PST Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is on the US West Coast right now. Maybe you are trying to reach someone in California, catch a show that starts on Pacific time, line up a work call, or just work out whether it is too late to text a friend in Los Angeles. That is what the clock at the top of this page is for. It shows the current time in the US Pacific zone and ticks forward every second, so there is nothing for you to work out by hand.

Wherever in the world you are reading this from, the clock tracks the Pacific zone and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. You read it, you get on with your day.

The PST and PDT thing worth knowing

Here is the part that trips people up, though. You looked for PST, and this page is labeled PST, but the Pacific zone does not actually stay on PST all year. For about eight months of the year it runs on daylight saving time, which goes by its own name, Pacific Daylight Time, or PDT.

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

• PST, Pacific Standard Time. Eight hours behind UTC. This is the winter setting.
• PDT, Pacific Daylight Time. Seven hours behind UTC, which is one hour ahead of PST. This is the summer setting.

What PST actually is

PST stands for Pacific Standard Time. It is the standard time used along the western edge of North America, and it sits eight hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, written as UTC minus 8. Out of the four main time zones in the lower 48 states, Pacific is the furthest west, which is also the reason it is the last of them to roll into a new day.

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

The Pacific zone runs the length of the West Coast and a little way inland. It covers California, Washington, and Oregon, most of Nevada, and a sliver of Idaho, which between them hold a large share of the country's people and most of its tech industry.

How to tell if it is PST or PDT 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. PST becomes PDT, and the zone moves from eight hours behind UTC to seven. Daylight saving time has begun.
• Fall back. On the first Sunday of November, at 2 in the morning, the clocks drop back one hour. PDT becomes PST again, and the zone returns to eight hours behind UTC.

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

Converting PST to other time zones

Lining Pacific 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 Pacific and the other US zones never changes through the year. Pacific is always one hour behind Mountain, two hours behind Central, and three hours behind Eastern, summer and winter alike.

The one number that does move is the gap to UTC and to places that keep their own schedule, since Pacific 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 West 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 Los Angeles, which runs on Pacific Time. Eastern is three hours ahead, so it is already 3 in the afternoon in New York. Central is two hours ahead, so it is 2 in the afternoon in Chicago. Mountain is one hour ahead, which puts Denver at 1 in the afternoon.

Now say you are on the West Coast and you want to call London. London is normally eight hours ahead, so 9 in the morning your time is already 5 in the evening over there, near the end of their working day. To catch someone in London first thing, you would be calling very early in your own morning.

One more, and this one leans on the season. If your Pacific clock reads 10 in the morning in the winter, that is 6 in the evening UTC, because winter Pacific is eight hours behind. The exact same 10 in the morning in the summer is 5 in the evening UTC, because by then the zone has shifted to seven hours behind. Same clock reading, one hour of difference, and the only reason is daylight saving.

Where Pacific Time is used

Pacific Time covers the whole US West Coast and a little inland. The bigger cities on it include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Sacramento, and Las Vegas over in Nevada. Exactly which areas fall inside the zone is set by the US Department of Transportation, which draws the official boundaries.

North of the border, British Columbia changed in 2026 and now keeps year-round Pacific time at UTC minus 7. Vancouver matches the US Pacific coast in summer, but in winter Vancouver is one hour ahead while California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada return to PST.

Down in Mexico, the Baja California peninsula in the northwest also runs on Pacific Time, and because it sits along the US border it follows the US daylight saving dates too.

Cities on Pacific Time

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

• Los Angeles time now
• San Francisco time now
• Seattle time now
• Las Vegas time now
• Vancouver time now

For the state-wide view there is California 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 PST right now?

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

Is it PST or PDT at the moment?

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

What is the difference between PST and PDT?

PST is the standard setting at eight hours behind UTC. PDT is the daylight saving setting at seven hours behind UTC, one hour ahead of PST. The clocks move forward an hour in spring to start PDT, then back an hour in autumn to return to PST. The plain term Pacific Time, or PT, just means whichever one is active.

How many hours behind UTC is PST?

Eight hours behind, written UTC minus 8. When the zone is on daylight saving as PDT, it is seven hours behind, UTC minus 7.

What is PST in Eastern and Central time?

Pacific is always three hours behind Eastern and two hours behind Central, because every mainland US zone changes for daylight saving on the same dates. So 12 noon Pacific is 3 in the afternoon Eastern and 2 in the afternoon Central.

Does everywhere on Pacific Time change for daylight saving?

The US and Canadian parts of the zone do, switching to PDT each summer. Pacific Time is fairly compact, so there are no large year-round standard-time pockets the way there are in some other zones.

What is the IANA name for US Pacific Time?

It is America/Los_Angeles. 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/Los_Angeles 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