The best time to post on LinkedIn: weekdays, but when?

What the studies say, day by day

Three studies give LinkedIn slots for every day, in your audience’s local time. Read on 24 October 2026.

Scope:

• Sprout Social (31 March 2026): nearly 2 billion engagements across 307,000 profiles, 27 November 2025 to 27 February 2026, six networks pooled, LinkedIn included.
• Buffer (9 September 2026): more than 4.8 million LinkedIn posts sent through Buffer; it presents its slots as valid for a company Page and a personal profile alike. The period isn’t stated on the page.
• Hootsuite (19 November 2025): more than 1 million posts, times localized across 118 countries. 2025 data.

The only consensus: not on weekends

All three studies rank Saturday and Sunday last. Sprout Social doesn’t even give a slot: in its view, B2B content published on a Saturday is invisible. Buffer and Hootsuite do give weekend hours, but note that engagement drops.

For the best day, Sprout Social picks Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Buffer puts Wednesday first, then Thursday and Friday, and ranks Monday and Tuesday at the bottom of the working week. Hootsuite names Tuesday and Wednesday.

Why the hours differ: LinkedIn is shifting

Buffer explains it itself. In 2025, its best LinkedIn slots stayed within office hours and fell off after 5 p.m. In 2026, they’ve moved to late afternoon and early evening, as Instagram and TikTok did before.

Hootsuite, with 2025 data, still finds mornings (8 to 9 a.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Sprout Social, with a 2025 to 2026 winter, sees the working day, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Three periods, three snapshots of a network that’s changing.

By time zone

Hootsuite is the only study that breaks LinkedIn down by time zone:

Thursday shows up in every one of them. That’s a solid day to start a test, whatever your region.

Finding your LinkedIn slot: a spreadsheet, not a tool

I have to be straight with you here. PlugKit publishes and schedules on your LinkedIn profile, but it reads no LinkedIn analytics: its documentation doesn’t list LinkedIn among the networks it collects numbers for. In video 4, Claude spotted it on its own: LinkedIn was missing from my stats.

So no automatic grid. Your raw material is LinkedIn’s native analytics: Buffer notes they show your top-performing posts over a period, for Pages and profiles alike. The method to turn that into a slot is the one Later describes:

1. Pick five slots across the week: one in the morning, one at lunch, one at the end of the day, plus two from the table above.
2. Log every post in a spreadsheet: date, time, reactions, comments.
3. Shift the hours from one week to the next. Tuesday’s 8 a.m. post moves to noon the following week.
4. Compare after several weeks, never on a single post.

Where PlugKit helps is keeping the rhythm: your AI schedules your posts at the exact test times, without you thinking about it.

Limits

• PlugKit doesn’t read LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn results have to be logged by hand.
• The studies don’t separate Pages and profiles. Buffer presents its slots as valid for both, yet a personal profile and a company Page don’t necessarily share an audience.
• Content comes before timing. Later notes that LinkedIn’s algorithm shows suggested posts long after they’re published: timing counts, but it isn’t everything.

For the other networks, the page on the best time to post on Instagram compares four studies the same way.