Best Days to Post on YouTube: What 42 Million Uploads Actually Show
Quick Answer: Which Day Is Best to Post on YouTube?
Sunday, and the gap is far too small to build a content calendar around.
vidIQ analyzed 40.2 million US long-form uploads, measuring every upload against its own channel's average day so that channel size does not skew the result. Across all seven days the entire spread is 5.7 percentage points:
Three things follow, and each one contradicts the advice you will find on most pages ranking for this query, including an earlier version of this one:
- Weekends win and midweek does not. Wednesday is the weakest day in this dataset, not the "sweet spot".
- Thursday and Friday are not peak days. Both sit slightly below their own channels' averages. They are the two days most commonly named as best.
- Monday is not a bad day. It lands on the channel average, not at the bottom.
And the honest reading of a 5.7 point spread is that day of week is a rounding error next to your packaging and your topic. A video that is 3.5% ahead because you posted it on Sunday is a video whose day of week explains almost none of its outcome.
Jump to: What YouTube says | The datasets disagree | Shorts vs long-form | What nobody has published | Find your own day | What matters more | FAQ
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What YouTube Actually Says About Publish Time
This is the part every competing page skips, and it is the only primary source in the whole topic. YouTube's own Help documentation on the recommendation system addresses upload timing directly:
The algorithm aims to deliver the right content to viewers whenever they visit YouTube, regardless of upload time. While publishing when your audience is most active might lead to more immediate views, we haven't observed any evidence it affects long-term viewership.
The same page states plainly that publish time is not known to impact a video's long-term performance.
Read that carefully, because it draws a line that matters. YouTube is not saying timing does nothing. It is saying timing can move your first few hours, and that the effect does not survive into the video's lifetime performance. The signals YouTube does name are viewer personalization, which is watch history, search behavior, subscriptions, language and interest affinity, and content performance once a video starts being shown. Day of week appears in neither list.
So when a guide tells you "YouTube's algorithm favors Thursday uploads", it is asserting a mechanism the platform has explicitly said it has not observed. There is no ranking bonus for a day of the week to be had.
The Largest Datasets Disagree With Each Other
If the day mattered much, the big third-party studies would converge. They do not. Here are the three most-cited ones side by side, with what each actually measured:
Two of these three name Wednesday and Thursday as the weakest days. The third names the same two days as the best. That is not a small disagreement about a Tuesday; it is a direct inversion of the ranking, and only one of the three is transparent about how it got there.
What the two methodologically transparent studies agree on:
- Sunday is first for long-form. vidIQ and Buffer reach this independently, on different samples, with different metrics. It is the single most reliable finding in this topic.
- Thursday is in the bottom half. vidIQ has it at -1.6%. Buffer scores it the lowest day of the week for long-form video and puts it "well below the neutral line".
Where they still disagree: vidIQ ranks Saturday second, while Buffer puts Tuesday and Monday in its strong tier and does not. So even the two credible studies only agree on the top of the list and the shape of the bottom, not on the order in between.
The practical consequence is not "pick Sunday". It is that any page presenting a confident seven-day ranking is presenting one vendor's sample as a platform fact, and a second vendor's sample would have produced a different ranking.
Shorts and Long-Form Have Different Best Days
This distinction is missing from most day-of-week guides, and it is the one place where the choice of day plausibly does change your plan.
Buffer's dataset splits the two formats and they invert:
Monday and Tuesday are in the strong tier for long-form and the weak tier for Shorts. Friday is the clear best day for Shorts and mid-table for long-form. If your channel runs both, a single weekly upload day cannot be optimal for both, and the sensible reading is that Shorts track leisure browsing while long-form tracks people who sat down to watch something.
Note also that vidIQ's 40.2 million uploads are long-form only, so its table above should not be applied to a Shorts schedule.
What Nobody Has Published
Several claims circulate constantly on this topic, including in the previous version of this page. None of them traces to a source:
- "YouTube's recommendation system considers your posting pattern." Contradicted by YouTube's own documentation quoted above. Suppressed.
- "Wednesday 2 to 4 PM is peak for educational content, Thursday 9 to 11 AM for business." Per-niche, per-hour, per-day figures like these appear with no sample, no date range and no source anywhere we could find. They are invented precision. Removed from this page.
- "Gen Z performs best Friday to Sunday, 55+ performs best Sunday and Wednesday." No public dataset breaks day-of-week performance down by viewer age. YouTube does not publish it and no third-party study we could read measures it.
- "Monday is the worst day because of a back-to-work mindset." Monday is level with the channel average in the largest dataset and in Buffer's strong tier. The mindset story is plausible and the data does not support it.
- A single best day that applies to every channel. Neither YouTube nor any study claims this. Your audience's country mix alone moves the answer.
Cutting an unverifiable number is more useful to you than restating it with confidence.
In vidIQ's analysis of 40.2 million US uploads, which day performs best against a channel's own average?
💡 Tip: Think carefully before selecting your answer!
