The best time to post on Reddit, from 52,756 posts

In a subreddit, you post to a community whose readers don't follow you. Your post joins the new queue alongside everyone else's. The community votes within a day or so, then the post is gone. If you use subreddits to find customers, get product feedback, or manage a client's Reddit posts, posting at the wrong time leaves no second chance.

Most timing advice checks when a subreddit's top posts went up. It considers only successful posts and mostly shows when people post most. I compared the 52,756 most recent posts whose votes had settled, from 123 subreddits, from r/SaaS and r/marketing to r/sourdough and r/Denver, against their subreddit's usual upvotes and comments. Evenings did a little better, the end of the week a little worse, and the hour mattered much less than the guides suggest.

At a glance

Evening posts did a little better

Posts between 7pm and midnight Eastern did about 5% better than posts at other hours in the same subreddits. After smoothing, about 9pm to midnight did best.

Most of the difference came from votes. Evening posts got about 8% more upvotes than posts at other hours, with about the same comment counts. Evenings did better in 74 of the 108 subreddits with enough posts to compare. In business, SaaS and marketing subreddits, the lead was about 7%.

I noticed the evening lead after comparing the six four-hour blocks. I hadn't planned that test, so it deserves less trust than the planned tests below. The lead held when posts rather than subreddits had equal weight, and when counting only upvotes.

Less competition is a likely reason. Fewer than one post in five goes up after 7pm Eastern, so evening posts face fewer new posts while plenty of US readers are still browsing. If you usually post during the working day, try a few evenings and compare your results.

Friday to Sunday trailed the rest of the week

Posts from Friday to Sunday did about 3% worse than posts from Monday to Thursday. Monday to Thursday were within a couple of percent of each other, with Thursday slightly ahead.

Friday afternoon did worst. Posts from noon to 6pm Eastern on Friday did about 7% worse than all other times. Saturday from early morning to lunchtime also did poorly, and the early hours of Sunday had the lowest chart values. Sunday from about 7am to 11am was as good as any weekday morning.

Weekends alone were closer to weekdays: about the same upvotes and about 4% fewer comments. Weekday posts did better in 62 of the 112 subreddits with enough weekend posts to compare, so the split was nearly even. Hobby subreddits, from gardening to fountain pens, had the biggest weekend drop. Business and SaaS subreddits did about 4% worse from Friday to Sunday, but there were fewer posts, so this could be chance.

If you've planned a launch or feedback post for Friday afternoon, moving it earlier in the week costs nothing.

Weekday mornings didn't help, and late night didn't hurt

Weekday posts from 6am to noon Eastern did about as well as posts at other weekday hours. Most Reddit timing guides recommend mornings. I planned this test before seeing any results.

Several guides call late night the worst time to post, but midnight to 4am matched the average. Early morning, about 4am to 7am Eastern, did about 6% worse.

These differences amount to only a few percent. Slightly under half the posts in every four-hour block beat their subreddit's usual post. A good title in the right subreddit matters much more than the hour.

How this compares to what's already published

The big social media schedulers don't publish Reddit timing studies. Smaller tools and agencies write the guides that rank for this search. I recorded each guide's claims before calculating results, then checked them against this sample.

• Web Tonic recommends Tuesday and Wednesday from 7am to 10am Eastern and says Friday afternoon and late night are worst. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings did about 3% better here, possibly by chance. Friday afternoon was worst here too. Late night was average.
• One study of the past year's top posts in 22 subreddits recommends 6am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm Eastern, with Sunday best and Thursday worst. Here, those hours were average, Sunday slightly below average, and Thursday slightly ahead. The study acknowledges that its sample favors successful posts.
• Syften counted replies on 641,202 posts in 12 developer and startup subreddits. Posts at 02:00 UTC, 10pm Eastern in summer, got the most replies on average, and posts at 06:00 UTC, about 2am Eastern, the fewest. Here, 10pm posts got a few percent more comments, possibly by chance, and 2am was average. Late-morning posts got no extra comments, matching Syften.
• Max Candocia modeled about 717,000 posts and recommends early weekend mornings. Weekend posts from 7am to 9am Eastern did about 6% better here, but fewer than 800 posts covered those hours, too few to confirm.
• Foundation shares a heatmap favoring 6am to 10am Eastern from Monday to Saturday and calls midnight to 4am the worst. Both were average here.
• Single Grain says weekend posts do worse, especially in business subreddits. This sample showed a slight difference in the same direction.

