Measured on viral posts, not opined

Best time to post on Pinterest (2026), from 73.8K viral pins

Measured on 73.8K viral pins from the last year on Pinterest: the slot with the highest average engagement is Thursday 16:00 UTC, and 11.8% of the posts published then made the top 10%. Every weekday, today, your time zone, the proof posts, the sample and the method.

Every other page on this question studies ordinary accounts and asks when they get the most engagement. This one asks a different question: when were the posts that actually went viral published? We track them for a living, we hold the timestamp of each one, and you can open them below.

Updated 2026-09-07 · recomputed dailyFirst published 6 Sep 2026Rodrigo · ViralHunt
All networks TikTokInstagramXFacebookPinterestBlueskyMastodonDouyinTumblrReddit
73.8Kviral posts measured
358days of data
6.5Ktop-10% threshold
17.4%best hit rate

The five best slots

Ranked by average engagement. The hit rate says how many posts published in that hour made the network's top 10%; the baseline is 10%.

#1 Thursday 16:00 UTC 6.4K average · 467 posts
11.8%
#2 Thursday 00:00 UTC 5.8K average · 523 posts
17.4%
#3 Saturday 13:00 UTC 5.4K average · 458 posts
12.2%
#4 Saturday 04:00 UTC 4.9K average · 364 posts
12.4%
#5 Thursday 09:00 UTC 4.6K average · 271 posts
10.3%

The worst hour

Sunday 02:00 UTC

Sunday 02:00 UTC: 2K average engagement over 555 posts, 7.7% of them in the top 10%. Publishing then is not fatal, but it is the weakest hour with a real sample.

The whole map: day by hour

Each cell is the average engagement of the posts published in that hour. Brighter is higher. Hover for the sample and the hit rate.

0
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2
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4
5
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8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat

By weekday

Sun3.1K
Mon3.1K
Tue3.3K
Wed3.3K
Thu3.9K
Fri3.2K
Sat3.2K

By hour (UTC)

13:003.7K
19:003.6K
14:003.5K
22:003.5K
12:003.5K
00:003.5K
18:003.5K
07:003.5K

Best time to post on Pinterest today

Today is Monday in UTC. The best hours today in our sample: 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 UTC. The switch at the top converts them to your clock.

10:00, 12:00, 14:00 UTC

Best time to post on Pinterest, day by day

The three strongest hours of each weekday, how the day compares with the weekly average, and its own hit rate.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Monday

10:00, 12:00, 14:00 The strongest hours are 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 UTC. Posts published on Monday average 3.1K engagement, 5% below the weekly average, over 10.5K posts, and 9.4% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Tuesday

13:00, 14:00, 18:00 The strongest hours are 13:00, 14:00, 18:00 UTC. Posts published on Tuesday average 3.3K engagement, 1% below the weekly average, over 9.8K posts, and 10.1% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Wednesday

07:00, 12:00, 14:00 The strongest hours are 07:00, 12:00, 14:00 UTC. Posts published on Wednesday average 3.3K engagement, 0% above the weekly average, over 10.6K posts, and 9.8% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Thursday

00:00, 09:00, 16:00 The strongest hours are 00:00, 09:00, 16:00 UTC. Posts published on Thursday average 3.9K engagement, 19% above the weekly average, over 9.9K posts, and 11.2% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Friday

05:00, 06:00, 11:00 The strongest hours are 05:00, 06:00, 11:00 UTC. Posts published on Friday average 3.2K engagement, 4% below the weekly average, over 10.7K posts, and 9.9% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Saturday

04:00, 13:00, 19:00 The strongest hours are 04:00, 13:00, 19:00 UTC. Posts published on Saturday average 3.2K engagement, 2% below the weekly average, over 10.6K posts, and 10.1% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on Pinterest on Sunday

13:00, 14:00, 19:00 The strongest hours are 13:00, 14:00, 19:00 UTC. Posts published on Sunday average 3.1K engagement, 5% below the weekly average, over 11.7K posts, and 9.7% of them made the top 10%.

The best slots in your time zone

The three best slots converted to the zones our readers ask about most. Daylight saving moves some of them by an hour part of the year.

SlotUTCCiudad de MéxicoNew YorkLos AngelesSão PauloLondonMadrid · Paris · BerlinMumbaiSydney
#1Thu16:00 Thu10:00Thu11:00Thu08:00Thu13:00Thu16:00Thu17:00Thu21:30Fri02:00
#2Thu00:00 Wed18:00Wed19:00Wed16:00Wed21:00Thu00:00Thu01:00Thu05:30Thu10:00
#3Sat13:00 Sat07:00Sat08:00Sat05:00Sat10:00Sat13:00Sat14:00Sat18:30Sat23:00

The posts that prove it

The three most viral viral pins published in the best slot, Thursday 16:00 UTC. Open them.

The sample, month by month

How many posts from each month are in the data. A study is only as good as its recency.

How to find your own best time on Pinterest

This page measures when the viral posts of the whole network were published. Your account is one audience inside it. Open Pinterest's native analytics, look at when your followers are online, and start with the slots above that overlap. Then move your posts one hour at a time and compare the first-hour numbers for two or three weeks. Keep what wins, and come back: these numbers are recomputed every day.

Why the first hour matters

Every network shows a new post to a small slice of its audience first. The likes, comments and shares of that first hour are what earns the next slice. Publishing when that first slice is awake is the whole reason the hour matters: the same post at 4 AM starts its test in an empty room. It is also why the slots here are measured on publish time and not on the hour the engagement arrived.

How often to post on Pinterest

Timing does not replace frequency; it multiplies it. The accounts behind the posts in this sample publish daily or more on the short-video networks and several times a week elsewhere. One post a day inside a good slot beats five spread across weak ones, and the algorithms reward a steady cadence more than volume.

How this was measured

Who measured this

R

Rodrigo · ViralHunt

Rodrigo, founder of ViralHunt. Fifteen years building social audiences: 8M followers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and YouTube, without ads, by catching content before it peaks. ViralHunt is the tool that came out of that work, his own network runs on it, and these pages read the same database his team uses every day.

Updated 2026-09-07 · First published 6 Sep 2026

Frequently asked

What is the best time to post on Pinterest?
In our sample of 73.8K viral pins from the last year, the slot with the highest average engagement is Thursday 16:00 UTC, where 11.8% of the posts made the top 10% against a 10% baseline. The five best are listed above with their sample size.
What is the best day to post on Pinterest?
By average engagement, Thursday. By the number of viral posts published, Sunday.
What is the worst time to post on Pinterest?
Among slots with a real sample, Sunday 02:00 UTC, with 2K average engagement. The gap between best and worst hour is what the map shows.
What is the best time to post on Pinterest today?
Today is Monday in UTC. The best hours today in our sample are 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 UTC; the switch at the top of the page converts them to your time zone.
Is it better to post on Pinterest on weekdays or at the weekend?
In our sample, weekday posts average 3.4K engagement and weekend posts 3.2K. It is close to a tie. The busiest publishing day for viral posts is Sunday.
Where does this data come from?
From the posts ViralHunt tracks on Pinterest: 73.8K with their own publish time between 2025-09-06 and 2026-08-30. Recomputed daily.
Why are your times different from other studies?
Most studies measure when ordinary accounts get the most engagement. This one measures when the posts that went viral were published, which is a different question with a smaller but sharper sample, and it is recomputed every day rather than once a year.

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