EST to CST Converter: Eastern to Central Time

Eastern Time is EST (UTC−5) in standard time and EDT (UTC−4) during daylight saving time. Central Time is CST (UTC−6) in standard time and CDT (UTC−5) during daylight saving time. DateMath reads both clocks for the date you pick, so the answer always uses the names and offsets in force that day.

Both zones change their clocks for daylight saving time on the same dates, so the difference doesn't change with the seasons: people write EST and CST all year, and the conversion is the same in July.

Every hour of the day in Eastern Time, read in Central Time. The times hold on any date outside the clock-change nights; they are worked out for January 15, 2027.

Outside the clock-change nights, Central Time is 1 hour behind Eastern Time on every day of 2027.

The zones don't change at the same moment, because each changes at 2:00 AM on its own clock. So for a short while the gap is different: from 3:00 AM EDT on March 14, 2027 to 4:00 AM EDT, Central Time is 2 hours behind Eastern Time; from 1:00 AM EST on November 7, 2027 to 2:00 AM EST, Central Time is the same time as Eastern Time.

Turn the difference around: Central Time to Eastern Time always uses the same gap in the other direction. Press Swap in the converter above to switch the two zones.

With both sides working 9 to 5, the shared hours are 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST in New York, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM CST in Chicago. To add more people or other working hours, use the meeting planner. For an event set at a time in Central Time, convert it here, then count down to it with the day countdown.

DateMath turns the date and time you enter into one moment on the from zone's clock, then reads that moment on every other zone's clock, with each zone's UTC offset for that exact date from the IANA time zone database in your browser. So the difference between two zones is worked out for the date you pick, never taken from a fixed table: Pacific Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Time all year, but UTC is 8 hours ahead of Pacific Time in winter and 7 in summer.

• The IANA time zone database. DateMath's time zone tools take each zone's UTC offset and daylight saving dates from the IANA time zone database (tz) built into your browser, the data computers and phones set their clocks by, so every date gets the rule in force on it. US daylight saving time runs from 2:00 AM on the second Sunday in March to 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November (15 U.S.C. 260a); the EU and the UK change at 1:00 AM UTC on the last Sundays of March and October. Source: IANA time zones, 15 U.S.C. 260a, Directive 2000/84/EC.
• The Gregorian calendar. DateMath treats every date as a Gregorian date, with its leap-year rule: a year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except century years not divisible by 400, so 2000 had a February 29 and 2100 will not. Source: Gregorian calendar.

DateMath's date math is tested against more than 100 cases worked out by hand. Every worked example and table on the site is computed with the same code the calculators run, so a page and its calculator can't disagree.