Measured on viral posts, not opined

Best time to post on TikTok (2026), from 68.8K viral videos

Measured on 68.8K viral videos from the last year on TikTok: the slot with the highest average engagement is Monday 04:00 UTC, and 17.8% 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
68.8Kviral posts measured
363days of data
846.9Ktop-10% threshold
17.8%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 Monday 04:00 UTC 619.8K average · 202 posts
17.8%
#2 Saturday 22:00 UTC 609.8K average · 450 posts
13.6%
#3 Sunday 22:00 UTC 593.2K average · 422 posts
15.2%
#4 Sunday 23:00 UTC 588K average · 376 posts
16.8%
#5 Saturday 20:00 UTC 553.4K average · 606 posts
15.3%

The worst hour

Wednesday 08:00 UTC

Wednesday 08:00 UTC: 227.7K average engagement over 215 posts, 7.9% 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.

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10
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13
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20
21
22
23
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat

By weekday

Sun372.9K
Mon380.6K
Tue360.2K
Wed340.4K
Thu340.1K
Fri370.8K
Sat360.3K

By hour (UTC)

20:00492.3K
21:00431.1K
22:00429.3K
23:00419.8K
02:00417.8K
05:00401.5K
09:00376.2K
01:00375.8K

Best time to post on TikTok today

Today is Monday in UTC. The best hours today in our sample: 02:00, 04:00, 20:00 UTC. The switch at the top converts them to your clock.

02:00, 04:00, 20:00 UTC

Best time to post on TikTok, 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 TikTok on Monday

02:00, 04:00, 20:00 The strongest hours are 02:00, 04:00, 20:00 UTC. Posts published on Monday average 380.6K engagement, 6% above the weekly average, over 9.3K posts, and 10.4% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Tuesday

05:00, 20:00, 23:00 The strongest hours are 05:00, 20:00, 23:00 UTC. Posts published on Tuesday average 360.2K engagement, 0% above the weekly average, over 10.8K posts, and 9.9% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Wednesday

01:00, 09:00, 20:00 The strongest hours are 01:00, 09:00, 20:00 UTC. Posts published on Wednesday average 340.4K engagement, 5% below the weekly average, over 10.9K posts, and 9.7% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Thursday

03:00, 06:00, 20:00 The strongest hours are 03:00, 06:00, 20:00 UTC. Posts published on Thursday average 340.1K engagement, 5% below the weekly average, over 10.5K posts, and 9.9% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Friday

02:00, 07:00, 08:00 The strongest hours are 02:00, 07:00, 08:00 UTC. Posts published on Friday average 370.8K engagement, 3% above the weekly average, over 9.4K posts, and 10.4% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Saturday

09:00, 20:00, 22:00 The strongest hours are 09:00, 20:00, 22:00 UTC. Posts published on Saturday average 360.3K engagement, 0% above the weekly average, over 9.3K posts, and 9.8% of them made the top 10%.

Today

Best time to post on TikTok on Sunday

06:00, 22:00, 23:00 The strongest hours are 06:00, 22:00, 23:00 UTC. Posts published on Sunday average 372.9K engagement, 4% above the weekly average, over 8.6K posts, and 10.1% 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
#1Mon04:00 Sun22:00Sun23:00Sun20:00Mon01:00Mon04:00Mon05:00Mon09:30Mon14:00
#2Sat22:00 Sat16:00Sat17:00Sat14:00Sat19:00Sat22:00Sat23:00Sun03:30Sun08:00
#3Sun22:00 Sun16:00Sun17:00Sun14:00Sun19:00Sun22:00Sun23:00Mon03:30Mon08:00

The posts that prove it

The three most viral viral videos published in the best slot, Monday 04:00 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 TikTok

This page measures when the viral posts of the whole network were published. Your account is one audience inside it. Open TikTok'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 TikTok

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 TikTok?
In our sample of 68.8K viral videos from the last year, the slot with the highest average engagement is Monday 04:00 UTC, where 17.8% 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 TikTok?
By average engagement, Monday. By the number of viral posts published, Wednesday.
What is the worst time to post on TikTok?
Among slots with a real sample, Wednesday 08:00 UTC, with 227.7K average engagement. The gap between best and worst hour is what the map shows.
What is the best time to post on TikTok today?
Today is Monday in UTC. The best hours today in our sample are 02:00, 04:00, 20:00 UTC; the switch at the top of the page converts them to your time zone.
Is it better to post on TikTok on weekdays or at the weekend?
In our sample, weekday posts average 357.5K engagement and weekend posts 366.4K. It is close to a tie. The busiest publishing day for viral posts is Wednesday.
Where does this data come from?
From the posts ViralHunt tracks on TikTok: 68.8K with their own publish time between 2025-09-06 and 2026-09-04. 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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