Facebook posting times for businesses, by industry

Sprout Social and Hootsuite both break their Facebook data down by industry, but they group businesses differently. The table pairs the closest matches. All times are local to the audience.

Industries only Hootsuite lists

• Construction, mining and manufacturing: Thursday, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Marketing agencies: Thursday, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Media and entertainment: early mornings on Thursday and Saturday.
• Real estate, legal and professional services: Thursday at 5 p.m.
• Utilities and energy: Monday, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Three industries get advice that can’t both be right. Government: Sprout Social says Tuesday to Thursday daytime, Hootsuite says weekends. Healthcare: Sprout Social’s windows are weekday mornings, Hootsuite’s is Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Hospitality: Sprout Social’s travel and hospitality slots fall on weekdays, while Hootsuite’s dining, hospitality and tourism group peaks on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The reasons are mundane. The two sort businesses into different groups, their data comes from different months (Sprout Social’s from late November 2025 to late February 2026; Hootsuite published in November 2025), and each average blends thousands of Pages whose customers aren’t yours. A hospital and a pharmacy chain can share a label and still keep very different hours.

Tip: When your industry has two answers, you already have a test: take one slot from each report and alternate them for a month.

A business post that lands well brings questions about price, stock, delivery or opening hours. Plan posts for hours when someone can reply, or set up automatic replies before you schedule a post for 6 a.m. or a Sunday.

• Public replies to comments have no deadline, though a quick answer keeps the thread useful for the next reader.
• A private reply to a comment, the message that lands in the commenter’s inbox, can be sent once per comment and only within 7 days of it.
• Replies through Meta’s Messenger Platform, which chatbots and auto-reply tools use, must go out within 24 hours of the person’s last message.
• The human agent tag extends that to 7 days, but only for support from real people, not for promotions.

Early slots are where this bites. Hootsuite’s 6 a.m. picks and Buffer’s 8 a.m. ones put a post’s first hours before many shops open, so decide in advance who, or what, replies.

1. Log in to Meta Business Suite and select your Facebook Page.
2. Open Planner from the menu on the left.
3. Click Create to draft a post, then click Schedule.
4. Select Active times to see when your followers were most active on Facebook over the past seven days, and pick a slot.

Those steps follow Sprout Social’s March 2026 description, and Meta moves Business Suite menus from time to time, so the labels on your screen may differ. The view shows when followers were online, not when they reacted or bought, so treat a busy hour as a candidate.

Then put the chart next to how your customers act. If Active times peaks at 9 p.m. but orders and bookings arrive before lunch, test a morning post against the evening peak. The slot that brings enquiries wins, even if it collects fewer reactions.

Both industry reports use local time. Sprout Social tells readers to schedule for the listed hours in the audience’s own time zone, whether that audience is in Los Angeles or London. Hootsuite’s advice for a spread-out audience is to post when each regional audience is most active and look for overlapping windows.

A business with a Page per city can follow each city’s clock. One Page serving two regions needs a slot that is daytime in both, or a separate post for each. For a Page split between the UK and the UAE, 9 a.m. in London is 12 p.m. in Dubai during British summer time and 1 p.m. in winter.