Most push campaigns go out when the marketing team is ready. The sale goes live at 9am, so the notification goes out at 9am, to every customer at once, wherever they happen to be.
Push works best when it lands at a moment the customer can act on it: on the bus, at lunch, on the sofa after work. The same message, sent then, gets seen and tapped instead of buried under a stack of other notifications.
This guide covers what current data says about the best time and day to send push notifications, how timing changes with each type of message and how to find the right time for your own customers.
What Data Says About the Best Time to Send Push Notifications
Push notifications get their best open rates when they’re sent between morning and early evening. In Batch’s 2025 benchmark of 800 billion messages from 10,000 apps and websites, pushes sent from 8am to 7pm averaged open rates of 4.5% to 5.1%.
After that, open rates fell every hour, to 3.2% for pushes sent at 11pm.
| Hour sent | Average open rate (Batch, July 2024 to July 2025) |
|---|---|
| 8am | 5.08% |
| 9am | 4.92% |
| 10am | 4.52% |
| 11am | 4.85% |
| 12pm | 4.85% |
| 1pm | 4.96% |
| 2pm | 4.73% |
| 3pm | 5.11% |
| 4pm | 4.89% |
| 5pm | 5.11% |
| 6pm | 4.52% |
| 7pm | 4.91% |
| 8pm | 4.21% |
| 9pm | 4% |
| 10pm | 3.69% |
| 11pm | 3.2% |
App use follows a similar pattern through the day. Batch found that people use apps most around lunchtime and in the early evening, with the busiest hour at 6pm, and far less late at night.
That gives you a dependable window for campaigns, from breakfast to early evening, when customers pick up their phones between other things. The busiest hours are also when the most other apps are sending, so a slightly quieter slot can help your message stand out.
What’s the Best Day to Send Push Notifications?
Monday and the weekend are the strongest days for ecommerce push. In Pushwoosh’s ecommerce data, published in 2025, open rates peaked at 1.55% on Mondays and about 1.5% on Saturdays and Sundays, and dipped to 0.94% on Thursdays.
| Day sent | Average open rate, ecommerce and retail apps (Pushwoosh) |
|---|---|
| Monday | 1.55% |
| Tuesday | 1.07% |
| Wednesday | 1.02% |
| Thursday | 0.94% |
| Friday | 1.41% |
| Saturday | 1.5% |
| Sunday | 1.49% |
Across all industries, Batch also found Monday the strongest day of the week.
How Important Is Timing with Push Notifications?
Timing matters more for push than for most channels, because so much of its value comes from being immediate. A well-timed notification reaches customers wherever they are and brings them into your app with one tap.
Sent while they’re busy, the same message is easy to miss. It slides down the lock screen under newer notifications, or gets swiped away and forgotten.
Bad timing can also cost you subscribers. A buzz in the middle of a meeting, or in the middle of the night, is the kind of thing that gets notifications switched off, or the app deleted.
Phones also decide when some messages are seen, and iPhone and Android each give customers their own controls. On iPhone, customers can hold notifications during a Focus, such as Work or Sleep, or collect them into a scheduled summary at times they pick, so a 10am push may not reach them until the evening.
The Time Sensitive level lets a notification break through both, but Apple’s guidelines keep it for events happening now or within the hour, and say never to use it for marketing.
How to Find the Right Time for Your Push Notifications
The best time to send depends on your customers, your products and what each message is for, so treat the benchmarks as a starting point.
Start With Your Customers’ Routines
Send when your customers have time to browse. Think about when they use your app and when they’re free to act: before work, at lunch, on the way home or after dinner.
Your own data is the best guide. Your app analytics show when customers open the app and when they buy, and those peaks are a strong first guess for your campaigns.
Some brands write the moment into the message itself. Obvi’s “Rise and Shine!” notification is written for the start of the day, and Muscle Republic pitches its new sweats for a Sunday night in.
Day of the Week
The best hour can change from one day to the next. A weekday lunch break and a slow Saturday afternoon catch customers in different moods, so test weekend sends on their own rather than copying your weekday schedule.
For a shopping app, a weekend afternoon may be prime browsing time, while the same hour on a Tuesday finds most customers at work.
Type of Notification
Timing depends on what the message is for. Order confirmations, delivery updates and account alerts should go out the moment there’s news, because that’s when they’re useful.
Triggered messages time themselves around what each customer does. A cart reminder works best within the first hour after a customer leaves, a welcome offer straight after someone installs your app and a back-in-stock alert the moment the item returns.
In our push notification report, we recommend a second welcome nudge 24 hours later for customers who haven’t bought yet.
Triggered messages also get the most opens. Batch found that contextual campaigns, sent automatically after an action or at a set time, averaged a 14.4% open rate, against 4.19% for generic ones.
Campaigns are where you choose the time. In our research, Mr Porter spaced its category edits about three hours apart, and LSKD counted down to its drops 48 hours and 24 hours out, then again when they went live and for a last chance.
Consider the User’s Time Zone
If your customers live in more than one time zone, schedule every campaign in each customer’s local time. A 9am send from New York reaches Los Angeles at 6am, before most customers are up.
Push platforms make this easy. OneSignal and Klaviyo can both send a campaign at a set local time in each customer’s time zone, so 9am means 9am wherever they are.
Some platforms go a step further and choose a time for each customer. OneSignal’s Intelligent Delivery, Klaviyo’s Personalized Send Time and Braze’s Intelligent Timing look at when each person tends to use your app or engage with your messages, and send then.
Those tools are best suited to campaigns that can wait up to a day. Flash sales and launches with a fixed start time should go out at a set local time instead.
When an offer has a deadline, say when it ends, and in which time zone. Sephora’s Power Hour ran from 4pm to 8pm NZDT, and Farfetch gave shoppers until 10pm GMT.
Dead Times
A campaign at 2am does more harm than good. Few people open it, and if it wakes them up, it’s a quick way to lose a subscriber.
Set a window when you never send campaigns, such as 10pm to 8am in each customer’s time zone. Batch’s data backs this up, with open rates falling every hour after 7pm.
Some platforms have quiet hours built in. Braze, for example, holds back messages that would land inside the quiet hours you set.
The exception is anything the customer needs right away, like a delivery that’s arriving or a problem with their account. Those can go out whenever they happen.
Test and Analyze Results
Benchmarks show where to start, but your own customers decide the answer. Test send times the way you’d test copy: send the same message to two matched groups at different times, and change nothing else.
Compare orders and revenue, not just opens, and give each test a couple of weeks. Watch your opt-out rate too, because a time that wins clicks but annoys people isn’t a win.
You might expect after-work sends to win for a shopping app, then find your customers respond better at lunch. The only way to know is to try a few slots.
Launch Your App and Unlock Push Notifications With MobiLoud
To send push notifications at all, you need an app. If you don’t have one yet, MobiLoud can get you there.
MobiLoud transforms your website into a custom native app, powered by the same underlying code as your site. We build, publish and maintain the app, and most brands go live in a few weeks.
Your app works with OneSignal on every plan, or Klaviyo on Business and Enterprise, so you can send in each customer’s own time zone and let triggered messages time themselves. And once it’s live, our team works with you to make your push campaigns a success, including what to send and when.
Final Thoughts
Timing is one of the easiest ways to get more from every push you send. The data points to a clear starting window: from morning to early evening, in each customer’s own time zone, with late nights left alone.
From there, let the message set the time. Send order updates the moment there’s news, let triggered messages follow what each customer does and save your campaigns for the moments your customers have time to shop.
Then test. The best time to send push notifications is the one your own customers respond to, and a few weeks of testing will find it.
