The Best Time to Ask for a Signature

Insights from the Nitro Data team.

We analyzed every single-signer request routed through the Nitro Sign web app in the first half of 2026, in the sender's local time, and asked a simple question: how do the odds of getting signed change depending on when the request goes out? The short answer is that people sign when they are at their desks. But behind that simple reality lies a clear pattern with peak hours and optimal send times.

Mornings win for signature completion by time of day

Timing is everything. A request sent between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM is signed within four hours about 60% of the time. By mid-afternoon, those odds begin to decrease, dropping below 50% by 5:00 PM and sinking to roughly 30% by 9:00 PM. This would make sense, a morning request lands while the signer is still working, whereas an evening prompt sits overnight, running the risk of getting buried under the next days workload.

Whatever the hour, roughly 70% of all requests are signed within 24 hours. A morning send doesn’t dictate whether your document gets signed. It dictates whether it gets signed today.

Friday afternoon has the lowest signature completion rate

Afternoon signature completion rates by day

Unsurprisingly, the late it is in the week the slower the response. A request sent on Monday has an 81% completion rate within two days. Send that same request on Friday afternoon, and completion drops to 64%. You can even see the weekend casting its shadow a day early, Thursday afternoon requests complete slightly less often within two days, because their 48-hour window runs into Saturday.

The weekend itself tells the same story from the other side: during the week the typical request is signed in about an hour and a half, while a weekend send typically waits 5 to 12 hours.

The best time to send a signature request

Signature requests move faster than you might expect. 50% of them are signed within 90 minutes of being sent, and 25% within 15 minutes. If you need an ink-dry decision today, fire off your request in the morning, before lunch is the sweet spot. If it's Friday afternoon and the signature can wait, let it as you’ll be waiting either way. You lose zero momentum by scheduling it for Monday morning, and you keep your document from languishing at the bottom of a quiet inbox all weekend.

A note on the data. Analysis covers Nitro Sign web app requests sent to a single signer between January and June 2026, normalized to sender local time. A request counts as "signed within N hours" against everything sent in the window, so cancelled and never-completed requests count against the odds. The same pattern holds in the first half of 2025, so this is not a one-off. Only relative comparisons are shown.