About

About EasternTime.net

An independent, static reference for the Eastern Time Zone. Every clock on the site is calculated on your own device, and every rule, boundary and date is checked against the law or database that defines it.

Time zone data
IANA tz database
Calculated
In your browser
Sunrise accuracy
About ±1 minute
Analytics
Google Analytics

What is EasternTime.net?

EasternTime.net answers one family of questions: what time it is in the Eastern Time Zone, how EST and EDT work, how ET converts to other zones, and where the zone's boundaries actually run. The pages fall into four groups – live time for the zone's major cities, explanations such as EST vs EDT and the daylight saving time rules, time zone converters, and geography pages for the states and provinces on Eastern Time. The starting point is the live Eastern Time clock. The site is written and edited by the EasternTime.net team.

The site exists because Eastern Time is the default clock for much of North American life – stock markets, national broadcasts, federal deadlines – and yet it is routinely mislabelled. "3 PM EST" in July is wrong; a meeting set for "9 AM Eastern" can land an hour off in Europe during the weeks when the two continents change clocks on different dates; and a county line in Tennessee or Michigan decides which hour a school bell rings. A world-clock widget shows the time but rarely explains it. Each page here tries to teach one thing a widget cannot: the legislation, geography, history or solar time behind the number.

How are the times on this site calculated?

Clocks. Your browser already contains a copy of the IANA Time Zone Database, usually through the ICU library that ships with it. The site reads your device clock and asks the browser's Intl date formatting API what that instant is in a named zone such as America/New_York or America/Toronto. No time server is contacted, so a clock here is exactly as accurate as your device. Named zones are used instead of fixed offsets so that EST and EDT switch automatically.

Daylight saving time. The US rule in 15 U.S.C. §260a – second Sunday in March at 2:00 AM to first Sunday in November at 2:00 AM – is computed in code, not typed. For Eastern Time that means 07:00 UTC in March and 06:00 UTC in November. Ontario and Quebec follow the same dates under their own laws. Static tables on the site were generated with the same functions and checked against the tz database's transitions.

Converters. A wall-clock time can be ambiguous. On the November night when 1:00–2:00 AM happens twice, the converter uses the first occurrence (EDT); a time inside the skipped March hour is moved forward to the first valid time.

Sunrise and sunset. City and state pages use the equations behind NOAA's Solar Calculator (after Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms): the Sun's equation of time and declination are evaluated at the moment of each event, with the conventional altitude of −0.833° that allows for atmospheric refraction and the Sun's radius. Checked against the US Naval Observatory, results agree to within about a minute at mid-latitudes. They ignore elevation, terrain and weather, so a valley or a cloud bank can change what you see.

When a government changes its rules, devices only show the new offset after a browser or operating-system update delivers new tz data. The 2026 changes in western Canada are a recent example; pages describe such changes in text so the explanation does not depend on your device's data.

Which sources does EasternTime.net rely on?

Primary sources first, secondary sources only to find or cross-check them:

  • 49 CFR Part 71 – the Department of Transportation's legal description of every US time zone boundary, county by county.
  • 15 U.S.C. §§260–267 – the Standard Time Act and Uniform Time Act, including the daylight saving dates.
  • NIST Time and Frequency Division – the official time of the United States, published at time.gov.
  • National Research Council Canada – Canada's official time – together with provincial statutes such as Ontario's Time Act and Quebec's Legal Time Act.
  • IANA Time Zone Database – the rules browsers use, plus its commentary, which documents historical changes with citations.
  • The Federal Register, state and provincial legislation and government announcements for history and pending bills, and US Census Bureau gazetteer data for map coordinates.

Wikipedia and news articles are used to locate these documents and to cross-check them, never as the only source for a number.

What are the site's editorial standards?

  • Numbers are generated, not typed. Offsets, conversion tables, DST dates and solar times come from code running on tz data, and the results are re-checked for AM/PM and previous-day or next-day labels.
  • Facts are verified. County lists, legislation, airport codes and historical dates are checked against primary sources. When sources conflict, the page attributes the claim or leaves it out.
  • Pending is not enacted. Bills are described as bills, with an "as of" date. Statements about "right now" use live scripts so they stay true after publication.
  • Consistent notation. ET is the generic name; EST is used only for winter time and EDT only for summer time; offsets use a true minus sign (UTC−5).
  • No legal advice. The pages explain how time works, but a contract, court or tax deadline is governed by its own rules and its issuing authority.
  • No advertising. The pages carry no ads, sponsored content or affiliate links. They do load Google Analytics through Google Tag Manager, which sets cookies, to produce aggregate audience statistics; the privacy policy explains what it collects, how to opt out and which requests the maps make.

How are corrections handled?

Errors are fixed rather than defended. If you find one, write to contact@easterntime.net with the page address, the exact sentence or number, and a source – ideally a primary one such as a Federal Register notice, a statute or a tz database release. A verified correction is applied on every page that repeats the fact, and the page's modification date is updated. Suggestions for missing topics within the Eastern Time Zone are welcome too; the contact page explains what to include and what the site cannot help with.

Frequently asked questions

Is the clock on EasternTime.net exact?

It is exactly as accurate as your device clock. The site converts your device's time into Eastern Time; it does not fetch the time from a server. Devices that synchronize automatically are usually within a fraction of a second; compare with time.gov or the NRC web clock if in doubt.

Why might a time here differ from another site or app?

The usual causes are a device clock that is set manually and has drifted, a browser or operating system with outdated time zone data, or another service that uses a fixed offset such as UTC−5 instead of a real time zone, which ignores daylight saving time.

Is EasternTime.net affiliated with NIST, the NRC or any government?

No. EasternTime.net is an independent site. It links to NIST, the National Research Council Canada, the eCFR and other official sources, but it does not speak for them, and its pages are not official time services.

Can I link to or quote EasternTime.net?

Yes, linking is welcome. For legal, contractual or official purposes, cite the primary source the page names, such as 49 CFR Part 71 or a provincial statute, because those texts are what actually bind.

Does the site work offline?

Partly. Once a page has loaded, its clock, converter and sunrise times keep working without a connection because everything is calculated on your device. Maps and links to other pages need the network.

Explore

Glossary

UTC, offset, tz database and other terms used on the site.

Privacy

Analytics, cookies, map requests and how to opt out.

Contact

How to report an error or suggest a topic.