How long does a LinkedIn connection request take to be accepted? Half within a day, almost all within a week

How long does a LinkedIn connection request take to be accepted? On my account, half of the acceptances arrived within 15 hours, and almost all of them within a week. These are the same 102 requests as the earlier post, sent from my own account, each with a short note written from the person's profile. The earlier post asked who accepts. This one asks when, because the answer tells you how long a pending request is worth waiting for. Eight days after the last request went out, 51 had been accepted.

How long does it take for someone to accept a LinkedIn connection request?

Of the 51 acceptances from 102 requests sent September 15 to 30, 2026, 34 came within a day and 50 within a week, as counted on October 8: two thirds within a day, almost all within the week.

The pattern says more than the numbers. A connection request gets answered the next time the person opens LinkedIn, and most people open it every day. The ones who took a week were away. After that, nobody came back.

What is the average time to accept a LinkedIn connection request?

Across the 51 acceptances counted on October 8, 2026, the median acceptance took 15 hours and the average 1.6 days, pulled up by the few slow ones. The median is the number to plan with: it describes the typical person, while the average describes no one in particular.

Does a request still get accepted after a week?

One of the 51 acceptances in this batch of 102 came after the seventh day, as counted on October 8, 2026. For planning purposes, no. After seven days, a pending request is a no, even if nobody said it.

When should you withdraw a pending LinkedIn connection request?

Not on day one, and not on day two: 17 of the 51 acceptances, a fifth, came after the first day, and 16 of those 17 still inside the first week, as counted on October 8, 2026. Give it the full week. On day eight, count it as a no. If your pending list is getting long, withdraw it, and move the person to the list you revisit next month.

What to do with this

1. Judge a batch of requests only after a week. The acceptance rate you see on day two is about two thirds of the rate you will have on day seven.
2. Check pending requests once a week, not every morning. Anything older than seven days is a no.
3. Do not send a follow-up on day one. The person who accepts on day three has not seen your request yet.

Scout keeps that clock for every request and only counts a batch once it has had its week. You read the rate; it does the waiting.

How these numbers were measured

• Source: Scout running on my own LinkedIn account, prospecting for real. No data from other users of Scout; the app keeps its data on each user's computer and sends nothing to us.
• What was counted: connection request, sent with a note written from the person's profile; accepted, the request was accepted. Time runs from the moment the request was sent to the moment the acceptance appeared.
• When: 102 requests sent between September 15 and 30, 2026; acceptances counted on October 8, eight days after the last request, past the one-week maturity this blog uses for acceptances.
• Size and rounding: 51 acceptances. Shares are rounded to whole percentages; the median is preferred to the average.
• Left out: an acceptance shows that someone opened LinkedIn, not that they want to talk. 51 acceptances turned into 29 replies, which is the subject of the next post. Nobody is named; only aggregates.
• The rules that apply to every post are in How the numbers on this blog are measured.

This is the second data point of a benchmark that gets updated with each run. The first one, on who accepts and who replies, is here.

Changelog

• 2026-10-08: first version. 102 requests sent September 15 to 30, 51 acceptances counted on October 8.
• 2026-10-16: each question section now opens with its number, base and count date in one sentence; numbers unchanged.