If you’re still posting manually to Instagram, you’re wasting too much time on repetitive tasks. Not to mention the risk of forgetting to post and missing your best times to post.

But if you schedule Instagram posts in advance, it frees up time to focus on more important tasks. Plus, it helps you maintain a consistent posting schedule to support your Instagram marketing strategy.

In this post, we discuss how to schedule Instagram posts and what benefits you can get from it. We also explore the best tools and tips for successful Instagram scheduling.

How to schedule Instagram posts for free

There are two ways to schedule your Instagram posts for free: through the native Instagram app and using Meta Business Suite. These two options are great for those seeking a cost-effective Instagram scheduling solution. But note that they don’t support bulk scheduling, which means you’ll need to schedule each Instagram post individually.

How to schedule Instagram posts from the Instagram app

After years of users asking for it, Instagram finally added in-app scheduling near the end of 2022. Users are able to schedule up to 25 posts per day and up to 75 days in advance.

Keep in mind, only Instagram Business and Creator accounts have access to this feature. Personal profiles are unable to schedule content.

Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Open your Instagram app and tap the + at the bottom of the screen or swipe the home feed to the right to create a new piece of content.

Step 2: Select Post or Reel, depending on the type of content you’re creating.

Step 3: Either take a photo or record a video using the in-app camera or upload one from your camera roll.

Step 4: Add any text, stickers, music, effects, etc., then add your caption.

Step 5: Tap More Options at the bottom of the screen.

new post creation window on the Instagram app showing "more options" button at the bottom

Step 6: Toggle the Schedule this post option on, then select your preferred date and time from the menu that appears.

Instagram app "more options" window showing an option to select the date and time to schedule the post

Step 7: Go back to the previous screen and tap Schedule.

How to schedule Instagram posts from Meta Business Suite

You can also use the Meta Business Suite to schedule your Instagram content. First, connect your Instagram Business Account to your Facebook Page so you can access both from the Meta Business Suite.

Then follow these steps:

Step 1: In Meta Business Suite, click Create post or Create reel.

Step 2: Specify which Instagram account you want to share your post or Reel to. It may also include your Facebook Page—it’s up to you whether you also want it to post to your Facebook Page or only to Instagram.

compose window on Meta Business Suite showing a left-hand panel to select the profile, upload the media and add text and a right-hand panel showing a preview for an image post with the text "the donutman" against a pink background

Step 3: Upload your media, then write out your caption. Be sure to include your mentions and hashtags (you can even save hashtags to reuse in your content). You can even geotag a location if you wish.

Step 4: Next to Scheduling options, toggle on the option to Set date and time. Then select your preferred date and time.

scheduling options window on Meta Business Suite showing the date and time and a button for "active times"

Step 5: Not sure when to schedule your post? Click Active times to access a popup showcasing some of the upcoming times that your audience is active.

popup window showing the option to choose the date and time to schedule the post and three most active times

Step 6: Once you’ve selected your time, click Schedule to complete your scheduling.

How to schedule Instagram posts at scale using Sprout Social

Scheduling Instagram posts natively is straightforward. But how about when you have a larger social strategy across multiple platforms to plan and schedule?

With a dedicated social media publishing tool like Sprout, you can do so much more. Cross-posting, team collaboration and permissions, in-depth analytics—the list goes on.

We make it so easy to schedule all kinds of Instagram posts, including single posts, Reels, Carousels and Stories. Whatever you want to upload, simply finalize your content and schedule it on desktop or mobile. You can also use Sprout’s Instagram grid planner to visualize how your scheduled posts will actually look on your profile.

Follow the steps below to learn exactly how to schedule Instagram posts using Sprout.

Step 1: Connect your Instagram profiles to Sprout Social

The first thing you need to do is log in to Sprout Social and link your Instagram profile (If you don’t already have an account, sign up for a free 30-day trial).

From the dashboard, click Connect a Profile and select Instagram from the different options. Then, follow the on-screen instructions to easily connect your Instagram profile.

