The best time to post on Instagram on Thursday, from 836 posts

Buffer, Later, and SocialPilot all put the best Thursday time on Instagram in the morning, and four of the five big timing studies rank Thursday among the better days of the week. Both show up in this data, faintly. Thursday's mornings were its strongest hours and Thursday was the best weekday, but neither difference was big enough to be sure it's real.

I pulled about a year of posts from 171 public Instagram accounts on September 22, 2026, and 836 of them went out on a Thursday. Each post was compared with its own account's usual post, so a two-million-follower account and a two-thousand-follower account count the same. On Thursday, posts did better than usual from about 5am to 10am ET and mostly worse than usual in the evening.

At a glance

What is the best time to post on Instagram on Thursday?

Thursday's best stretch was 4am to 8am ET, at 1.12x an account's normal likes, but it didn't lead the rest of Thursday by enough to rule out luck. It's also the stretch where the most posts, about half, beat their own account's usual post.

The morning edge carries on until noon. On the other six days, mornings are a weak time to post. Thursday is the day they hold up.

Buffer names 9am, then 8am and 7am, and calls Thursday "the only weekday where mornings outperform evenings." All three fall in Thursday's two morning stretches here, and the 9am hour on its own did well, as one of the two busiest Thursday hours.

Two things could make this wrong. The early-morning lead leans on a couple of hours: 4am and 7am did very well, while 5am and 6am came in a little under normal, so a few posts may be doing the lifting. And 4am to 8am in New York is 10am to 2pm in Berlin, so some of this could be European accounts posting in their own daytime.

What is the worst time to post on Instagram on Thursday?

Thursday's weakest stretch was midnight to 4am ET, at 0.83x an account's normal likes, though again we couldn't tell whether the dip is real. Fewer of its posts beat their account's usual post than at any other time on Thursday, while the same hours on other days did better than normal.

Midnight to 4am in New York is Wednesday evening in Los Angeles and Thursday morning in Europe. Later lands on the same stretch from the other side. Its worst times of the whole week are "Thursday at 3 AM and Saturday at 11 PM."

The 3am hour on its own was about normal, though. The low comes from 1am and 2am.

The evening doesn't make up for it. Thursday evenings ran behind other days' evenings, and the hour curve bottoms out around 8pm. Few accounts post then anyway: only about 1% of Thursday posts went out in each hour from 6pm to 8pm.

Is Thursday a good day to post on Instagram?

Thursday was the best weekday in this sample, at 0.99x an account's normal likes, but only Saturday and Sunday beat an account's normal post.

The differences between days were small. Thursday was a touch ahead of the other weekdays and a touch behind the weekend, and none of those gaps was big enough to be sure of. Against the whole week, Thursday came out exactly at normal. It's an ordinary day that happens to top a weak set of weekdays.

The earlier Instagram study, on the same accounts with fewer posts, had Thursday doing better, tied with Friday behind Saturday. That lift didn't hold up once there was more data.

Split by account size, Thursday looked about the same for small, mid-size, and large accounts. The accounts over a million followers dipped, but that's 6 accounts, too few to read anything into.

What do Buffer, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Later say about Thursday?

All five big Instagram timing studies name a Thursday time, three of them in the morning, and four put Thursday among their better days. Each row quotes the study's own page as fetched on October 3, 2026.

On Thursday, this sample and the big studies lean the same way, on the hour and on the day. Buffer's 7am to 9am, Later's 4am to 5am, and SocialPilot's 7am to 9am all fall in the two morning stretches, the only times Thursday beat other days. Later's worst Thursday time falls in Thursday's weakest stretch. And Thursday came out as the best weekday, which fits four of the studies ranking it among their better days.

Where they part: Sprout's noon to 2pm and Hootsuite's 4pm to 5pm both fall at times that were level with other days here. And none of the agreement is strong enough on 836 posts to call it proven, so it's agreement in direction only.

The methods differ. The five studies add up engagement across many accounts, and Buffer, Sprout, Later, and SocialPilot say their times apply in the audience's own time zone. This study compares each post with its own account and reports every time in US Eastern. None of the five pages says how many posts sit behind the hours it names, or how sure it is of them.

How I measured it

This uses the same posts as the Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday studies, looked at for Thursday. The accounts are public creators in 40 niches, found for the earlier Instagram study, and they range from small accounts to big ones. I took about a year of each account's posts and left out any under two weeks old, since those were still collecting likes. That left 5,734 posts from 171 accounts, 836 of them on a Thursday.

Each post was compared with that same account's usual post, so a big account's likes don't drown out a small one's, and the few posts that went viral were kept from deciding a whole time of day on their own. Every time is in US Eastern. I also checked how much each answer changed when a different mix of accounts was included. With a sample this size, a small difference between two times can still be luck.

The posts came through one Instagram endpoint on AnyAPI, instagram.user_posts, on September 22, 2026, and the whole crawl cost $0.53. Here's one page of it, on one account in the sample:

curl -sS -X POST https://api.getanyapi.com/v1/run/instagram.user_posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYAPI_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"handle":"_garden.ing"}'

{"output":{"data":{"posts":[{"id":"3988678296405120718","createdUtc":1789707527,"likes":804,"comments":217}],"nextCursor":"..."}},"costUsd":0.0008}

The sample: 69 accounts under 10k followers, 63 between 10k and 100k, 32 between 100k and 1M, and 7 over 1M.

What are the limits of this data?

This study measures likes only, in US Eastern time, on 171 public accounts that weren't picked at random.

• Likes only. Nothing here speaks to reach, saves, shares, comments, or follower growth, and Instagram's ranking leans on sends and saves more than likes.
• US Eastern for everyone. The accounts came from around the world, and none was matched to its audience's time zone. Thursday 5am in New York is 11am in Berlin, so a morning lift in Eastern time could be European daytime.
• The best and worst times were picked after looking. Side by side, Thursday's best and worst stretches were far enough apart to look like more than luck, but only just, and a pair picked after seeing the data always flatters itself. Treat it as a lead.
• Few evening posts. Only a small share of Thursday posts went out in the evening, and single evening hours hold about a dozen posts each, so they jump around.
• Patterns, not proof. An account that posts its strongest work on Thursday mornings makes Thursday mornings look good.
• Not a random sample. The accounts came from niche searches a year ago, and a different set of niches could shift a result this small.
• Today's follower counts. An account that grew during the year is labeled by today's size.

The time you post on Thursday may matter a little. The day itself made almost no difference.

What should you change in your Thursday Instagram schedule?

Nothing in 836 Thursday posts says to move your schedule much, so the useful changes are small.

1. Keep Thursday in your schedule. It was the best weekday here, and nothing in this sample says to avoid it.
2. If you want a Thursday slot to test, try the morning in your audience's time zone. 4am to noon ET was Thursday's best stretch and the one place it beat other days, and it's where Buffer, Later, and SocialPilot point.
3. Skip the small hours. Midnight to 4am was Thursday's weakest stretch, and Later calls Thursday 3am one of the worst times of the week.
4. Check your own account once it has thirty Thursdays. Pull your posts with instagram.user_posts, skip the newest twelve so you're not scoring posts that are still collecting likes, divide each post's likes by your typical post's likes, and group by hour in your audience's time zone. Ignore any hour with fewer than about ten posts. Four calls cost $0.0032.

The Tuesday and Wednesday studies found the hour made little difference on those days, the Saturday study found that late night and morning really did differ on Saturday, and the Instagram study across all seven days uses the same method on the same accounts. The Instagram endpoints are what you'd use to rerun it on your own account.

Use data responsibly and follow AnyAPI's Acceptable Use Policy.