Best Time to Buy Ethereum: Day of Week, Hour and DCA Buy-Day Data

Best day of the week to buy ETH

Each row is every UTC day of that weekday from Coinbase ETH-USD daily candles: return is close versus open, “avg move” is the average size of that day’s move up or down, and “week’s low close” is how often that day had the lowest close of its Monday-to-Sunday week (14.3% each if the days were alike).

Last 5 years (Oct 22, 2021 – Oct 21, 2026)

Full history (May 18, 2016 – Oct 21, 2026, 3,807 days)

• Return differences are noise. A one-way ANOVA on daily returns by weekday gives p = 0.51 for the full history and p = 0.33 for the last 5 years. Wednesday leads the full history (+0.51% average) but its median day is only +0.09%.
• Volatility differences are real. Saturday’s average move is 1.50% and Sunday’s 2.06% over 5 years, against 2.52–2.98% on weekdays (p < 0.001). ETH also rose on 57.5% of Saturdays. Quieter weekends fit with U.S. stock markets, ETF trading and most economic data being shut on those days.
• “Monday is the cheapest day” is an artifact. Monday had the week’s lowest close in 21.9% of weeks, but in a random walk the low of any window tends to fall at its first or last point (the arcsine law), so Monday and Sunday win more often by construction.
• Thursday has been the weakest day. It had the lowest average return in both halves of the history (split at August 2021) and over the last year (−1.22%, up on 36.5% of Thursdays). With 7 days and 4 periods compared, a run like that can happen by chance; we would not trade on it.

Best day of the week for weekly DCA

We bought $100 of ETH at the UTC daily close on the same weekday every week and measured the average cost per ETH. Lower is better. Value today uses the October 21, 2026 close of $2,471.78.

Wednesday was the dearest weekly buy day in all three recent windows, but only by 0.3–1.3%, and a different day was cheapest in each. The 5.1% gap since 2017 comes from ETH’s 90-fold rise that year, when a few days of difference at $8–$20 per ETH bought a lot more coins; it says nothing about today’s market.

Best time of day to buy ETH (ET and UTC)

From 43,811 Coinbase hourly candles (Oct 22, 2021 – Oct 21, 2026). “Avg move” is the average size of the hourly move; “vs day avg” is how far that hour’s close sat from the average close of its New York day. Each hour starts at the time shown (9 AM = 9:00–9:59).

• The U.S. morning is the wild part of the day. The 10 AM ET hour averages a 0.67% move and 9 AM 0.61%, about twice midnight’s 0.34%. U.S. data such as CPI comes out at 8:30 AM ET and the NYSE opens at 9:30 AM ET. The 9 AM hour has also leaned down slightly (−0.045% on average, up 46.7% of the time).
• The intraday price edge is tiny. The early-afternoon closes (noon to 3 PM ET) sat about 0.04–0.05% below the day’s average and 7–8 AM ET about 0.04% above it. On a $1,000 purchase that is roughly 50 cents, far less than a typical exchange fee. Hourly returns fail a basic test (ANOVA p = 0.2).
• In UTC: the busiest hours are 14:00, 15:00, 13:00 UTC and the calmest 04:00, 06:00, 05:00 UTC. Use the tool above to switch the table to UTC.

Best day of the month for monthly DCA

Same backtest, buying $100 once a month on a fixed day (1–28) at the UTC daily close. The three cheapest and three dearest days per period:

Monthly gaps are bigger than weekly ones because each day gets only 12 to 60 buys, so one sharp move in a given month shifts the result. The 5th came out cheapest over both the last year and the last two, but over five years the 18th did. Since 2017 the 1st looks 26% better than the 28th, purely because ETH climbed about 90-fold during 2017. Pick a day that suits your paycheck, not the backtest.

Best month to buy ETH: when the year’s low came

Average returns by calendar month, including the “Uptober” check, are on our Ethereum price history page. Here is the other side of the question: the day each full year hit its lowest Coinbase close.

Four of nine yearly lows fell in the first days of January (2017, 2021, 2023, 2024), which simply means ETH went on to rally in those years. In falling years the low came late (December 2018) or mid-year (June 2022, April 2025, March 2020’s Covid crash). No month has been a safe bet.

