Best time to post, converted to your time zone

The windows come from our own “best time to post” pages for Instagram and Facebook, which compare studies by Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer and Later and give the year of each. The calculator doesn’t add numbers of its own: it takes those windows and moves them from your audience’s time zone to yours.

Take Sprout Social’s 2026 Instagram window of Tuesday 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. For followers in New York, while New York is on daylight time, that is Tuesday 10:30 p.m. to Wednesday 4:30 a.m. in India. When New York goes back to standard time the same window shifts by an hour, so the tool converts each weekday at its next occurrence, daylight saving included, rather than using today’s offset.

• Windows with days and clock times are converted, and the weekday changes when midnight is crossed.
• Windows with no day, such as an hour range that applies to any day, get a “the next day” note if the conversion moves them across midnight.
• A window with no clock time, such as the weakest days, can’t be converted, so it is shown as the study wrote it.
• Words after a window, such as the days it is strongest, are not used to narrow it. The original text sits right beside the conversion.

The studies disagree with each other, and the pages say so: Instagram’s differ on whether the best slot is a weekday evening or very early morning, and Facebook’s split between midweek afternoons and early mornings. Each blends thousands of accounts with different audiences and none of them can see your followers. The calculator lists every window it has, not a winner, so you can pick two or three to test.

The cheapest check is free: the Insights in Instagram and in Meta Business Suite show when your own followers are active. Post in a few of these slots for several weeks, note the reach and interactions for each, and keep the slot that performs best for you.

Tip: If your audience is spread across zones, one slot will not suit everyone. Pick the zone where most of your followers live, or alternate between two.

The windows are loaded only when you open this page. If they can’t be loaded, the tool says so rather than showing guesses. Dates on the source pages show when each was last checked, and the studies change as their publishers update them.

Conversion uses your browser’s own time zone database, so it is as accurate as your device’s. Nothing you choose is sent anywhere or saved, and there is no account to make. The studies cover Instagram and Facebook posts in general; they don’t split by whether the post is a Reel, a Story or a photo here, so for those formats see the separate pages for each.