Best time to send cold email, by hour and day, from 2.0M emails
By Ryan Doyle, co-founder of Sales.co. Published October 22, 2026, updated November 9, 2026.
Send cold email between 10am and 7pm Eastern, any weekday, and stop worrying about the exact hour. In 2.01 million cold emails Sales.co sent from Oct 6, 2025 to Oct 25, 2026, every hour from 10am to 7pm got between 0.72% and 0.78% human replies per email. Emails sent in the 9pm, 12am and 1am hours got 0.04% to 0.25% (the 10pm and 11pm hours are not shown because one sender made most of those emails).
What this page adds: reply rates by send hour and weekday from one company's own sending, 2,007,540 emails and 10,072 human replies, with every reply tied to the hour of the email it answered. The page is generated from the data file, so the dates above are the dates of the numbers.
Quick answers · By hour · By day · Follow-ups · Method · FAQ
Quick answers
- What is the best time to send a cold email?
- Between 10am and 7pm Eastern. In Sales.co's 2.0M emails, each of those hours got 0.72% to 0.78% human replies per email, so the hour inside the working day barely mattered. The single best hour was 5pm (0.78%, 59,720 emails).
- What is the worst time to send a cold email?
- Late at night Eastern time. Emails sent in the 9pm, 12am and 1am hours got 0.04% to 0.25% human replies per email, against at least 0.72% in working hours, so even the best of those hours got about 3 times fewer.
- What is the best day to send cold emails?
- Any weekday. Sent in working hours (9am to 6pm Eastern), Monday to Friday ranged from 0.67% (Thursday) to 0.72% (Wednesday) human replies per email.
- Should you send cold emails on the weekend?
- Weekend emails sent in working hours got more replies per email in this data (Saturday 0.95%, Sunday 1.20%). They were only 7.6% of working-hour sends, and this data does not record which campaigns sent them, so test a weekend send on your own list before moving volume there.
- How many cold email replies come from follow-ups?
- 26.7% of human replies and 23.7% of interested replies answered a follow-up rather than the first email (9,696 human replies where the step was recorded).
- What reply rate should a cold email get?
- Across all 2.0M emails, 0.50% got a human reply and 0.15% got an interested one, about one interested reply per 671 emails sent.
Reply rate by send hour
Inside the working day the hour hardly matters: from 10am to 7pm Eastern every hour landed between 0.72% and 0.78% human replies per email, on 1,016,730 emails. The drop comes at night: the 9pm, 12am and 1am hours got 0.04% to 0.25% (the 10pm and 11pm hours are not shown because one sender made most of those emails). Night is not uniformly low: without the largest sender, 10pm got 0.58% and 11pm got 0.09%. Remove the largest sender and the working-day band is 0.69% to 0.76%, so one company's schedule does not make the pattern.
| Sent (Eastern) | Emails | Human reply rate | Interested rate | Human rate, largest sender removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12am to 1am | 114,256 | 0.04% | 0.01% | 0.04% |
| 1am to 2am | 109,034 | 0.14% | 0.06% | 0.14% |
| 2am to 3am | 41,026 | 0.20% | 0.08% | 0.18% |
| 3am to 4am | 41,903 | 0.32% | 0.17% | 0.28% |
| 4am to 5am | 42,155 | 0.33% | 0.13% | 0.29% |
| 5am to 6am | 34,485 | 0.50% | 0.22% | 0.51% |
| 6am to 7am | 34,105 | 0.55% | 0.25% | 0.57% |
| 7am to 8am | 34,225 | 0.54% | 0.20% | 0.59% |
| 8am to 9am | 38,162 | 0.44% | 0.17% | 0.47% |
| 9am to 10am | 109,329 | 0.63% | 0.18% | 0.65% |
| 10am to 11am | 131,076 | 0.72% | 0.19% | 0.75% |
| 11am to 12pm | 128,183 | 0.73% | 0.19% | 0.74% |
| 12pm to 1pm | 136,243 | 0.72% | 0.21% | 0.76% |
| 1pm to 2pm | 135,533 | 0.72% | 0.20% | 0.72% |
| 2pm to 3pm | 132,309 | 0.73% | 0.19% | 0.74% |
| 3pm to 4pm | 133,131 | 0.74% | 0.21% | 0.73% |
| 4pm to 5pm | 125,959 | 0.72% | 0.21% | 0.69% |
| 5pm to 6pm | 59,720 | 0.78% | 0.19% | 0.76% |
| 6pm to 7pm | 34,576 | 0.78% | 0.20% | 0.73% |
| 7pm to 8pm | 27,779 | 0.73% | 0.21% | 0.66% |
| 8pm to 9pm | 36,440 | 0.61% | 0.22% | 0.58% |
| 9pm to 10pm | 21,808 | 0.25% | 0.10% | 0.22% |
| 10pm to 11pm | 132,209 | not shown | not shown | 0.58% |
| 11pm to 12am | 173,894 | not shown | not shown | 0.09% |
"Not shown": fewer than 2,000 emails in the hour, or one sending workspace made more than 45% of them. Source: Sales.co sending data, October 6, 2025 to October 25, 2026.
Why night sends may do worse: the hour is only part of it. Sending tools spread a day's volume across the hours each mailbox may send, so the night hours may carry a different mix of campaigns; the data does not show it. The database also does not record the recipient's time zone, so some night sends land in someone else's morning. The night rows show what late sends got; they do not prove the hour alone caused it.
