Best time to post on YouTube
Pick where you publish from and who you publish for. You get an upload window in your own local time, and the reasoning behind it.
Work out your upload window
Your own time zone is detected from your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Times below are in United States local time. Your own local time is added once the page loads.
| Day | Audience is watching | Upload at (United States) | Which is (your time) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 15:30–17:30 | |
| Tuesday | Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 15:30–17:30 | |
| Wednesday | Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 15:30–17:30 | |
| Thursday | Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 15:30–17:30 | |
| Friday | Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00 | 15:30–17:30 | |
| Saturdayweekend | Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00 Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00 | 07:30–09:30 14:30–16:30 | |
| Sundayweekend | Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00 Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00 | 07:30–09:30 14:30–16:30 |
Monday to Friday share a shape, and so do Saturday and Sunday: the model distinguishes weekdays from weekends and nothing finer. Inventing a different peak for Wednesday would be inventing data. Each day is still converted on its own real date, so a week containing a clock change is correct row by row.
Recommended windows, in your audience's local time
These do not depend on where you are. They are the shape of an ordinary day wherever your audience happens to be, which is why they are the starting point rather than the answer.
Long-form video, weekday
| When your audience is watching | Upload window (audience local time) |
|---|---|
| Weekday evening · 18:00–22:00The largest reliable block of free attention in a working day. Work and school are over, the phone is out, and nothing else is scheduled. | 15:30–17:30 |
Long-form video, weekend
| When your audience is watching | Upload window (audience local time) |
|---|---|
| Weekend late morning · 10:00–13:00Weekends start later and the morning is unhurried, so the first peak arrives hours earlier than it does on a weekday. | 07:30–09:30 |
| Weekend evening · 17:00–22:00Broader and flatter than a weekday evening: people are free earlier and stay up later, so the window is wider rather than sharper. | 14:30–16:30 |
Shorts run to a different schedule and have their own page.
How this is calculated
There is no public dataset of the best times to post on YouTube. The figures that circulate come either from one scheduling vendor’s own customers or from other articles quoting each other, and none of them know anything about your channel. So this page does not start from a table of best times. It starts from two things that can be argued with:
One — people watch on a schedule. Not a precise one, but a real one: a large block of attention in the evening once work and school are done, a smaller one around lunch, and a later, flatter shape at the weekend. That is stated in the audience’s own local time, which is the only frame in which it means anything.
Two — a video needs a head start. Publishing at the exact moment your audience arrives means arriving with nothing: no watch time, no click-through, nothing for YouTube to judge it on while the audience is actually there. Publishing earlier means the peak finds a video that already has signal.
The recommendation is the second applied to the first: take the window when the audience shows up, and move backwards by the head start the format needs.
- Long-form video. Published about two and a half hours before the audience arrives. Long-form is surfaced by search, suggested videos and subscriptions, all of which react to early watch time — so it helps to already have some when the peak starts. It also leaves room for processing to finish, which on a long upload is not instant.
- Shorts. Published about forty-five minutes ahead. The Shorts feed leans on freshness far more than search does, so a long head start works against you. Short enough to still be new when the peak arrives, long enough to be processed and in circulation.
Everything after that is arithmetic — and the arithmetic is the part creators actually get wrong, because the gap between two countries is not a fixed number. It changes when either side puts its clocks forward, and those dates do not line up. This page recalculates it every time you open it rather than storing an offset. More on why that matters.
Why the time difference is not a fixed number
The most common mistake in scheduling for another country is working out the difference once and writing it down. It does not stay put, because countries change their clocks on different dates — and some change them for reasons that have nothing to do with summer.
Morocco is the clearest example. It sits at UTC+1 for most of the year, but returns to UTC+0 for Ramadan, which moves around eleven days earlier each year. The United States, meanwhile, changes on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. Put those together and the gap between Casablanca and New York in 2026 is six hours in early February, five hours through March, and changes four times across the year.
A creator in Morocco who worked out “New York evening means I publish at 21:30” in January is publishing an hour off target by March, with nothing on screen to indicate it. The same applies to any pairing where one side observes daylight saving and the other does not, or where the dates differ — Europe and the United States change on different weekends, so there are two weeks each spring and autumn when the usual difference is simply wrong.
This tool recalculates every time the page is opened, using the IANA time zone database your browser already carries. It never stores an offset.
Pages for specific audiences
Written where a country has something particular about it, rather than generated for every country there is.
Questions
What is the best time to post on YouTube?
For most channels, a weekday evening audience is the largest reliable block of attention, so publishing in the late afternoon — roughly two to three hours before that evening peak in your audience's local time — gives the video a head start. The important word is theirs: if your viewers are in another country, their evening is not yours, and the difference is not a fixed number of hours.
Does posting time actually matter on YouTube?
Less than most advice implies. Packaging, subject and the first thirty seconds decide far more than the hour of the day. Posting time is a small effect that is worth getting roughly right and not worth agonising over — and a schedule your audience can predict is worth more than an optimal hour you keep moving.
Should I post Shorts at a different time from long-form videos?
Slightly earlier relative to the peak for long-form, and closer to it for Shorts. Long-form is surfaced by search, suggested videos and subscriptions, all of which respond to how a video did in its first hour, so a head start helps. The Shorts feed leans much harder on freshness, so the same head start works against you.
How do I find the best time to post for my own channel?
YouTube Studio, Analytics, the Audience tab, the card called “When your viewers are on YouTube”. That is built from your actual viewers and it beats any general recommendation, including this page. Use a tool like this one when a channel is new and does not have enough of its own data yet.
Do I need to change my posting time when the clocks change?
If your audience is in another country, usually yes. Daylight saving start and end dates do not line up between countries, so the gap between your clock and theirs changes several times a year. Keeping your own upload time fixed means drifting an hour away from your audience's evening without noticing.
Is this tool free?
Yes, and it needs no account. It runs entirely in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.