PST to CET
Los Angeles to Paris.
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All date & timeQuestions
What time is CET when it is 12:00 PST?
21:00. Central European Time is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time, all year round. There is no hour of the standard working day that is inside 9-to-5 in both Los Angeles and Paris. One side has to take the call outside office hours, so it is worth agreeing which.
Is the difference between PST and CET the same all year?
Yes. Central European Time is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time, all year round. Both zones change their clocks, and close enough to the same dates that the gap between them holds — apart from a week or two each spring and autumn when one has shifted and the other has not.
What do PST and CET actually stand for?
PST is Pacific Time, the zone covering Los Angeles, currently UTC−8 in January. CET is Central European Time, covering Paris, at UTC+1. Pacific Time runs three hours behind the US east coast, which is why a 9am meeting on the east coast is a 6am meeting here — the single most common scheduling complaint in North American business.
Anything worth knowing about Central European Time?
One zone covers most of the continent — Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Warsaw and Stockholm all read the same clock, despite Madrid sitting almost as far west as London. Spain's clocks were moved to match Berlin in 1940 and never moved back.
When is a good time to call between Los Angeles and Paris?
There is no hour of the standard working day that is inside 9-to-5 in both Los Angeles and Paris. One side has to take the call outside office hours, so it is worth agreeing which. If the call has to happen outside that, the fairer arrangement is usually to alternate which side takes the awkward hour rather than always asking the same one.
How it works, and more about pst → cet
The difference, and whether you can rely on it
In January, Central European Time is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time — UTC−8 against UTC+1. It stays that way all year, so the number is worth memorising if you work across these two often.
When you can both be at a desk
There is no hour inside 9-to-5 in both Los Angeles and Paris. Whatever you schedule, one side is taking it outside working hours — so the useful question is not when to meet but who absorbs the inconvenience, and whether it alternates.
Reading the abbreviations literally will mislead you
PST strictly means one fixed offset, but almost nobody uses it that way. People write it to mean the time in Los Angeles, which shifts if that city observes daylight saving — and it does. This page follows the common usage rather than the strict one, because the strict reading gives an answer that is wrong for a good part of the year.
Pacific Time runs three hours behind the US east coast, which is why a 9am meeting on the east coast is a 6am meeting here — the single most common scheduling complaint in North American business. One zone covers most of the continent — Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Warsaw and Stockholm all read the same clock, despite Madrid sitting almost as far west as London. Spain's clocks were moved to match Berlin in 1940 and never moved back.
Scheduling something recurring
For a one-off, the converter above is the whole job. For a standing meeting across zones it is worth putting the invitation in a calendar that stores the zone rather than the time — then the changeover is handled for you and nobody has to remember. If you are trying to find a slot across more than two places at once, the meeting planner shows a whole day at a glance instead.