Current time in Boston, Massachusetts right now

It is 5:03 pm in Boston, Massachusetts 🇺🇸 right now, on Saturday, September 26, 2026. The city keeps America/New_York, which is EDT at UTC-4, so Boston is 4 hours behind of UTC, where it is 9:03 pm. The sun rose in Boston at 6:36 am and sets at 6:34 pm, which is 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight.

What time is it in Boston right now?

The time in Boston, Massachusetts is 5:03 pm, 17:03 on a 24 hour clock, on Saturday September 26, 2026. The reading above ticks from your own device against the America/New_York rules, so it stays right through a clock change rather than drifting an hour out twice a year.

Boston sits at 42.36 degrees north and 71.06 degrees west, at a middle latitude and 4,710 km from the equator. Its clock is set to a zone whose nominal meridian is 60.0 degrees west, and the city itself is 11.1 degrees west of that line. Those 11.1 degrees are worth 44 minutes 14 seconds of sun time, which is most of why solar noon here lands at 12:36 pm rather than on the stroke of twelve.

Boston time zone and UTC offset

The IANA zone for Boston, Massachusetts is America/New_York. Right now it is running at UTC-4 and the abbreviation in force is EDT. Boston is on summer time at the moment, which is why the offset reads UTC-4 rather than the UTC-5 it keeps in winter.

Daylight hours in Boston today

The sun rose in Boston at 6:36 am and sets at 6:34 pm, which is 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight. Solar noon, the instant the sun stands at its highest over Boston, is at 12:36 pm, which is 36 minutes after clock noon. The sun's declination today is -1.43 degrees, so at this latitude it reaches about 46.2 degrees above the horizon at its highest, to the south.

The full month by month picture for this city, the extremes of the year and every twilight band are on the sunrise and sunset page for Boston, which works from the same coordinates.

Where Boston is on the map

The marker sits at the coordinates this whole page is computed from, so the sun times, the distances and the solar noon above all belong to this exact point rather than to the wider metropolitan area.

Time difference between Boston and major cities

Every row below is computed at this instant, so daylight saving on either side is already in it. A positive figure means that city's clock reads later than Boston.

Best time to call Boston

Treating a working day as 9am to 6pm on both sides, this is the window the two cities genuinely share. Some of these pairs have no shared working hour at all, which is worth knowing before a meeting is proposed.

Other cities in United States

We cover 415 cities in United States. These are the ones nearest to Boston, with the time on their clocks right now.

Cities on America/New_York time

136 of our cities keep America/New_York, so every one of them reads 5:03 pm at this moment and changes its clocks on the same night as Boston. Nearest first:

Moon phase over Boston tonight

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, 15.7 days into its cycle and about 99% lit. The next full moon falls on October 26, 2026 at 12:11 am New York time, and the next new moon on October 10, 2026 at 11:49 am. Both are the same instant everywhere on Earth, printed here on the Boston clock, which is why the calendar date can differ from the one a reader further east or west sees.

When the clocks change in Boston

The next change is on Sunday, November 1, 2026, 35 days from now, when the clocks in Boston go back 1 hour at 1:59 am and the offset moves from UTC-4 to UTC-5.

Two things follow from that. Any standing call with Boston shifts by an hour on that date unless the other side moves the same weekend, and every offset printed on this page is the offset for today rather than a fixed property of the city.

How far Boston is from other cities

Great-circle distance, computed from the coordinates rather than road mileage. The nearest city we cover to Boston is South Boston, Massachusetts at 3 km, and the furthest is Mandurah, Australia at 18,770 km, which is 94% of the way to being exactly opposite.

The antipode of Boston

Dig straight through the centre of the Earth from Boston, Massachusetts and you come out at 42.36 degrees south, 108.94 degrees east. That point is in the Indian Ocean. The nearest city in our catalogue to it is Mandurah, Australia, 1,246 km away from the antipode itself, where the clock currently reads 5:03 am on Sunday.

The antipode is worked out by flipping the latitude across the equator and swinging the longitude a half turn: 42.36 degrees north becomes 42.36 degrees south, and 71.06 degrees west becomes 108.94 degrees east. Two thirds of the planet is ocean and the land is unevenly spread, so most antipodes are open water: Boston is no exception. The local time at the antipode runs close to UTC+8, roughly twelve hours from Boston, because a half turn of longitude is a half turn of the day.

