EST Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is on the US East Coast right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in New York, a flight to catch, the stock market opening to keep an eye on, or you just want to reach a friend before they head to bed. That is what the clock at the top of this page is for. It shows the current time in the US Eastern zone and ticks forward every second, so you do not have to work anything out by hand.

It does not matter where in the world you are reading this from. The clock tracks the Eastern zone and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. You read the time, you get on with your day.

The EST and EDT thing worth knowing

Here is the part that trips people up, though. You looked for EST, and this page is labeled EST, but the Eastern zone does not actually stay on EST all year. For roughly eight months of the year it runs on daylight saving time, which has its own name, Eastern Daylight Time, or EDT.

So there are really two settings hiding behind the word Eastern:

• EST, Eastern Standard Time. Five hours behind UTC. This is the winter setting.
• EDT, Eastern Daylight Time. Four hours behind UTC, which is one hour ahead of EST. This is the summer setting.

What EST actually is

EST stands for Eastern Standard Time. It is the standard time used down the eastern side of North America, and it sits five hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, written as UTC minus 5. Out of the four main time zones in the lower 48 states, Eastern is the furthest east, which is also the reason it is the first of them to roll into a new day.

In everyday talk most people just say Eastern Time, or ET, and leave it there. That is fine for a casual chat, but ET on its own does not tell you whether the clocks are on the standard setting or the daylight saving one. EST and EDT are the exact names for each.

The Eastern zone is the busiest one in the country. Close to half of everyone in the United States lives inside it. Washington DC and seventeen states sit entirely within it, and another five are split between Eastern and Central, which is how a state like Indiana ends up with most of its counties on Eastern and a handful on Central.

How to tell if it is EST or EDT right now

The switch dates are set in US law, the Uniform Time Act, which was last adjusted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The law fixes the change to two Sundays:

• Spring forward. On the second Sunday of March, at 2 in the morning, the clocks jump ahead one hour. EST becomes EDT, and the zone moves from five hours behind UTC to four. Daylight saving time has begun.
• Fall back. On the first Sunday of November, at 2 in the morning, the clocks drop back one hour. EDT becomes EST again, and the zone returns to five hours behind UTC.

So the rule is short. From the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, the Eastern zone is on EDT. For the rest of the year, from November round to March, it is on EST. Place today between those two Sundays and you have your answer.

Converting EST to other time zones

Lining Eastern Time up with another zone is easier than it looks, because the United States moves all of its mainland clocks on the very same two Sundays. That means the gap between Eastern and the other US zones never changes through the year. Eastern is always one hour ahead of Central, two hours ahead of Mountain, and three hours ahead of Pacific, summer and winter alike.

The one number that does move is the gap to UTC and to places that keep their own schedule, since Eastern itself slides by an hour when daylight saving starts and stops. Here is the quick reference. The right column assumes it is 12 noon on the East Coast.

A few quick examples

Let us run a few, so you can see how this works in practice.

Say it is 12 noon in New York, which runs on Eastern Time. Pacific is three hours behind, so it is 9 in the morning in Los Angeles. Central is one hour behind, so it is 11 in the morning in Chicago. Mountain is two hours behind, which puts Denver at 10 in the morning.

Now say you are on the East Coast and you want to call London. London is normally five hours ahead, so if it is 9 in the morning where you are, it is already 2 in the afternoon over there. Leave the call until later in your day and you will be catching them after dinner.

One more, and this one leans on the season. If your Eastern clock reads 3 in the afternoon in the winter, that is 8 in the evening UTC, because winter Eastern is five hours behind. The exact same 3 in the afternoon in the summer is 7 in the evening UTC, because by then the zone has shifted to four hours behind. Same clock reading, one hour of difference, and the only reason is daylight saving.

Where Eastern Time is used

Eastern Time covers a lot of ground. In the United States it runs the length of the east coast and a good way inland. The bigger cities on it include New York, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, and Detroit. Exactly which counties fall inside the zone is set by the US Department of Transportation, which draws the official boundaries, so it does not always follow a clean state line. Indiana is the classic example, with most of its counties on Eastern and a few on Central.

North of the border, much of eastern Canada keeps the same time and the same daylight saving schedule, including Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Further south there is a twist worth knowing. A few places sit at the same five hours behind UTC but never move their clocks for daylight saving, so they stay on Eastern Standard Time the whole year round. Panama, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the one Cancun is in, all do this. So they line up with the US East Coast through the winter, then sit one hour behind it all summer while the States are on EDT.

Cities on Eastern Time

If you want the live clock for one particular city on Eastern Time rather than the zone as a whole, here are a few to jump to:

• New York time now
• Washington DC time now
• Miami time now
• Toronto time now

And if you need the wider picture across every US zone at once, there is USA Time Now.

Questions people ask

What time is it in EST right now?

The clock near the top of this page is the answer, and it updates every second. Just remember that because the Eastern zone observes daylight saving, that clock shows EST in the winter months and EDT in the summer, switching over on its own. Whichever it is, the time shown is the correct local time on the US East Coast.

Is it EST or EDT at the moment?

Go by the dates. From the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November the zone is on EDT. The rest of the year it is on EST. Find where today falls between those two Sundays and you will know.

What is the difference between EST and EDT?

EST is the standard setting at five hours behind UTC. EDT is the daylight saving setting at four hours behind UTC, one hour ahead of EST. The clocks move forward an hour in spring to start EDT, then back an hour in autumn to return to EST. The plain term Eastern Time, or ET, just means whichever one is active.

How many hours behind UTC is EST?

Five hours behind, written UTC minus 5. When the zone is on daylight saving as EDT, it is four hours behind, UTC minus 4.

What is EST in Pacific and Central time?

Eastern is always three hours ahead of Pacific and one hour ahead of Central, because every mainland US zone changes for daylight saving on the same dates. So 12 noon Eastern is 9 in the morning Pacific and 11 in the morning Central.

Does everywhere on Eastern Time change for daylight saving?

Most of it does and switches to EDT each summer. A handful of places never change their clocks and stay on EST all year, among them Panama, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Quintana Roo in Mexico, which is where Cancun is.

What is the IANA name for US Eastern Time?

It is America/New_York. That is the entry in the IANA time zone database, the same time data your phone and your computer use, and it carries both the offset and the daylight saving rules. It is also what drives the live clock on this page.

References

1. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Time Zone Database (the tz database), source of the America/New_York identifier and its daylight saving rules. https://www.iana.org/time-zones
2. U.S. Code, Title 15, Section 260a: Advancement of time or changeover dates. The Uniform Time Act of 1966, as amended by Section 110 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Pub. L. 109-58), which sets the second Sunday of March and first Sunday of November dates. Office of the Law Revision Counsel. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section260a
3. U.S. Department of Transportation. Uniform Time, and the official listing of the nation's time zones under 49 CFR Part 71, Standard Time Zone Boundaries. https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/time-act
4. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Time and Frequency Division, the source of official time for the United States. https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division