ET time now (Eastern Time)

What ET means

ET (Eastern Time) is the clock of the eastern United States and Canada. It is not a fixed offset: it means EST (UTC−5) in winter and EDT (UTC−4) from the second Sunday of March at 2:00 AM to the first Sunday of November at 2:00 AM.

Why the generic name is the safe one

ET names a region’s clock, not an offset. It means standard time in winter and daylight time in summer, the way a wall clock in that region actually reads. That makes it the right choice for meeting invitations, broadcast schedules and opening hours: “2 PM ET” is correct on any date, while “2 PM EST” is wrong for about eight months of the year.

In software, the matching IANA zone is America/New_York. Store times in UTC and convert with the zone, never with a fixed offset, or your events will drift by an hour twice a year.

Eastern Time in this sense is North American. Australia’s Eastern Time is AEST/AEDT, and Eastern European Time is EET/EEST.

Where and when ET is used

18 zones follow ET: EST in winter, EDT in summer. Computed from tzdata under the current rules.

Related zones and conversions

• EST time
• EDT time
• America/New_York time zone
• UTC time
• Time zones of the world
• Daylight saving time
• Time zone converter