Convert EST to PST

Quick converter

EST to PST at a glance

To convert Eastern to Pacific, subtract 3 hours. To go the other way (Pacific to Eastern), add 3 hours.

Multi-city scheduling with EST and PST

A simple EST-to-PST conversion handles a two-city call cleanly. Add more participants — a Chicago contact (Central, 1 hour behind Eastern), a Denver colleague (Mountain, 2 hours behind) — and the table breaks down fast. The ZoneKit Time Zone Converter adds as many destination cities as you need, all from one source time, so you can see what "10 AM New York" means for six participants across four zones at once. For a visual grid that colour-codes sleeping versus working hours by city, the Meeting Planner is often faster than stacking individual conversions.

Why Eastern Time sets national broadcast schedules

The largest share of the US television audience lives in the Eastern zone, so national primetime runs 8–11 PM EST. That same block lands at 5–8 PM PST — early evening, not primetime. Networks solve this with "live plus tape" scheduling: major live events (awards shows, sporting finals, election-night coverage) air in real time on the East Coast and again in a time-delayed feed at 8 PM local time on the West Coast. Some events air as a single national stream and some don't. If you're planning to watch a live event with someone on the other coast, check whether the network runs a delay. A 9 PM EST game starts at 6 PM PST — three hours is a meaningful difference for a long playoff game, and the West Coast viewer may see social-media spoilers long before the local broadcast reaches the same moment.

Why the gap is always exactly 3 hours

The US Eastern and Pacific zones both follow the same federal daylight saving schedule. Clocks spring forward on the second Sunday of March and fall back on the first Sunday of November — on the same day in both zones. Because they shift together, the difference between them never changes: it is 3 hours in January and 3 hours in July.

This is different from transatlantic pairs like London and New York, where the two regions change their clocks on different dates and the gap briefly wobbles for a couple of weeks each spring and autumn. Within the US, the zone offsets stay locked to each other.

EST vs EDT — the name changes, the gap doesn't

Strictly speaking, "EST" (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-5) is the winter name and "EDT" (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-4) is the summer name. The same applies to Pacific: PST (UTC-8) in winter, PDT (UTC-7) in summer. Most people say "EST" or "Eastern" loosely to mean Eastern Time whatever the season. Either way, Eastern stays 3 hours ahead of Pacific — you rarely need to worry about the standard-vs-daylight distinction when converting between two US zones, only when converting to a zone outside the US that changes on different dates.

Frequently asked questions

Major cities in Eastern and Pacific Time

The Eastern zone covers the most populous stretch of the US — New York, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, and Cleveland. The Pacific zone covers the western seaboard: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, and San Diego. For most business purposes, "East Coast" means Eastern Time and "West Coast" means Pacific Time.

Who converts EST to PST most often

The EST-to-PST conversion comes up constantly for anyone whose work crosses both US coasts. New York finance teams coordinate with San Francisco technology companies for meetings that must land at a reasonable hour on both ends. TV networks schedule live broadcasts knowing a 9 PM EST prime-time slot hits at 6 PM Pacific. Remote workers who have moved from New York to California run this conversion daily when calling colleagues or family back east. The 3-hour gap is large enough that a casual "let's meet at 9 AM" from a New York colleague means a 6 AM start for someone in Los Angeles — always worth checking before sending the invite.

Related conversion guides

• Convert PST to EST — the reverse direction
• Convert EST to CST — Eastern to Central, 1 hour
• Convert UTC to EST — the universal reference to Eastern
• Convert GMT to IST — UK to India, 5½ hours
• Time difference between New York and Los Angeles — the cities behind these zones
• What is UTC? — how time-zone offsets work