How to identify the best times to post

Discover when sharing content on Facebook, Instagram (available when connected through Facebook), TikTok (business accounts only) , X (Twitter), Linkedin and Youtube is best.

Go to the Planning section after connecting your social networks. Then, click on the Best times button at the top right. After choosing the platform you want to analyze, you will see different shades of color, where a darker hue means a better time to post.

📊 How to read the heatmap

• Each column is a day of the week
• Each row is a time slot
• The darker the cell, the better the performance

This helps you spot your best posting times at a glance!

💡 Need more detail? You can enable the percentage view to get a more accurate representation of how activity is distributed throughout the day.

How we get this data

Best Times may take up to 7 days to appear after connecting your account to Metricool, depending on the platform. Keep in mind there’s no stored history: past and future weeks will show the same best times, as only the most recent data is used for each day.

Here’s how we get the data for each network:

➡️​ Instagram: two ways to get your best times

For Instagram, there are two possible ways to get this data. We recommend connecting your account through Facebook whenever possible to get more accurate and personalized results.

• Option 1: Connected through Facebook (recommended)

If your professional Instagram account is connected to a Facebook Page, we use the data Meta provides through its API. It’s the same data you’ll see in your Instagram Insights, reflecting your audience’s real behavior.

Your account needs at least 100 followers for Instagram to generate this data.

• Option 2: Not connected to Facebook

If you connected Instagram using only your login credentials and didn’t link it to a Facebook Page, it’s not possible to access this data via the API.

In this case, we show you an estimate based on behavioral studies we’ve done on general Instagram usage.

This gives you a global view of the best times to post, though it won’t be tailored to your account.

➡️​ Facebook

Even though Meta officially stopped supporting best times in its API on September 24, 2024, Metricool still shows you the best times to post.

• If your account was connected before that date, we continue using your historical data. Behavior patterns on Facebook haven’t changed much in recent years, so your past data is still a useful and personalized reference.
• If you connected your account after that date, we show best times based on behavioral studies we’ve conducted on the platform’s usage. These give you a general view of active posting times, but they aren’t specific to your account.

➡️​ TikTok

We use the best time data that TikTok provides through its API. Your account must also have at least 100 followers for this data to be available.

➡️​ X (Twitter), LinkedIn and YouTube

These platforms don’t provide account-specific data, so we use behavior studies to give you a general idea of the best times to post.

How we interpret this data

Metricool identifies the best times of the day when there’s the most activity on social media:moments when more content is shared and higher interaction levels are generated.

The more activity there is, the more people are online, increasing the chances that your posts will reach a larger audience.

👉 What does this mean?

The “best times” are not calculated based on your active followers but on the time slots with the highest activity on each social network.

For example, if little content is shared at 9:00 and there’s much more interaction at 20:00, the 20:00 slot will be highlighted as the “best time” to post.

💡 Remember that you can enable the percentage view to get a more accurate representation of how activity is distributed throughout the day.

Why does it look different from Instagram's chart? (spoiler: it's to help you)

If you chose the recommended method for getting your Instagram best times—by connecting your account through Facebook—

the data we show comes directly from Meta’s API. It’s the same data you’ll find in your professional Insights.

But there’s one key difference: We changed the way we display the data to help you interpret it more easily.

🔍 Instead of bars, we use a heatmap:

• Darker cells mean higher activity or better performance
• Lighter ones show lower impact

This format makes it super easy to spot your peak hours without needing to compare bar heights.

Best times are not displayed

If your accounts have the number of followers needed to show the best times and they are not displayed, go to Metricool with your browser in incognito mode.

If they are displayed in incognito mode, it is because a browser extension or ad blocker is interfering with Metricool; disabling them will display them in the browser.

It is also possible that an antivirus program is blocking this content.

• TikTok: To access TikTok's best times, they must be visible in your TikTok (professional) account's analytics. Check by following these steps:

1. Go to your profile, select the three lines in the upper right corner, and go to "Creator Tools."

2. Select "Analytics" or "Statistics."

3. Look for the best times.

4. In the "Audience" section, you can see when your followers are most active.

Updated on: 19/11/2025