Quick tip: Have more than one Instagram profile? Connect them all. Sprout lets you manage and schedule posts to multiple accounts from one dashboard. In fact, you can also link your other social profiles, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Step 2: Open your Sprout publishing calendar

Once you’ve linked your profile, click Publishing in the left menu to open Sprout’s social media calendar. You can view this as a list, week or monthly calendar.

calendar week view of a sample publishing schedule on Sprout Social

Next, it’s time to choose the image(s) or video to post. If you’re not 100% sure what you should publish, check out our in-depth guide on Instagram post ideas.

You can directly schedule posts or leave notes by clicking through the spaces in your calendar. This keeps you organized and gives you a bird’s eye view of your content strategy.

Step 3: Compose your Instagram post

Hover on your calendar to schedule a post on a specific day. Or click the blue pencil/paper icon in the top right corner of your screen to create a new post.

Choose the Instagram account you want to publish to and specify the type of content you want to schedule—post or Story.

At this point, you can start composing your post. Start by writing a compelling caption for your content. You can also add relevant Instagram hashtags or tag users in your caption.

Sprout pro tip: Use our Enhance by AI Assist feature to generate more caption ideas and speed up your creative process. If you’re not sure what to post about, Enhance by AI Assist can help you create content based on a draft you input into the Compose box.

Suggestions by AI Assist also helps you change the tone of the content (think: confident, friendly or professional). So you can easily align captions with your brand’s tone of voice.

sprout compose window showing a post draft on the left-hand panel and a few caption suggestions from AI Assist on the right-hand panel

Now, upload your visuals. There are several ways to do this in Sprout.

You can upload an image(s) or video directly from your computer or mobile. Another way is to choose a visual from the Asset Library. This is helpful if you already have shared media uploaded on Sprout, such as company or product photos.

Upload images directly from Canva

If you don’t have any premade assets to upload and want to create beautiful Instagram posts on the spot, our Canva integration can save the day.

To create and export images directly from Canva, click Upload Media in the compose window and select Design on Canva from the drop-down.

Log in to your existing Canva account on the screen that pops up or create a new one in a few minutes. Then, select a template, customize it and click Export to Sprout when you’re done. Easy!

Canva popup window within the Sprout platform showing a sample graphic of a cup of coffee and text that reads "Oat Latte Coffee of the Day"

Step 4: Select your preferred date and time

Scroll down in the Compose box to the When to post section. Choose your preferred date and time. You can also specify the time zone if your audience is located in a specific region.

Alternatively, select Optimal Send Times to see data-driven recommendations when your audience is most likely to see your content. Our ViralPost technology suggests the best times to post based on your historical engagement data for maximum reach opportunity.

calendar week view on Sprout publishing dashboard with a right-hand panel showing a sample new post in the process of being composed and a drop-down menu showing optimal send times

Step 5: Stage your post for scheduling

After your content is edited and approved, you can click Schedule to add it to your calendar.

Other scheduling options in Sprout are to Draft, Queue or Submit for Approval. Let’s take a look at each option:

  • Draft:Not sure if your post is ready to go live quite yet? Want to create multiple “backup” Instagram posts for the future? Draft is a great spot to park your unfinished content or items that still need approval.
  • Queue:The Sprout Queue is ideal for edited posts ready to go live—especially if you’re not sure when to post your content. When you queue your Instagram posts, Sprout picks the best time to publish within the window you specify.
  • Submit for Approval: Choosing an approver ensures your content is properly edited, timely and on-brand. Select specific approvers to review your content before it goes live. This option is perfect if you have or plan to establish a social media workflow.

The best Instagram post schedulers to use

Third-party tools can make Instagram scheduling even easier than the in-app tool. Additional apps allow you to schedule content to multiple social media platforms at once. They also offer more features and can help with your overall social media management, from automation to analytics.

Here are three tools you might consider.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform to schedule and publish content across various social media networks including Instagram. It provides a visual content calendar for planning and organizing posts. It also offers analytics to track post-performance and engagement.