How to Find Your Own Best Day
Past a few thousand subscribers your own analytics beat every study on this page, because they measure your audience rather than a sample of everyone's. YouTube gives you the report for free.
Where the data lives. YouTube Studio, then Analytics in the left menu, then the Audience tab. The report is called "When your viewers are on YouTube". YouTube describes it as your audience's online activity across your channel and all of YouTube, and says outright that you can use it to help determine what time and day is best for you to upload. It covers videos, live streams and Shorts.
One caveat YouTube states directly: audience behavior differs across formats, so success looks different for Shorts than for long-form. If you publish both, do not read one heatmap as guidance for both.
How to actually test it, rather than just reading the heatmap:
- Pick two candidate days, one from your heatmap's densest block and one from your current habit. Sunday versus your usual day is a good first pair.
- Publish comparable videos on each. Same format, same rough topic, same length band. A tutorial against a vlog tests the topic, not the day.
- Compare views at 7 and at 28 days, not at 24 hours. Early view counts mostly reflect who happened to be online. vidIQ found that differences between upload slots had shrunk to within a few percent by day 30.
- Repeat across at least five pairs. One pair is noise. With a 5.7 point true effect size, a single comparison tells you nothing at all.
- Publish a few hours before your densest block, so YouTube has processed the video and started testing it by the time your audience arrives.
Use our YouTube average views calculator to get your baseline before you start, so you have something to compare each test against.
What Matters More Than the Day
Every source on this page, including YouTube itself, points the same direction: the day is a small effect and the things around it are large ones.
- Consistency beats precision. A predictable slot trains returning viewers and gives you a stable baseline to measure against. Both are worth more than 3.5%.
- Publishing into your audience's active window beats publishing on a nationally popular day, especially if your viewers are concentrated outside the US, where a US-sampled study does not describe them.
- Packaging and topic. Click-through rate and watch behavior after the click are what YouTube names as content performance signals. Day of week is not on the list.
- Volume. Two videos a week on an ordinary day beats one video a week on a perfect day.
If you want the hour rather than the day, our best times to post on YouTube guide covers time of day and time zones. To project what a given upload cadence does to your subscriber count, our Subscriber Goal Tracker models when you reach 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M at your current growth rate, with the monetization milestones marked.
For creators publishing to several platforms on a fixed weekly schedule, SocialRails can queue a week of content across YouTube and your other accounts in one pass, so a consistent cadence does not depend on remembering to upload.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best day to post on YouTube?
Sunday, on the two largest datasets that disclose their method. vidIQ's analysis of 40.2 million US long-form uploads puts Sunday at 3.5% above each channel's own average day, and Buffer's separate study of 1.8 million videos also ranks Sunday first for long-form. The important caveat is the size of the effect: the entire seven-day spread in vidIQ's data is 5.7 percentage points, from Sunday at plus 3.5% to Wednesday at minus 2.2%.
Does YouTube's algorithm favor videos posted on certain days?
No. YouTube's own documentation on the recommendation system states that the algorithm aims to deliver the right content to viewers whenever they visit YouTube, regardless of upload time, and that it has not observed any evidence that publishing when your audience is most active affects long-term viewership. The same page says publish time is not known to impact a video's long-term performance. Any claim that a specific day earns algorithmic favor is asserting a mechanism YouTube says it has not seen.
Is Thursday or Friday really the best day to upload on YouTube?
The data says no, despite this being the most commonly repeated recommendation. In vidIQ's 40.2 million upload dataset Thursday is 1.6% below a channel's average day and Friday is 0.5% below. Buffer's independent 1.8 million video study scores Thursday the weakest day of the week for long-form video. Friday is a different story for Shorts, where Buffer ranks it the single best day.
Is Monday a bad day to post on YouTube?
No. Monday lands at roughly the channel average in vidIQ's dataset, and Buffer places it in the strong tier for long-form video, third behind Sunday and Tuesday. The common advice that Monday underperforms because viewers are in a back-to-work mindset is a plausible story that the data does not support. Monday is a weak day for Shorts specifically, where Buffer ranks it and Tuesday last.
Do YouTube Shorts have different best days than long-form videos?
Yes, and they invert. In Buffer's data the strongest days for Shorts are Friday, then Saturday, then Thursday, while the weakest are Tuesday and Monday. For long-form the strongest are Sunday, Tuesday and Monday, and the weakest are Thursday and Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are therefore in the strong tier for one format and the weak tier for the other, so a single weekly slot cannot be optimal for both. Note that vidIQ's 40.2 million upload sample is long-form only and should not be applied to a Shorts schedule.
How do I find the best day to post for my own channel?
Open YouTube Studio, select Analytics, then the Audience tab, and read the report called When your viewers are on YouTube. YouTube states you can use it to help determine what time and day is best for you to upload, and it covers videos, live streams and Shorts, though YouTube also notes audience behavior differs across formats. Then test rather than assume: publish comparable videos on two candidate days, compare views at 7 and 28 days rather than at 24 hours, and repeat across at least five pairs. With a true effect this small, a single comparison is noise.
Related YouTube guides:
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