Which zone this page means. CST means US Central Standard Time (UTC-6) and also China Standard Time (UTC+8) — fourteen hours apart. This page means the US zone. For the Chinese zone see China Standard Time. AEST applies in winter; AEDT (UTC+11) applies from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. Australian seasons are reversed, so summer time runs over the southern summer. Queensland stays on AEST all year.
CST is behind AEST by 15 hours today
On 28 August 2026, Central Standard Time (US) is on CDT at UTC-05:00 and Australian Eastern Standard Time is on AEST at UTC+10:00. The gap between them is 15 hours, with AEST ahead. So 9:00 am in CST is 12:00 am in AEST, and 5:00 pm in CST is 8:00 am in AEST. Going the other way, see AEST to CST.
The gap is not constant, and that is the part that catches people out
Central Standard Time (US) is currently observing daylight saving and changes next on 1 November 2026, when clocks go back an hour. Australian Eastern Standard Time is currently on standard time and changes next on 4 October 2026. Because the two zones change on different dates — US rules for CST and AU rules for AEST — there are a few weeks each year when the usual gap between them is an hour out. That window is the single most common source of a missed call between these two zones, and it is why a page that quotes only the nominal offset is wrong for part of the year.
When you can actually both be at work
Taking a working day as 9:00 am to 5:00 pm local at each end, there are 0 overlapping hours in a normal day. There is none: the two working days do not touch at all, so any live meeting between Central Standard Time (US) and Australian Eastern Standard Time has to sit outside somebody's normal hours. The table above shows which end has the shorter stretch to give up.
Zone rules are set by legislation and change, sometimes at short notice. This page is built against tzdata 2026a, last reviewed 2026-08-18. Quarterly. Zone rules change by legislation, sometimes at short notice. Version and review date are shown on every zone page. The converter above reads your browser's own copy of the zone database, so if a rule has changed since this page was built the live answer follows the new rule — and so does everything above, which is worked out from the same database when you open the page.
Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including the daylight-saving rules behind the 15-hour gap above.