Sprout Social also includes features for social listening and engagement. This allows users to monitor mentions and conversations about their brand.

sprout social publishing calendar showing sample posts scheduled for the week along with a new post compose window

2. SocialBee

SocialBee is another social media management tool designed to help users plan content across multiple platforms, including Instagram. It offers features like content categorization, a visual content calendar and post-performance analytics. SocialBee also emphasizes content variation with options to customize posts for each social media platform. This ensures optimal messaging and format for different audiences.

SocialBee homepage showing text that reads "the complete solution to take care of your social media profiles"

3. Agorapulse

Agorapulse offers powerful publishing features for Instagram scheduling. It offers features for seamless collaboration, including multi-step approval workflows. Meanwhile, the visual calendar lets you organize your scheduled posts with ease. Agorapulse also comes with an AI writing assistant to enhance your captions for better performance.

agorapulse homepage showing text that reads "everything you need for social publishing" next to images showing a preview of the dashboard

Benefits of scheduling Instagram posts

Businesses have begged for scheduling features on Instagram for years. But why are so many marketers eager to queue up their content? Below are some of the biggest benefits of scheduled Instagram posts.

1. Develop a more comprehensive and consistent content strategy

Food for thought: Different types of content all receive different rates of engagement. For instance, carousels and Reels may see higher levels of engagement than static images. This means brands need to diversify their content strategies and not just post the same type of content over and over.

When you schedule posts on Instagram, you get the time to actually assess your content calendar. So you can identify gaps and opportunities and gather the various assets you need to create fresh, compelling content.

Scheduling also enables you to stay consistent with your posting strategy, whether it’s one daily post or multiple posts a day. This helps keep you top of your followers’ minds (and feeds) and also gives you a boost with the Instagram algorithm.

2. Allows for more real-time engagement with followers

If nothing else, scheduling Instagram posts can free up some serious time in your schedule. That means more opportunities to interact with followers and reply to comments.

Even the best Instagram scheduler can’t do the legwork of building relationships with customers. When you stick to a social media post scheduler consistently, you create more time for dedicated customer engagement.

3. Better time management means increased productivity

Think about the effort that goes into creating Instagram posts or campaigns beyond writing captions and editing images. There’s also tagging accounts. Adding locations. Checking hashtags. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Creating Instagram posts last-minute is a recipe for burnout. When you schedule Instagram posts in advance, you can batch your time and be more productive. For example, you could write all your captions in one sitting or edit a week’s worth of images at once.

This helps your brain stay focused instead of constantly switching between different types of work. The result? You get more done in less time and craft more meaningful posts.

4. Create seamless marketing campaigns beyond Instagram

Your social media campaigns shouldn’t be siloed.

From organic and paid social to email and beyond, all of your channels should be on the same page in terms of creatives, landing pages and promotions. This creates a better customer experience.

Through social scheduling, you ensure that your posts fire off at the right time. If you’re using a social media management tool such as Sprout Social, you can actually sync all of your social channels. This saves you the trouble of having to publish manually or in real-time.

5. Encourage collaboration and brainstorming

Again, scheduling encourages brands to begin working on posts well in advance.

This means marketers and colleagues have time to partner on messaging and creative assets.

For social teams and brand marketers looking for feedback or approval workflows, collaboration and Instagram scheduling go hand in hand. Coupled with a social media approval process, it’s a cinch to get multiple sets of eyes on your content before it goes live.

Tips for scheduling posts on Instagram

We’ll say it again: You can’t just queue up your posts months or weeks in advance and expect your Instagram to grow on autopilot.

Below are some key considerations for brands looking to leverage Instagram scheduling.

1. Optimize your post timing to maximize engagement

A nice added bonus of scheduling is that your business isn’t beholden to “business hours.”

Based on our research on best times to post on Instagram, there’s a correlation between time of day and engagement:

heatmap showing the global engagement patterns on Instagram across different days of the week

These numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all of follower activity. In fact, they may vary based on your time zone. But they’re eye-opening in terms of when the average Instagram user is active.

