Best Time to Post on YouTube: What Your Own Data Says

There is no single best time to post on YouTube that works for every channel. YouTube itself says there is no evidence that posting time affects a video's long-term performance; where it does matter is in live streams and premieres. If you want to make the most of the first few hours, look at your channel's “When your viewers are on YouTube” report, schedule publication in YouTube Studio for that window and put more energy into publishing at a pace you can sustain.

What YouTube says about timing

The short answer is in YouTube's performance FAQ:

• In the long run, nothing suggests it matters. There is no evidence that posting time affects a video's long-term performance: the recommendation system tries to show the right videos to the right users, regardless of when they were uploaded.
• At the start, it can help. Posting when your audience is most active can help you get more views at first, but there is no record of it influencing the content's audience in the long term.
• In live streams and premieres, it does matter. For those formats, YouTube points to the report on when your viewers are active to decide what time to schedule a premiere or plan a live stream.

That is why you will not find a table of times by day of the week here: a table like that would say nothing about your audience, which need not resemble that of other channels.

The report on when your audience is active

It is in YouTube Studio: in the left-hand menu, Analytics, and at the top, the Audience tab. There you will find the “When your viewers are on YouTube” report, which shows the times of day when your users have been active on any YouTube platform over the last 28 days.

How we suggest using it (our own approach):

• Look for the window when your audience is usually connected and schedule the video a little earlier, so that it is already published when they arrive.
• Check where your audience is. On the same tab, the top geographies report shows where your channel gets the most watch time. If you are looking for “the time for Spain” and a good part of your audience is in other countries, the window that suits you may not be the one you expect.
• If the channel is new, the report will have little data. Publish when it suits you and look at it again once there is an audience.

To understand the rest of the metrics on that tab without drawing too many conclusions, see YouTube metrics.

How to schedule publication in YouTube Studio

With scheduled publication, a private video becomes public at the time you choose. The steps, from YouTube Studio:

1. Select CREATE and Upload videos.
2. Choose the file and enter the video details.
3. Click the Schedule card.
4. Enter the date, the time and the time zone.
5. Click Schedule.

Until the chosen date, the video will be private. To change the time, go to Content, open the video and edit the visibility: with the setting on Private, choose the new time under “Schedule”; if you would rather publish it now, change the visibility to Public. You can also schedule from the YouTube app. Two warnings from the help page:

• Strikes stop it. If your account has received a strike for breaching the Community Guidelines, the scheduled video will not be published while the penalty lasts, and you will have to schedule it again.
• The date shown is in Pacific time. The date on the watch page is set according to Pacific Standard Time (PST), and may not match the one in YouTube Studio if you publish from a time zone that is ahead, such as Spain's.

If you want people to watch it at the same time, you can set it up as a premiere: viewers can set reminders, use the chat and leave comments. Shorts cannot be launched in a premiere. We go through where each YouTube Studio option sits in what YouTube Studio is and what each section is for.

How often to upload videos

There is no magic number here either. Asked whether you need to upload videos every day or at least once a week, YouTube says no: after several analyses, it has not observed any correlation between an increase in views and the time between one upload and the next. It adds that many creators have built stable bonds with their audience by prioritising quality over quantity, and recommends looking after yourself to avoid burning out.

What it does advocate is consistency. In its advice on scheduling uploads, it says a consistent, sustainable schedule is essential for building an audience and meeting its expectations, as well as for protecting your wellbeing. The questions it suggests asking yourself:

• Frequency: how often per week or month do you upload content, and can it be kept up in the long term?
• Consistency: do you stick to your schedule? Will you tie content to particular days of the week?
• Volume: is there a format, series or type of content you prioritise over others?

And if you need to stop, stop: YouTube says that, after analysing thousands of channels that took a break, it has not observed that the length of breaks produced changes in views, although your audience may take a little while to get back into the rhythm when you return.

How to build a calendar you can keep up

A sustainable pace comes from your production capacity, not from what another channel does. A simple method:

1. Measure how long it takes you to get a video out from start to finish, counting script, voice, images, editing and review.
2. Choose a frequency below that pace, so that one bad week does not break the calendar.
3. Fix the days and, if the activity report gives you a clear window, the time.
4. Keep spare videos. YouTube's help page recommends recording several videos at once whenever possible and scheduling them to upload content steadily.
5. Organise by series. A series with a fixed format is easier to produce regularly; how to define them is in a YouTube channel bible.

For example, an educational channel that takes around ten days to finish each video should not promise one a week: better one every two weeks, always on the same day, with one finished in reserve.

The calendar in the Estudio de Canales

In the Estudio de Canales the date is decided when you plan, and publishing remains your job:

• Planning with a date. An approved idea is planned with a date: it becomes a video in production and goes into the calendar with that expected date. Each channel has its own publishing calendar.
• Series. Each series has its format and its variation rule, so that each episode says something different.
• Actually published. When you upload the video and paste the link, if YouTube confirms it belongs to your channel, its calendar entry is marked as published.
• Tracking. With the video linked and confirmed, snapshots of its figures are scheduled at 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21, 30, 45, 60 and 90 days.

What it does not do: it does not publish or schedule anything on YouTube. The package carries the chosen visibility (private, unlisted or public), but you set the date and time yourself in YouTube Studio. And since the figures it stores are daily, your audience's active hours are looked up in the YouTube Studio report.

Sources consulted

Checked on 11 October 2026. We link to the original source so that you can consult the current text.

• Preguntas frecuentes y solución de problemas de rendimiento de YouTube. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Conocer mejor a tu audiencia de YouTube. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Programar la hora de publicación de un vídeo. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Subir vídeos a YouTube. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Estrenar un nuevo vídeo. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Consejos para programar subidas. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.