Sunrise and sunset in Boston

Today the sun rises in Boston at 6:36 am and sets at 6:34 pm, giving 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight. The dedicated page for this city carries the month by month table, the longest and shortest days of 2026, the golden and blue hour bands at both ends of the day, and all three twilight stages: sunrise and sunset times in Boston.

Sun and moon in Boston today

The sun is up in Boston for 11 hours 58 minutes today, from 6:36 am to 6:34 pm. The moon sets in Boston at 6:27 am and comes up again at 6:21 pm. The next phase is the full moon on September 26, 2026. The moon is full, or as near to it as makes no difference, and the whole of the face turned towards us is lit.

Twilight is graded by how far the sun has dropped below the horizon. Civil twilight ends six degrees down, which is roughly the point at which you need a light to read outside. Nautical twilight ends at twelve degrees, when the horizon at sea stops being usable for a sextant sight. Astronomical twilight ends at eighteen degrees, which is full darkness for an observer.

Golden hour is the stretch with the sun between six degrees above the horizon and four below it, and blue hour runs from there down to six degrees below. Neither is literally an hour: each is as long as the sun takes to cross those few degrees, which is minutes near the equator and can be most of the evening at high latitude.

Moonrise and moonset are computed to the moment the moon's upper edge touches a flat horizon, allowing for refraction, for the size of the disc and for the moon's parallax, which together put the centre of the moon at 0.125 degrees above the horizon at the instant it rises. That is a different horizon from the one sunrise uses, and it is why a moonrise time cannot be worked out with a sunrise formula.

Prayer times in Boston

Seven days from September 26, 2026, computed for Boston, MA at 42.36 degrees north, 71.06 degrees west, on the clock of America/New_York. The method is Muslim World League (Muslim World League, Mecca), which puts Fajr at 18.0 degrees below the horizon and Isha at 17.0 degrees. Asr uses the Standard shadow ratio of 1, which is the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position.

Dhuhr is solar noon at Boston, MA, the instant the Sun crosses the local meridian, so it moves with longitude inside the time zone and with the equation of time through the year rather than sitting at a fixed clock reading. Sunrise and Maghrib are the standard refracted horizon, the same 0.833 degrees every almanac uses. Every figure above is computed from the Sun's position for this exact coordinate; none of it is copied from a table.

Different methods disagree, and that is expected rather than an error. Fajr under ISNA at 15 degrees comes later than Fajr under Egyptian General Authority of Survey at 19.5 degrees, by twenty minutes or more depending on latitude and season. Follow whichever your local mosque follows.

Qibla direction from Boston

From Boston, MA the qibla is 60.4 degrees on a true compass, which is east-northeast, or 29.6 degrees north of due east. The Kaaba is 10,002 km away, 6,215 miles, measured over the surface of the Earth.

That figure is the initial bearing of the great circle from Boston, MA to 21.4225 degrees north, 39.8262 degrees east, which is the Kaaba inside Masjid al-Haram. That reads as a surprise on a flat map, where Mecca sits well to the southeast. A flat map is not the Earth. The shortest path from Boston to Mecca is a great circle that runs northeast over the Atlantic and Europe, and the qibla is the bearing of that path where you stand.

The bearing is measured from true north, not magnetic north. A magnetic compass points at the magnetic pole, and the difference between the two can be anything from nothing to more than twenty degrees depending where you are, so check your compass reading against magnetic declination for Boston, MA before you use it. A phone compass set to true north, or the shadow of a vertical stick at local solar noon, avoids the problem entirely.

Boston time now: common questions

What time is it in Boston, Massachusetts right now?

5:03 pm on Saturday September 26, 2026. Boston runs on EDT, UTC-4.

What time zone is Boston in?

America/New_York, currently EDT at UTC-4. 136 of the cities on this site keep that zone.

What is the UTC offset for Boston?

UTC-4 at this instant. It alternates between UTC-5 and UTC-4 across the year.

Does Boston observe daylight saving time?

Yes. The next change is November 1, 2026, when the clocks go back.

How many hours ahead or behind is Boston of New York?

Boston is the same time of New York, where it is 5:03 pm right now.

What time does the sun set in Boston today?

6:34 pm, after a sunrise at 6:36 am and 11 hours 58 minutes of daylight.

What is on the exact opposite side of the Earth from Boston?

42.36 degrees south, 108.94 degrees east, in the Indian Ocean.

When is the best time to call Boston from London?

Between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm in Boston, which is 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm in London.

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