Prayer times change every day, with the sun, the season, and your location. Two cities in the same country can differ by minutes, and two websites can differ for the same city. This guide shows you how to check accurate times for any city, what each of the five daily prayers is, and why the numbers sometimes disagree.
Check prayer times for any city in 4 steps
- Enter the city name, and add the country if the city name repeats. Springfield, Paris, and Alexandria each exist in many places, and the wrong one gives the wrong times.
- Confirm the date. Prayer times shift daily, so yesterday’s timetable is already wrong, and a monthly timetable needs the right day column.
- Note all five prayers: Fajr before dawn, Dhuhr at midday, Asr in the afternoon, Maghrib just after sunset, and Isha at night. Sunrise is also shown because it marks the end of the Fajr window.
- Compare with your local mosque’s timetable when you can. Local mosques sometimes adjust times for their community, and their timetable is the one to follow locally.
Why times differ between websites
Prayer times are calculated from the sun’s position, but different methods define dawn and nightfall differently. Fajr is set by an angle of the sun below the horizon, and methods disagree on that angle: common values range from 15 to 19.5 degrees. Asr also has two conventions: the standard school and the Hanafi school, which sets Asr later. Time zones, daylight saving, and high-latitude rules add further differences, especially in northern cities where summer nights barely darken. None of this means a site is wrong; it means methods differ. Pick the method your local mosque or school of thought uses, and stay with it, rather than switching sites daily and confusing yourself.
Prayer times through the year
Prayer times breathe with the seasons. In summer, Fajr comes very early and Isha very late, stretching the fasting day in Ramadan and compressing the night. In winter, the day shortens, Fajr comes later, and the prayers bunch closer together. Near the equator, times barely change all year, while in northern cities the swing is dramatic: a summer Fajr before 3 a.m. and a winter Fajr after 7 a.m. are both normal in the same city. Daylight saving shifts clock times by an hour overnight, which confuses more people than any calculation method: when clocks change, check your timetable again rather than trusting memory. A monthly timetable, printed or saved, removes all of this guesswork, because it shows the whole curve at a glance. If your household follows different methods, agree on one timetable for the house. One shared timetable prevents daily confusion, especially for Fajr and Isha, where method differences are largest. A single agreed timetable also makes Ramadan and travel planning far simpler for the whole household.
Try it faster with the free tool
Everything above works without any tool, but the free Prayer Times — Today’s Salah Times for Any City in the World does it in seconds. Try it right here:
Tips and common mistakes
- When travelling, check the new city’s times the day before, not on arrival. Jet lag plus wrong times is an avoidable combination.
- Use a countdown to the next prayer if your tool offers one. It removes the mental arithmetic from a busy day.
- In high-latitude summers, expect unusual timetables. Some communities follow the nearest city with normal day and night instead.
- Save your home city’s page or timetable. Checking the same trusted source daily beats searching fresh each morning.
City plus country, right date, five prayers, local mosque as the tiebreaker. That routine keeps your prayer times accurate wherever you are.