Buying or moving ETH on-chain? Time the gas, not the price

If you buy through a wallet or DEX, or withdraw from an exchange, the Ethereum network fee is the cost you can actually time. Our live gas tracker’s heatmap shows gas has recently been cheapest from 7 PM to 4 AM ET and at weekends, and priciest on weekday mornings, 9 AM–1 PM ET. That lines up with the price data: the same U.S. morning hours are when ETH swings most. A weekend or late-evening transaction tends to get both calmer prices and lower fees. For longer trends see the Ethereum gas price history, and if a transaction gets stuck, use the stuck transaction checker.

What matters more than the day you buy

• When you start and whether you keep going. A lump sum at the October 22, 2021 close ($3,971.55) was −37.8% by October 21, 2026. Weekly buys over the same five years averaged about $2,214 per ETH and were +11.6%. The weekday changed that by 0.3%. Try your own plan in the ETH DCA simulator.
• Fees and spreads. Coinbase includes a spread in simple buy prices and charges a separate fee that depends on payment method and order size; simple limit orders carry a 1% execution fee. Any of these is larger than the 0.3% weekday gap. Compare the total cost in the order preview, or use an order-book (“advanced”) trade screen.
• Big drawdowns. ETH has fallen about 94% (2018) and 79% (2021–22) from past peaks. Position size matters far more than timing; see our drawdown history and how much ETH to buy.
• Calendar events. Fed decisions (see the FOMC calendar), CPI days and big ETF flow days can move ETH several percent in an hour. If you would rather not buy into a spike, avoid placing market orders in the first minutes after 8:30 AM or 2 PM ET on those days.

Method and caveats

• Prices: Coinbase Exchange ETH-USD candles from the public API, fetched October 22, 2026. Daily: 3,807 UTC days from May 18, 2016 to October 21, 2026 (May 21–22, 2016 are missing from the feed). Hourly: 43,811 candles from October 22, 2021 to October 21, 2026 (13 hours missing in three exchange outages).
• Daily return = close ÷ open − 1 for that UTC day; hourly return the same for each hour. Average move = mean of the absolute return. “Week’s low close” uses complete ISO weeks (Monday–Sunday, UTC).
• Hour of day in ET uses America/New_York with daylight saving time. “vs day avg” compares each hour’s close with the mean close of its ET calendar day (days with at least 23 hours of data).
• DCA backtests buy a fixed dollar amount at the UTC daily close on the chosen day, with no fees, and value the ETH at the October 21, 2026 close ($2,471.78). Average cost = total invested ÷ ETH bought.
• Significance: one-way ANOVA across weekdays (or hours) on returns, and a Kruskal–Wallis test on absolute returns for volatility. These are simple checks that ignore volatility clustering; they are meant to separate obvious patterns from noise, not to prove anything.

Download the data (CC BY 4.0)

• CSV: day-of-week statistics for 4 periods (28 rows)
• CSV: hour-of-day statistics in ET and UTC for 3 periods (144 rows)
• CSV: weekly and monthly DCA backtests by buy day (140 rows)
• JSON: all of the above plus significance tests and yearly lows

GrowYourEthereum. (2026). Best Time to Buy ETH: Day of Week, Hour of Day & DCA Buy Day (Coinbase ETH-USD) [Data set]. Updated October 22, 2026. https://growyourethereum.com/data/best-time-to-buy-ethereum. Licensed CC BY 4.0.

<a href="https://growyourethereum.com/data/best-time-to-buy-ethereum">Best Time to Buy ETH: Day of Week, Hour of Day & DCA Buy Day (Coinbase ETH-USD)</a> by GrowYourEthereum, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>.

@misc{growyourethereum_eth_best_time_to_buy_2026,
  author       = {{GrowYourEthereum}},
  title        = {Best Time to Buy ETH: Day of Week, Hour of Day & DCA Buy Day (Coinbase ETH-USD)},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://growyourethereum.com/data/best-time-to-buy-ethereum}},
  note         = {Data set, updated October 22, 2026. CC BY 4.0}
}