Central Time (CST) is 1 hour behind Eastern Time (EST).

Here is every hour of the day in CST and the same moment in EST.

The green rows are the hours when both zones are inside 9 AM to 5 PM. The row marked Now is the hour it is in Central Time right now.

A team split between CT and ET is at work together for 7 hours a day.

Taking 9 AM to 5 PM on each clock as the working day, both zones are at work from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM CST (10:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST).

A team spread across two time zones has fewer chances to notice someone drifting away. TeamPredict reads public LinkedIn signals to flag resignation risk early, wherever people work.

The gap between CST and EST stays at 1 hour all year.

Both zones are in the United States and move their clocks on the same two Sundays, so the gap holds.

These are the clock changes of both zones in 2026 and 2027.

CST stands for Central Time and EST for Eastern Time on this page.

Central Time is CST (UTC−6) in winter and CDT (UTC−5) in summer. People write CST all year, and this page does too; the clock reads CDT right now. It moves its clocks forward at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday in March and back at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November.

Eastern Time is EST (UTC−5) in winter and EDT (UTC−4) in summer. People write EST all year, and this page does too; the clock reads EDT right now. It moves its clocks forward at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday in March and back at 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November.

These nearby time zone pairs show the time right now too.

• EST to CST
• CST to PST
• CST to IST
• EST to PST
• EST to MST
• EST to IST
• EST to GMT

The time zone converter reads one moment on up to 12 clocks, the military time converter turns 24-hour times into AM and PM, and the time duration calculator measures the hours between two moments.