Post on TikTok between 6 and 9 AM, local time. In our data that window beats every other 3-hour window, for likes, comments and shares and for views. It is also a small effect. We compared 3.5 million TikTok videos with other videos by the same creator. A video posted from 6 to 9 AM gets 3.0% more engagement than the creator's average video and 1.6% more views. The worst window, 9 PM to midnight, gets 0.7% less engagement and 1.2% fewer views.
Two other choices move views more than the clock. A video posted less than an hour after the creator's last one gets 7% fewer views. And a creator who posts eight videos in a week gets about 20 typical videos' worth of views that week, while each video loses only 3%.
3.7%
Engagement
2.8%
Views
60%
First 24 hours
This page covers TikTok only. For Instagram, and for the two apps side by side, read our study of the best time to post on Instagram.
The short answer
All times are the creator's local time. Each number is how much more or less a video in that window gets than the same creator's average video.
| Window | Share of videos | Engagement | Views |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 to 3 AM | 4.7% | -0.1% | -1.0% |
| 3 to 6 AM | 1.3% | +0.6% | -0.2% |
| 6 to 9 AM | 5.0% | +3.0% | +1.6% |
| 9 AM to noon | 12.1% | +0.6% | +0.6% |
| Noon to 3 PM | 15.9% | -0.1% | +0.5% |
| 3 to 6 PM | 19.2% | -0.5% | +0.1% |
| 6 to 9 PM | 25.8% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 9 PM to midnight | 16.1% | -0.7% | -1.2% |
By single hour, 6 AM and 7 AM do best: 4.4% and 4.2% over average for engagement, 2.0% and 2.7% for views. The weakest hour is 11 PM, at 1.1% under for engagement and 1.9% under for views.
Only 5% of videos go out from 6 to 9 AM. A quarter go out from 6 to 9 PM, which sits exactly at average. The busiest hours for posting are not the best ones.
The best day is Sunday, at 1.4% over average for engagement and 0.6% for views. The worst is Wednesday, at 0.9% and 0.8% under. That is a gap of 2.2% for engagement and 1.4% for views, smaller than the gap between hours.
Views follow the same clock, by less
TikTok shows most videos to people who do not follow the creator. So the question most creators ask is about views, not likes. Every top result for this query reports engagement only. We measured both.
Compared with the creator's own videos, the morning lead holds for views: 6 to 9 AM gets 1.6% more views, and 9 PM to midnight 1.2% fewer. The gap is 2.8% for views and 3.7% for engagement. Views move less than likes in every window.
The pooled method gives the opposite answer. Across all accounts, median views per follower are 27% higher for videos posted from 6 to 9 PM than from 6 to 9 AM. Most of that is who posts when. Morning videos come from accounts with a median of 28,162 followers. Evening videos (6 to 9 PM) come from accounts with 69,488. Views per follower fall as accounts grow (see our TikTok engagement rate benchmarks), so the pooled evening peak is partly a big-account peak. Within the same creator, the evening is average and the morning is ahead.
Weekday by hour, by region
The morning lift is strongest in Asia and Europe, and weakest in the Americas.
| Region | Creators | Videos | 6-9 AM engagement | 6-9 AM views | Best-to-worst gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asia-Pacific | 23,350 | 1,513,820 | +3.9% | +2.0% | 5.3% |
| Europe, Africa, Middle East | 16,136 | 1,076,824 | +2.9% | +1.7% | 4.1% |
| Americas | 13,830 | 917,901 | +0.9% | +0.2% | 1.3% |
In Asia-Pacific, 6 AM is blue on six days of the week, from +4% to +9%. In Europe, Africa and the Middle East, 7 AM on Sunday is the single best slot in the chart, at +14%, with Monday 7 AM at +11%. In the Americas the cells are pale. The best are Monday 6 to 8 AM, at about +6%.
The Americas are flat for two reasons. The countries pull in different directions: the US and Colombia do best in the morning, Brazil after midnight, Mexico from 9 AM to noon. And we place every US creator in Eastern time, which shifts a Los Angeles creator's morning by three hours.
