Website traffic by hour of day, on one 7×24 heatmap
To see website traffic by hour of day, you need a weekday-by-hour grid: seven rows, 24 columns, each cell shaded by how busy that hour is. Simplytics draws it on every dashboard as the Views by hour card, added in November 2026. Pick any dates and it shows when your visitors arrive, in your own timezone.
What does the Views by hour card show?
The card is a heatmap of the dates you pick: the seven weekdays down the side, midnight to 11pm across the top. Each cell is the average views per day for that weekday and hour, so five Mondays do not outshine four Tuesdays. Five shades, from grey to dark blue, run from Less to More.
Hover or tap a cell to read it: "Mon, 2–3pm · 52 views on average". Hours that have not happened yet today are not counted as a day, and a range that holds only one of today's weekday shows "No views yet" for its later hours. On a phone the grid turns on its side, with hours down the left.
The card sits just above Views by day, the yearly heatmap, with nothing to switch on.
Which timezone are the hours in?
The hours are in the timezone on your account page, the one your reports already use for dates. The setting applies to new data only: change it and past days keep the hours they were counted in.
Google Analytics works the same way. Its Hour dimension "is reported in your property's timezone", per Google's Data API schema. Neither tool shifts each visitor to their own local time, so a site with readers on several continents shows the overlap of their days, not one person's habits.
How far back does it go?
Simplytics started counting traffic by hour in November 2026, and rebuilds older days from page journeys, going back up to 90 days, over the nights after release. A day is filled in only when its rebuilt journeys add up to exactly that day's views. When the dates you pick start before the first counted day, the card says "From" and that date.
How do other analytics tools show traffic by hour?
| Tool | Weekday × hour view | How you get it |
|---|---|---|
| Simplytics | Yes, a dashboard card | Views by hour, any dates |
| Google Analytics 4 | Build it yourself | A free-form exploration with Day of week name and Hour, cell type heat map |
| Plausible | Not in its docs | Its main graph shows one day by minute or by hour |
| Fathom | Not in its docs | Its graph groups by hour for ranges under two weeks |
| Simple Analytics | Not in its docs | Its stats API returns an hourly series |
| Umami | Yes | A "Weekly traffic" heatmap by day and hour |
Sources as of November 11, 2026: Google's free-form exploration help ("Display metric values as plain text, bar charts, or heat maps"), Plausible's guided tour, Fathom's dashboard docs ("Hourly is only available for date ranges under two weeks"), Simple Analytics' stats API docs and Umami's board docs ("Traffic heatmap by day and hour"). An hourly series is a timeline, hour after hour; it does not add up your Mondays at 9am.
Price is the other difference. Plausible's Starter plan is $9/month for 10,000 pageviews on one site. Simplytics is $12/year or $2/month, with unlimited sites and pageviews and every card included (pricing).
How do you get the hourly numbers out?
Three ways, all with the same counts as the card:
- CSV. On the analytics page, open Export CSV and choose Views by hour. You get one row per hour with views:
date,hour,views,visitors. Everything (ZIP) includes it. - API. Add
include=hoursto the stats API. It returns 7 rows of 24 for views and visitors, Monday first, plusday_counts, how many of each weekday have hourly data, for your own averages. A visitor counts once in each hour they visited. - MCP. The MCP server's
get_statstool takeshourstoo, so you can ask your AI assistant "when is my site busiest?"
On a public dashboard, the card is shown by default. Its owner can hide it under What visitors see, and if Views is hidden the cells show levels with no numbers.
What can you do with traffic by hour?
- Time your posts and emails. Publish just before your own busiest hours.
- Plan maintenance. Deploy or migrate in your quietest hour.
- Check a launch. Set the dates to launch week and compare it to the previous period.
- Read it with location. A late-night peak often lines up with another country waking up; the visitor map shows which.
When another tool fits better
- You need hours per visitor's own local time. Simplytics, like GA4, counts every visit in one timezone.
- You need minute-by-minute views. Plausible's graph goes down to the minute for a single day.
- You need hours cut by campaign or page. A GA4 exploration can add more dimensions; the Simplytics card shows the whole site. See Simplytics vs Plausible for the full feature list.
Last verified: 2026-11-11.