What is the difference between UTC and CDT?

CDT is 5 hours behind of UTC. UTC means Coordinated Universal Time at UTC+0, and CDT means Central Daylight Time at UTC-5.

Which time zone does this page use for UTC?

UTC. An abbreviation is not a time zone — it is a label a zone wears for part of the year — so every calculation here uses a named IANA zone and says which one. If you are writing code, use UTC rather than the string "UTC".

Does CDT mean anything else?

Yes: Cuba Daylight Time at UTC-4. Same letters, one hour apart from the American CDT.

Is UTC a daylight saving abbreviation?

No. UTC is the standard-time abbreviation. When daylight saving is in force, the same zone uses a different one.

UTC to CDT

UTC sits at UTC+0; CDT sits at UTC-5. That puts CDT 5 hours behind of UTC.

Convert a time

From

Date

Time

Converted time

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The converter needs JavaScript to run. Everything below — offsets, daylight saving dates and the hour-by-hour table — is part of the page and works without it.

Hour by hour

Computed on a date when UTC is genuinely in force — using today would be wrong for half the year, because a standard-time abbreviation does not exist in summer.

UTC	CDT
00:00	18:00previous day
01:00	19:00previous day
02:00	20:00previous day
03:00	21:00previous day
04:00	22:00previous day
05:00	23:00previous day
06:00	00:00
07:00	01:00
08:00	02:00
09:00	03:00
10:00	04:00
11:00	05:00
12:00	06:00
13:00	07:00
14:00	08:00
15:00	09:00
16:00	10:00
17:00	11:00
18:00	12:00
19:00	13:00
20:00	14:00
21:00	15:00
22:00	16:00
23:00	17:00

What these abbreviations actually are

	UTC	CDT
Full name	Coordinated Universal Time	Central Daylight Time
Representative zone	UTC	America/Chicago
Offset	UTC+0	UTC-5
Seasonal	Standard time	Daylight saving only
Zone changes in 2026	0	2
Other meanings	None in common use	1

Common questions

What is the difference between UTC and CDT?: CDT is 5 hours behind of UTC. UTC means Coordinated Universal Time at UTC+0, and CDT means Central Daylight Time at UTC-5.
Which time zone does this page use for UTC?: UTC. An abbreviation is not a time zone — it is a label a zone wears for part of the year — so every calculation here uses a named IANA zone and says which one. If you are writing code, use UTC rather than the string "UTC".
Does CDT mean anything else?: Yes: Cuba Daylight Time at UTC-4. Same letters, one hour apart from the American CDT.
Is UTC a daylight saving abbreviation?: No. UTC is the standard-time abbreviation. When daylight saving is in force, the same zone uses a different one.