Current Time in San Francisco
United States — America/Los_Angeles
About Time in San Francisco
San Francisco operates on Pacific Time (IANA: America/Los_Angeles), the same timezone as Los Angeles. During standard time, this is Pacific Standard Time (PST) at UTC-8, shifting to Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) at UTC-7 from the second Sunday of March through the first Sunday of November.
San Francisco is 3 hours behind New York, 8 hours behind London (7 during BST), and 17 hours behind Tokyo. The city shares its timezone with the entire West Coast tech corridor, from Seattle down to San Diego, making collaboration between Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle tech companies seamless.
The Pacific Time zone deeply influences Silicon Valley's work culture. Major tech companies in and around San Francisco — including those in the South Bay and Peninsula — coordinate product launches and earnings calls around PT. The '10 AM PT' meeting time has become a de facto global standard for tech announcements, as it catches East Coast afternoons and European evenings simultaneously.
Time Facts
San Francisco's tech industry popularized the concept of 'follow the sun' engineering, where code handoffs happen between SF (PT), European, and Asian offices to enable continuous 24-hour development cycles.
Apple's annual WWDC keynote traditionally starts at 10:00 AM PT from San Francisco or Cupertino — a time chosen to reach New York (1 PM ET), London (6 PM BST), and still be manageable in Tokyo (2 AM JST).
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck at 5:12 AM PST on April 18 — a time so precisely recorded that it became one of the earliest seismologically documented events with exact timestamps.
San Francisco's fog patterns are so tied to time of day that locals refer to the summer marine layer as 'Karl the Fog,' which typically rolls in around 6 PM PT and burns off by 10 AM PT.
Business Hours
Standard business hours in San Francisco are 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM PT (17:00-02:00 UTC during PST, 16:00-01:00 UTC during PDT), though many tech companies operate on flexible schedules.