HourHound Happy Hour Index · 2026
HourHound checked 5,224 verified happy hours across 11 U.S. metros. The national window is 3 PM–6 PM, the typical draft is $5 — and the regional quirks are where it gets interesting.
Published July 28, 2026 · Methodology · Cite this
The findings
The standouts
Drinks vs. food
Share of each metro's happy hours that include a food deal — a taco night, half-price apps, $1 oysters — not just discounted drinks.
Weekday vs. weekend
Share of each metro's venues that run happy-hour or daily specials on Saturday or Sunday. Resort and retiree markets skew high; big commuter downtowns skew weekday.
Every metro, compared
Median prices are drawn from deal listings that name the drink; small-sample metros are noisier. Click any metro to open its live map.
| Metro | Venues | Window | Beer | Wine | Food | Late | Weekend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | 1,177 | 3 PM–6 PM | $5 | $7 | 25% | 20% | 43% |
| Denver | 1,153 | 3 PM–6 PM | $5 | $6 | 34% | 33% | 54% |
| Tampa Bay | 666 | 3 PM–6 PM | $4 | $6 | 29% | 33% | 50% |
| Houston | 583 | 3 PM–6 PM | $4.50 | $6 | 12% | 15% | 36% |
| Phoenix | 521 | 3 PM–6 PM | $5 | $7 | 44% | 47% | 57% |
| Orlando | 263 | 3 PM–6 PM | $5 | $7 | 16% | 17% | 34% |
| Miami | 229 | 4 PM–7 PM | $5 | $6 | 11% | 16% | 47% |
| Fort Lauderdale | 200 | 3 PM–6 PM | $5 | $8 | 12% | 17% | 44% |
| Palm Beach | 181 | 3 PM–6 PM | $4.88 | $7 | 13% | 13% | 56% |
| Naples | 159 | 3 PM–6 PM | $4 | $6.25 | 15% | 16% | 75% |
| Sarasota | 92 | 3 PM–6 PM | $3 | $5 | 34% | 43% | 70% |
Methodology
Sample. 5,224 venues with a verified happy hour or daily special across 11 U.S. metros, carrying 10,490 distinct deal windows, as of July 28, 2026. Tentative/unverified listings are excluded from every figure.
Verification. Every venue's schedule and deals are checked against the venue's own published source (its site or menu) and timestamped. This is the same data that powers HourHound's live "open now" map — not a scrape of third-party guides.
Windows. The "window" is each metro's single most common happy-hour start–end time. "Late" counts venues with any deal ending at 9 PM or later (including past midnight); "weekend" counts any Saturday or Sunday deal; "food" counts any deal whose text names food (tacos, wings, apps, oysters, and the like).
Prices. Median prices are the median of dollar amounts written next to a drink term in the deal text (e.g. "$5 drafts"), bounded to $1–$25 to exclude bottles and food items. They describe advertised happy-hour pricing, not a menu audit; metros with few priced listings (shown by low counts) are noisier and are not used for national medians unless the sample is substantial.
Reproducibility. The underlying per-metro venue data is public and free to use with attribution at /api/v1/.
Cite this
Reporters and writers: quote any figure above with attribution to HourHound and a link to this page. Want a custom cut for your city — cheapest neighborhoods, a specific cuisine, a chart for your guide? We'll pull it.
Source line: HourHound Happy Hour Index 2026, hourhound.app/reports/happy-hour-index-2026