The best time to post on Reddit, checked on 289 million posts

The orange line is how likely a post was to reach the top 10% of its subreddit, by the hour it went up. It peaks at 13:00 UTC, 8% above average, and is lowest at 06:00 UTC, 9% below. The blue line is how many posts go up. It peaks later, at 17:00 UTC, when 34% more posts go up than in an average hour.

In plain numbers: 10.5 posts in 100 reached their subreddit's top 10% in its best 4 hours, 9.6 at any time and 8.3 in its worst 4 hours.

What we counted

• 19,696 subreddits with at least 1,000 posts in each of two periods, 289 million posts in all.
• A good post is one that reached its subreddit's top 10% by score in the month it was posted. Comparing each post with its own subreddit and month means a big subreddit and a small one count the same way.
• Two periods. We picked each subreddit's best, worst and busiest 4 hours from November 2024 to September 2025, then checked how posts in those hours did from November 2025 to September 2026. October 2025 is left out: something in that month's data looks off (see the em dash study).
• Hours are UTC, in windows of 4 hours in a row, including ones that cross midnight.
• Left out: known bots, NSFW posts, posts pinned or marked by moderators, and removed or deleted posts.

Last year's best hours still worked the next year

A subreddit's best 4 hours from one year gave posts a 10% better shot at its top 10% the next year. The single best window for all of Reddit, 12:00 to 16:00 UTC, did almost as well: 7% better. The worst 4 hours were 13% worse. Best against worst, that is a 26% difference.

So timing matters, but it is a small edge. At a subreddit's best hours, 0.9 more posts in 100 reach its top 10% than at any time: a nudge, not a multiple. What the post says, and whether it fits the subreddit, matters more than the hour it goes up.

Posting when everyone posts barely helps

Posts in a subreddit's busiest 4 hours did only 2% better than average the next year. In 83% of subreddits, the best 4 hours start at least 3 hours away from the busiest ones, and in 57% at least 6 hours away. Only 3% have the same window.

The busiest windows pile up in the afternoon UTC (morning to midday in the US): 2,764 subreddits have theirs starting at 16:00. The best windows are spread around the clock. The most common start is 11:00 UTC, for 1,637 subreddits, and every hour of the day is the best start for at least 466. A likely reason is competition: at busy hours a new post has more new posts to compete with for the same readers. This data shows the pattern, not the cause.

When your subreddit's own hours matter

For 37% of subreddits, the best hours start within 2 hours of 12:00 UTC, and the Reddit-wide window works as well as their own (+12.6% against +12.8%). For 38%, about 2 in 5, the best hours start 6 or more hours away. There the Reddit-wide window helped by just +2.1%, while the subreddit's own window gave +6.9%.

One catch: it takes a lot of posts to find a subreddit's own hours. When we picked them from 6 months of posts instead of 11, they did no better than the Reddit-wide window (+7.8% against +8.1%), even in the subreddits far from it (+4.0% against +3.7%). And the exact hours move from year to year: in 41% of subreddits, the best 4 hours started within 2 hours of the year before. Use a subreddit's hours as a rough window, not an appointment.

Best hours in popular subreddits

From November 2025 to September 2026. In r/AskReddit, the best 4 hours were 00:00 to 04:00 UTC (8 PM to midnight in New York in summer), while its busiest were 16:00 to 20:00 UTC. In r/SaaS, the best were 02:00 to 06:00 UTC and the busiest 13:00 to 17:00 UTC.

For a subreddit that isn't listed, check it in KissMyPost: it shows the good and bad hours of the whole week for any subreddit with enough posts.

The day of the week barely matters

Across subreddits, the best day was Wednesday, 2% above average, and the worst Friday, 2% below. A subreddit's best day from one year gave +3.1% the next year, and its worst day -2.1%: smaller than the gap between hours.

Picking the best 4 hours of the whole week (day and hour together) did worse than picking hours alone: +7.7% against +9.6%. A week has 168 hours, and most subreddits don't have enough posts in each one to tell good from lucky.

What this data can't tell you

• Score is upvotes minus downvotes. A post can be useful to its author (a sale, a reply, a sign-up) without reaching the top 10%.
• Removed posts are left out. If moderators or filters remove more posts at some hours, the chance of being seen at those hours is lower than shown.
• Hours are UTC. Clocks in the US and Europe move by an hour twice a year, so the edges of each window shift by about an hour between summer and winter.
• In the most recent months, which come from our own collection, evening hours UTC looked a little weaker than before. We can't rule out that scores in those months were recorded sooner after posting.
• These are averages over thousands of subreddits and millions of posts. A strong post beats a good hour.

Method

Posts: every Reddit post from November 2024 to September 2025 and from November 2025 to September 2026 in subreddits with at least 1,000 posts in each period (19,696 subreddits, 148,623,244 and 140,241,158 posts). Known bots, NSFW posts, pinned posts, posts marked by moderators, and removed or deleted posts are excluded. A post is in the top 10% if its score is above the 90th percentile of its subreddit's posts that month.

For each subreddit and each start hour, we counted the share of posts in the next 4 hours (UTC, wrapping past midnight) that reached the top 10%. From the first period we took the subreddit's best window (highest share), worst window (lowest share) and busiest window (most posts), and one window for all of Reddit: the one with the highest average share across subreddits (12:00 to 16:00 UTC). Then we measured the same share for those windows in the second period and compared it with the subreddit's average there. Each subreddit counts once. Intervals are 95% bootstrap intervals over subreddits (2,000 resamples).

Window length: 3 and 4 hours did about the same (+9.7% and +9.6%); longer windows dilute the effect (+8.9% for 6 hours). Results for 1 to 8 hours, the 6-month check and the by-day check are in the results file. The source data is public Reddit archives back to 2005 plus our own collection for recent months.

The data

The results, the hour-by-hour numbers and the subreddit tables are in these files. They're free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit KissMyPost and link to this page.

• CSVResults of the checkPosts in the top 10% per 100 and the change against the subreddit's average for its own best, worst and busiest 4 hours and the Reddit-wide window, with 95% intervals; the same for the 6-month check, by distance from the Reddit-wide window, by day, and for windows of 1 to 8 hours.
• CSVBy hour and by dayFor each hour (UTC) and day of the week: chance of reaching the top 10% against the average, share of posts, and how many subreddits have their best and busiest windows starting at that hour.
• CSVBest and busiest hours, 43 subredditsBest and busiest 4 hours in UTC and New York time, and posts counted, November 2025 to September 2026.
• PNGResults chart, 1600 × 1000The check in one picture, as an image.
• PNGBy-hour chart, 1600 × 1000Chance of top 10% and posts going up, by hour, as an image.
• PNGBest vs busiest hours chart, 1600 × 1000Where subreddits' best and busiest windows start, as an image.

Questions people ask

This study comes from the archive behind KissMyPost, a Reddit analytics tool. It shows when posts do well in a subreddit, what gets posts removed and who writes there, and lets you search posts back to 2005.