Eastern Time (EST) is 1 hour ahead of Central Time (CST).

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

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 Eastern Time right now.

A team split between ET and CT 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 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST (9:00 AM to 4:00 PM CST).

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 EST and CST 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.