The best time to post on Threads, from 2,380 posts

Ask four scheduling tools when to post on Threads and you get four answers. Buffer says Thursday at 9am. Hootsuite says Tuesday at 8am. Social Champ says 3am to 6am. SocialPilot says Wednesday, "between 8 AM and 1 AM". What they mostly agree on is what to avoid: evenings and weekends.

On October 3, 2026, I pulled the recent posts of 300 public Threads accounts across 48 niches and scored 2,380 of them, each against its own account's usual likes. A news page with a million followers and a hobby account with 400 count the same that way, and a post only scores high if it beat what that account usually gets. Scored like that, the hour barely matters, and the evenings and weekends the guides warn about hold their own.

At a glance

What is the best time of day to post on Threads?

No time of day gave Threads posts an edge we could be sure of. The hour curve stays close to an account's usual post all day, and four-hour stretches of the day tell the same story:

None of them led the rest of the day by enough to rule out luck. Even the best against the worst wasn't far enough apart, and I picked that pair after seeing all six, which flatters it.

The late afternoon is the one time I'd keep an eye on. 4pm to 8pm is the only stretch where about half the posts beat their own account's usual post, and when I set aside the viral posts, it did stand out from the rest of the day. That means more of the breakout posts went out at other hours, which pulls the other times up. I only ran that check after noticing the afternoon, so test it on your own account before you build a schedule on it.

Social Champ's early-morning peak doesn't show up either. The closest stretch to its 3am to 6am, 4am to 8am, was about level with the rest of the day.

Are evenings and weekends really the worst time to post on Threads?

Posts from 6pm to 11pm ET did slightly better than other hours, and weekend posts slightly better than weekday posts. Neither difference is big enough to be sure of, but both lean the opposite way to what the guides say. Buffer's key takeaways list "Evening hours (6 p.m. to 11 p.m.) and weekends (especially Saturday)" as the worst times, and Social Champ says both "should be avoided for key posts".

I tested each claim the way the guide words it and settled the tests before looking at the results, so these five don't have the picked-after-looking problem the best and worst times do:

What could make this wrong: a small real penalty for evenings or weekends. This data can't rule out a dip of a few percent, but a bigger one would have shown up. Saturday alone, which Buffer calls the worst day, was about level with the rest of the week.

If you've been holding finished posts until Monday morning, or skipping evenings because a guide said so, nothing here backs that habit.

Which day is best for posting on Threads?

Sunday scored highest at 1.16x and Thursday lowest at 0.94x, but no single day clearly beat the rest of the week.

Sunday's lead over the rest of the week fell just short of ruling out luck, and so did Thursday's shortfall. Set Sunday directly against Thursday and the gap looks real, but that's the widest of all the day pairs, picked because it's the widest, so I don't count it. Sunday also had the most posts beating their account's usual post, and Thursday the fewest.

That puts this sample at odds with the midweek advice. Wednesday is Buffer's and Social Champ's best day and Thursday Buffer's best slot; here Wednesday is middling and Thursday is last.

What do Buffer, Hootsuite, and the other guides say about the best time?

The Threads guides that come up first in search, read on October 3, 2026, name different hours but share the same warnings, and none of them says how sure it is of the times it names.

Sprout Social's best-times guide covers six networks and Threads isn't one of them.

On the hour, this sample can't side with any guide, because no hour stood out. Later's 6pm to 8pm window is closest to the best stretch here, 4pm to 8pm, and that stretch didn't stand out either. On evenings and weekends, it leans against Buffer and Social Champ: the times they tell you to avoid did a little better than average, and a big penalty would have shown up.

The methods land in different places because they measure different things. Buffer looks at the typical engagement of posts in each hour across millions of posts, so an hour looks good when the posts in it get more engagement in absolute terms. That rewards whichever hours busy, large accounts favor. This study asks whether a post did better or worse than its own account usually does, which takes account size out of it. Buffer also reports in each poster's local time and SocialPilot in EST, while this one reports US Eastern for everyone.

How I measured it

I looked at 2,380 Threads posts from 204 public accounts, found by searching Threads for everyday niches, from fitness coaches and nurses to tattoo artists and pastors. They range from small accounts to big ones. The posts went up between October 6, 2025 and September 30, 2026, and I only counted ones at least three days old, after their likes had mostly settled.

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. A sample this size can show a large gap between times, but not a small one.

The posts came through three Threads endpoints on AnyAPI on 2026-10-03, and the whole crawl cost $0.6388. Here's one account's call, trimmed to the fields the study reads:

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

{"output":{"found":true,"data":{"posts":[{"id":"3953438408047520146_63081482410","username":"history","likeCount":39,"replyCount":0,"repostCount":2,"quoteCount":1,"createdUtc":1785506605},"..."]}},"costUsd":0.0012}

The sample: 72 accounts under 1k followers, 64 between 1k and 10k, 40 between 10k and 100k, and 26 over 100k.

What are the limits of this data?

This study measures likes only, in US Eastern time, on 204 public accounts that weren't picked at random.

• Likes only. Each post comes with likes, replies, reposts, and quotes, but no views, so nothing here speaks to reach or follower growth.
• US Eastern for everyone. Threads profiles carry no location, so there's no way to keep only US accounts, and the user search turned up accounts from well outside the US. For those accounts, every hour result is shifted by their own time difference.
• Recent posts weigh more. Each call returns only the latest 15 posts, so most scored posts are from the last three months, and an account that posts several times a day contributes only a few days of its life.
• Small samples. A four-hour stretch holds a few hundred posts, and the Thursday 9am slot only 30. That's enough to rule out a large effect, not a small one.
• Breakout posts are common. A few posts do far better than their account's usual post and most do slightly worse, so a handful of breakouts moves every average here. The afternoon result changed when those posts were set aside.
• Not a random sample. The accounts came from 48 name searches, which favor accounts with the niche word in their name. A different set of searches could shift an effect this size.
• Thin follower splits. Split by account size, only one of eight comparisons stood out, weekend posts from accounts with 10k to 100k followers, and with eight tries one standing out by luck wouldn't be surprising.
• Today's follower counts. An account that grew during the year is labeled by today's size.

Every difference here is small, and none of the tests settled before looking showed one we could be sure of.

What should you change in your Threads posting schedule?

In 2,380 Threads posts, nothing about the clock earned a rule, so the useful changes are the ones that loosen your schedule.

1. Post when it suits you. No time of day stood out from the rest.
2. Stop avoiding evenings and weekends. Both did slightly better than average here, against what Buffer and Social Champ say.
3. Don't build your week around Thursday 9am. Thursday was the lowest-scoring day in this sample.
4. Test the late afternoon and Sunday on your own account. They're the two leads in this data that came closest; post a few there and compare them with your usual post before you make it a habit.
5. Check your own numbers. Pull your posts with threads.user_posts, drop anything from the last three days, divide each post's likes by your typical post's likes, and group by hour or day. One call costs $0.0012 and returns your latest 15 posts, so rerun it every couple of weeks and keep the results.

The Instagram study, the TikTok study, and the Facebook study use the same method on other platforms. The Threads endpoints are what you'd use to rerun this on your own account.

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