When is the best time to cold call? What the data says

The best time to cold call depends on what you measure. The best-known public study, from 2007, found late afternoon best for reaching web leads, while Cognism’s 2025 cold-calling report found the longest calls between 10 and 11 a.m. Neither fits every team, so test your own hours in each contact’s time zone, inside legal calling hours.

What the public studies found

Two public studies are cited most often. They used different data and measured different things, so read the method before the result.

	InsideSales.com/MIT study	Cognism, State of Cold Calling in 2025
Who	InsideSales.com with Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT; presented 16 Oct 2007	Cognism, with data from WHAM (We Have A Meeting)
Data	3 years of calls from 6 companies: over 15,000 web leads and over 100,000 call attempts	Worldwide: 41,936 connected calls and 27,513 conversations
Leads	People who filled in a web form	Cold calls to B2B prospects
Measured	Contact (a live person on the line for a set time) and qualification	Average call length by hour, and meetings booked and conversations by day
Best time	4 to 6 p.m. to make contact; 8 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 5 p.m. to qualify	10 to 11 a.m., then 2 to 3 p.m.
Best day	Wednesday and Thursday	Tuesday for meetings booked

The InsideSales.com/MIT study (2007)

The study asked when companies should call web-generated leads. It found 4 to 6 p.m. the best time to make contact, 114% better than 11 a.m. to noon. For qualifying a lead, 8 to 9 a.m. was 164% better than 1 to 2 p.m. Thursday was 49.7% better than the worst day, Tuesday, for contact, and Monday was poor in every category.

Three limits matter. The leads had asked to be contacted, which is not a cold call. The data is from 2007 or earlier. And the study came from a company that sold calling software, so weigh it with that in mind.

Cognism’s State of Cold Calling in 2025

Cognism’s 2025 report ranked hours by average call length. Calls were longest between 10 and 11 a.m., with 2 to 3 p.m. second, and call length dipped around 7 to 9 a.m., at noon and at 5 p.m. By day, the most meetings were booked on Tuesdays. Fridays were among the worst days for booking meetings but among the best for conversations. The average cold call in 2025 lasted about 93 seconds.

The report does not publish an exact date range, and its measure of the best hour is call length, not how many people answered or how many meetings followed.

Where the studies disagree, and why

The two studies point in different directions on both questions:

• Hour. The 2007 study’s best window to make contact, 4 to 6 p.m., includes the hour where Cognism’s 2025 data shows call length dipping, 5 p.m.
• Day. The 2007 study found Tuesday the worst day for contact. Cognism’s 2025 data found Tuesday the best day for meetings booked.

Neither result is wrong. They answer different questions:

1. Different leads. A person who just filled in a form expects a call. A cold prospect does not.
2. Different measures. Reaching someone, qualifying them, talking longer and booking a meeting are 4 different outcomes, and each one can peak at a different hour.
3. Different years. Phones and work patterns changed between 2007 and 2025.
4. Different buyers. Both studies average across many companies and countries. Your buyers’ roles, industries and time zones may not match either sample.

So use the studies as a starting point for what to test, not as your schedule.

How to find the best time for your own team

1. Pick 2 outcome metrics. Use connect rate (connects ÷ dials) and meetings booked per 100 dials. Call length alone can reward long calls that go nowhere. For definitions, see SDR call metrics managers should track every week.
2. Use the contact’s local time, not the rep’s. A 10 a.m. call block in London reaches New York at 5 a.m. Tag every call with the hour in the contact’s time zone.
3. Split the day into slots, such as 8 to 10 a.m., 10 a.m. to noon, 1 to 3 p.m. and 3 to 5 p.m.
4. Rotate lists across slots. If the best list always goes into the morning block, the morning will look better than it is.
5. Collect enough calls. Aim for a few hundred dials per slot before you compare. For a small team that can take 4 weeks or more.
6. Compare by segment. Role, industry and country can each have a different best window.
7. Move your call blocks, then measure again the next month.

Calling hours set the outer limits

The best hour is only useful inside the hours you are allowed to call. As of October 2026:

• United States. The FCC’s rule bars telephone solicitations to residential subscribers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in the called person’s local time (47 CFR 64.1200(c)(1)). The FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule sets the same 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window for calls to a person’s residence without their prior consent (16 CFR 310.4(c)). Calls to business lines may fall outside these rules, but a mobile number can belong to a person at home, so check with your counsel.
• Other countries. Each country sets its own window, and some set none in law. See legal calling hours by country.

How DialSavvy handles this

DialSavvy checks calling hours in the contact’s time zone before every call, using a rule pack for each country, and checks your do-not-call list. A brief before every dial shows the contact’s local time and earlier calls. Public-holiday calendars and per-state US rules are coming. See the DialSavvy dialer.

Before your next planning cycle, tag last month’s calls by the contact’s local hour and see which slot already books the most meetings per 100 dials.