The methods give different answers because they ask different questions. Checking when top posts went up mostly measures traffic: when people post most. This study compares posts with their subreddit's usual results, which helps you choose when to post.

How I measured it

The sample includes 52,756 posts from 123 subreddits, all between three days and a month old. Collecting them through two AnyAPI Reddit endpoints took 3,058 calls and cost $1.34.

1. Pick the subreddits. I chose 135 across ten groups: SaaS, startups and marketing, e-commerce, programming, personal finance, hobbies, fitness, parenting, city subreddits and gaming. I checked each one's weekly active users with reddit.subreddit_details.
2. Read the new queue, not the top posts. I paged through reddit.subreddit_posts sorted by new for each subreddit, up to 40 pages, stopping when most posts on a page were older than a month. New listings include every visible post, successful or not.
3. Let the votes settle. I dropped 13,256 posts under three days old, the age when votes have mostly settled, and 2,639 older than a month.
4. Remove ads, repeats and deleted posts. I dropped 4,069 promoted posts, 6,509 repeats across pages, and 51 deleted posts. Every post had a time and score, so none needed a separate reddit.post lookup.
5. Keep subreddits with enough posts. 12 subreddits had fewer than 30 settled posts left. Two were so busy that every listed post was under three days old; two returned no posts. The rest were quiet or tightly moderated, with too few posts left from the month. This left 123 subreddits and 52,756 posts, a median of about 400 per subreddit.
6. Score each post against its subreddit. Compare its upvotes with median upvotes and its comments with median comments in that subreddit. Cap each at 6x either way so one viral post counts once, then average the two.
7. Group and compare. Convert times to US Eastern and group by weekday, hour and four-hour block. Take each group's geometric mean, weighting subreddits equally. Resample each comparison by subreddit 1,000 times to see how results change with different communities.

This call gets one page of r/SaaS posts. The response shows only the fields used:

curl -sS -X POST https://api.getanyapi.com/v1/run/reddit.subreddit_posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYAPI_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"subreddit":"SaaS","sort":"new"}'

{"output":{"found":true,"data":{"nextCursor":"cur_...","posts":[{"id":"1xm0gmi","createdUtc":1793633833,"score":2,"numComments":1,"subreddit":"SaaS","permalink":"/r/SaaS/comments/1xm0gmi/how_do_i_beat_competition/"},"..."]}},"costUsd":0.00038}

By weekly active users, the sample has 11 subreddits over a million, 72 between 100,000 and a million, 38 between 10,000 and 100,000, and 2 under 10,000.

The limits of this data

• Votes after a few days, not the first hour. Scores were collected between three days and a month after posting. They don't show how quickly posts gained votes.
• Only visible posts. Posts removed by moderators or Reddit's filters don't appear in listings. This data can't show what gets removed or when.
• US Eastern for everyone. Reddit doesn't show where posters live. City subreddits like r/london or r/sydney have different local times, shifting their hourly results.
• The busiest subreddits are missing. Their listings didn't go back far enough to reach posts three days old. Very small subreddits are also scarce: only 2 have fewer than 10,000 weekly active users.
• A chosen sample. These 123 subreddits were picked by hand from communities our readers use, plus hobbies and everyday topics. A different selection could change results this small.
• Better posts may go out at better times. People may save their best posts for Tuesday evening, making that time look better because of the posts themselves.
• Upvotes and comments only. Reddit doesn't show post views. This data doesn't measure clicks, signups or replies from the right people.

The evening lead is about 5%. With different subreddits, it could plausibly be about 1% to about 9%. The end-of-week drop is about 3%, with a range of 1% to 6%.

What to do with it

1. Post in the evening, Eastern time, when you can. 7pm to midnight did about 5% better than other hours.
2. Publish important posts between Monday and Thursday. Friday to Sunday did about 3% worse.
3. Avoid Friday afternoon for important posts. It was the worst part of the week.
4. Don't get up early just to post. Weekday mornings did no better than other weekday hours.
5. Focus on the subreddit and the post. About half the posts at any time of day beat their subreddit's usual post. Timing matters least.
6. Check your own subreddits. Page through reddit.subreddit_posts sorted by new. Drop posts under three days old, divide upvotes and comments by the subreddit's medians, and compare your preferred hours. One page costs $0.00038.

The Threads study, LinkedIn study and TikTok study use the same method on platforms where posts belong to accounts. Use the Reddit endpoints to repeat this for your subreddits. Read is the Reddit API free for what Reddit's own API allows.

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