By country
The 6 to 9 AM window is the best window in 15 of the 20 largest countries in the study. "Gap" is the best 3-hour window against the worst, for the same creator.
| Country | Creators | Best window | 6-9 AM engagement | 6-9 AM views | Gap | Best day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thailand | 4,879 | 6-9 AM | +4.3% | +1.1% | 5.8% | Sun |
| United States | 3,425 | 6-9 AM | +2.6% | +1.6% | 4.4% | Sun |
| Indonesia | 3,213 | 6-9 AM | +5.2% | +2.2% | 10.8% | Sun |
| Brazil | 3,068 | 12-3 AM | -0.4% | -0.9% | 4.4% | Sat |
| Russia | 2,859 | 6-9 AM | +4.3% | +3.6% | 9.8% | Tue |
| Japan | 2,526 | 6-9 AM | +4.3% | +4.0% | 9.2% | Mon |
| Philippines | 2,486 | 6-9 AM | +8.5% | +4.5% | 11.5% | Sun |
| Mexico | 2,179 | 9 AM-12 PM | +0.9% | +1.2% | 5.0% | Mon |
| Vietnam | 2,032 | 6-9 AM | +2.2% | +2.0% | 4.6% | Sat |
| Turkey | 1,616 | 6-9 AM | +3.8% | +0.6% | 5.7% | Sun |
| South Korea | 973 | 6-9 AM | +9.2% | +5.1% | 10.7% | Sat |
| United Kingdom | 701 | 6-9 AM | +5.4% | +4.3% | 8.4% | Sun |
In the US, the evening also holds up. Videos from 9 PM to midnight get 1.3% more engagement than average and videos from midnight to 3 AM 1.1% more. The weak part of the US day is noon to 6 PM, at 0.9% to 1.6% under. Of the countries in the table, South Korea has the largest morning lift for views, at 5.1%, then the Philippines, the UK and Japan, at 4.0% to 4.5%. Smaller countries move more by chance: with 700 creators, a gap of 8% can shrink or grow by a few points in another year of data.
By follower tier
| Tier | Creators | Best window | 6-9 AM engagement | 6-9 AM views | Gap | Best day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano, 1K to 10K | 16,759 | 6-9 AM | +4.1% | +2.4% | 6.5% | Fri |
| Micro, 10K to 100K | 17,338 | 6-9 AM | +4.0% | +2.7% | 5.1% | Sun |
| Mid, 100K to 500K | 10,682 | 6-9 AM | +1.2% | -0.3% | 2.8% | Sun |
| Macro, 500K to 1M | 3,453 | 9 PM-12 AM | +1.3% | -0.8% | 3.8% | Sun |
| Mega, 1M+ | 5,084 | 9 PM-12 AM | -0.6% | -1.8% | 3.6% | Sun |
The morning helps small accounts. Creators under 100,000 followers get about 4% more engagement and 2.5% more views from a 6 to 9 AM video. For accounts over 500,000 the morning is flat or slightly worse, and the late evening is best, by 1% to 2%. A large account's audience is spread across countries and time zones, so its own local morning matters less.
By category
| Category | Creators | Best window | 6-9 AM engagement | 6-9 AM views | Best day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comedy & entertainment | 17,218 | 6-9 AM | +2.4% | +1.3% | Sun |
| Lifestyle | 6,192 | 6-9 AM | +4.2% | +2.2% | Sun |
| Beauty | 2,870 | 6-9 AM | +11.0% | +7.1% | Sun |
| Music | 2,743 | 12-3 AM | -0.8% | -0.7% | Sun |
| Food | 1,936 | 6-9 AM | +1.9% | +1.6% | Mon |
| Parenting & family | 1,678 | 6-9 AM | +2.8% | +1.3% | Mon |
| Education & business | 1,238 | 6-9 AM | +5.3% | +3.9% | Mon |
| Fashion | 1,208 | 6-9 AM | +2.4% | +1.1% | Sun |
| Sports | 1,103 | 6-9 AM | +4.0% | +2.4% | Sun |
| Fitness | 929 | 6-9 PM | +0.3% | -1.1% | Sun |
| Travel | 924 | 6-9 AM | +4.6% | +2.6% | Fri |
| Gaming | 825 | 6-9 AM | +8.6% | +6.1% | Sun |
| Pets | 500 | 12-3 AM | -1.5% | -2.7% | Thu |
Beauty and gaming creators gain most from the morning: 7.1% and 6.1% more views. Music, fitness and pet creators are the exceptions. Music and pets do best after midnight, fitness from 6 to 9 PM. Education and business creators do best on Monday, as do food and parenting creators.