Marketers using Sprout Social can increase engagement with our ViralPost algorithm. This optimizes post timing based on real follower engagement data. Rather than guess or decide when to post via trial and error, you’ll know exactly when to post using data-driven suggestions.

2. Take extra care when crafting your captions

It’s no secret that Instagram captions represent valuable real estate when it comes to engagement.

They shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought. For each post, consider:

  • Which hashtags are you using? How many? Are they in your first comment?
  • Do you need to tag any accounts?
  • Did you write a strong call-to-action?
  • How does this caption compare to your most recent one(s)?

Much like your content strategy needs to be diverse, the same rings true for your Instagram captions.

When you schedule posts in advance, you have time to put your captions under the microscope and ensure there’s some variety. Likewise, you can confirm that you’re using the right Instagram hashtags and aren’t missing any key details before your post goes live.

3. Keep a close eye on your content calendar

Scheduling based on a defined content calendar encourages both variety and consistency in terms of your posts.

As you queue up your posts, ask yourself:

  • Are we hitting the appropriate publishing frequency?
  • Is there enough variation in our content schedule?
  • How are we promoting this content to encourage engagement?
  • Are there opportunities to cross-post or repurpose this content to other networks?
  • Have the appropriate stakeholders reviewed this post before it goes live?

The answers to all of the above ensure more thoughtful, goal-driven posts that are poised to perform well. Below is a quick snapshot of what a content calendar looks like in Sprout:

User interface of Sprout Social's Publishing content calendar across all social networks

4. Block off time to engage with customers

Despite popular belief, scheduling Instagram posts doesn’t make your presence more “passive.”

Quite the opposite, honestly.

Yet again, scheduling frees up your schedule to interact with customers in real-time.

Mind your notifications and make sure your comment section never gathers cobwebs. Be proactive and make a point to respond to social customers ASAP for the sake of satisfaction and loyalty.

In addition to Instagram scheduling, Sprout aggregates messages from all your social networks into a singular Smart Inbox. This lets you filter and categorize messages and enables real-time collaboration between your team. No message goes unanswered and you’ll also avoid response collisions.

5. Know when to hit “pause” on your scheduling

Whether due to a brand emergency or a bigger crisis management effort, sometimes you need to put a stop to your scheduled content.

Failure to do so could come off as inauthentic or result in otherwise poor engagement when your followers’ minds are elsewhere. For example, publishing promotional content on somber occasions or in the wake of tragedies could come across as tone-deaf. This could then reflect badly on your brand reputation.

This speaks to how Instagram scheduling is so much more than putting your brand on autopilot. Sprout has built-in features to pause scheduled posts and resume them when the time is right.

Schedule your Instagram posts at scale

Instagram scheduling helps you save time and streamline your publishing efforts. While the free native scheduling tools are great, they can only get you so far.

That’s where social media management tools like Sprout come in. With features like bulk scheduling, you can effortlessly scale your Instagram publishing strategy. Sign up for a free 30-day trial to check out these features.

How to schedule Instagram posts FAQs

Can you schedule Instagram posts?

Absolutely! There are several ways to schedule Instagram posts:

How do I schedule Instagram Stories?

Scheduling Instagram Stories is a unique process from scheduling Instagram posts. Review our guide on a visual step-by-step process on how to schedule Instagram Stories for more information.

Why can’t I schedule posts on Instagram?

If you’re unable to schedule posts on Instagram, check the following:

Confirm whether you have a Business or Creator account. If not, you can easily switch from a personal to professional profile.

Are you trying to post to a different Instagram profile? Cross-posting to other accounts via scheduling is currently unavailable in the native Instagram app. However, you can schedule posts to multiple Instagram profiles using a third-party tool like Sprout Social.

Does Instagram have a calendar feature?

No, Instagram does not currently have a calendar for scheduling posts. You can use the Meta Business Suite or an Instagram scheduling tool like Sprout to access a content scheduling calendar.