Post Time Zone Planner

About the Post Time Zone Planner

Your followers are spread over several time zones, so the best time to post is the time when most of them are awake and online. Enter where your audience is (each city or country with its share, or its follower count, from your analytics), the hours they are usually online in their own time, and, if you know them, their peak hours. Add the times you are thinking of posting, in your own time zone.

The planner shows each time in every city, with the share of your audience inside its active and peak hours; the share every 15 minutes across your day on one timeline; the best windows, ranked; and the clock changes of the next six weeks that move your plan. Summer time follows the time zone database your browser ships, so a time that does not exist on a clock-change day, or happens twice, is pointed out.

Without a pass, the free preview shows the best window in full, with the first rows of each table and the timeline marked as a preview; the other shares, Copy plan and the CSV come with a Pro pass.

Common uses

• Creators with followers on several continents choosing one time that reaches most of them.
• Brands planning a launch post for audiences in the US, the UK and India at once.
• Checking whether next month’s clock changes move a weekly live stream for part of the audience.
• Comparing two or three slots before putting them in a content calendar.

How the shares are worked out

• Each place counts by its share of the figures you typed: 50, 30 and 20 are 50 %, 30 % and 20 %; follower counts of 12,400 and 8,000 are 61 % and 39 %.
• A place counts as online at a moment when its own local time is inside the active hours, and as peak when it is inside the peak hours. Hours that end before they start (18:00 to 02:00) run past midnight.
• Your day is cut into 15-minute steps in your own time zone. A window is a run of steps with the same shares, and windows are ranked by the share online, then the share in peak hours, then their length. The run before midnight and the run after it count as one window when their shares are the same, because a posting plan repeats every day.

Summer time and clock changes

Local times come from the IANA time zone database built into your browser, through the standard date and time formatting of JavaScript (ECMA-402). On a day when your clocks jump forward a time that does not exist moves forward by the gap (01:30 becomes 02:30 in London in spring); on a day when they go back a time that happens twice uses the first one. Countries change their clocks on different days or not at all, so the gap to a city can change by an hour for a week or two: the planner lists every change in the six weeks after your day, in your time zone and in your audience’s, with what it does to your first post time.

Where to find your audience’s locations and hours

Most social platforms show the top cities or countries of your followers in their audience insights or analytics, as a share or a count. Some also show when your followers are online. If yours does not, start with waking hours (08:00 to 23:00) and evenings as peak hours, then check what worked with your own results in the Best Time to Post Analyzer. A country with several time zones (the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia) needs one row per zone, such as New York and Los Angeles.

Sources

• IANA Time Zone Database: the rules for every time zone, as shipped in browsers
• ECMA-402, the ECMAScript Internationalization API: Intl.DateTimeFormat with a time zone, which turns an instant into each city’s local time

Limitations

• The shares are the ones you enter: the planner does not connect to any account.
• The same active and peak hours apply to every place. If one city keeps different hours, plan it on its own.
• Weekdays and weekends are not told apart: plan each day you post.
• A city stands for its whole time zone, and results are in 15-minute steps.
• Clock changes are listed for six weeks after the chosen day, from the time zone data of your browser; a country that changes its rules at short notice can differ until the browser is updated.

Privacy

On this device: nothing is sent

Everything is worked out in your browser. Your places, shares, hours and times are kept in this browser’s local storage so they are there next time; Clear removes them. Nothing is uploaded.