Best time to post on LinkedIn in 2026: what two big studies say, and how to find yours

Ask two of the biggest social media companies when to post on LinkedIn and you get two different answers. Sprout Social's 2026 study, built on nearly 2 billion engagements across 307,000 profiles, says 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday through Thursday. Buffer's 2026 study of 4.8 million LinkedIn posts says 3 to 8 p.m. on weekdays, with Wednesday at 4 p.m. the single strongest slot. Both agree that Saturday and Sunday are a waste. Below: what each says per day, why they disagree, and the 10-minute method for finding the answer in your own LinkedIn Analytics, which beats either study once you have a few weeks of posts.

Quick answers

Best time to post on LinkedIn: weekday working hours. Sprout's peak is 11 a.m.–5 p.m. local time, Buffer's is 3–8 p.m. The overlap, 3–5 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, is the safest default while you collect your own data.
Best day to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday (Buffer's best day; one of Sprout's three peak days), then Tuesday and Thursday.
Worst time to post on LinkedIn: Saturday and Sunday, in both studies. Sprout lists no optimal weekend times at all.
Personal profile or company page? Both studies measure company pages and profiles together; the pattern is the same because the audience is the same people at work.

What the two studies say, day by day

All times local to the audience. Sprout: engagements between 27 Nov 2025 and 27 Feb 2026, published 31 March 2026. Buffer: posts sent through Buffer, 2026 edition. Both pages re-read 30 October 2026.

Why the studies disagree

They measure different things. Sprout counts when engagement happens across every profile on its platform, which is dominated by larger brands and agencies whose audiences are at their desks. Buffer measures engagement on posts sent through Buffer, a smaller-business and creator-heavy base, and found that engagement after 3 p.m. climbed sharply in 2026 compared with 2025, when it was confined to office hours. Buffer's own note is that people now catch up on LinkedIn after the workday, which is why its Monday and Sunday "best" slots are 10 p.m.

Neither is wrong. They're averages of different audiences, and your audience is a third one. A recruiter's followers, a SaaS founder's followers and a photographer's followers are online at different hours. Treat the table as a starting grid, not a verdict.

The 10-minute way to find your actual best time

LinkedIn gives you the data free; it just doesn't draw the chart for you.

1. Company page: Analytics → Content. Switch the metric to engagement rate and sort. Export the post list if your page allows it.
2. Personal profile: your profile → Analytics & tools → Post impressions, then open each of your last 20–30 posts and note the time you published and the engagement in the first 24 hours.
3. Put publish time against engagement in a spreadsheet, one row per post. Group by hour. Two or three hours will stand out; those are your windows, and they will not match either study exactly.
4. Check Analytics → Followers for where your followers are. If 40% are in another time zone, shift the windows accordingly.

Smart Post Studio does this for you: once your LinkedIn profile or page is connected, the best-time heatmap is built from your own account's activity, and the composer suggests the slot. It's the same arithmetic, without the spreadsheet.

Best time to post on LinkedIn by day

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Monday

Sprout: 1–2 p.m., the first break after the Monday inbox catch-up. Buffer: 10 p.m., when people catch up on the feed after the workday. If you post once on Monday, early afternoon is the lower-risk choice; test the late slot if your followers skew to founders and freelancers.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Tuesday

Sprout's longest window of the week, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Buffer's best slot is 4 p.m. Both agree Tuesday is a core day. Text posts do well here: Sprout's 2026 content report found 51% of users prefer text-based posts on LinkedIn.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Wednesday

The closest thing to a consensus day. Sprout: 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Buffer: 4 p.m., its best slot of the whole week. If you post once a week, post Wednesday at 4 p.m. local until your own data says otherwise.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Thursday

Sprout: 11 a.m. and 1–5 p.m. Buffer: 5 p.m. Longer posts and webinar announcements tend to land here; people are planning the following week.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Friday

Sprout: 11 a.m. and 1–2 p.m., a short lunch window before people check out. Buffer: 3 p.m. Keep Friday for lighter content; anything needing a decision waits for Tuesday.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Saturday

Sprout lists no optimal time. Buffer's best Saturday slot is 9 a.m., with engagement well below weekdays. Only worth it if your own analytics show weekend readers.

Best time to post on LinkedIn on Sunday

Sprout lists no optimal time. Buffer: 10 p.m., the Sunday-evening planning scroll, still lower than any weekday. A good slot for scheduling the week's posts, not for publishing them.

How to test it in two weeks

Pick two windows, one from each study (say Wednesday noon and Wednesday 4 p.m.), and alternate them for two weeks with comparable posts. Compare impressions and engagement in the first 24 hours. Then move the loser to a third candidate from your own analytics. Four weeks of this and you'll have a schedule nobody else's study can give you.

Hitting the slot without being on LinkedIn at 4 p.m.

LinkedIn lets you schedule a single post natively from the composer. For a profile and a company page, plus the same content going to X, Threads or Instagram, a scheduler saves the double entry. In Smart Post Studio, LinkedIn profiles and company pages are both supported, each post gets its own caption per platform (the LinkedIn version can be the long one), and the web app fires it from our servers at the scheduled time whether your laptop is open or not. The calendar shows the week across every platform, so Wednesday 4 p.m. on LinkedIn and Wednesday noon on Instagram sit side by side. How the LinkedIn integration works, and the Instagram and TikTok versions of this guide.

TL;DR: Post on LinkedIn on weekdays, Tuesday to Thursday first. Sprout Social says 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Buffer says 3–8 p.m. with Wednesday 4 p.m. on top; 3–5 p.m. midweek is the overlap. Skip weekends. Then spend ten minutes in LinkedIn Analytics to find your own two best hours, because your followers are not the average.