Reading Pacific time on the East Coast
New York is three hours ahead of Los Angeles. A 9:00 AM start on the West Coast is 12:00 noon in the East, and a 3:00 PM call in San Francisco lands at 6:00 PM in Boston. Type your Pacific time, or press Use now, and the Eastern time appears with its abbreviation.
Strictly, PST and EST are the winter names. From March to November both coasts are on daylight time, PDT and EDT, though people keep saying PST and EST all year. Because the two regions change clocks on the same weekends, the three-hour gap stays the same all year except for a few hours on clock-change nights, and the page names the abbreviations in effect for the date you chose.
A West Coast team that serves East Coast clients has a shorter shared day than it expects. Pacific 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM is 12:00 noon to 5:00 PM Eastern, so the Eastern afternoon is the only stretch when both sides are at their desks. The hour-by-hour table on this page lays out a 9:00 to 17:00 Pacific day hour by hour against the Eastern clock.
Late evenings cross midnight in the East. Anything after 9:00 PM Pacific is already tomorrow on the Eastern clock, and the result flags it. Use the swap button when you need to go the other way.
Worked examples
Questions about this tool
How many hours is PST behind EST?
Three. The gap is the same in January and in July because both regions change their clocks on the same dates.
If someone writes 1 PM PST in July, what do they mean?
Almost certainly the clock on the Pacific coast, which in July is PDT. The converter treats the source as Pacific time and shows the abbreviation in effect on the date.
Is a 6:00 PM Pacific meeting too late for the East Coast?
It is 9:00 PM there, so it falls well outside normal office hours. Check the hour-by-hour table to see which Pacific hours land in the Eastern workday.
Related tools
Where this comes from: IANA time zone database and the rules behind it ยท US Department of Transportation, uniform time and daylight saving time