How fast views arrive
The top pages for this query say the first hour decides a video's reach. Sprout Social calls it "initial engagement velocity", and Buffer says engagement "within the first hour or so" tells TikTok to push the video. None of them shows a view curve. Our crawler reads many videos more than once, so we can show one.
The median video has 13% of its day-6 views after 3 hours, 44% after 12 hours, 60% after 24 hours and 75% after 2 days. Likes arrive a little faster: 15% in the first 3 hours, 65% in the first day.
So a TikTok video still gets 40% of its day-6 views after the first day. A video posted at 7 AM is still being shown that evening and the next day, which may be why the posting hour moves views so little. We tried to compare the curves by posting hour, but fewer than 200 videos per window had a reading in the first 12 hours. That comparison needs more data.
Posting frequency and spacing
12% of the videos in our data went up less than an hour after the creator's previous video. Those get 8.1% less engagement and 7.1% fewer views than the creator's average. Up to 12 hours after the last video, the loss is about 3%. From a day on, it is gone. Two videos in the same hour compete for the same viewers.
Videos after a break of two weeks or more get 20% more than average. Part of that is what creators post after a break: a comeback, a big project, news. When we compare each video only with the same creator's videos in the same month, the break is worth 6.4%.
More videos in a week cost each video a little and add a lot to the week. In weeks with 2 or 3 videos, each video gets about the creator's average views. In weeks with 8 to 14 videos, each gets 3.3% fewer views, and the week adds up to 20 typical videos' worth of views. In weeks with 15 or more, each video gets 5.2% fewer. Weeks with one video look strong per video (+32%), because they include many of the comeback videos above.
The cost per video of posting often is about the size of the gain from posting at 6 AM. The added views from the extra videos are far larger. Across creators the picture looks worse: creators who post 15 or more videos a week have a median of 0.16 views per follower per video, against 0.73 for creators who post less than once a week. Those are different creators, so that comparison mixes in who they are. Within the same creator, more videos in a week meant more views.
The median creator in our study posts 2.9 videos a week.
Two creators with opposite best times
Averages hide big swings for single creators. We took 10,722 creators with at least 8 videos from 6 to 10 AM and 8 from 6 PM to midnight. For each, we compared the views of the typical morning video with the typical evening video. 51% did better in the morning. Half fall between 0.72x and 1.44x. A tenth get about half as many views or fewer in the morning, and a tenth more than twice as many.
Alex, @aleex.andria, morning. Alex is a stay-at-home mom in Florida with 366,000 followers. Her main format is the school-morning routine: getting her two children, Dior and Damian, ready for school. She posts it at about 9 AM. Of her last 100 videos, 35 went up between 6 AM and noon, and 30 of those are morning routines. Their median is 128,100 views. Her 22 evening videos have a median of 50,350. Her three most-viewed videos are morning routines posted between 9:00 and 9:34 AM: "Dior was up before the alarm today" from August 28, 2025, at 12 million views, and two from January 2026 at 8.6 million and 6.7 million. When we opened the first on October 2, it had 826,500 likes; our crawler had read 825,500. She posts a morning video in the morning, and the morning is her best time.
Shelby Ann Bell, @shelbyannbell, evening. Shelby Ann Bell (2.5 million followers) reviews drugstore makeup and dupes of expensive brands. Of the 98 videos we read, 46 went up between 6 PM and midnight Eastern, with a median of 622,900 views. Her 18 morning videos have a median of 219,300. Her two biggest videos went out at night: "Well I had to put the full face to the test" at 10:54 PM on July 8, 2026, with 13.2 million views, and a drugstore full-face video at 9:11 PM in December 2025, with 8.9 million. On October 2 the July video showed 1.7 million likes. Her mornings hold more brand posts, for Thayers, Maybelline and Hard Candy among others: 4 of her 18 morning videos against 6 of 46 in the evening.
For both, the hour and the content go together. Alex's best format is about the morning. Shelby's dupe reviews and full-face tests go out at night. For a single creator, which video goes out matters more than when. Check which of your videos went out when before you move your schedule.
What to do with this
For creators
- If you have under 100,000 followers, put some videos in the 6 to 9 AM window. Expect about 4% more engagement and 2% to 3% more views, not double.
- If you have over 500,000 followers, the late evening is as good as the morning. Your audience is in many time zones.
- Beauty, gaming and education creators gain most from the morning. Music, fitness and pet creators should test the evening or late night first.
