hours are not proven bad hours.
7. Shares null 180/180. The rate is likes + comments.
8. Feed mix includes Reels (65/180). No format-split headline. /profile/reels was not used as a primary list.
9. Thin buckets. Hours with n < 8 are not findings: 00:00 (n=1), 01:00 (n=2), 07:00 (n=1), 09:00 (n=3), 10:00 (n=5), 11:00 (n=2), 12:00 (n=5), 20:00 (n=5), 21:00 (n=6), 23:00 (n=5). 19:00 itself is n=9. n ≥ 8 is a floor, not a power calculation. This is a dated 180-post snapshot, not Buffer's 14 million or Sprout's 2 billion. The advantage is live-API reproducibility.
10. No per-weekday best hour. Sibling-keyword demand exists for Wednesday, Saturday, Monday, and the rest. The grid does not support it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best time to post on Facebook on Monday?

Capture day was Monday 2026-08-31. 30 of 52 Monday posts went live that day (mean norm_er 0.59) vs 1.23 for the other 22. The raw Monday row is −13.7%; drop the capture day and Monday is +18%. The only Monday × hour cell at n ≥ 8 is Monday 17:00 UTC (−77.0%, n=8), also capture-day contaminated. There is no Monday hour finding. Do not treat "avoid Monday" as a rule.

What is the best time to post on Facebook on Saturday?

Saturday is the headline day: +55.4% mean, median 1.12, n=13, 8 Pages. It holds in every sensitivity cut. No Saturday × hour cell reached n ≥ 8, so there is no honest Saturday hour. Prefer Saturday as a day; do not invent 10 a.m.

What is the best time to post on Facebook on Wednesday?

Wednesday's mean is +5.0% (n=29) but the median is 0.70. The only Wednesday × hour cell at n ≥ 8 is Wednesday 13:00 UTC (−9.0%, n=8) — below average, not a peak. Buffer's live page calls Wednesday the best day; this sample does not. No Wednesday hour finding.

What is the best time to post on Facebook on Sunday?

Sunday scored +32.9% mean / median 1.01 / n=20 — the only other day besides Saturday with both mean and median above 1.0. Sprout's Sunday H3 ("worst day") is volume on a six-network sample; this rate on Facebook-only Pages disagrees. No Sunday hour at n ≥ 8.

What is the best time to post on Facebook today?

There is no vendor "today" clock. If "today" is Saturday, the day finding applies; if Tuesday, this sample is weak. The hour to try is still 19:00 UTC in the four converted local clocks (15:00 EDT / 12:00 PDT / 20:00 BST / 21:00 CEST). Recency: posts published the day you measure will look worse because likes and comments have not finished arriving.

What is the best time to post on Facebook for likes?

The study metric is norm_er on likes + comments, not likes-only. Shares were null on 180/180 so they never enter the rate. We did not rank hours by likes alone. Do not treat 19:00 UTC as a likes-max window; it is a per-page normalized likes+comments window.

Reproduce the pull in the Explorer against your own Page list and see your data before writing a single line. Endpoint docs for GET /v1/facebook/profile/posts live at /docs/facebook.