Best time to post YouTube Shorts in 2026: four studies compared

What each study found

Every row is a separate published study, read and checked on the date in the byline. Times are the local time of the accounts in each study unless the time-zone column says otherwise.

Where the studies agree

The four performance studies agree that Shorts do better later in the day than long-form videos. SocialPilot puts it bluntly: long-form and Shorts “now have almost completely opposite optimal posting windows”.^[2]

• Friday 4 PM: Buffer’s top slot, inside SocialPilot’s “strongest” Friday 4–7 PM and Metricool’s 2–6 PM.^[1][2][4]
• Saturday 4 PM: Adobe’s top slot, inside SocialPilot’s Saturday 3–6 PM and Metricool’s 2–6 PM.^[3][2][4]
• Weekday evenings: Buffer and SocialPilot both name Thursday 7–9 PM.^[1][2]

Where they disagree, and why

Friday. Buffer calls Friday the best Shorts day and SocialPilot agrees; Adobe ranks Friday among the worst.^[1][2][3] Adobe’s sample is small (280 creators) and skewed toward hugely popular channels, with averages that a few viral Shorts can pull up. Buffer uses medians across a much bigger, more ordinary set of accounts.

Mornings. SocialPilot lists morning options (7–11 AM) on several days; Buffer’s Shorts picks are almost all after 4 PM, and Adobe found the busiest upload hours (8–10 AM) did worse than off-peak hours.^[2][1][3] Posting when everyone else posts means more competition.

Time zones. Buffer and SocialPilot give local times. Adobe and Metricool don’t say, so their hours may be in one zone. vidIQ’s upload chart is in US Eastern time.^[5]

How much it matters. YouTube’s help centre says “publish time is not known to impact a video’s long-term performance” and that the system aims to recommend videos “regardless of when that video was uploaded”.^[7] Buffer says the same for Shorts: they are “continuously resurfaced”, so timing is “less make-or-break”.^[1]

Day by day

Each study’s Shorts picks for each day, in local time where stated.

Worst times to post on YouTube Shorts

• 12–5 PM on most days, except late Friday afternoon (Buffer).^[1]
• 3–7 AM (SocialPilot).^[2]
• Monday and Tuesday (Buffer); Friday and Monday (Adobe).^[1][3]
• 8–10 AM, the busiest upload hours, did worse than off-peak hours in Adobe’s data.^[3]

By format

Shorts and long videos have different windows in every study that splits them. Buffer: Shorts peak 6–11 PM, long-form Sunday mornings. SocialPilot: Shorts later in the day, long-form 2–4 PM on weekdays. Metricool: Shorts 2–6 PM, long-form 10 AM–4 PM.^[1][2][4] See the long-form YouTube guide for those.

On length, Adobe found Shorts of 40 seconds or longer were 33% more engaging than shorter ones in its sample.^[3]

Your audience is different: find your own golden hour

Every study above averages thousands of accounts. Your followers live in their own time zones and keep their own routines, so treat the windows as a first guess and check your own numbers.

In YouTube Shorts’s own analytics

1. Open YouTube Studio, choose Analytics in the left menu, then Audience at the top.^[8]
2. Find the card When your viewers are on YouTube. It shows when your viewers were on YouTube (anywhere, not just on your channel) in the last 28 days.^[8]
3. Pick the darkest bars and post 1–2 hours before them, so the Short is ready when they arrive.
4. Small channels may see little or no data in that card; then start from the study window above and compare views after 48 hours.

With Octoque

Octoque’s starting hour for YouTube Shorts is 18:00 in your audience’s local time.

That is 6 PM. It sits at the start of Buffer’s 6–11 PM peak and inside SocialPilot’s Friday 4–7 PM.

Tell Octoque where your audience lives (up to three regions) and that hour follows their clock, not yours. Once you have a few posts, your own results take over from the starting hour. You can always pick a time yourself, post right away, or add the post to your queue. See how golden hour works.