- Do not post two videos within the same hour. Leave 12 hours or more between videos when you can.
- Post more often if you can keep the quality. In weeks with 8 to 14 videos, each video lost about 3% and the week brought 20 typical videos' worth of views, against 3 in weeks with 2 or 3 videos.
- Test on your own account. Compare each video with your median video, not with your best one. Our TikTok engagement rate calculator gives your median-video rate, and the Instagram engagement rate calculator does the same for Instagram.
For brands and agencies
- Do not let a posting time decide the price of a deal. The best window is worth about 3% in engagement and less in views.
- Ask a creator not to post your video within an hour of another video. That costs about 7% of the views.
- A sponsored post loses much more than a bad hour: 31% on average on Instagram, in our sponsored post engagement study.
- Compare each campaign video with the creator's own usual video, not with other creators. Our guide on reading TikTok retention data with the creator covers what to ask for.
- Virev creator search shows each creator's recent videos, views and engagement, so you can see their own pattern before a campaign.
For journalists
The headline numbers, the CSV and the method are in the box at the top. The point that differs from most published advice: the scheduling-tool studies pool their customers' accounts, and pooled data puts TikTok's best time in the evening. Compared with themselves, creators do best in the early morning, and the size of the effect is 3% to 4%, not 30%.
How we measured, and what can be wrong
- Accounts: public TikTok accounts with 1,000+ followers read by Virev's crawler between June and October 2026. We removed brands, media, businesses and organizations by Virev's profile label.
- Videos: posted within a year before the account read and at least 3 days old at the read. We removed videos with ad tags in the caption (#ad, #sponsored, #paidpartnership and others) and giveaways. Each creator needed at least 10 videos. 19,050 duplicate rows from the crawl were removed.
- Local time: from the creator's country in Virev's profile (47,684 creators), or from the script of their captions for Korean, Japanese and Thai creators without a country (5,632). Japanese needed hiragana in at least half the captions, after a hand check found Indonesian accounts using the hashtag #fypシ. Countries with several time zones use the main one: Eastern for the US and Canada, Sydney for Australia, Sao Paulo for Brazil, Mexico City for Mexico, Jakarta for Indonesia, Moscow for Russia. Daylight saving is applied. A hand check of 159 random Instagram and TikTok creators in our sister study found the local clock right within one hour for 140 (88%). US creators in the West are off by up to three hours.
- South Korea: many Korean accounts are placed by caption script and have no profile label, so for the South Korea row we also removed 125 accounts whose usernames look like brands or official accounts (official, store, shop, _kr and similar). That moved the 6 to 9 AM lift from +9.5% (1,097 creators) to +9.2% (973 creators). The other rows and the totals are unchanged. The Korean edition has the full Korean results for TikTok and Instagram.
- Round-the-clock accounts: we dropped 1,682 creators who put more than a third of their videos between 1 and 6 AM local time. Most of these run on a wrong time zone or a scheduler.
- Measure: for each video, the log of likes plus comments plus shares, and separately the log of plays, minus the creator's average. We report each group's average as a percentage over or under the creator's average video. A check that compares each video only with the same creator's videos in the same month gives the same order: 6 to 9 AM at +2.2%, 9 PM to midnight at -0.3%.
- Final counts: we read most videos once, at least 3 days after posting, and a TikTok video still gains views after that. The view curve uses a different set: 40,481 videos read two or more times in their first days, from all accounts, including brands. Each age bin holds different videos, so the curve is a cross-section, not one video tracked over time.
- Choice: creators choose when to post, and they may put their best ideas at certain times, as Alex does with her morning routines. This is an observational study. It shows what videos at each time got, not what moving one video would do.
- Precision: with 3.5 million videos, the standard error of each 3-hour window is 0.2 to 0.8 percentage points. Gaps of 1% in large groups are real, but small. Single slots in the heatmap, and small countries and categories, move more by chance.
For engagement rates by follower tier, see our TikTok engagement rate benchmarks. For Instagram posting times, see the Instagram study.
Download the data
The aggregate tables behind every chart are in one CSV: best-time-to-post-on-tiktok-2026.csv. It has the result for each local hour, 3-hour window and weekday, the weekday-by-hour grid for each region, each country, tier and category by window and day, the spacing and frequency tables and the view curve. Every row has video counts, creator counts, the engagement lift, the views lift and the same-month check. Please cite "Virev, October 2026" and link this page.