Reply rate by day of the week
Weekdays are close to even. Sent in working hours (9am to 6pm Eastern), Monday to Friday ran from 0.67% on Thursday to 0.72% on Wednesday. Weekends got more replies per email, Saturday 0.95% and Sunday 1.20%, on far less volume: 7.6% of working-hour emails went out on a weekend.
| Day | Emails, 9am to 6pm | Human rate | Interested rate | Emails, all hours | Human rate, all hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 205,121 | 0.71% | 0.19% | 343,263 | 0.54% |
| Tuesday | 201,574 | 0.69% | 0.17% | 346,438 | 0.53% |
| Wednesday | 196,493 | 0.72% | 0.19% | 339,363 | 0.53% |
| Thursday | 208,296 | 0.67% | 0.19% | 349,478 | 0.50% |
| Friday | 197,308 | 0.67% | 0.18% | 334,388 | 0.49% |
| Saturday | 46,868 | 0.95% | 0.34% | 137,816 | 0.40% |
| Sunday | 35,823 | 1.20% | 0.28% | 156,794 | 0.44% |
The all-hours columns include the night sends, which pull every day down. Source: Sales.co sending data, October 6, 2025 to October 25, 2026.
The strongest objection: weekend volume is small, and this data does not record campaigns, so it cannot say whether the senders who mail on a weekend simply had better lists. A higher weekend rate here is worth a split test on your own list before you move volume to it.
Timing across a sequence: first email vs follow-ups
26.7% of human replies and 23.7% of interested replies answered a follow-up; the rest answered the first email. That counts 9,696 human replies where the sending tool recorded which step they answered. For the reply rate of each email in a sequence, see cold email follow-up reply rates by step; for what to say in those follow-ups, see the follow-up email templates.
What to do with this
Schedule sends for 10am to 7pm Eastern, Monday to Friday. This data cannot tell you whether the recipient's own time zone matters, so test that on your list, and put the effort you would spend on picking the hour into the list and the first line. Across all 2.0M emails the human reply rate was 0.50% and the interested rate 0.15%, one interested reply per 671 emails. To see what that means for meetings at your volume, use the lead generation calculator.
If you would rather have someone run the sending, Sales.co runs done-for-you cold email from $2,000 a month for up to 10,000 emails, month-to-month. See pricing.
Method
- Source: Sales.co's sending database, one record per cold email sent (2,007,540 emails from 61 sending workspaces, October 6, 2025 to October 25, 2026), and the replies the sending tool labeled.
- Window: emails sent up to 14 days before the newest send in the database, so late replies have time to arrive.
- A human reply is a recipient's reply that is not an auto-reply, out-of-office, bounce, warm-up, test or spam (sending tool's labels); one per recipient per sending workspace. An interested reply is a human reply the sending tool labeled 'possibly interested'.
- Rate: replying recipients divided by emails sent in the same bucket; each reply is attributed to the day and hour of the email it answered (Eastern time). Replies the sending tool could not tie to a sent email are left out, so every rate here is a floor, and the hours and days compare on the same footing.
- Left out: any hour or day with fewer than 2,000 emails, or where one sending workspace made more than 45% of them. The largest sender made 32% of all emails, so each table also shows the rate with it removed. No client is named and no email, subject line or address is published.
- Older Sales.co pages (cold email statistics, cold email response rates) cover earlier periods and use other reply definitions (the raw rate on the response-rates page includes auto-replies), so their rates are higher and their weekday and first-email splits differ. Compare numbers within one page.
- Refresh: each time the data is recomputed, this page is regenerated from it; the freshness line at the top is written from the data file.
Cite this: Sales.co, "Best time to send cold email, by hour and day", https://sales.co/research/best-time-to-send-cold-email, data through October 25, 2026.
Where to go next
11 cold email rules from 1.1M emails · follow-up reply rates by step · Cold email statistics · cold email response rates · cold email conversion rate benchmarks · follow-up email templates · cold email subject line grader · all Sales.co research
Sources
- Sales.co sending database: 2,007,540 cold emails and 10,072 human replies, October 6, 2025 to October 25, 2026, as of November 9, 2026.
- Sales.co pricing and plans: sales.co/pricing, read October 22, 2026.
FAQ
What is the best time to send a cold email?
Between 10am and 7pm Eastern. In Sales.co's 2.0M emails, each of those hours got 0.72% to 0.78% human replies per email, so the hour inside the working day barely mattered. The single best hour was 5pm (0.78%, 59,720 emails).
What is the worst time to send a cold email?
Late at night Eastern time. Emails sent in the 9pm, 12am and 1am hours got 0.04% to 0.25% human replies per email, against at least 0.72% in working hours, so even the best of those hours got about 3 times fewer.
What is the best day to send cold emails?
Any weekday. Sent in working hours (9am to 6pm Eastern), Monday to Friday ranged from 0.67% (Thursday) to 0.72% (Wednesday) human replies per email.
Should you send cold emails on the weekend?
Weekend emails sent in working hours got more replies per email in this data (Saturday 0.95%, Sunday 1.20%). They were only 7.6% of working-hour sends, and this data does not record which campaigns sent them, so test a weekend send on your own list before moving volume there.
How many cold email replies come from follow-ups?
26.7% of human replies and 23.7% of interested replies answered a follow-up rather than the first email (9,696 human replies where the step was recorded).
What reply rate should a cold email get?
Across all 2.0M emails, 0.50% got a human reply and 0.15% got an interested one, about one interested reply per 671 emails sent.