CST to PST time
Pacific Time is two hours behind Central Time for the whole year: 6:00 PM in Chicago, Houston or Minneapolis is 4:00 PM in Los Angeles. The converter applies the right daylight or standard offset for whatever date you enter.
Convert the other way: PST → CST
- Difference right now
- PST 2 hours behind CST
- Shared office hours
- 8 PM–2 AM CST
- Daylight saving
- Both zones shift their clocks
CST to PST, hour by hour
Every hour of the day, using today's offsets (daylight saving is applied automatically).
- 12:00 AM10:00 PM−1
- 1:00 AM11:00 PM−1
- 2:00 AM12:00 AM
- 3:00 AM1:00 AM
- 4:00 AM2:00 AM
- 5:00 AM3:00 AM
- 6:00 AM4:00 AM
- 7:00 AM5:00 AM
- 8:00 AM6:00 AM
- 9:00 AM7:00 AM
- 10:00 AM8:00 AM
- 11:00 AM9:00 AM
- 12:00 PM10:00 AM
- 1:00 PM11:00 AM
- 2:00 PM12:00 PM
- 3:00 PM1:00 PM
- 4:00 PM2:00 PM
- 5:00 PM3:00 PM
- 6:00 PM4:00 PM
- 7:00 PM5:00 PM
- 8:00 PM6:00 PM
- 9:00 PM7:00 PM
- 10:00 PM8:00 PM
- 11:00 PM9:00 PM
Serving West Coast customers from the middle of the country
Many call centers, insurers and logistics firms based in the Central zone support customers nationwide. To cover a West Coast customer's whole business day, a Central office has to stay open until 7:00 PM Central (5:00 PM Pacific), and a 7:00 PM Pacific closing for retail support means agents in Dallas or Omaha work until 9:00 PM. Scheduling West Coast callbacks for the Central afternoon, 1:00–5:00 PM, reaches Californians between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM.
Sports fans feel the same two hours. When the Cubs play the Dodgers at 7:10 PM in Los Angeles, the first pitch is 9:10 PM in Chicago, and a Seattle Seahawks late-afternoon kickoff at 1:25 PM Pacific is 3:25 PM in Texas.
The odd hour on clock-change night
The gap is two hours on every ordinary day, but for a short window on each clock-change night it is not. Clocks move at 2:00 AM local time, and 2:00 AM arrives in Chicago two hours before it arrives in Los Angeles. On the second Sunday of March, Chicago springs forward first, so for those two hours Chicago is three hours ahead of Los Angeles. On the first Sunday of November, Chicago falls back first, and for two hours the difference shrinks to one.
Only overnight systems such as batch jobs, shift rosters and flight schedules ever notice. If you run scheduled tasks across zones, store times in UTC; the UTC to CST page shows how Central Time maps onto it.
Clock changes this year
- Mar 8, 2026CST: clocks go forward, UTC−6 → UTC−5
- Nov 1, 2026CST: clocks go back, UTC−5 → UTC−6
- Mar 8, 2026PST: clocks go forward, UTC−8 → UTC−7
- Nov 1, 2026PST: clocks go back, UTC−7 → UTC−8
Cities on these zones
Pacific Time PST
Other conversions with these zones
Frequently asked questions
- What time is 6 PM Central on the West Coast?
- It is 4:00 PM Pacific. Subtract two hours from the Central time.
- Does the time difference between Chicago and Los Angeles ever change?
- Only for a couple of hours in the middle of each clock-change night, as explained above. On every normal day it is two hours.
- Is Oklahoma on Central time?
- Yes. Oklahoma uses Central Time, apart from the small community of Kenton in the Panhandle, which unofficially follows Mountain Time.
- How late can a Central-time office call California customers?
- Calls at 7:00 PM Central reach California at 5:00 PM. Most consumer-calling rules limit calls to before 9:00 PM in the recipient's time zone, which would be 11:00 PM Central.
- Is Minneapolis on the same time as Houston?
- Yes. Minnesota and Texas both use Central Time, so both are two hours ahead of Los Angeles.