EST to PST Converter — Eastern to Pacific Time
Eastern Time is always 3 hours ahead of Pacific Time. Enter a date and time below to see the exact equivalent, or use the quick facts on this page for a fast mental conversion.
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EST to PST: the short answer
Pacific Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Time, every day of the year. Noon in New York is 9:00 AM in Los Angeles. This is one of the few US cross-country conversions that never changes, because both the Eastern and Pacific time zones observe daylight saving on identical dates — they move their clocks forward and back together, so the gap between them never drifts.
That's not true of every US pair — Arizona, for instance, doesn't observe daylight saving at all, so its gap to the coasts shifts twice a year. Eastern and Pacific are the simplest case: whatever the calendar month, subtract 3 hours going west, or add 3 hours going east.
Why the gap never changes
"EST" technically refers only to Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5), which applies in winter. For most of the year the Eastern zone is actually in Eastern Daylight Time, EDT (UTC-4) — and the same pattern holds on the West Coast, where PST (UTC-8) is winter-only and PDT (UTC-7) covers the rest of the year. Because the US federal daylight saving schedule moves both zones' clocks on the same two Sundays each March and November, the two zones are always exactly 3 hours apart, whether both are on standard time, both on daylight time, or during the brief transition weekend itself.
In casual use, "EST to PST" is often used to mean the current Eastern-to-Pacific gap regardless of which specific standard/daylight label technically applies — the calculator above always uses the correct one for your chosen date automatically.
EST to PST hour-by-hour reference
Use this table for a quick lookup. Subtract 3 hours from any Eastern time to get the Pacific equivalent.
| Eastern Time (EST/EDT) | Pacific Time (PST/PDT) |
|---|---|
| 6:00 AM | 3:00 AM |
| 8:00 AM | 5:00 AM |
| 9:00 AM | 6:00 AM |
| 10:00 AM | 7:00 AM |
| 12:00 PM (noon) | 9:00 AM |
| 1:00 PM | 10:00 AM |
| 2:00 PM | 11:00 AM |
| 3:00 PM | 12:00 PM (noon) |
| 5:00 PM | 2:00 PM |
| 6:00 PM | 3:00 PM |
| 9:00 PM | 6:00 PM |
| 12:00 AM (midnight) | 9:00 PM (previous day) |
For a specific date, or a time not listed above, use the converter at the top of this page — it also flags when a conversion lands on the previous or next calendar day, which the last row above illustrates.
Best meeting times between the East and West Coast
Because Pacific workers start their day 3 hours later than Eastern workers, the practical overlap for a typical 9-to-5 is late morning through mid-afternoon Eastern:
- 10:00 AM–1:00 PM Eastern lands at 7:00 AM–10:00 AM Pacific — workable, but early for the West Coast.
- 1:00 PM–4:00 PM Eastern lands at 10:00 AM–1:00 PM Pacific — the most comfortable window for both coasts on a standard workday.
- 5:00 PM Eastern or later lands at 2:00 PM Pacific or later — fine for the West Coast, but pushes Eastern participants into their evening.
Rule of thumb: aim for the Eastern early afternoon. It's the only stretch that's daytime hours on both coasts without asking either side to start unusually early or stay unusually late.
Worked examples
Scheduling a 2 PM Eastern call
A team lead in New York proposes a 2:00 PM call. Subtracting the fixed 3-hour gap, that's 11:00 AM in Los Angeles or Seattle — a normal mid-morning slot, with no need to double check the date or worry about a daylight saving mismatch, since both coasts shift together.
A red-eye flight from LA to New York
A flight leaves Los Angeles at 11:30 PM Pacific and the airline lists a 7:50 AM arrival — in Eastern time, since that's the destination. Converting the departure time to Eastern (2:30 AM) shows the actual flight duration is about 5 hours and 20 minutes, not the roughly 8 hours you'd get by naively subtracting the clock times without accounting for the zone change.
Where this comes up in real life
Remote work
Companies with staff on both coasts often standardize core hours in Eastern time and let Pacific-based employees translate, since Eastern working hours (9 AM–5 PM ET) compress into a still-reasonable 6 AM–2 PM Pacific window — early, but workable, whereas the reverse would push meetings into the Eastern evening.
Live events and broadcasts
A show billed as airing "8 PM Eastern / 5 PM Pacific" is describing the same broadcast moment in both zones — this is the standard way US television and streaming schedules are announced, precisely because the 3-hour gap is constant and doesn't need a date-specific caveat the way an EST-to-London or EST-to-Sydney gap would.
If your deadline is expressed in business days rather than a specific clock time, the Date Difference Calculator can help you count the days involved separately from the time zone question. For a different city pair — especially one where the gap does shift seasonally — the full Time Zone Converter supports any two locations worldwide.
Frequently asked questions
How this page is maintained
This page pulls from the same conversion engine as the main Time Zone Converter, which reads live rules from the IANA Time Zone Database rather than a hardcoded offset table — so the EST–PST gap described above is calculated from those rules rather than typed in by hand. Content is written by the CalcPro. See the formula and methodology on the main converter page, or contact us to report an inaccuracy.
Related calculators
Further reading: Time Zone Guide — UTC, GMT, daylight saving and how to convert.