Best time to post in Australia/Instagram
Best time to post on Instagram in Australia.
Buffer puts the strongest hours at Thursday 9am, Wednesday 12pm and Wednesday 6pm, from 9.6 million Instagram posts from 200,000+ Buffer accounts. Below is what that means once you account for the fact that your audience is spread across Australia.
Updated 2026-08-14
The window that reaches everyone
One instant, every clock.
Buffer’s strongest band for Instagram is 6pm to 11pm in local time. These are the hours on an eastern clock that land inside that band in every Australian time zone at the same time.
Winter, standard time
8pm, 9pm, 10pm AEST
Publish in this window and every Australian, Perth included, sees it inside the 6pm to 11pm band.
Summer, daylight saving
9pm, 10pm AEDT
The window narrows from 3 hours to 2. Daylight saving stretches the country from two hours wide to three.
Derived from published UTC offsets and Australian Bureau of Statistics population at 31 December 2025. The band itself is Buffer’s finding, not ours.
Day by day
Instagram, every day of the week.
All hours are local time, exactly as published. Best day is Wednesday, then Thursday and Tuesday. Weakest is Friday and Saturday.
| Day | Best hour | Also strong | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 7pm | 6pm, 8pm | Moderate |
| Tuesday | 7pm | 3pm, 5pm | High |
| Wednesday | 12pm | 6pm, 8am | Highest |
| Thursday | 9am | 8am, 7am | Highest |
| Friday | 10pm | 9pm, 6am | Low |
| Saturday | 9pm | 10pm, 8pm | Low |
| Sunday | 9pm | 10pm, 8pm | Moderate |
Where this number comes from
Buffer: Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2026
- Sample
- 9.6 million Instagram posts from 200,000+ Buffer accounts
- Period
- January 2024 to December 2025
- Published
- 14 July 2026
- Which clock
- Normalised to local time. Buffer states: "12 p.m. Wednesday means 12 p.m. local time wherever you are", and names Australia among the countries this applies to.
Read this before you use the table
Buffer's single best slot is Thursday 9am, which sits outside its own strongest band of 6pm to 11pm. Buffer flags Thursday morning as the one exception to otherwise weak weekday mornings. Treat it as a genuine outlier rather than evidence that mornings work generally.
Sense check
What 8pm on the east coast actually looks like.
Same instant, eight capitals, both halves of the year. This is the table worth keeping next to your scheduler.
Winter, standard time
| City | Local clock when Sydney reads 8pm |
|---|---|
| Sydney | ▸8pm |
| Melbourne | ▸8pm |
| Brisbane | ▸8pm |
| Adelaide | ▸7:30pm |
| Perth | ▸6pm |
| Darwin | ▸7:30pm |
| Hobart | ▸8pm |
| Canberra | ▸8pm |
Summer, daylight saving
| City | Local clock when Sydney reads 8pm |
|---|---|
| Sydney | ▸8pm |
| Melbourne | ▸8pm |
| Brisbane | ▸7pm |
| Adelaide | ▸7:30pm |
| Perth | ▸5pm |
| Darwin | ▸6:30pm |
| Hobart | ▸8pm |
| Canberra | ▸8pm |
Questions
Instagram in Australia.
What is the best time to post on Instagram in Australia?+
Buffer's figures put Instagram's strongest band at 6pm to 11pm local time, from 9.6 million Instagram posts from 200,000+ Buffer accounts. To land that band everywhere in Australia at once, publish between 8pm and 9pm and 10pm AEST in winter, and between 9pm and 10pm AEDT during daylight saving.
What is the best day to post on Instagram?+
Wednesday, then Thursday and Tuesday. The weakest is Friday and Saturday. These are Buffer's findings from 9.6 million Instagram posts from 200,000+ Buffer accounts, published 14 July 2026.
How reliable are these Instagram times?+
Buffer's single best slot is Thursday 9am, which sits outside its own strongest band of 6pm to 11pm. Buffer flags Thursday morning as the one exception to otherwise weak weekday mornings. Treat it as a genuine outlier rather than evidence that mornings work generally.
Do these times need converting for Australia?+
Normalised to local time. Buffer states: "12 p.m. Wednesday means 12 p.m. local time wherever you are", and names Australia among the countries this applies to.
Compare every platform on the Australian posting times hub, see all seven days on the best day to post page, or read the method.
Engagement hours on this page are third-party figures, quoted as published, with the sample size and analysis period next to each one. The Australian timezone analysis is ours, computed from published UTC offsets and Australian Bureau of Statistics population figures. We publish no engagement numbers of our own, and the method page explains exactly why.
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