Benchmarks / Best time of day

What is the best time to send cold emails?

Based on 850 million+ emails · Smartlead platform data

Send between 6am and 10am in the recipient's time zone. Reply rates peak at 1.34% at 7am, one reply per 75 contacts. From 11am they fall, and every hour from 1pm to 11pm sits between 0.78% and 0.86%, or 116 to 128 contacts per reply.

Cold email reply rate by hour

Reply rate for each hour a cold email was sent, in the recipient's local time. Built from more than 850 million emails sent through Smartlead.

Dark bars mark the 6am to 10am window. Every hour is in the table below.

Send hour (recipient's time)	Reply rate	Contacts per reply
12am	0.82%	122
1am	0.87%	115
2am	0.85%	118
3am	0.81%	123
4am	0.77%	130
5am	0.83%	120
6am	1.17%	85
7am	1.34%	75
8am	1.28%	78
9am	1.24%	81
10am	1.19%	84
11am	1.05%	95
12pm	0.95%	105
1pm	0.86%	116
2pm	0.84%	119
3pm	0.83%	120
4pm	0.82%	122
5pm	0.79%	127
6pm	0.78%	128
7pm	0.78%	128
8pm	0.79%	127
9pm	0.80%	125
10pm	0.82%	122
11pm	0.84%	119

What the data shows

The morning window is real and it starts early. Reply rates jump from 0.83% at 5am to 1.17% at 6am, peak at 7am and stay above 1.1% until 10am.

The drop after that is steep. A 7am send earns a reply every 75 contacts. By 1pm the same email needs 116, and from 5pm to 8pm it needs 127 to 128.

Late morning is the edge of the window, not its center. 11am earns 1.05% and noon 0.95%, both well below the 7am peak.

Night sends are no worse than afternoon ones. Emails that arrive between midnight and 5am earn 0.77% to 0.87%, about the same as the afternoon.

How this compares with common advice

Most published guides point to a window between 8am and noon, and some stretch it to 2pm. The hourly data agrees on the morning but puts the best hours earlier. 7am and 8am beat every later hour, and by noon most of the advantage is gone.

What this data can't tell you

It shows which send hours earned the most replies, not why. It doesn't split results by industry, role or country, and it doesn't show how many emails went out in each hour.

How to use these benchmarks

Schedule the first email for 6am to 10am in each recipient's own time zone. The time zone scheduling guide covers the setup.
Don't worry much about the day. Reply rates across the week sit between 0.82% and 0.91%, so the day of the week matters far less than the hour.
Fit the volume to the window. The typical mailbox sends about 14 cold emails a day, so a morning-only schedule may need more mailboxes rather than more sends per mailbox.
Plan follow-ups around fast replies. 64% of replies arrive within an hour of sending, so check the morning's replies before the next step goes out.

Frequently asked questions

When is the best time to send a cold email?

Between 6am and 10am in the recipient's time zone. Reply rates peak at 1.34% at 7am, and every hour from 6am to 10am earns 1.17% or more. After 11am they fall, to 0.86% by 1pm.

Is 4pm a good time to send an email?

Not for cold email. A 4pm send earns a 0.82% reply rate against 1.34% at 7am, so it takes 122 contacts to earn a reply instead of 75.

Which time zone should I schedule cold emails in?

The recipient's. These hours are local to the person receiving the email, so a 7am send to London and a 7am send to New York go out five hours apart.

Methodology

More than 850 million emails sent through Smartlead, using combined, anonymous platform data only. Only senders with at least 500 emails sent in the period are included. Each email is grouped by the hour it was sent, in the recipient's local time.