EST to PST Converter

What this does

Put in an Eastern time and get the Pacific time it corresponds to. Under the hood the source zone is America/New_York and the target is America/Los_Angeles. Daylight saving comes from the real zone database for the date you enter, so the offset matches the season instead of being assumed. The whole conversion happens in your browser and still works with no connection.

How many hours behind Eastern is Pacific?

Three, for all but a few hours a year. Eastern and Pacific keep the same daylight-saving calendar — forward on the second Sunday in March, back on the first Sunday in November — so the pair is EST/PST (UTC−5 and UTC−8) through the winter and EDT/PDT (UTC−4 and UTC−7) through the summer. Subtract three hours and you have your answer on any ordinary day.

What time does an 8 PM ET show start on the West Coast?

5:00 PM. American broadcasters quote Eastern first, which is where "8/7c" comes from — 8 PM Eastern, 7 PM Central, and 5 PM Pacific. Market hours work the same way, since the exchanges run on New York's clock:

How do I convert an Eastern time here?

The field on the left takes the Eastern clock reading:

1. Pick the date first. Air dates and settlement dates near a clock change are exactly where mental arithmetic fails.
2. Enter the Eastern time, or hit Use now to drop in the current New York clock.
3. The Pacific reading appears on the right, with the size and direction of the gap written underneath it.

What happens on the November clock change?

Eastern falls back at 2:00 AM its own time, which is three hours before Pacific reaches its own 2:00 AM. In between, from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM Eastern on that Sunday, the coasts are only two hours apart — 3:00 AM Eastern is 1:00 AM Pacific, not midnight. It is a narrow window, but red-eye flights, batch jobs and overnight broadcasts land inside it, so it is worth knowing the usual subtraction does not hold there.

Why does my invite say EDT instead of EST?

Because the meeting falls in the summer half of the year, when New York is on Eastern Daylight Time. EST is only correct from early November to mid-March; "ET" covers both. The same holds on the other side, where PST becomes PDT. Nothing about the three-hour gap changes. If you need Central, Mountain or anywhere overseas, the timezone converter compares many zones at once, and PST to EST handles the return trip.