The Best Time to Post YouTube Videos

Gaining subscribers on YouTube is an art that mixes quality content with honoring the best YouTube SEO practices. Focusing on the latter, we’ve analyzed a lot of YouTube channels to answer the question: “What’s the best time to publish YouTube videos?”

No matter what you feature in your content, social media requires an element of calculation with posting times. Specifically, you want to cater to your target audience and post at the time they’re most likely to view and comment.

While other platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram have a definitive answer for posting times, YouTube is not so clear. Some speculate that this is because there’s no feed on YouTube, but we’ll leave that to the data scientists.

Regardless, there is a lot of survey information available from reliable sources we’ve compiled into the table below. Here are the key time windows when you should post on YouTube:

With the general time frames above, you have a solid idea on the best times to upload YouTube videos. However, with a little data, it’s possible to narrow down your timeframes and zero-in on what’s best for your channel.

YouTube’s real-time analytics report can help you lock down a solid publishing schedule. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open YouTube Studio.

2. Select Analytics.

3. Click the tab that reads Overview.

The data under this tab lays out when your videos received top viewership in the:

• Previous 2 days

• Previous 60 minutes

With that information, you can determine the hour and day your videos received the most views. For example, if your peak viewership time is 6 p.m. on Fridays, then the best time to post YouTube videos is one or two hours before.

Notice we mentioned posting “one or two hours before” the peak viewership time. That’s because YouTube needs time to both analyze and index the video, so the algorithm will share it to more viewers.

Also, it gives you time to blast notices to your followers – including on other social media channels – so you can maximize your viewership in the first hour or so.

We’ve spoken a lot so far about the best times to post. But to ensure that you can post a video at the exact time you want, you’ll need to upload your video in a timely fashion – especially if you’re making videos for monetization.

Be sure to start your upload process, ideally, a few hours before you intend to post. Doing it this way ensures YouTube has enough time to process your video in all formats – specifically for 4K and if it’s a long video – and has time to review the ad suitability for your content. This process can take up to an hour for monetized YouTube channels.

Once your video passes the check, you’ll receive a notification. But no ads will show until you receive that notice. Should you choose to publish beforehand, you could miss out on ad revenue during the review process, so always upload at least an hour before you intend to publish a video.

With that, we’ll dive a little deeper and learn how to use YouTube’s Advanced Report feature to lock down your most optimal posting days and times.

With more traffic, you’ll gain more data. And that’s a prime opportunity to make use of YouTube’s advanced reporting features. It’s possible to know when your viewers are on YouTube, so you can better plan your posting schedule. To find out, follow these steps:

1. Open YouTube Studio.

2. Select Analytics.

3. Then click the Audience tab.

With this report, you gain access to extensive analytics of your traffic. But instead of only seeing ‘views’, you’ll have access to advanced analytics that can help drive more traffic to your channel.

Note the days of the week and the purple bars that let you know when your viewers are on the platform. The darker the bar, the more viewers are on YouTube – i.e. that’s the prime hour and day to post a video.

To gain more viewers, you’ll most likely post over one video per week. Although some top channels put out high-end, informative videos on a monthly or quarterly basis, and others post multiple videos each day. Most top content creators put out 2-3 videos per week. It’s all based on your audience.

However, there are some common practices with posting multiple videos. It’s best to not post videos on consecutive days if you’re going with a 2-3 video per week schedule. In that case, you might ask, “What if my two best posting days are consecutive.”

In that situation, choose the best day as your lead, and then use the analytics to space things out by a day. You don’t want one video to overshadow the other.

For example, if your two best viewership days are Friday and Saturday. Post one video on Friday, and then look at the analytics for Wednesday and Sunday to see which one works best for the other video. Most likely it’ll be Sunday, but your numbers could vary.

Getting more views on your YouTube channel takes more than just posting at the right time. You need to put out quality content that viewers want to share.

To do that, we recommend Movavi Video Editor. It has everything you need to turn your ideas into interesting videos. The platform has an intuitive interface that anyone can use and comes with a range of read-made effects, intros, and transitions that were specifically designed for YouTube creators. Check out all effects packs you can use by following the link below:

Go to Effects Store