The best time to post on Instagram on Thursday: the day with three good answers

What the studies say about Thursday

Local times, your followers’ time. Read on 24 October 2026.

On Thursday, mornings win at Buffer

This is Buffer’s anomaly: Thursday is the only day where mornings beat evenings across its 9.6 million posts. From 7 to 9 a.m., with 9 a.m. as the best slot of the whole week. Buffer admits it doesn’t know why; its best guess is end-of-week planning energy, as people map out their weekend.

Sprout Social sees the opposite: engagement narrows on Thursday, so it recommends the lunch rush, 12 to 2 p.m., and holding back on late-afternoon posts. Hootsuite aims precisely at the late afternoon, 4 to 5 p.m., and 4 to 6 p.m. in Central European time.

And Later shows how fragile hour-level advice is: Thursday 4 to 5 a.m. is a good slot in its data, but Thursday 3 a.m. is one of its two worst slots of the week. One hour apart.

Thursday by industry

What my account says: Thursday noon, my most solid cell

Over 30 days, PlugKit’s best-times grid puts Thursday 12 p.m. right behind Monday 12 p.m. on my Occirank posts. Its average engagement is lower (9 against 12), but it rests on 11 posts against 8.

That’s the Thursday lesson: the cell with the best average isn’t necessarily the most reliable. The one with the most posts says something sturdier. It’s also the only one of my two slots that a study confirms: Sprout Social, with 12 to 2 p.m.

In video 4, Claude still suggested testing Thursday 6:30 p.m., as part of its six-week test with five posts per slot. It makes sense: I almost never posted in the evening, so nobody knows whether Thursday evening would do better.

Test Thursday on your account

1. Three slots, one per study: 9 a.m. (Buffer), noon (Sprout Social), 5 to 6 p.m. (Hootsuite).
2. Same format everywhere, over several weeks, rotating from one Thursday to the next.
3. Look at the post count before the average, as my Thursday noon shows.
4. Ask your AI to read the grid in your local time and tell you whether your data is enough to conclude.

Key takeaway

On Thursday, the studies give three good answers, and my account confirms one. Test all three. For the other slot that stands out for me, see the best time to post on Instagram Monday.